Chapter 14
TRENT
Imet up with Colby to get the lowdown on everything that had happened while I’d been gone. Thankfully, my foreman had never been one to mince words.
We stood next to the main barn while he gave me an update that sent relief trickling all the way through to my soul. The cows were healthy, the bulls were thriving, and the breeding program was still on track.
I nodded along, trying not to zone out once he turned to less important updates, but it was harder than it should’ve been. Unfortunately, while I couldn’t really afford it after being gone for so long, I was distracted today.
Charlotte looks damn good in that dress.
She was picking her way across the yard in her shiny heels, carefully avoiding every stray clump of dirt. I caught her glance at me with wide eyes, clearly a little overwhelmed with the situation but evidently still determined to join me instead of staying put and sitting pretty in the house.
God, I should’ve given her a hat at least.
I’d been so surprised when she’d asked if she could come with me that it had never even crossed my mind.
Now, the poor girl was shielding her eyes from the brutal Texas sunshine with a manicured hand, the sun beating down on her bare shoulders, and while I should’ve thought about it as her problem and not mine, some protective instinct was growling and snapping about getting her to the safety of shade.
When she finally reached us, instead of acting on that impulse, I cleared my throat and waved at my foreman. “This is Colby. Colby, this is Charlotte, my girlfriend.”
Both of his eyebrows shot up, clearly trying to reconcile the glamorous woman in front of him with the rough-and-tumble ranch work part of me he knew so well.
But he simply tipped his hat and pretended not to notice that she was wearing a powder blue, designer dress that would never survive this dirt.
“Miss,” he said cautiously. “Welcome to the ranch.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a polite smile, looking like she was trying to appear unshaken, but I knew better. “I’m thrilled to be here.”
As she said it, she slid a hand onto my shoulder and stepped closer to my side, flashing me a sweet smile and batting her eyelashes. Seeing it as the challenge it was, I slid my arm around her waist and absolutely did not notice how well she fit against me.
Colby glanced between us, smiled, and tipped his hat again. “It’s nice to meet you, miss. I’ll be seeing you around. Maybe get your girl some boots, Trent. What kind of gentleman are you?”
She smiled up at me, enjoying herself. “Yeah, Trent. A gentleman would have gotten me boots. Thank you, Colby, for keeping him in line.”
Colby chuckled and took off toward the barn, undoubtedly to ask the others if they’d met the boss’s city girl yet, but as soon as he was gone, she let go of me and lifted one dark, perfectly arched eyebrow. “How was that for not overthinking it?”
I shrugged. “It could’ve gone worse.”
A faint smile spread on her lips, her delicate hands finding her hips now that she seemed to have found her footing in the dirt. “Sure, Cowboy. Keep telling yourself that.”
I will, thanks. What else am I going to tell myself, that I had a brief flash of what it might feel like to have you underneath me, completely at my mercy? Yeah, that’s not happening.
“Let’s go, Westwood. We’re burning daylight and we’ve got a lot more people to check in with.”
“That was all you needed to discuss with your foreman?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “It seems like that meeting could’ve been an email.”
“It’s not all I need to discuss with him,” I said, looking away from her to sweep my gaze across the yard. “There’s a whole heck of a lot more, but for that, we need to be in front of a computer. This was just the highlights.”
“And so, even ranching has moved into the digital age,” she said solemnly before she winked at me. “Soon, your hands will be as soft as Alex’s.”
I sighed, spun around, and smiled when she squeaked as she realized she’d have to try to keep up with me. “Ranching has never been as backward a business as you seem to think.”
“Clearly.”
She sounded impressed, but I didn’t turn to check. I shouldn’t give a shit what she thought. And yet…
Introductions to the ranch hands we ran into went about as smoothly as I might’ve expected. There were some polite nods and a few curious glances but mostly we encountered skepticism—and way too many roving eyes when they thought I wasn’t looking.
Eventually, in an effort to quell the rising tide of possessiveness I had no business feeling, I let her wander a bit while I finished off. As soon as I was done, I went over to where she’d been standing overlooking some of the paddocks and jerked my head toward the truck.
“Come on. I’ll take you back to the house.”
She hesitated, glancing up at me with her lip between her teeth as her gaze flicked back and forth. “Can’t we go see the horses first?”
I shook my head. “You can see the horses when you prove you can handle being on a ranch.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “How do I prove that?”
“Boots,” I said pointedly. “Possibly consider a pair of jeans too.”
She perked up. “I can do that.”
I groaned and swept a hand over my face, ignoring the quizzical look she sent me in favor of helping her pick her way back across the dirt so I could get her out of the sun—and away from all the lingering, appreciative stares she was drawing.
Two hours later, she was in yet another designer dress, a tight red little number that accentuated her curves and made it hard not to stare.
As we walked into a restaurant in Dallas, she clung to my arm like she’d been glued to me, but I didn’t mind it as much as I could’ve.
We just hadn’t come here for me to strut her around and feel like a god about it.
Okay, maybe a little bit.
The aim of making reservations at this particular restaurant had been for us to be seen together, and it was a gamble that paid off. As soon as I started introducing her to the country-club regulars and the other gossip-mongers as my girlfriend, heads turned and whispers started floating.
She might not be the type that my ranch hands had expected I’d choose, but around here, no one had any trouble believing I was dating the current sole female heir to the Chicago Westwood fortune. Most of these people knew how close I was to the family and that my sister had married into it.
The only curveball I hadn’t seen coming was that two of my friends, a married couple, were seated at the table right next to the one we were shown to. My stomach twisted a little when I saw them, Rob and Mabel Miller.
While the other people might not have any problem buying our story, these two actually knew me—and they knew I sure as shit had never mentioned having any interest in a relationship with Alex’s little sister.
Rob grinned when he noticed us walking toward them, but he did a visible double-take when I introduced her. “Mabel and Rob, meet Charlotte Westwood. My girlfriend.”
A mix of shock and amusement registered on both their faces as they rose to greet her. Charlotte shook their hands, probably realizing the social chaos she’d just stepped into, but she took it in stride and I had to give her credit for it.
Mabel, thankfully, took to Charlotte immediately. That alone eased some of the tension curling in my gut.
“Well, isn’t this an interesting development,” Mabel said, eyelashes fluttering in surprise. “What other secrets have you been keeping, Trent Shepard?”
“Hopefully just me,” Charlotte said, smiling as she leaned into my side. “Unless there’s something else I need to know about?”
I shook my head and both women laughed. She and Mabel started making small talk and I got to watch her transform into a confident charmer completely at ease in the situation.
She was easy to talk to, and clearly, she appreciated all the subtle cues so well that I didn’t need to guide her through anything.
She winked at me like she could read my thoughts.
“Come sit with us,” Mabel said warmly when she sank back into her seat. “We’d love to have you join us.”
Charlotte hesitated, probably weighing just how deep we were getting dragged into this, but she still slid into the chair I pulled out for her.
Rob leaned in as soon as I took my place by her side, his eyes narrowing with curiosity.
“So this is why you’ve been spending so much time outside Texas lately, isn’t it? ”
I just nodded, letting the lie take on a life of its own. “Yeah, Charlotte and I ran into each other at a Christmas party last year. We got stuck under the mistletoe together and it was love at first kiss.”
Charlotte’s gaze hit mine when I said it, her expression sharp and calculating, but I didn’t flinch. I just let the story roll out, lying through my teeth. I wished I had kissed her but there was no changing the past.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for her to catch up. She laughed, but fixed her eyes intently on mine, sending a silent warning not to push it too far.
Rob stared at us with his jaw slack, like he might actually choke on his steak while Mabel melted, even waving a hand in front of her face. “Oh my word, that is just the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
Charlotte smiled, her lips curving into a polite, carefully measured grin, but her eyes were still locked on mine. Don’t make me do something stupid.
In response, I draped my arm over the back of her chair, leaning in just slightly and letting my voice soften. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
Her eyes widened for a heartbeat, but then she relaxed into me enough that I could kiss the corner of her mouth. She played along almost too effortlessly, leaning into my side and even turning her forehead into my cheek.
I smirked against her hairline as I held her, but in the back of my mind, alarm bells were blaring like a four-alarm fire had started somewhere. This is either really going to be fun. Or it’s going to become complete hell. One of the two.
“That’s right, baby,” she purred, but there were daggers in her eyes for a moment when she pulled away to look up at me. “I’m sure that’s enough of our story for now. What about you guys, how did you meet?”
Mabel took the bait, which made dinner itself survivable, but she did keep asking questions about us, too. Delighted with our story, she hung on every fabricated word about mistletoe and instant love.
Charlotte kept her composure, laughing when it was expected, finishing some of my sentences with embellished details of her own, and she smiled when required to, but the lovestruck facade vanished the second we were back in the truck.
She shoved me as hard as someone her size could manage, and even though it felt like getting beat on by a child, it was still enough to make me grunt. I spun to face her without turning over the engine.
“What the hell is your problem?” she demanded, her cheeks flushed and her eyes blazing in the ambient light streaming in from the street. “That can’t be our meet-cute!”
I blinked at her. “Meet-cute?”
“It’s that thing where you don’t make people want to punch you when you meet them,” she snapped. “You royally snubbed me at CC’s Christmas party. Everybody who was there talked about it for weeks. That story’s never going to hold up.”
I shook my head. “It’s too late now. Rob and Mabel are part of every social club in the greater Dallas area. They’re invested in that story, so it’s sticking. We’ll just make something up if anyone starts asking questions. Maybe I tracked you down later that night.”
Her nostrils flared, but she was clearly done talking about this.
She turned up the music so loud that my eardrums ached, and I spun the volume knob down.
She switched on the AC. I turned it off.
The sudden tension between us would’ve been bad enough even without the traffic, but we’d slowed to a crawl, our windows up, and only the hum of the engine filling the tense silence between us.
“You’re an asshole,” she said finally, throwing me a glare that could cut glass.
“I’ve been called much, much worse,” I replied evenly, gripping the steering wheel tighter as annoyance rolled through me.
I hadn’t meant to snub her at the party, but it seemed to have become a bit of a tender spot. If I’d known then what I knew now, maybe I just would’ve done it, but I couldn’t change the fact that I’d walked away.
She huffed out a breath as she crossed her arms, obviously pissed off about it all over again. “Maybe I’d be better off with Gregory.”
I nearly swerved into the lane divider, but I forced my eyes onto the road and my hands to steady on the wheel. “Okay, slow down. What exactly do you want?”
She blinked at me, startled, as if the question had hit a nerve. “What do you mean, what do I want?”
“I get it, okay. I understand that the wealth needs to be protected and that your family does that by arranging marriages. I realize this is just how it works for you. Hell, my own sister married into the Westwoods after Jamie was given the ultimatum, but she did it for love.”
Charlotte wasn’t a child, but she wasn’t naive either.
So I glanced at her and repeated my question, a little more gently this time.
“What do you actually want, Charlotte? Because I can play this charade for Alex all day long, but I want to know what you want. Do you want Gregory? Because if so, I can have you in the air in an hour.”
Her jaw tightened, but to my surprise, she didn’t answer right away. She just stared out the window at the passing lights and chewed on her lip. An odd sensation crept up on me, a suspicion that it was possible this was the first time anyone had genuinely asked her that question.
At the realization, all I knew for sure was that whatever she said next, it was going to change the entire trip—and maybe even everything I’d thought I knew about her. She pouted for another moment, like she was weighing how much to tell me. Then she visibly steeled herself.
“I’d like to have kids,” she said and I blinked, half-expecting a punchline, but it didn’t come. “A big family. I want to know what it felt like for my mom. Being loved, and needed, and never forgotten.”
What the hell?
I didn’t understand what she meant, not fully, but there was a weight in her voice that told me she was stone cold serious. She didn’t give me a chance to ask any questions either, simply turning up the radio again as soon as the words were out.
That simple act said more than anything she could have said aloud.
Instead of turning down the volume again, I let the music fill the space between us.
Then I wondered why my first instinct had been to offer her the babies she so badly wanted, even knowing that having a family together had never been anywhere close to being part of the deal.