20. Montana
Montana
A fter the whirlwind of the first few weeks of Piper arriving and becoming an increasingly larger part of Blackwood Ranch, I’d started feeling better than I had—well, maybe ever.
With Piper picking up our slack, the other guys and I have had a lot more time to spend on work, the house, or—heaven forbid—actually taking care of ourselves.
Heck, just this morning Clay took time to go see the barber and get himself a straight razor shave and a haircut.
I think Piper might faint when she sees him clean-shaven.
I was even able to sneak down to the antiques store to pick up a little something for Piper. Nothing too fancy—a small figurine of a cowgirl with red hair in twin braids, swinging a lasso over her head, along with an old-fashioned ice cream scoop.
Piper promised Maisie a fancy banana split sundae if Maisie could go a full month of putting all her toys back in the box without being asked.
Maisie has been successfully leading Piper and Zeke in the “clean up song” every night for the last week, so it was only a matter of time before we were gonna need that scoop.
And the cowgirl? Well, I didn’t know. Piper’s room was still so empty since she came to us with nothing but the clothes on her back. The little wood and metal painted cowgirl reminded me of our city slicker turned country girl. Maybe she’d like it. I was willing to find out.
When I got back to the ranch, everyone else was out, a piece of paper on the table in Piper’s delicate handwriting letting me know they were stopping on the way home to pick up some things to throw on the grill.
I couldn’t blame them. The night air was warm and sweet, just begging for a cookout under the stars.
I lumbered to my bedroom and changed out of the clothes I’d sat in behind my desk all day, in favor of my most worn pair of jeans and a well-loved T-shirt. I had just shrugged into a nice heavy flannel for a Friday night by the grill and the firepit when my office phone began to ring down the hall.
I shuffled back down the hall to pick up the phone just before it would have stopped ringing. “Good evening, Blackwood Ranch, how may I help you?” I droned, unable to drum up my usually snappy customer service voice.
“Dakota, is that you?” a familiar pitchy drawl snapped from the other end of the line, and my blood turned to ice in my veins.
“Caroline?” I scoffed in disbelief.
“Dakota—you listen to me right now. You get Clayton on the phone. I don’t want to talk to your goddamn brother, and I certainly don’t want to talk to that caveman, Zeke,” she snipped as my irritation threatened to spill over.
“Caroline, it’s Montana—why the hell are you callin’ the ranch, when we all know that you’ve already gotten your money? There’s nothing for you here,” I growled into the receiver.
“Oh, Montana, hush. You don’t even know what you’re talking about!” She let out a venomous laugh.
“Clay eventually told us, you know.” I gripped the edge of the desk, my knuckles cracking as I held tighter and tighter.
“How you came creeping back, asking for money right around Maisie’s first birthday, after you took off at six fucking weeks.
” I eased off, worried I might turn the edge of the desk to splinters.
“Yeah? Did he tell you he only made a down payment on ruining my fucking body and my life?” Caroline snorted, unimpressed by my pain, my anger.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I mean that he still owes me money for all the damage that Pack Blackwood did to my perfect body, all the prospects that I lost because of pregnancy and exclusivity,” Caroline explained matter-of-factly. “Of course, there’s also the matter of my daughter, Daisy,” she added snootily.
That was what finally sent me over the edge.
“Her name is Maisie , and you can get royally fucked, Caroline. You don’t have any power over us anymore,” I barked, my lips curling back from my teeth as I snarled into the phone to make my point.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Monty, honey.
” Her voice was sickly sweet, almost a whisper.
“I’ve got a whole pack of high-powered businessmen with the best legal teams money can buy behind me.
If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to make things very, very difficult for you and the rest of the boys. ”
I felt a little relief in that moment that Caroline wasn’t aware of Piper’s recent installation at the ranch—or the fact that all of us were smitten with Miss Collins.
“And what is it that you want, Caroline? Or should I say, how much do you want?” I cut straight to the chase.
“I want the ranch, along with its crown jewel.” Caroline’s words dripped with venom as she added, “And if that means I need to go through the little girl, then so help me, Montana—I will use the little girl to get what I want.”
I didn’t need to ask Caroline what she meant by crown jewel… I knew that she meant Clay.
The two of them were like oil and water, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t tried to mix it up—often with sexually explosive results. It never lasted long, though. The two of them could never see eye to eye long enough to build a deeper connection.
After Caroline left, Clay only hardened his heart more, closing himself off and burying his feelings in our increasing workload.
The fact that Piper had already started to melt some of his icy, gruff exterior in the short amount of time that she’d been here, only highlighted how clearly Clayton and Caroline were never meant to be.
“Caroline, with all due respect, you’re dreamin’ if you think you’re ever getting anywhere near this ranch, much less that you’d ever be getting this ranch ,” I laughed good-naturedly, as if I had never heard a funnier joke in my life.
“We’ll see who’s dreaming when I see you in court with my insanely prestigious legal team. You’ll be begging me for scraps!” she shouts through the phone.
There was nothing more for me to say. Anything else would have devolved into name-calling and mudslinging, and I wasn’t about to lower myself to Caroline’s level.
“Serve us with papers if you’re going to do it, Caroline. Otherwise, fuck off and please never contact me or any of the rest of my family again.”
And that was when the dial tone sounded.