Chapter 16
Hayes
“Some bachelor party you’ve got going on,” Mason said as he moseyed through the tree line, carrying a six-pack of beer.
I chuckled. “Sorry. I’m not the steak and strip club type.”
The estate was blissfully quiet after nearly twelve hours of mayhem.
Hallie and Catherine had been outside for most of it, giving marching orders as a giant white tent was erected in one of the pastures beside the rose garden.
Catering staff had been bustling around the house all day, preparing for the meal tomorrow.
I had picked up the rings and my suit had been delivered.
This was real. I was marrying Catherine Foster.
Mason chuckled as he took a seat on the patch of grass beside me and stared at the pond. “Me either.” He offered me a beer from the six-pack, but I waved it off. He grabbed one for himself and popped the top. “You’re actually going through with it, huh?”
“Don’t have much choice at this point.”
Mason lifted a shoulder. “There are worse things in life than marrying a good woman and having some land to call home.”
“No arguments there.”
“So…” Mason’s voice trailed off. “The governor is dear old Dad, huh?”
I glanced over at him. “Where’d you hear that?” To my knowledge, Catherine had kept that information secret, though a lot of people were about to find out when he walked her down the aisle.
“Cath told Hallie. Hallie told me. Don’t worry,” he said as he rested his arms on top of bent knees. “That’s estate business. It doesn’t leave the gates.” He glanced at me. “I’m just curious how you got him to agree to walk her down the aisle.”
“Just took a phone call.” I snapped a blade of grass and twisted it around the tip of my finger.
Mason laughed. “So, you’re telling me that she’s tried to have a relationship with the man for her whole twenty-something years on this earth, and all it took from you was one phone call?”
“I can be persuasive when I need to be,” I said as I stared out at the glossy surface of the pond.
Mason took a long drink. “I guess money does talk.”
“I didn’t pay him,” I said. “We just had a conversation.”
“Be straight with me,” Mason said as he smoothed down his silver beard.
“I called him up and told him how unfortunate it was that we didn’t have a chance to speak more at the funeral, especially since I was going to marry his daughter.”
Mason laughed at my sarcasm.
A huff slipped free because of how ridiculously easy it had been. “I apologized for not getting his blessing before proposing, but that it would mean the world to Catherine and to me to have him in attendance.”
“That’s all it took, huh? A little emotional strong-arming?”
“He expressed his sincerest condolences for my granddad’s passing”—I paused and rolled my eyes—“and said that he’d have to check his calendar.
I accepted his bullshit sympathies and said my only regret was that my mom and grandma weren’t alive to see her become the next Mrs. Wilder, and how they would have thought Catherine was the perfect woman to be the next head of the Wilder family and estate. ”
“Ah. So you reminded him that his daughter was about to be the matriarch of a hundred-million-dollar fortune?”
“We’re about to enter an election cycle and he’s a shoo-in for the VP nomination.
The Grants might have political capital, but they don’t have the kind of capital Catherine’s about to have access to.
He needs her, whether he wants to admit it or not.
Virginia might believe that he has the picture-perfect family, but once he’s in the national spotlight, people will start hunting for skeletons.
They’ll dig up his affair and find out about Catherine.
He’ll be eviscerated if he tries to hide it.
If he owns it, he looks like a modern father whose daughter can help bring in a hell of a lot of campaign donations. ”
Mason let out a low whistle. “Damn. You’re one manipulative son of a bitch.”
I smirked. “You’re forgetting my granddad wasn’t just a nice old man. I learned from the best.”
Mason nodded. “And you think Catherine will play the dutiful daughter after he’s hidden her away all these years?”
“There won’t be pressure on her right away. I think she’ll be clear of it after we get the marriage annulled.”
Mason let out a sharp breath and downed the rest of his beer. “I hope you’re right. Women like Catherine are rare. Don’t hurt her.”
“I could say the same about Hallie,” I said pointedly.
Mason’s jaw tightened. “Damn right about that,” he muttered.
“You know, there are no rules forbidding workplace romances on the estate,” I said.
“I know,” Mason said calmly as he stared at the pond, like he was simply acknowledging a well-known fact the same way he would if he had to confirm he knew his birthday or who the president was. “It’s just not time yet.”
By my guess, Mason had been waiting for it to be time for years.
“Thanks for not making me drink alone,” he said as he stuffed the empty beer back into the case and tucked it under his arm. “Don’t stay out too late. Big day tomorrow.”
Understatement of the year.
I waved him off before lying back on the grass and closing my eyes, enjoying the gentle serenade from the crickets and the frogs as daylight began to dim.
The dusky haze that settled over the grass was my favorite time of day.
It was the moment when the sun dripped down from the heavens and touched the earth.
Footsteps neared. I froze and waited for the rustle of brush as whoever it was headed to the pond, but the steps passed by and faded into the distance.
Huh.
Mason had headed up to his place. All the vendors setting up for the wedding should have been working up by the garden.
Hallie was likely at the estate house. Zach rarely left the west wing.
Levi was working off property, but I had seen his taillights heading to his place when I was walking to the pond.
Which left my fiancée unaccounted for.
I eased up and let my curiosity lead the way.
I caught her blonde hair and blue jeans slipping into the stables and followed. My boots echoed as I set foot inside. Catherine whirled around, looking rather guilty.
“Hallie will never forgive you if you become a runaway bride after she put in all that work for the wedding tomorrow,” I teased.
Catherine popped open a bag of baby carrots. “I just needed to get some air. I was working on refreshing my résumé and gave myself a migraine.”
The sound of the bag was a beacon to every horse in the whole place. Overwhelmed with excitement, Maisey collided into her stall door in a tangle of limbs. There was a clumsy scuffle as she scrambled to get back up. Finally, she popped up onto her hooves and dropped her head over the partition.
I rested my hands on my hips. “You’re not very good at being a horse, are you?”
Catherine snickered, but I could sense the strain hidden beneath the beauty queen smile.
Maisey just craned her long neck in Catherine’s direction, trying to will the carrots into her mouth.
“She’s like a puppy,” Catherine said as she offered a single carrot in her flattened palm.
Maisey lunged for the bag instead of the carrot, then threw a temper tantrum, tossing her head and stamping her hooves when the bag wasn’t given to her.
Catherine sighed. “A really untrained puppy.”
From the other side of the stables, Elvis glared at Maisey. The old barn cat eased off his perch on Elvis’s head, tiptoed along the edge of his stall, then jumped off and leaped over to the edge of Maisey’s stall.
Apparently, an ornery cat was more appealing than carrots. Maisey’s ears popped up. She let out a delighted whinny, then snapped at the cat’s tail.
The cat was faster, dancing edge to edge, skipping across the bottom of the stall, then darting out. The feline parkour twisted Maisey into knots.
It took her a moment to get her bearings before she realized the cat was gone. She huffed and blustered with frustration in those big eyes.
“Is that mean ol’ cat teasing you?” Catherine cooed as she hid the bag behind her back and offered Maisey a single carrot. “You just need some attention, don’t you?”
Maisey craned over the edge of the stall as far as she could and dropped her forehead onto Catherine’s shoulder.
“You’re a sweet girl,” Catherine gushed.
“You remember how to ride?” I asked.
“Do you remember how to tack up a horse?” she countered.
I glanced at Maisey, then at the spare cowboy hat that hung from the wall.
It had Savannah’s signature leather branding on the brim—a bespoke “W. W.” for Walt Wilder.
I snagged it off the nail and put it on.
“I think the better question is, can we get Calamity Jane into the cross ties without her taking us both out.”
—
By some kind of miracle, Maisey was so excited at the prospect of being ridden that she stood still as a statue as I got her fitted with a saddle, saddle pad, and bridle. She was sweet, but I didn’t trust her enough to put Catherine on top of her.
Instead, Catherine rode Elvis while I was on Maisey. We quickly left the stables behind and headed to one of the trails that looped around the foothills.
To my surprise, Maisey trotted pleasantly, trying her best to match Elvis’s gait.
Occasionally she would get a burst of excitement and skip like a giddy schoolgirl, making me hold on for dear life.
Every time she got the zoomies like a puppy, Elvis would let out a low grunt and glare at her until she fell back in line.
Catherine’s features were serene as we circled the north side of the estate. The mountains loomed to the left and the valley stretched out to the right.
“You ready for tomorrow?” I asked.
Catherine nodded but didn’t look at me. “Everything’s coming together nicely. I think we actually pulled it off.”
“That’s not what I asked, Cath.”
I watched the rock and sway of her hips with each of Elvis’s steps and the rise and fall of her chest with each controlled breath.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted after a long stretch of silence. “And stressed.”