Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
“Scott. Scott Blackstone––a party animal?” The bewildered doubt that colored her tone pulled a slow smile out of me.
“Yep.”
Sighing deeply, Laurel stopped drumming her fingernails on the steering wheel. “Real talk?”
“Sure,” I said, but instinctually the guardrails went up. I didn’t have any close friendships outside of Miller. I’d spent most of my adult life competing, outsmarting, and generally seeing human nature for what it really was: selfish and self-serving. Which was why it was hard for me to trust anyone.
“I know about your arrangement with Scott. He told me and Ryan.”
I suspected as much, and if Scott trusted them then I assumed I could too. “Then you know it’s important we keep this to ourselves.”
“Scott’s been real good to me and Pete. The prior owner was a gigantic prick. He cut all our salaries and put the money in his pocket. Gambling habit. That’s why he was forced to sell, praise Jesus––” Laurel gestured with raised hands, briefly taking them off the steering wheel. “I’d never do anything to betray Scott.” Her gaze shifted back and forth between me and the road. “I pride myself as a good judge of character and I can tell you’re gonna be good for him. That boy is clueless when it comes to women. He thinks he’s smart, but he ain’t.”
Boy? I tamped down the urge to smile at the memory of how Laurel had handled Scott in the office the other day.
“It’s only business…We’ll eventually get divorced.”
“He thought it was casual with Misty, but I saw the way she looked at him––” Laurel continued right over me as if she hadn’t heard a word. I, on the other hand, had heard Laurel perfectly.
“Misty?” It’s not like I was jealous, of course I wasn’t, we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Still, the news that Scott had someone needled me regardless.
“Someone he was datin’ a while back.” Laurel sneaked another glance. “Like I said, nothing serious.”
On Monday, Miller arrived. We were to meet in front of the office of the Lazy S. The cabin was impossible to find unless you knew your way around the property, and I wasn’t about to lose the best assistant I’d ever had and the closest thing to a best friend to wildlife. Though I shouldn’t have worried on that front. In his usual brutal efficiency, Miller arrived at the ranch safe and sound in a rented fully loaded pickup truck.
The sun was out full blast that day, the weather remarkably warm for December. I was leaning against the powder blue Ford, sipping my coffee, when he pulled up with his arm hanging out of the open window of a silver pickup, his angular features arranged in a wicked smirk.
“Do I look mega-butch or what?”
Miller was hardly a bruiser. More on the refined side of handsome, with wavy chestnut hair and hazel eyes. He had a preppy frat boy quality to him despite his twenty-nine years on the planet.
“Very macho,” I remarked with a wry grin. “Even in your Burberry collection tartan puffer jacket.”
When Miller began working for me, I caught him on more than one occasion flirting his ass off with my secretary. And two accountants. And a paralegal. All women. So it never occurred to me that he was gay. Not until Miller––in typical Miller fashion––started openly gabbing about his love life, or lack thereof. He’d said it was a product of having grown up gay in a particularly tough section of Pittsburgh where you could attract a world of trouble if you didn’t stay hidden in plain sight and grow eyes in the back of your head.
The hiding in plain sight had struck a chord. Some hid behind beauty, some behind humor, some outrageous behavior. I hid behind the tight control I exerted over myself, a product of my childhood, and Miller behind his all-American-guy routine. Maybe Scott was hiding too.
Hopping out of the vehicle, Miller scanned the parking lot and the stables off to the side. It was lunchtime and a bunch of the ranch hands were sitting at a picnic table stuffing their faces, their interest fixed on the new Mrs. Blackstone and her guest.
Arms crossed, he leaned against the Ford next to me. “I’m getting a serious I wish I knew how to quitchu vibe.”
I smiled around the rim of my travel mug watching a large figure on horseback approach while Miller threw a coy look at the men watching us.
“I hate to break hearts but I’m a happily married man.”
“How is Paul?”
“Enjoying the hot tub in our room with a Brokeback mountain view.” His attention turned on a dime. “Okay, where is he?”
I knew exactly where he was. My attention had been split between my assistant and my husband since Scott had trotted up to the barn. I motioned with my head at the man on the buckskin horse across the parking lot. “The tall one getting off the pale horse.”