Page 63 of Cowboy Don't Go

Money.

It fluttered to the floor like autumn leaves. Cooper just stared at it.

Sarah turned at his silence and gasped. “What . . . is that?”

He reached for the bills. Hundred-dollar bills. Lots of them. He turned to Sarah, wide-eyed.

“Oh, my God—” she breathed.

Cooper turned back to the wall. Pulled off more drywall. Then a whole section of drywall pulled away from the wall in one piece. A secret door. More bills tumbled out. Stacks of bills. Some wrapped in currency bands. Others, loose. There were thousands and thousands of dollars stuffed between the studs and spilling out onto the barn floor.

Speechless, the two of them just stared at the money.

Finally, Sarah said, “Wh-where did that come from? Who . . . who put it there?”

Cooper pulled more bills from the wall and looked back at her. The truth was inevitable now. There was no way he could keep it from her. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

*

“Honest?” Shay shouted, appearing at the barn doors. “Ha! Clearly you don’t even know the meaning of the word.”

Cooper and Sarah turned in shock at her sudden appearance.

“Shay—” Cooper began, getting to his feet.

Shay’s angry finger-pointing wavered at the sight of the money scattered all over the floor. She felt the color drain from her face. “What is that?”

“Money,” Sarah answered, stating the obvious. “Lots of money. Money that doesn’t belong to us.”

The price of your mother’s infidelity. Stunned into silence for a heartbeat or two, Shay turned fiercely to Cooper. “This is all your fault. You, Cooper Lane, are a liar. Is this what you’ve been looking for all along? This money? Payback maybe for your father’s suffering?”

“What?” Cooper stared at her in shock. “No.”

“Shay—” Sarah warned.

“Forget about the money, Mom. Did he tell you that he’s known all along who our stalker was? Did he tell you it was Evan Clulagher? The man who supposedly died eight years ago?”

Sarah looked at Cooper in confusion.

“And did he mention that he hired a private investigator to investigate us?”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” he denied. “I had no idea that—”

“Just stop. Trey Reyes told me everything. How you believed Mom was at the center of it all and—”

“What?” Sarah gasped.

“How our family was about to be implicated in this mess about Ray? All the while, he tried to . . . to insinuate himself into our ranch. Tried to make me think”—she teared up, her voice going up an octave as her throat closed up—“that he cared about me. That he . . . was falling in love with me.”

“I am. I am in love with you, Shay.”

Now actual tears squirted out of her eyes, tears as angry as she was. “Don’t! Don’t make it worse by lying again.”

He blinked at her anger. “Is that what you really think? That I would try to trick you? Pretend about my feelings for you?”

“Well . . .” she choked out. “I was the one holdout to your being here. The one you had to convince.” She shook her head. “Go on. Deny it. You can’t. You used me to get to . . . to all this.” Tears leaked out of her eyes against her will.

The wounded look on Cooper’s face nearly broke through her anger, nearly broke what remained of her heart, but she wouldn’t allow him to fool her again. “Oh, and here. You forgot this.” She pulled his phone from her pocket and threw it at him, hitting his shoulder before he could duck. The phone clattered to the ground. “Now look.” She pointed to the money. “How . . . how are we going to explain this?”

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