Page 195 of The Billion Heirs Boxed Set
“Everywhere. You’re mine, Sadie. All mine.”
And I do just that. Learning her body, backing up my words with tender actions. Then rough ones. Because my woman likes it every way I give her.
As long as we’re together, everything will be just fine.
BROKEN
PROLOGUE
CHANCE
Love.
I only loved one woman in my life, and that was nearly fifteen years ago.
Sure, I have my fun. I pick up a lady at The Dusty Rose now and again, maybe even take her out a time or two.
But that’s it. I’ve only felt that spark once, and I’ve never found it since.
So I stopped thinking about love. Bachelorhood isn’t so bad. I love the land, the animals, the work around the ranch. Hell, I even love my new brothers.
Damn it, though, the two of them brought romantic love into the house. Within weeks. They had no trouble finding it right here in Bayfield, my hometown. To be fair, they didn’t actually find love. Love seemed to find them. But love never found me, not in fifteen years.
Granted, I haven’t exactly been looking, and life has been a fucking tornado since my father’s death. I’m still a person of interest in the death of Joey Hopkins. I’m innocent, and I’m pretty sure the information Sadie uncovered will go a long way in proving it, but still…
It all gets to a guy after a while.
“I need to ride like the wind, boy,” I say to Raphael, my midnight-black quarter horse, as I groom his flank with the curry comb.
I’m on my own at the ranch today. Miles is taking care of Sadie, who needs some serious time off. After what she’s been through, fuck. I haven’t seen them and don’t plan to. They haven’t left his bedroom as far as I know. Austin has gone with Carly to her therapy session in Billings.
So I’m taking the morning off too. Just Raphael and me and the sunshine.
I need an escape.
Ivory, a gorgeous cremello mare, snorts in the next stall. She’s the horse Carly was grooming when Austin first laid eyes on her. He’s told me the story a hundred times if he’s told me once—how he was a goner the first time he saw her.
Miles says the same thing about Sadie. As soon as she sauntered up to him in that bar and asked him to take her panties, he was all in. Doesn’t sound much like a love story, but the look in Miles’s eyes when he tells it removes all doubt.
Maybe I should go over to that bar sometime.
“What do you think, buddy?” I brush a tangle out of Raphael’s mane. “You think there’s a woman out there for me?”
“I’d like to think there is.”
That voice—melodic with just a touch of sexy rasp.
I drop the curry comb, and it lands on the hay-covered dirt with a thud.
I turn.
Standing in the door to the stable is a mirage.
A mirage from fifteen years ago.
It can’t be. It just can’t.
“Avery? Avery Marsh?”
