Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Miranda
Mover and Shaker
Usually, folks at the local grocery store didn’t pay her too much mind.
They’d gotten used to seeing a Sutton doing her own grocery shopping soon after her daddy died.
Right about the same time she realized they were too broke for most of the things they took for granted, like grocery delivery.
Which was how she knew something was wrong as she pushed her cart down the cereal aisle and every person she passed looked at her then quickly looked away.
Some with a distasteful tsk or a shake of their heads.
Until a woman in the floral department just stared at her, and said, “Bless your heart.”
“Well, thank you,” she replied, but as she passed by the magazine rack, she saw several tabloids had pictures of her face in a circle next to a bigger picture of her kissing Renn.
It was from that first night they met in the bar.
Someone must have snapped their picture.
Another one had a picture of Renn in his Aces uniform looking like a rugged football god.
But then several more pictures were spread like a deck of cards of her kissing other men, or with different engagement rings on.
“Oh no.” She grabbed the first copy and started to leaf through it. Renn Ripley Walker was somehow caught up in a home-town mess, with gold digger Miranda Sutton. Every other line was about how she was a manipulative man-eater.
Her phone started to ping with incoming texts, and she tried to refold the tabloid but couldn’t find the front.
“You have to buy that to read it,” the florist said with her judgy tone.
“I’m not buying this trash,” Miranda said, digging her phone out of her bag and seeing she had several missed calls from Shelby and one from Renn. Before she could decide who to call back, a text popped up.
“Call me,” Shelby texted but it started to ring with an incoming call from her friend.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the grocery store, but I’m about done.”
“Did you happen to check out any social media today, or the news?”
“Well yes I did, and I can’t believe people think so much of my sad love life to plaster it all over.”
Miranda held her head high as she steered her cart through the milk aisle. She wasn’t going to cut this trip short just because people in this small town would rather spend their time gossiping about her than minding their own business.
“I agree, it’s all lies.”
“Well technically I have been engaged twice, to two wealthy men in the same family. It doesn’t make it any better saying one cheated and one offered to save my ranch. Not my proudest moment, but I am that girl they are claiming I am.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t let them convince you that you’re no good.”
“More like conniving and self-serving, but they did get one thing right. I’m definitely not good enough for Renn Walker. Do you know the worst part? I can’t even say with certainty that I wouldn’t have seen him as a new lotto ticket if I’d known he was a famous NFL player.”
“I’m on my way to meet you at the ranch. We need to do some damage control and talk about this,” Shelby said.
“You can’t fix everything, Shelby—some of us are just broken beyond repair. But look, I gotta go because people at the grocery store are starting to act like the paparazzi.”
She hung up and put her phone in her bag and pulled her shades back down. If she was going to have her picture plastered all over it wasn’t going to be with dark circles under her eyes and tears of embarrassment.
She decided not to return Renn’s call and just shot him a text saying she was sorry her reputation was tarnishing his.
The truth was she didn’t need the bad press right when she was trying to make sales with the Beautiful Beasts, but the worst part was knowing now everyone knew she wasn’t good enough for Renn.
And he must have agreed because he didn’t respond.
The media onslaught didn’t let up over the next few days as news of Renn signing with the Aces had the entire town in a frenzy.
Finding out that one of their own was a famous football player, was big news.
Never mind he’d never lived in Sandy Point, and no one had known he was related to the Harts until the media ran the story.
The town was quick to claim him and admonish her for trying to trick him into a relationship.
Which would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.
She would have just locked herself in her room but as luck would have it both her mares went into labor.
So, between new foals, and the new horses she’d bought at the local estate sale, she was too busy to be sad.
There was no time to worry about the media or what everyone in town was saying about her.
Each day she spent her time in the barn with her horses, hoping the stories would die down.
It had been ten days since she’d seen Renn and she’d avoided just about everyone.
Jeremy had been mad at first about what the media reported about her, but he followed her lead to ignore it, and they didn’t talk about it.
The only remnants of her time with Renn were the constant ache of knowing he wasn’t hers to hold on to and that his light was about to shine so bright he’d forget all about her.
She also hadn’t heard back from Dixon or any of the other ranches that had initially expressed interest in mating their mares with Beast. But she had the cash from the sale of Thor to hold them over for at least another few months.
Hopefully the bad press would be forgotten, and she could sell a few foals before she ran out of funds again.
She just had to focus on training all the colts, and pray her plan worked out.
“Miranda, there’s someone here to see you,” Jer called into the barn.
She was finishing up her rounds checking on not one but three healthy male foals.
At least the breeding gods had given her three more chances of growing the Beautiful Beasts stock.
It was only seven in the morning so any visitor seemed strange, but her heart started to pound thinking it might be Renn.
She’d been unable to resist looking him up online each night and reading all the press coverage of his contract signing with the Aces.
And in every interview, he denied any attachment to her or having a girlfriend.
Which was what she’d said she wanted and still felt like a knife twisting in her back every time.
But instead of Renn the woman she’d met at the auction from Dixon ranch appeared in the barn, wearing worn jeans and cowboy boots.
“Good morning, Ms. Sutton, it’s nice to see you again.”
Miranda pulled off her working gloves and accepted the woman’s handshake, while trying not to smile too big. “Mrs. Dixon.”
“Hope you don’t mind the unannounced visit. We find it best to try and pop in to see the animals in their normal routines.”
“I don’t mind at all. You’re in time to watch me put the boys through their paces.” She nodded toward Beast and her other new studs she was working on training.
“Perfect, I’d love to help if you can use a hand.”
“You can do as little or as much as you like. My guess is you’d like to get a feel for how those two behave and then get your eyes on our new foals?”
The woman smiled and nodded. “Correct, we were excited to see your social media posts of them being born healthy and strong.”
“And I assume Thor has been living up to his name for you?”
“Yes, you did a fantastic job with training him. He’s settled in nicely at our ranch.”
For the next hour Miranda worked in companionable silence with the woman.
Although she looked somewhat pampered based on her shiny nails and sparkling jewelry, she wasn’t shy about getting her hands dirty.
She was eager to hear what the woman drove all this way for but knew she’d have to just wait and see.
“You’re very good at this. You have a steady but firm hand with the horses and a good eye for quality,” the woman said.
“My mama grew up on a horse farm, so I learned most of my technique from her.” She led the woman to see the foals and could see her genuine excitement and admiration in the way she studied them.
“Oh my, these boys are even more gorgeous than I expected. Your social media says you’re interested in selling one or two of the foals?”
“That’s right, I got lucky with three newborns and while I’m tempted to keep two, if the offer is right, I’ll consider it. These are my first-generation Beautiful Beasts to sell trained or untrained.”
“Have you considered taking on a partnership with any ranches?” the woman asked.
Miranda froze. The last time she’d tried a partnership she ended up engaged to a man twice her age and desperate enough to sell off land.
“No, but I’m willing to hear you out.”
“As you may have heard from Renn, we lost his mother, our head wrangler earlier this year to cancer.”
“Yes, it was tragic she died so young. I think I would have liked to have met Ms. Walker.”
“She would have liked you for more reasons than one. But what you may not know is we grew up together. And she helped establish the Dixon brand. We’d like to bring you on as our next-generation wrangler, in charge of breeding and horse stock.”
“What?”
“Now I know you have this vision for your Beautiful Beasts, and we want you to keep building that while you work with us exclusively. Once you’ve built your own stock you can sell to whoever you want, but in the interim you’ll help us continue with our brand.
We’d of course like to purchase multiple rounds of stud services with Beast, and I’d like to hear more about that horse Maximus. I didn’t see him on your website?”
“I bought him recently at an estate sale. He’s a four-year-old Appaloosa. I just loved his demeanor. He’s fast and has the highest jumps of any horse I’ve ever ridden.”
“I think your instinct about horses is your brand, Ms. Sutton. Don’t ever doubt it.”
“If I were to work for you, my brand would instantly be linked to Dixon—we’d have a shared lineage.”
“Yes, but we would gain an exclusive on all new foals sired by the BB studs we’re under contract with. Is your goal to build your business on breeding sales, or sales on horses you breed and train?”
“My goal is to establish BB as a premier company for racing and show horses that I breed and train here, and eventually not need to pimp out any of my studs.”
“Then all the more reason to partner with us.”
“But how would that work? I’d need to live out on Dixon Ranch.”
“Yes, and you could bring your family. We have top-rated schools.”
Miranda looked out at the home and land she didn’t want to lose but held a lot of bad memories for her. Her mama left her here when she was young with a father who didn’t really love anyone more than himself.
“It doesn’t have to be forever.”
“The truth is I’ve always wanted to get out of this town, but have felt stuck on this land. You’re offering me a golden opportunity.”
“Your instinct with these horses has gotten you this far, but only you know what it’s telling you to do now.”
Miranda nodded and looked back at the woman who was smiling like she already knew what Miranda would do.
“Did Renn ask you to offer me this deal?”
“No, as much as I love that boy, this is a business. You’ve earned this offer on your own. You have the touch and the grit we need out at Dixon, for our next generation.”
Miranda swiped at the tears that fell, because having someone else in the business tell her how much they believed in her was the type of validation she hadn’t thought she’d ever find.
“I’ll need to talk to my family about this. It’s a big step.”
The woman held out her hand for Miranda to shake it. “I’ll be staying in town tonight at the inn. Why don’t we have dinner and we can finalize terms, if they agree.”
Miranda couldn’t believe what had just happened and if she had to guess she already knew what Jeremy and Sara would say.
But if they moved to Duluth, which was just outside Atlanta, she’d only be a short drive to where Renn was living and playing for the Aces.
That might be the hardest part, living so close to the one man she couldn’t have.