Chapter 4
Beau
Claire’s taillights mocked me as she drove off the property after that parting little barb about “getting my shit in order”. Not to mention her proud middle finger lifted in the air to really drive home the fact that I was on her shitlist.
I had to admit, I was still a little stunned by the whole thing. She’d gotten a lot feistier over the years, and for a minute there, I thought she was going to hit me.
Now that would’ve been a sight to see.
I knew the town would have a lot to say about us both applying for the partnership, given our families’ history, but I hadn’t expected her to. Claire and I didn’t know each other that well anymore, but when we were kids, she was way less volatile. Still bossy, but less…explosive.
I didn’t necessarily hate it.
There was a fire in her eyes. A determination that burned inside her just as fiercely as it burned in me. It only made me that more excited for the upcoming weeks. I had to really pull all the stops out now, and I couldn’t wait to see how Claire would react.
I sent Anna a text, telling her I was coming over for dinner.
I needed to get started on this first project for Cavendish if I was going to beat Claire, and I needed Joseph’s insight to do just that.
Because honestly, Claire was right: I knew jack shit about breeding and training horses.
Our horses at Circle M came to us pre-trained, so we could get straight to work, but it was long overdue that I learned.
The first requirement Cavendish had was to submit a formal proposal to them about our plans for the partnership that was due in three days. And while I had ideas, I needed to run them by Joseph to see if they were even plausible.
When I walked through Anna’s door, I got hit with the sweet smell of vanilla.
Her house always smelled like something was baking, a welcoming scent for a worn-out cowboy after a long day of work.
While I had my “games”, as Mount called them, I still spent most of my days out in the pastures wrangling cattle, which left me bone tired.
I knew my father thought I was cutting corners by implementing technology into the ranch, but I would rather die than do a disservice to my family’s legacy like that.
Knowing that my father thought so little of me to even imply that stung. Badly.
I typically spent most nights alone, so going to Anna’s was a nice change of pace. For the most part, anyway. Most of the time, I left feeling a little…envious.
“BoBo!” my nephew, Henry, flung himself at my legs as I walked in the door. He was in nothing but his underwear, a Superman cape, and his boots.
My knees cracked as I knelt down in front of him. “Hey there, big man.” I wrapped him in my arms and kissed the top of his head while he squeezed my neck almost too hard.
“I missed you,” he said, pulling away and looking at me like he genuinely meant it, and my heart nearly exploded.
He had Joseph’s blue eyes and Anna’s blonde hair, a perfect mix of them both.
It was an indescribable feeling to see a little human who my baby sister created and notice little pieces of her in the way he acted and the expressions he made.
It made me wonder what a little one of my own would look and act like. They’d probably be a little terror, just like the one I encountered earlier this morning.
I cleared my throat. “I missed you, too, buddy.” I stood, ruffling his hair. “I gotta go see your mama.”
Henry’s boot-clad feet pattered on the floor after me as I walked to the kitchen. Anna was standing over the stove, stirring something. She turned, and her belly was a little bigger and rounder than the last time I saw her.
When she grinned at me, I nearly stopped in my tracks.
She resembled our mother so much that I could barely stand to look at her sometimes.
She died right after having Colt thirty years ago, a complication that I still didn’t quite understand.
Anna was only two at the time, so she didn’t really remember her.
But I did. Sometimes I wished I didn’t, and then I beat myself up for being a terrible son.
When our mother died, all the warmth in our father went out like an extinguished flame.
He scolded me every chance he got, wanting to mold me into a man at the ripe age of five.
He could barely tolerate holding Colt, carrying a bitterness towards him that I thought he still did, but kept buried deep.
But Annabelle? He adored her. She could do no wrong and had him wrapped around her finger. I resented her for it for a while, but then I realized that if he felt that way about her, then maybe there was a chance he could feel that way about me again.
That remained to be seen.
“Long time no see, BoBo,” Anna said, coming around the island and kissing my cheek.
“Hey.” I sat on a stool while she handed me a beer. “Whatcha making’?”
“Nothing fancy. Just spaghetti.” She placed her hands on the counter, letting out a long breath. “Saw you were in the Whispers,” she said with a smirk. “I guess we’re the McCoys now.”
I took my hat off, setting it on the counter, and rolled my eyes.
“Such B.S.” I took a long sip from my beer.
“And then she had the nerve to show up at Circle M this morning, guns blazing. Talking like I owed her.” Owed her for what exactly, I wasn’t sure.
Her family was the one who screwed over ours.
If it weren’t for her grandfather being a backstabbing coward, Circle M and Golden Bridle would be united right now.
Anna’s eyes went wide, her brows raised. “Claire?”
“Yeah. She had the whole ranch giving me shit all day after that. She’s a little spitfire that’s for sure.”
The memory of Claire standing by the barn, arms crossed, dark brows pinched together, glaring at me while I easily had at least eighty pounds and a foot on her should’ve been flat-out laughable. But she didn’t let it intimidate her—not my size, or the fact that she was on my ranch.
She grabbed the bull by the horns and yanked. Hard.
And for some reason, that had been lingering with me all day.
Anna smiled with a kind of fondness that only nostalgia offered. “Always has been.”
“Well, it’s fu—” Anna shot me a glare before her gaze darted to Henry in warning. “It’s freaking annoying.”
She chuckled to herself, shaking her head while going back to the stove.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she replied with that voice that definitely meant something. But before I could get the answer out of her, Joseph walked through the door.
“Daddy!” Henry flew out of his chair and left me to rot like old news. Something hot twisted in my chest at the sight of them embracing and being genuinely overjoyed by seeing one another.
The twist morphed into an ache as I watched Joseph greet my sister and her growing belly. They were so in love, it was a little nauseating, honestly. Constantly smiling. Constantly touching. Constantly happy. I didn’t remember a time I’d ever been like that with someone. Probably because I hadn’t.
The only thing that welcomed me home was an empty house and TV dinners. Would I ever have a warm home and a happy family to end my nights with? I wasn’t so sure that was in the cards for me after a trail of failed relationships I had left behind over the years.
It took Anna about two seconds to ask about my dating life once we sat down to eat. Every time I saw her, it was the same spiel of wanting to set me up. It was exhausting.
“I don’t have time to date. I’ve told you that thousands of times. Especially not now with this Cavendish partnership in the works.” When I had to focus on going against Claire, who had probably planned this proposal to a tee.
She pursed her lips, stabbing at her salad. “Maybe you should date another rancher, then. That way, she’d understand your schedule.”
My fork froze midair, looking at her out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not dumb enough to fall for this, Annabelle. Whatever plan you’ve got churnin’ in that head needs to stop. You hear?”
My scheming little sister just shrugged a shoulder. It was too nonchalant, and it set me on edge. “I’m not planning anything, just letting the universe do its work.” She was a terrible liar.
After dinner, while Anna got Henry ready for bed, Joseph and I went to his study. It was all dark leather, cigar smoke, and masculinity. Instead of sitting at his desk, he sat on the plush leather loveseat, crossing one leg over the other with a legal pad in his hand.
“So, let’s talk Cavendish,” he said with an easy grin, knowing he had no skin in this game.
I sat in the armchair beside him and took a sip of the bourbon he poured. It was some expensive shit. I cleared my throat and leaned forward, elbows resting on my knees. I fiddled with the crystal tumbler in my hand, suddenly feeling way out of my depth.
“Right. So, there’s a proposal due in three days. Kinda what our plans are for integrating them into Circle M, what we have to offer, those kinds of things.”
He jotted that down, the same look of concentration that Henry gets on his face. “Okay. What were you thinking?”
I scoffed, settling back into the seat. “Fuck if I know. I just know I want horses at Circle M and will do what I need to get them.”
Joseph arched a red brow. “I know you have ideas, so just spit them out. No idea is stupid here.”
I chewed on my cheek. Normally, my ideas got ridiculed or shot down by Mount.
But I needed to remember that Joseph wasn’t him, and he couldn’t help unless I let him in.
“Well, we have all that land in the pasture at the back of the property. We don’t use it for anything.
Was thinkin’ we’d put stables there, maybe thirty or forty stalls.
I’ll leave the specifics for you to figure out. ”
Joseph nodded, writing as I spoke. “I like that. There’s space back there for an indoor arena for when the weather is shit, too. To save space, we can combine the outdoor and jumping arenas and have portable jumps that the ranch hands can move.”
It felt like he was holding my hand through this, and I fucking hated it. I bet Claire had all kinds of ideas that involved pre-drawn layouts and lists for days. She had always been meticulous like that when we were kids.
He started making long, harsh strokes on the pad. I shifted towards him, and he was drawing a rough sketch of a layout. It looked like a lot; a lot of money, time, and space.
Mount was going to lose his shit. Possibly cut me out entirely, like Colt said, if this went south.
“We’ll also need foaling stalls.”
“What?”
“Birthing stalls. And a space for veterinary treatment. You have a vet lined up, right? Cavendish isn’t going to settle for the town vet. They’ll want someone dedicated to the ranch and available twenty-four seven.”
My vet normally showed up in cargo shorts and steel-toed boots with holes in them. And he was about as old as my dad. He definitely wouldn’t do.
Joseph glanced at me, doing a double-take. He must’ve seen the answer on my face. “I’ll make some calls.”
“Thanks,” I murmured. My knee started to bounce. Claire’s voice from this morning filtered through my mind: You don’t know anything about taking care of them. They don’t even recognize you as the boss.
I wrenched my jaw, knowing she was right, but I wasn’t going to back down. I knew a good opportunity when I saw one, and I wasn’t going to let this pass me by.
“We’ll also need a breeding shed with a phantom mount for semen collection—”
I grimaced. “Leave a little mystery, would ya?”
He just laughed. “There is none when it comes to breeding thoroughbreds.”
My head fell back against the chair, my eyes screwed shut to brace for the blow. “How much is all this gonna cost me?”
“Millions.” He said it like that was chump change.
“Jesus Christ,” I hissed and drained my bourbon. I got up to pour another, needing to settle my nerves.
“We could make it smaller, like twenty stalls. We can spin it as a more one-on-one facility. But even then…it’s gonna cost you a pretty penny, brother.”
I knew it’d be a lot, but millions? I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was riskier than I expected, far riskier. I wasn’t just messing with my inheritance at that point; it was Anna and Colt’s, too. Henry and the baby’s.
I planted my hands on the bar cart, leaning against it. Claire’s knowing grin flashed behind my eyelids, telling me that I had no business getting involved in something I didn’t understand while gambling my family’s financial security to do it.
“You can do this, Beau,” Joseph said as if he could read my mind. “This isn’t some far-fetched idea. You have the space. You have the money. You have the reputation.”
My heart was pounding like I was standing at the edge of a cliff. And once I jumped, there’d be no turning back. This is what I wanted for years, what my family wanted in the seventies, so why was I choking now that the opportunity was here?
The couch rustled, and Joseph came beside me. “Anna and I talked about it, and I want to be more than just a consultant in this.” My head whipped towards him.
“I’ve got the reputation, knowledge, and connections you need.
We’ve set aside some money so I can open my own place one day, but we’d rather keep it all in the family.
It’s not a lot in the grand scheme, but my connections can make up for it.
I want to be a full partner in this, Beau.
You can keep the cattle all yours, but horses? I want in. What do you say?”
I couldn’t breathe.
Nobody had ever put themselves on the line for me like Joseph just had, and all the uncertainty that Claire had placed this morning vanished. “You’re fuckin’ insane, brother,” I whispered, but couldn’t stop my smile. “Deal.”
We shook hands, grinning.
We were really doing this then. Which only meant one thing: Claire Hayes needed to watch her back.