Page 14 of Parading the Cowboy Billionaire (Bluegrass Ranch 4)

“His country house?”

“I’m going to live there for a while,” she said, picking up the sugar bowl and turning around to put it back in the cupboard where she’d found it.

“In your brother’s country house, because the mansion he lives inout in the countryon the family block is…not his country house.” Cayden sounded confused, and a sigh pulled through her. She had too much to explain and no desire to explain it.

Cayden got up and came around the peninsula and into the kitchen. “Ginny,” he said softly, and it was that two-syllable name in that luxurious voice that solidified her decision to walk away from Sweet Rose—at least for now.

His hand trailed along her waist, and Ginny leaned into him. He didn’t say anything else, and Ginny simply breathed in and out with him, the silence in the house absolutely wonderful.

She finally took a long breath and said, “You’re about to be late, I think.”

“That’s true.” He still didn’t leave her side.

“I’m going to have Mel bring my dogs out here,” she said. “Blaine said it was okay, and that you love dogs.” She looked up at him. “Is that really okay?”

“Yes,” he said, gazing down at her.

“I’m going to go live in Drake’s house, because he rarely uses it, and I don’t want to be on the family block.”

“Okay.”

“Iamchoosing you, Cayden. I don’t care what my mother thinks or says or does, but I’m going to talk to my brothers and see if we can find a way for me to have you and pacify Mother.”

He nodded, his jaw tight and his eyes blazing. She wasn’t sure if he was angry or not.

“We might have to keep things…secret,” she said. “How do you feel about that?”

“I’ll do what you want,” he said. “Okay, Ginny?”

She smiled and stretched up to kiss his cheek. “It might be kind of exciting to have a forbidden relationship, don’t you think?”

That got him to smile, but an alarm on his phone sounded, and he stepped away from her. “I’ll see you…when?” he asked.

“Probably tomorrow morning,” she said.

He nodded, swiped the alarm off, and said, “Okay, sweetheart. See you then.” He swept a kiss along her forehead and left. Ginny stood in a kitchen that was not hers, wearing men’s clothes, all alone.

She was happier here than she’d been in years, and a smile stretched across her face. Now, she had to figure out how to have this life combined with the work at Sweet Rose that she loved.

“What Mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she murmured to the horizon out the window above the kitchen sink. She turned away from the sink and went to get her phone so she could give Mel the go-ahead to pack up the trio of dogs when she stopped by the house to get Ginny’s clothes.

* * *

Ginny could scarcely lookat her brothers as she approached the booth at Old Ember’s, an upscale, ritzy restaurant in downtown Lexington the four of them had been dining in for decades now. Their standing dinner date normally fell on Tuesday evening at nine p.m., but anyone could call an emergency dinner at any time.

In the past, an emergency dinner had only been initiated twice, once by Harvey when he’d found out about their father’s philandering, and once by Drake when he’d panicked over asking Darcey to marry him.

Not everyone made it to every dinner every Tuesday, but the majority of them were attended by all four Winters siblings each week. Ginny only missed when she had social events for Sweet Rose drawing her away.

The past several months, she’d purposely scheduled other dinners and get-togethers on Tuesdays to avoid this meeting, as Harvey and Elliot had started down a road to modify the budget for employee salaries that Ginny did not like.

As the current majority shareholder in Sweet Rose, she ran the board meetings each Thursday morning, and a lot of the final say on things fell on her shoulders. She’d blocked their attempts to pay their full-time people less over time, despite the grandfathering they’d outlined.

Ginny wanted Sweet Rose to be the premier whiskey distillery, farm, shop, and event venue in Kentucky. She wanted their whiskey to continue to top the charts in flavor and style around the world. She wanted to attract the very best employees, and keep them in their jobs for their entire careers, not constantly be re-training people as others left due to harsh working conditions and low pay.

They had the money in the company, and she didn’t need any more lining her pockets. Harvey and Elliot had cited looking ahead to the future and needing a reserve, but Ginny didn’t understand why the eighty-seven million dollars they had in their reserve wasn’t already enough.

They had not been happy with her; she was not happy with them. They hadn’t spoken outside of business meetings in a while—until she’d returned from her trip to the Caymans in mid-January.

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