Page 63 of Parading the Cowboy Billionaire (Bluegrass Ranch 4)

She wanted to be Beth’s friend too. She wanted to belong to these women.

You don’t, though, she thought, and she let Beth go as she stepped back. “Get over there by it,” Beth said as she pulled out her phone. “I want a picture with the masterpiece and the artists themselves.”

Ginny giggled and stood with Olli next to the table-cake. Beth snapped pictures, her face full of joy. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll text these to you guys. I better go get dressed.”

“Yes,” Ginny said. “You can’t renew your vows in jeans and a tank top.”

Beth grinned at her, thanked her again, and bustled down the hall.

“That reminds me,” Olli said. “You said you’d help me pick a blouse for today…” She looked at Olli with apprehension in her gaze. “I’ve got them in the front room.”

“Let’s go,” Ginny said, as she loved to dress Olli, who really had the worst fashion sense on the planet. It was something Ginny adored about her, and as she considered the two choices Olli had brought, Ginny prayed her best friend would always have room in her life for a spinster.

“The emerald one,” she said. “It’ll be gorgeous with your hair.”

“Emerald,” Olli said with a scoff. “It’sgreen, Ginny. Just green.” She grinned at Ginny, and the two of them laughed together. Ginny sure did love Olli, but she couldn’t quite remember a time when that friendship love was enough.

She knew now what it felt like to have a man like Cayden, and she wanted to share her life, the inside jokes, the good news, and the bad, withhim.

* * *

Later,Ginny snuck out of the party before it was quite over. Lawrence and Duke had said they’d take down the tiers and clean up the table, and Ginny saw no reason to torture herself by staying in the same room with Cayden when they weren’t speaking to each other.

Beth and Trey had renewed their vows at the ranch where they lived, and that was only a twenty-minute drive from the country house. Exhaustion pulled through Ginny’s muscles and neck as she drove home. She simply wanted a chocolate-shell ice cream bar, a hot bath, and a pair of elastic-waist pants.

She wanted to lock all the doors and curtain all the windows. She’d turn off her phone and hunker down. If Cayden couldn’t talk to her, he couldn’t break up with her.

“That’s not true,” she muttered to herself. When they’d stopped talking at the beginning of the year, they were definitely not together.

She turned off the highway and onto the dirt lane that led back to the house. Once around the bend and past the trees, she slammed on the brakes, bringing her SUV to a sudden and complete stop.

A shiny red sedan sat in front of the country house, and it didn’t belong to Drake.

It belonged to Sydney, Mother’s assistant.

“She’s here,” Ginny said, her voice hollow and her fingers strangling the steering wheel.

19

Cayden wiped down the counter next to the fridge, glad the festivities for the day had ended. The work he needed to do that day wasn’t, but he’d learned to compartmentalize as an early teenager once his father had really started laying on the chores.

With school, family, friends, and all the responsibilities heaped on him, Cayden made methods and systems for himself that he’d been using for three decades.

He tossed the rag into the sink just as Trey and Beth, along with Blaine and Tam, came into the farmhouse through the back door. They were all talking at the same time, and that was Cayden’s cue to get out of there.

“This is all clean,” he said as Trey set a stack of dirty cake plates in the sink Cayden had just emptied. If he’d have done that at the homestead after Cayden had spent twenty minutes cleaning, he’d have said something. As it was, this wasn’t his house, and he’d just been trying to help. A healthy pounding of annoyance ran through him, though.

He could’ve left twenty minutes ago. Heaven knew he had plenty to do that afternoon.

“Thanks,” Trey said, his smile fading. “Are you taking off?”

“Yes,” Cayden said. “I have to go over the menus for the Smash. I’m meeting with Bryson on Monday morning.”

“We wanted to talk to you,” Blaine said, closing in on Cayden’s other side.

He flinched away from the voice and the proximity of his brother. “I don’t think that’s going to work for me,” Cayden said.

“Seems like nothing’s working for you these days,” Trey said.

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