Page 49 of The Guy Who Stole My Ranch

I smiled.

William:Will do.

Chapter 13

-Brooke-

William had been in Whitehill for three days. Three days in which I’d done everything I possibly could, short of making him clean up manure with his bare hands, to dissuade him from buying my ranch.

He’d risen to every challenge I’d imposed on him. Worse, after he left each evening, he would text me asking if he could take me to breakfast.

Would I like to spend more time with him?

No.

Yes.

I tapped the steering wheel and made a face.

Who was I kidding? Every moment I spent with William Harris made him more attractive to me, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore that fact.

When he’d texted me the night before, once again asking about breakfast, I was happy that I’d had an actual excuse.

Rick, my brother who was a veterinarian, and I spent a couple of mornings a month at a small horse rescue just outside of San Antonio. He checked the health of the horses, and I spent the time socializing with the animals. Many of them had been neglected or abused, and getting used to the fact that not all people were going to hurt them took persistence.

Because of that, this morning I was getting a much-needed break from William and his accursed steadiness.

I glared at the idiot on the other side of the highway driving toward me with his high beams on and flashed my own lights once at him. Sunrise was less than an hour away, which meant there was no reason to be using the brights.

“Probably someone from out of town,” I grumbled.

Would William do that?

Wait, William had a driver. Patrick had proved to be an even harder worker than William, and my dad had dragged him to the far end of the ranch to take on the fields we hadn’t plowed yet. Patrick seemed to be having a good time running the big machinery.

William preferred to get into the nitty-gritty bits of the ranch instead of pining over driving the tallest tractor we owned. I could tell he didn’t love getting dirty, but he hadn’t shied away from it yet. Since the cut on his arm, he’d been extremely careful about not letting it happen again. The guy trailed behind me like a puppy and took notes like a madman. However, he always listened to me and asked questions about our task.

Did all billionaires do this? I’d always imagined that they had people for these kinds of things.

I’d tried to get more information out of William about his childhood dream of buying a ranch, but that was the one subject he always sidestepped. I guess I couldn’t blame him. I probably wouldn’t tell him my secrets at this point.

The turnoff to the ranch came into view, and I slowed. I checked the time and winced. Rick was going to make fun of me for being late. Punctuality was important to me, but after three days of a grueling schedule that I’d brought on myself, I’d needed those ten extra minutes of sleep.

Actually, I’d gotten up even later than that and hadn’t bothered to shower. I was only going to get smelly here anyway, and I should have plenty of time between this and when William was supposed to be at the ranch this afternoon that I could clean up before getting dirty. Again.

I suddenly realized that my life was a cycle of cleaning up, sleeping, getting dirty, and cleaning up again.

Sure, most people showered each day, but for me it was a necessity. Sometimes I had to do it twice.

I turned off the main road onto a smaller road that wound around a hill to the rescue location.

As I’d predicted, Rick’s truck was already parked at the barn, and I could feel his judgement radiating from within the structure.

Good thing I’d loaded up the bed of my truck the night before with a bunch of supplies I’d found for half-off the last time I’d been in San Antonio. The rescue was always in need of basics, and I’d taken the liberty of restocking them this month.

The best way to get Rick off my back about being late would be to distract him by carrying a heavy load into the barn with me. So I pulled the tailgate down, grabbed a huge box of wormer medicine, and started toward the building.

Our horse barn was a mixture of old and new, whereas this one was just old. They were throwing a fundraiser in a few months to see if they could make enough money to replace the roof. I’d already recruited a dozen guys and gals to help with the construction; we just needed materials.

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