Golden Handcuffs
SLADE
An hour later, we’ve dropped the dog at my house, where she promptly curls up on her bed with her stuffed hedgehog and is asleep before we’ve even made it to the door. Lila looks back at her once with that soft expression I’ve started to take a lot of pleasure in.
And then we’re off to the stables, where I’m saddling up Ghost for myself and Daisy Mae, our prettiest palomino mare, for Lila.
“All right,” I tell Lila, leading Daisy Mae over to her. “You ever sat in a Western saddle?”
“Never.”
“Nothing to it. Stirrups are bigger and saddle is stiffer than you’ll be used to. You got that pommel you can rest your hands on. Daisy Mae’s a good girl. Real responsive.”
Lila’s gaze dips to my mouth as I say it and she swallows. “Good to know.”
“Need a lift?”
She nods. “I think so.”
As she puts her boot in the stirrup I put my hands on her waist and lift. She’s warm through the knit of her sweater, her curves plush beneath my hands. I have her in the saddle in one motion and my hands back at my sides before I do something stupid with them, like trail my fingers along her hip.
I mount my own horse, resolutely not looking at her. “This way.”
As we ride the property, I find myself telling her about Wild Rose.
Normally, talking to people feels like pulling teeth for me, but it’s easy with Lila.
She asks questions and keeps the ball rolling and the conversation feels effortless.
I tell her about our cattle operation and the regenerative agriculture Rafe has started us on, and all the other things that make Wild Rose run.
When we get to my favorite overlook, I pull up to a stop. “We can let the horses graze for a minute.”
I dismount first, and then go to her to help. As I help her down, she slides against me on the way, her sweater soft under my hands, her hair in my face for just a second. The flowers and marshmallow smell floods my sense and I resist the urge to breathe in deep.
While she goes to the edge of the rocky overlook, I pull out leather-wrapped flask from my saddlebag and bring it over to her.
“Drink?” I venture.
Our fingers brush as she takes it from me. “Whiskey?”
I nod. “Bourbon.”
She takes a sip. Her eyes widen. “This is good stuff.”
“What, you think cowboys only drink rotgut?” I tease.
She gives me a coy smile that makes my heart rate pick up. “Not your type of cowboy. You’ve got expensive tastes.”
“Oh?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Come on. An Ellis & Macklan custom home? That truck? You might have dirt on the floors and sleep on a mattress but you’ve got a taste for the finer things in life, Mr. Rhodes.”
My eyes sweep down her. The cashmere sweater and tight jeans clinging to her curves. The gold and jewels winking at her wrists and earlobes and neck. She’s sexy and elegant all at once and her whole vibe really does it for me.
“Yeah,” I say, a little roughly. “I guess I do like the finer things.”
The pink in her cheeks deepens as she hands the flask back to me. I take a long pull off the flask and let myself have the thought that her lips were just here, that the flask is still warm from her touch, and then I put it in my pocket and look at the mountains.
“So what’s troubling you?” I ask.
“Slade, you’re my client. You don’t want to hear about my private drama, trust me.”
“Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
She looks out over the valley. From up here you can see the whole of Wild Rose.
The pastures we just rode through, the cottonwoods by the river turning autumn gold.
The creek winds in a silvery ribbon through the land and the mountains are already dusted with snow on the highest peaks.
The wind is fiercer at this elevation, and it blows her pink hair around her in a way that makes her impossible to look away from.
Stunning as this landscape is, and it’s the most beautiful piece of land I know, she’s the most breathtaking thing in it.
“I have a complicated family,” she says at last. “And just when I manage to forget about them for five minutes, they call to remind me why I left.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighs, a pink strand of hair fluttering over her nose.
Her shoulders drop. “I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen.
Low contact with them, mostly no contact.
Which has suited everyone fine. But now there’s money involved, and a deadline, and they’re paying attention to me for the first time in years and it’s not for any good reason. ”
“What kind of deadline?”
She waves a hand. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”
“Lila.”
She looks at me with those big brown eyes and a rush of protectiveness moves through me. The more she underplays it, the more worried I’m getting. Is she in some kind of financial trouble? And with family drama attached to it?
That shit can get real complicated, real fast.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “But you can.”
She puts her hands to her cheeks. “God, this is so unprofessional.”
I lean forward and gently pull her hands away from her face. Her rings are cool against my fingers but her skin is warm and silky.
Her breath catches when I touch her. I let go before I want to. I want her to trust me. To open up to me.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I say. “Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t fix it,” she says. “But thank you.”
She hasn’t moved back. I haven’t either. Her chin is tipped up slightly to look at me and her teeth are sinking into her bottom lip. I need to stop staring at her lips, because I’m doing an extremely poor job of being her client right now. Or even just a concerned friend.
“Try me,” I say.
She looks down. Her eyelids are dusted in champagne sparkle. She’s an artist in everything she does.
“Everyone in my family gets a trust fund,” she says at last. “But it comes with major strings attached. I never wanted to let them control me and manipulate me with that money, so I cut those strings.”
Trust fund. Okay. So she’s not in dire financial straits, which is good. I mean, I could have helped her if she was. But this is obviously a different kind of situation.
“I’m not sure I follow,” I tell her.
“The money in the trust fund is released when you reach certain milestones. Like graduating from an Ivy League—boom, a check lands in your account. Advanced degree like an MBA or doctorate? More money. Getting married—another fat check. Having children—yet another check.” She looks at me.
“I never took that money. Never even tried. I don’t want anything from them.
Now I have thirty days left before the deadline to get married.
If I don’t claim that money, it gets redistributed to my siblings. ”
She pauses. “That’s why my brother and sister are calling. Not because they care what I do. Because they care what they get. They’re calling to make sure I stay single and cooperative.”
I let that sit, thinking through what she just told me. “Hang on a second. So you get access to your trust fund if you get married, do I have that right?”
“That’s right.”
“But your family is calling to make sure you don’t get married.”
“Correct. My brother and sister are breathing down my neck now because they don’t want me to mess it up for them right at the finish line. But they have nothing to worry about. I’m very much single.”
She’s single.
That’s the minor yet somehow extremely important detail my mind seizes on. “So that phone call?” I ask.
“That was with the Sherwood family attorney. Calling to remind me that I need to get married by the time I turn twenty-six or I forfeit the money.”
The gears in my head are already turning. I can fix this for her. I can help her.
Like my brothers, I’ve always had a reckless streak. Unlike them, I just keep it quiet, which means nobody sees it coming. My opponents learned that the hard way.
I already know in my heart that I’m about to do something crazy, but I’ve got to warm Lila up to it a little first.
I ask her, “How much is that trust fund check worth?”
“Five million. My sister wants a vacation home in Nantucket. My brother needs to dig himself out of some bad real estate investments that have been all over the local news back home. It’s enough for them to be very invested in my continued singlehood.”
“And what would you do with the money?” I ask, purely curious. She deserves to do anything she wants with it, frankly.
She blinks. “I’ve never even thought of it as a real possibility.”
“If it were.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I’d donate it. All of it. I don’t want anything from my family, including their money. But I’d rather it do some good somewhere instead of fund my sister’s vacation home or line the pockets of some private equity vultures.”
I take another slug of bourbon and look out at the mountains and think, why not? Why not be reckless?
Life is short.
I learned that the hard way.
Lila deserves to take that money and give it away if she wants to. And I happen to be conveniently available and I’m leaving in less than a year anyway, so there’s a built-in exit that won’t hurt either of us.
That’s all it is.
I look at Lila. Twenty-five years old, all alone in the middle of Montana. Building a life from scratch after rejecting her family’s money and manipulation. Not a lot of people have the strength to walk away from golden handcuffs like she did.
How many years has she spent handling things alone? Gotten so good at it she’s stopped relying on anyone else to help her?
I can’t imagine how painful it must be to have to cut off your own family because they’re so toxic.
My gaze snags on her bare ring finger where she’s got her arms wrapped around herself.
Seeing her hug herself like that, it activates my protective instincts again.
This girl stopped on the side of a road for an injured dog. She’d donate five million dollars without blinking. She’s on her own since she was eighteen, but it hasn’t hardened her. She’s soft-hearted and so beautiful, and very much alone in the world.
She deserves someone to stand by her side.
“You should collect that money,” I say.
“Not gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“I have until the end of October to get married.” She gives me a look. “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“You don’t need a boyfriend,” I say. “You need a husband.”
Her eyebrows lift. “From where? The feed store? Do they have an aisle for that?”
I nearly smile. “You can look closer than that.”
The wind moves her hair across her face and she doesn’t push it away. So I do it for her, my rough fingertips barely grazing her cheek as I tuck it behind her ear, and I feel her breath catch at the contact.
“Lila,” I say. “Let’s get married.”