Page 6 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

“I wish,” he replied before gesturing to the open road. “Lead on, Macduff.”

A rancher who knew Shakespeare, Sarabeth thought. How refreshing.

And yep, she decided as she started her small SUV, it did up his sexy factor. And that, considering her earlier thoughts, was definitely something she could do without.

Sarabeth felt Brett’s eyes on her profile and resisted the urge to squirm. She was rapidly approaching fifty, and he made her feel like a gauche teenager dealing with her first crush. Her hands tightened on the wheel as she drove the still familiar road into Royal. As she approached the impressive gates to Elegance Ranch, Sarabeth sighed and couldn’t help slowing down as she caught a glimpse of her old home through the copse of trees. It was as impressive as it had always been, but now it felt cold. And ostentatious.

She far preferred the clean lines of Brett’s ranch house. It was big, everything in Texas tended to be, but it hadn’t been designed as a showpiece.

He cleared his throat and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him gesture to the mansion. “Do you miss it?”

Sarabeth quickly shook her head. “Hell, no. I missed my kids but the bricks and stone? Never.”

“And Rusty?” Brett casually asked.

Sarabeth slowed down to look him squarely in the eye. “Have you met my ex?”

The corners of his mouth twitched in amusement. “Point taken.”

Brett leaned his elbow on the frame of the open window and lifted his Stetson up to run his hand through his hair. “Speaking of, Rusty asked me to sit on the advisory board of Soiree on the Bay. It’s a music and food and wine festival that is going to be held on Appaloosa Island.”

Now wasn’t that a blast from the past? Rusty acquired the small private island in Trinity Bay early in their marriage. They’d built a holiday home there, and she’d loved spending days on their private beach, swimming and making sandcastles with the kids.

When Sarabeth found out that Rusty had taken one or more of his mistresses to their beach house for dirty weekends, she’d refused to set foot on the island again.

“Why you?” Sarabeth asked, wincing at her rude question. But she needed to know how open she could be with Brett. While she didn’t intend to trash her ex while she was in town—he was still, after all, her children’s father—she didn’t want to have to censure her every word.

Especially since everyone already knew that she and Rusty stood on different sides of a cattle grid.

Brett took his time to answer her question. “Probably because I have a lot of money and they think that asking me to be on the board will encourage me to loosen my wallet.” His words were neither a boast nor an exaggeration, just a matter-of-fact statement.

“And will it?”

One shoulder lifted in a negligent shrug but when he spoke, it was to ask a question of his own. “You know that he’s painted you as a gold digger, right?”

It shouldn’t hurt but it did. “Is that all? I thought that I was a gold-digging slut with no morals who abandoned her kids and who dabbled with drugs. I have one or two friends in town, and I’ve heard that some stories have me biting the heads off chickens too.”

Sarabeth heard the bitterness in her voice and winced. She’d trained herself not to care about what Rusty and the not-so-righteous people of Royal thought, but that was a lot easier when she was in California, many miles away from this gossipy small town in East Texas. She’d been back in Royal for only a couple of days, and she was sliding back into her old insecurities and caring too much about how people viewed her.

Strangely, her biggest worry was how Brett viewed her. This was nonsensical because he was only her landlord and she shouldn’t care what a guy a decade younger than her thought. But Royal, as always, had the ability to scramble her brains.

“Are you?” Brett quietly asked.

“Am I what?”

“A gold digger?”

Her initial reaction was annoyance that he had the gall to ask her that, then her common sense kicked in and she appreciated his frankness. She far preferred people to shove a knife in her chest while they looked her in the eye than stab her in the back when her eyes were closed.

“No. Not then and not now,” Sarabeth eventually answered him. “Back then, all I wanted was access to my kids. I came back to Royal to repair my relationship with Ross, and I also want to get to know Charlotte and spend time with my grandson, Ben.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you support yourself?” Brett asked, after a short silence. “I mean, my cottage is one of the most expensive rentals in Royal, and you paid three months rent in advance.”

Ah, that. How much to tell him? In California, as the founder ofSarabeths!, she’d developed a bit of a name for herself and she was semifamous, but here in rural Texas, no one, including her children, had connected her with the now famous company producing organic cosmetics.

She’d recently sold the company and was many, many millions richer...

“Hopefully you demanded, and were awarded, a hefty, lifelong alimony from Rusty.”

---