Page 117 of Boston
“Yeah, send me the address,” Cash said. “And any instructions I need to know for how to get in, and I’ll go up there after the twenty-first.”
“I’ll finalize everything with my mama,” Jet said. “It’s good to talk to you, Cash.”
“Yeah, you too,” Cash said, smiling.
“Next time, I’ll check the time.”
“Ain’t no thing,” Cash said. “Stay safe.”
“You too, brother,” Jet said, and the call ended.
Cash replaced his phone on the nightstand and sank back against the plush headboard in the master bedroom, which he had claimed. He’d really enjoyed having Boston and Beth stay here with him, and Cash could admit, silently inside his own mind, that he really liked being back in Coral Canyon.
So he and Boston would go look at the property in just a couple of days, and if it turned out to be right for them, Cash thought they’d probably buy it. In the meantime, he now had the McClellan place to stay, and he’d just bought himself another seven months in the small town that he loved.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Bryce Young walked through the pumpkin patch when the shrill of his phone broke the silence. He knew who’d be on the other end of the line before he even looked at the screen, because he’d given Bailey her own ringtone.
“Howdy, Bay,” he said, though she certainly didn’t call all the time, and he couldn’t imagine what they possibly needed to talk about now.
“Bryce, hey,” she said, the words almost like missiles coming across the line. “Do you have a minute?”
Bryce stopped and looked down at his pumpkins. “Sure do,” he said, though something had started ringing in his mind—an alarm that Bailey was in a heightened emotional state. He could just see her pacing in her apartment or office, though he had no idea where she lived. Perhaps she’d bought a house in Butte, for all he knew. It wasn’t like she ran her major life decisions past him.
“You know how I was just there?” she asked.
“Yep,” Bryce said. He’d spent an afternoon horseback riding with her and OJ, and he turned back the way he’d been walking to see where the boy was. He came out to the Rising Sun Ranch every Saturday to help Codi with the weeding in the garden. He’dkept the front yard dandelion and weed-free too, and Kassie and Reggie had hired him to do the same thing at their place.
When he finished with that, he usually followed Bryce around, chattering his ear off about all the things he’d done that week and all the things he was looking forward to for the next week.
Bryce had told him he wanted to walk the pumpkin patch to see how things were coming along, as they’d probably need to get their frost prevention gear out soon. He’d lost plenty of plants by planting them too early or thinking he had more time to cover them in the fall. Really, he only had another month to get ready, and he’d expanded his pumpkin patch to a full acre this year.
All of the cousins loved to come help him harvest it, and he and Codi had been doing a spooky Halloween walk for a few years now that even the adults liked.
With the additional funding he’d gotten from the Country Quad concert series last Christmas, Bryce had been able to improve his stables and move some of his red horses onto family farms where they could simply graze out their days. That had freed up more stable space for horses he could rehabilitate and resell, and he definitely felt that he’d made a lot of progress, even though only seven months had passed.
That money had literally saved him and the Rising Sun Ranch, and he thanked God for it every morning during his toaster-prayer.
“You still there?” he asked when Bailey didn’t say anything.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about this. I’m not even sure why I called you.”
Bryce watched OJ as he chased a butterfly down at the end of the next row over. “Well, I’m here if you need me,” he said. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s on your mind, that’s fine too.”
“I’m just—” She cut off. “Oh, this is just dumb.”
Bryce waited, because Bailey had never been one to second-guess her decisions. She’d been driven and ambitious and talented in college, having a clear vision of what she wanted and going after it. Nothing, not even their unwanted pregnancy, had stopped her.
“When I was in Coral Canyon,” she said. “I went around and looked at various properties.”
Bryce’s breath fell out of his body, and he couldn’t have said anything even if he’d wanted to.
“I’m thinking of moving my veterinary clinic there,” she said. “Obviously, I would be living there too. I’ve already talked to my daddy about having him help me buy a place, and there’s one on the market right now that I think would be perfect.”
“Wow,” Bryce managed to say.
