Page 7 of Cowboy Seeks Husband
“Listen to the lady,” Andy encouraged, stepping back toward the camera monitors again.
“I hate this,” Walker said, not bothering to keep his voice down.
“I know. You and every contestant will hate it even more before it’s over,” Molly whispered. “But, believe me, walking away isn’t worth it.”
Walker nodded once.
“Let’s finish this up then, so you can get back to your cattle.”
As Walker followed Molly back into the line of the cameras, Andy gave him a little smile but said nothing as he indicated Walker’s barstool as if he was offering a throne.
Walker wanted to punch the guy in the face. Instead, he sat down.
“Let’s do this then. I’ll be charming as fuck.”
“That’s the spirit,” Andy called out. “Roll.”
The rest of the interview went as well as could be expected, given that Walker was now laying it on a little thick and the precious light was turning in a way that Andy deemed dreadful. But it was over before most people in the world had eaten breakfast, and it wasn’t even noon before he was with Marlon and Dennis, spreading out the hay.
“Where y’at?” Marlonasked when they were done spreading hay and had headed over to the loading bay to await a straggling truck that was picking up the very last of the calves.
“I’m fine.”
“Then why you making a bahbin, boo?”
“I’m not pouting,” Walker said.
But Marlon tsked at him and shook his head. His hat hid most of his dark face but Walker could tell from the white glint of his teeth that he was grinning.
“It’s nothing. I shouldn’t complain. I knew what I was getting into.”
He wanted to say, “I knew whatyou’dgotten me into” instead, but he understood Marlon had sent in Walker’s application toQueer Seeks Spouseout of sheer desperation and love for Reed Ranch, and Marlon had never, in a million years, dreamed that Walker would truly be chosen. Besides, no one had held a gun to Walker’s head when he signed the contract—not Tessa, not his dad, and least of all Marlon, who’d been excited, sure, that his ploy had miraculously worked, but also skeptical from the start.
Marlon tipped his head back, and his brows drew down over his dark eyes. “Qui c’est q’ca?”
“For the next six weeks, I have no privacy. Unless I’m taking a shit, I’m fair game for them to film,” he told Marlon, who stared at him, then whistled between his teeth.
“They can do that?”
“Apparently.”
Marlon worried the corner of his mouth with his tongue. A faint sheen of sweat made his top lip sparkle. “I’m sorry.”
“Listen, like I said, there’s nothing to complain about. I knew what the contract said when I signed it. If the money on offer made me lose all common sense, then that’s my burden to bear.”
“Seems like you got plenty of those.”
Walker straightened his back. Of course he did. But who didn’t? After the last hurricane, all Louisiana farms were suffering. At least he wasn’t a dairy farmer. With the price of milk dropping like a stone, dairy farms were going tits up all around him. It could be worse, and now he had this six-week-long opportunity to dig them out of the last of their recovery debt. It was worth it. Marlon had done a good thing by signing him up.
He slapped his friend on the back. “I just have to suck it up, is all. Don’tyoumake a bahbin now,” he said, teasingly using his friend’s Cajun slang term for a pout.
They didn’t talk much for the rest of the afternoon. Loading the calves was noisy business, and he tried unsuccessfully to put the show and all that went with it out of his mind. What had possessed him to sign up for this? Or worse, say yes to all the lies that went with it? Giving up his privacy was one thing, but pretending to be something he wasn’t—namely, a wealthy cowboy of means—was another. A glance at the “lavish” changes to the old barn would have his neighbors howling with laughter. And when the show presented him as a catch worth keeping, they’d laugh even more. But in the end, he’d have three hundred thousand dollars to help all that scorn go down easy as his daddy’s best whiskey.
It was worth it.
It had to be.
The last of the cattle were finally loaded up. The truck drove off with a deep rumble, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust and an eerie silence behind under the setting sun. Walker went to the stables and saddled Cormac, his old quarter horse. Most of the work happened with machines and trucks these days. Still, every once in a while, at the end of the day, he liked to saddle up and do his final rounds on horseback.
“Like a real cowboy,” his step-mama always teased. And fuck it, that’s exactly what it was.
At least, in this one particular way, he wouldn’t be faking it. He was as All-American as he could get: a cowboy born and bred, and nowhere more free than in the saddle.
Contracts making him a slave to Hollywood be damned.
