Chapter 17
Claire
“What do you mean it’s the merger?” Beau took the worn paper from my hands.
He set the paper down, staring at it like it was a grenade. “Holy shit. It’s signed, Claire.”
“No way.” I took the paper back, finding two signatures at the bottom that were clearly our grandfathers’. “Does that mean this whole time the ranches have been one mega ranch?”
If that were the case, all of that when we were kids, all our fathers’ hostility, would have been for nothing, and I didn’t know how I’d feel if that were the case.
“Don’t think so. If it never got filed, then they couldn’t be.”
“Maybe it was just something for between them. Not official, but symbolic.”
Beau’s brows furrowed as he braced his hands on the counter. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Look at this.” I pointed at one of the bottom paragraphs.
“The land parcel is to remain in the McLeod and Hayes families in perpetuity, with succession rights passed only to direct heirs. No portion of the land may be sold, divided, or transferred without the mutual, written consent of both families.”
“So they wanted the ranches—our families—to stay together indefinitely.”
Chills ran down my arms. My mind raced with the possibilities of how different things could have been. Would Beau and I have gotten together sooner? Would Anna and I still have been best friends? Would my family not be in debt?
“We couldn’t possibly do that now, though. Not after everything. That’d be crazy,” Beau said, peeking at me out of the corner of his eye as I set the contract down. “Right?” My heart lurched, my chest tightening.
“Yeah…definitely crazy,” I said, nodding, unable to stop staring at the contract. “How much is the land worth now anyway?” I asked casually as if my heart wasn’t in my throat.
Beau’s tone mirrored mine. “About 2.1 million, give or take.”
I rapped my fingers on the counter. “A lotta money.”
“Yeah.” He scratched the back of his head. “How much did you get from Cavendish again? I forgot.”
“About a million dollars.”
He nodded, staring down at the granite, feigning indifference. “That’s really great, baby…really great.”
Not even five minutes later, we were on a group FaceTime with Emmett, Anna, Colt, Savannah, and Delilah. We tried Tess, but naturally, she didn’t answer. And neither did Weston, but he was out of town for a rodeo, so he was probably busy.
“What the hell is this?” Colt asked, his camera angled on only half his face, which was too close to the screen. “I didn’t know you could FaceTime this many people at once.” Somebody laughed. I couldn’t tell if it was Delilah, Anna, or Savannah.
“Is this y’all’s way of announcing you’re together?” Anna asked, grinning. Her and Joseph’s heads were nestled together in the frame. They were so cute together.
“Because we knew that already,” Savannah tacked on. She had gold, shimmering eye patches under her eyes and a purple pimple patch in the shape of a star on her forehead.
“Sure,” Beau replied. “But that’s not why we called.”
“Wasn’t expecting to hear from y’all at all tonight,” Delilah pointed out with a smirk that made me blush. She had her hair in a messy bun with a face mask on, not caring that everyone could see her looking like Hannibal Lecter. She and Savannah must’ve been doing a skincare night.
Her brows raised a fraction. “Performance anxiety, Beaumont?”
Colt and Joseph snickered. “I like her,” Joseph said, grinning at Anna.
“I am pretty great,” Delilah said, with a smug smile.
Emmett scoffed. “Pretty great at being a pain in the ass is more like it.” It looked like he was in the barn stall he converted to a home gym over the few years he’d been home; he practically lived in there.
And given the way his inked skin was glistening with sweat, he had been in there for a while already.
Delilah’s middle finger filled her camera.
Everyone’s icons shifted, and Weston’s face popped on the screen. There was a squeak, and Savannah shut off her camera. I clocked it immediately and glanced at Beau the same time he looked at me, as if to say, You noticed that, too?
“Well, looky here,” Weston said, grinning wide, breathing hard. His face was sweaty, his hair brushed back as if he’d been running his hands through it, still wearing his protective vest. He must’ve just finished. “The gang’s all together again.”
“That’s kinda what we were calling about,” I said, picking at my nails out of view. Beau’s hand settled low on my back, offering silent support. “So I’m over at Circle M, and Beau and I were in the basement.”
Weston grimaced. “Y’all were boning in the basement? Weird choice, but okay.”
“He can’t get it up. You missed that part,” Delilah said casually.
Weston’s head tilted back with laughter. “They make a pill for that, you know.”
I buried my face in my hands, shaking my head and fighting a smile. Delilah and Weston had always fed off each other like a match and gasoline, and it seemed that the years apart hadn’t changed that.
“My dick works just fine, thank you very much,” Beau ground out, his cheeks a little pink. It was adorable.
“More than fine,” I added, smirking at him. He pulled me into his side and kissed me hard, right in front of all of our siblings.
Everyone let out a collective sound of disgust that made me smile wider.
“Anyway,” I started, drawing out the word. “What I was trying to say was that we were in the basement and Beau grabbed this bottle of wine, and when he pulled it out, there was a paper with it.”
“A paper,” Colt deadpanned. “You’re calling all of us about a paper.”
“Consider me on the edge of my fuckin’ seat,” Weston said, glancing between the camera and whatever was going on at the rodeo.
“A real nail-biter,” Delilah added.
Beau groaned. “Fuck off, all of you, and just let her finish.”
“Aw, he’s defensive of her,” Anna cooed. “So cute.”
“You, too, Annabelle,” Beau said with that deep, authoritative voice that always got to me. But now wasn’t the time for that.
I cleared my throat. “It was the original contract of the merger from the seventies. Signed.”
Everyone’s teasing smiles dropped. Silence crackled between the nine of us, the air tense. It just showed how much this one thing had loomed over us and our families for years. And all the more reason why I wanted to end its reign of terror.
“Like, the merger?” Emmett asked cautiously.
I nodded. “Yeah. Our grandfathers must’ve never filed it. They wanted the land to stay in our families, together, indefinitely. While it’s not legally binding, it’s obvious what they wanted.”
“While Claire and I are technically the owners of Circle M and Golden Bridle now that Mount’s out, we wanted to run it by y’all first.” Beau let out a heavy breath, glancing at me briefly. “But we want to do it. We want to fulfill their wishes and merge the two ranches.”
There was more silence, and my stomach twisted with doubt. Was this a mistake? What if none of them wanted it? There was no way Beau and I could do something of this magnitude without consulting them; they were our siblings, and it affected them as much as it did us.
But now that the idea was out there, I wanted it more than anything.
“What about Cavendish?” Delilah asked. “We just signed the contract with them, bear.”
“We’d have to ask them about it, but since they had originally offered the partnership to Beau and Joseph anyway, I don’t see why they’d have an issue.”
“They’d probably be all for it,” Joseph said. “They’d have what they were planning with Circle M and the veteran outreach. It’d be more land, more opportunities, which means more money. They’d be stupid not to be okay with it.”
“Well, that aside, this would be big for us,” Beau said. “Lots of changes to each ranch's infrastructure, combining of assets, probably a bunch of other shit I’m not thinkin’ about. Are any of y’all against it?”
My hand curled on the edge of the counter, and I waited with bated breath as everyone gave their answers.
One by one, everyone agreed to go for it.
Relief crashed into me like a tidal wave. They didn’t really have a reason to shoot it down, but there was no telling with our group.
Our group. We hadn’t been a group since we were kids, and now here we were, all talking together for the first time in almost twenty years. It felt like listening to your favorite song or watching your favorite movie—familiar, comfortable, easy.
I bit my bottom lip, smiling ear to ear. “I guess we’re doing it then.” I looked up at Beau, and he was smiling just as hard.
“How would that even work, though?” Emmett asked. “Golden Bridle is horses, and Circle M is cattle.”
Beau shrugged a shoulder. “I guess we’d keep doin’ our own things, just under one ranch. Training horses, raising and herding cattle, and we’ll have the veteran outreach program on top. It’s just a matter of merging finances and that kind of legal stuff.”
“Good thing we have a lawyer in the group,” Anna said, now sitting outside without Joseph. Weston’s camera jerked, and he stared down at his phone intently, laser-focused. More than he had been the entire call.
“Yeah, I could extend my leave from work and stay in Wild Creek to help out with the legal side of things,” Savannah said, her camera still off. “It’d be nice to get away from Dallas for a while, and be home for longer than two days,” she continued.
I frowned slightly. She hadn’t mentioned anything about not being happy in Dallas. If anything, it was the opposite.
“Our cousin, Levi, works at Wild Creek Law; he can help you out, too,” Beau added.
“He’s a Hollis, Beau,” Weston said, voice tense. “She can’t trust him to help out with something like this. He’ll just go take it to Sterling.”
“I don’t know,” Colt said, “he seems to hate Sterling and Preston as much as we do.”
“Aren’t Levi and Preston brothers, though?” Delilah asked, painting her toes. “Sounds sketchy if you ask me.”
“Half,” Anna clarified. “They share a dad, but different moms.”
“I think he can be trusted,” Beau said. “We could at least give him a chance to prove he’s not like the rest of his family.” That was all I needed to get on board. If Beau trusted him, I did too.
“I don’t like this,” Weston said.
My eyes narrowed. It wasn’t like him to have such strong negative opinions. At least, not the version of him I knew when we were younger. “Why?”
“Because it’s highly sensitive stuff about the ranches. Ranches that his brother just tried to poach from the two of you, if I’m not mistaken. You don’t think that’s sketchy? And then to throw”—he swallowed, hesitated—“to throw Savannah into the mix so he knows her every move? Hell no.”
“I kind of have to agree with him on this one,” Emmett said, which was out of character for him not to just go with the flow. “We don’t know this dude. I mean, how often do you guys even see him?”
“I see him sometimes at the station or city hall. He’s one of those lawyers for things like divorces and custody agreements,” Colt said. “But outside of that, we don’t really keep up with him.”
“See? Can’t be trusted,” Weston said. “And he doesn’t even do the kind of law we need.” I arched a brow at the camera. He sure did have a lot to say for someone who barely knew the guy.
Beau let out a long sigh. “Well, we can worry about that later. It’s not like this is happening right now. There are still hoops we need to jump through.”
“So we’re doing this?” I asked one more time just to be sure. Because once this ball was rolling, there’d be no stopping it.
The chorus of yeses was music to my ears.
“We’re gonna go now, then.” Beau’s hand slid down my back and into my pocket, cupping my ass. “We’ve got celebratin’ to do,” he said with a wink that made me blush and everyone gag. “Talk to y’all later.”
Everyone said bye, their little icons vanishing one by one until my face reflected back at me. I spun on my heel, a buzzing, warm feeling burning in my chest. I brought my hands to my face. “Was that real? Is this real? Pinch me so I know it’s real.”
Beau reached forward, pinching my cheeks gently, and I only smiled harder. “It’s real, baby. We’re doin’ it.”
I let out a squeal and jumped into his arms, my face hurting from my smile. His laugh rang out through the kitchen as he spun me around and showered me with kisses all over.
He set me on the counter next to the dusty bottle of wine. “Now we have to open this.”
Except when he tried, the cork snapped in half. It had dried out from sitting for so long. But once he finally got it free, he poured me a glass. I took a sip and immediately spat it out back into the glass. “Do not drink that. It’s disgusting.”
Beau looked down at his glass for a beat and then drank what little was in it. My mouth dropped with a gasp.
He grimaced and then shivered. “That’s fuckin’ foul.”
“What did you do that?!”
He rinsed his mouth in the kitchen sink, then turned and said, “We’re in this together. You drink shitty wine, I drink shitty wine. You wanna merge our ranches, I wanna merge our ranches. You want to start racing again, I’ll be at every rodeo.”
My breath caught at the sentiment. He came between my legs and cradled my face in his hands. “You’re done doin’ things alone, Claire. I’m gonna be here every step of the way to take care of you, to support you, to show up for you.”
My heart could’ve exploded with how much I adored him. “I love you,” I whispered, leaning forward.
“I love you, too,” he replied, his voice nothing more than a breathy rasp, and pressed his lips to mine.