Page 15 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

Ah, he’d heard about and believed the gold digger rumors. Sarabeth stared at him, debating how to respond. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she could, probably, penny for penny, match Brett’s wealth. But pride and stubbornness kept the words behind her teeth. It was no one’s business but her own how well her business did, how much she’d sold it for and how much she was worth.

And that was a lot...

Brett turned to look at her. “Hey, Sarabeth? I need to get the bird home so can we get moving?”

“Absolutely.” That sounded like an awesome idea.

“It was nice meeting you,” Sarabeth told Jules, the good manners her mama drilled into her forcing her to speak the lie.

Jules grinned. “No, it wasn’t.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t.” She was annoyed with him for making assumptions, but she also admired his loyalty to his friend. Not wanting to make an enemy of him—she already had a few in Royal—she briefly touched his arm. “I’m not here to cause trouble, Jules.”

He stared at her for a minute before his mouth softened into a small smile. “Glad to hear it, Ms. Edmond.”

She’d used Rusty’s surname for the best part of thirty years, but here, in Royal, it felt wrong. And weird. She wrinkled her nose. “Just call me Sarabeth.”

“Can we please get going?” Brett demanded, sounding impatient. Sarabeth frowned when she saw him climbing into the trunk of her SUV, contorting his big legs around the carrier. Was that really necessary?

Jules shook his head, and when he looked at her again, humor had returned to his eyes. “You’ve got competition for his attention.”

She shut her trunk door on both Brett and the bird and rolled her eyes at Jules. “It was a moment of madness. I doubt it will happen again.”

Jules walked her to the driver’s door and yanked it open. He gestured her inside. “Yeah, it sure will.”

Sarabeth couldn’t argue with his emphatic statement because God, she really hoped it would.

Jules, the bastard, didn’t know when he wasn’t wanted and, despite Brett glaring at him through the back window of Sarabeth’s SUV, followed them back to the ranch. After Sarabeth dropped him off at the stable block, she continued on to her cottage, which stood on the other side of his lap pool and hot tub.

When her car disappeared from sight, Brett glared at Jules. “Why are you still here?” he demanded.

Jules picked up the carrier and followed Brett down the path that skirted the stables to the custom-built, small rehabilitation center he’d constructed. Having great facilities was another perk of being stupidly wealthy.

“I wanted to check in with you since we haven’t spoken since you denied me the opportunity to be your best man,” Jules told him. He waggled his eyebrows and shoved his tongue into his cheek. “But it seems like you are handling the situation just fine.”

Brett led him to a small, wire enclosure, big enough for the owl to move around freely but not flap her injured wing. After retrieving a set of thick gloves from his supply closet, he pulled them on and dropped to his haunches to take the owl out of the carrier. The bird attempted to bite him, but Brett ignored her anger and gently placed her in the wire cage. After securing the cage, he stood up and pulled off the gloves. “I need to rehydrate her. Are you going to help me or are you going to bust my ass?”

“Both.”

Fair enough. Brett entered the small building that served as a kitchen to prepare food for his injured animals, a storage space and an incubator room. Against the far wall was a series of cages to hold critters that couldn’t be placed outside or that needed specialized care. He’d spent many hours in the room, sitting on the floor and nursing an injured animal back to life.

Animals were much less complicated than people. And damn, while he could do with Jules’s help to feed the owl, he’d really wanted to be alone so he could make sense of what had happened with Sarabeth.

One minute they’d been talking about kissing, the next he had his arms full of a fragrant sexy woman.

Brett wanted to believe that he would’ve eventually come to his senses, but also reluctantly admitted that if Jules arrived ten or fifteen minutes later, he might’ve found them naked.

It was official: Sarabeth could shut down his synapses.

“Water, glucose.”

Brett blinked before frowning at Jules. “What?”

“You need glucose and water to rehydrate the owl and I don’t have all day,” Jules told him, leaning against a counter, smirking.

He nodded. “Right.”

Brett knew Jules would not let the Lexi-Sarabeth matter drop. He gave him ten seconds, maybe twenty, before he raised the subject again.

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