Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 115683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
“So these ideas you got for the ranch.”
I can tell he’s forcing himself to focus.
“Talk to me.”
I do.
Wild as it sounds, I feel safe to just…dive right in. Share everything. Even though I rarely show people my notebook. This thing is for rough drafts. Rough ideas. It’s my heart and head working themselves out on the page. So much of what’s in here sucks.
But I show Colton anyway.
I walk him through my sketches. His favorite color is yellow, so he likes the drawing I did of a stallion on its hind legs, mane flying, colored with a marigold-hued pencil. He tells me the horseshoe logo I’ve been working on is beautiful but that it looks a lot like the logo Mollie designed for Lucky River Ranch.
We laugh at my notes on how much horses actually poop. He shows me where I drew the lines of my map incorrectly and then tells me about landmarks that will help me find my way around the property.
He uses his blunt fingertip to trace a pair of figures—a man and a woman—I drew watching Doc Sally and her husband, Wyatt, work together the other day. The man’s in a cowboy hat, with his hands on her hips. She looks up at him, her hair trailing down her back.
“This is beautiful. Lainey, this is all…so creative. Really fucking beautiful. Wow. Seeing the ranch through your eyes…” He blinks, sitting up. “It’s brand-new.”
I feel like I’m going to cry again. “Wow. That’s awful kind of you to say. Thank you, Colt.”
He turns his head to look at me. “Will you please call me that? From now on? Because I really hate Colton.”
I really, really dig him telling me so explicitly what he wants.
I dig him being vulnerable like this even more.
I’m in so much trouble.
“Why?”
“Just do. Too formal.”
“Okay. But only if you stop calling me Dallas and use Fort Worth instead.”
His laughter fills the room, echoing inside my rib cage. “Sure thing, Fort Worth.”
He takes the notebook in his hands, and we flip through more pages.
“You really wanna give this up to go corporate?” he asks.
“This is silly.”
“Seems like it’s important to you if you’re spending so much time on it. Double U.” He chuckles, pointing to my manic light-bulb moment. “Clever.”
“Beck liked it. I wanna workshop it with Dean too before I finalize anything, but I’m pretty proud of that one. Came up with it after we…did what we did in the barn that day. Go figure. Having an epic orgasm really helps with creativity.”
He thumbs through all the pages I’ve filled. “You’ve been orgasming a lot, then, haven’t you?”
“Come to think of it, I have.”
“Promise me something?”
“That sounds serious.”
“You’ll only orgasm with me going forward. Until you head back to Fort Worth.”
I take a deep inhale, pretending to ponder the proposition. “You work a lot.”
“I’ll find time.”
“I work a lot.”
He’s trailing his fingertips up my arm now. “You know I like a challenge, right? I’m gonna make this happen, honey, come hell or high water.”
My first impulse is to assume he’s full of shit. No way will Colton—wait, Colt—jump through hoops to see me. I’m not that important.
I don’t matter that much.
But you do. And he will.
And he does. The next day. And the day after that too.
CHAPTER 25
Mending Fences
COLT
My heart thumps as I pull up to Mom and Dad’s house.
Dean, however, leaps out of the car with a yelp of utter joy. “I’m starving, Dad. What d’you think Mimi made for dessert? Are you still going to be mad at Auntie Billie and Uncle Ry? I can’t wait to kick his butt at UNO. Is Lainey really going to be here? I hope she’s going to be here.” My son pulls the deck of cards out of his jacket pocket.
Shaking my head, I tuck the flowers I bought from the grocery store underneath my arm and hustle toward the door. We’re running late, thanks to a kindergarten class playdate that went half an hour long. The other room parent and I wanted to get the kids together outside school hours, and a Sunday afternoon ended up being the best time to do it.
“How do you know I’m mad at Auntie Billie?” I ask, although I already know the answer.
“I heard Uncle Tate talking about it. He said you were being a butthead.”
“What did we say about that word?”
“So ‘butt’ is okay, but ‘butthead’ isn’t?”
“How about we avoid the B word altogether, yeah?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
The flowers are a shitty consolation prize for Mom after I intentionally skipped Sunday supper the past couple weeks. I just couldn’t deal with seeing Billie and Ryder together, stupid as that sounds. But I was short on time, and I figured flowers were better than nothing.
I’m anxious as hell as I follow Dean through the front door. The smells of tomato sauce and sweet Italian sausage hit me the second I step inside.