Page 47 of Eighteen Bowties and Counting

“You didn’t go?”

Mason shook his head, his attention back on his phone. “I sent my foreman and my cowboys.” He looked up. “Does your owner go on the roundup?”

“Yeah,” Beau said, a little surprised Mason hadn’t gone to fetch his own cattle. “He’s our vet, so yeah, he goes.”

Mason nodded. “How’s Char?”

“Good,” Beau said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly. “We’re out—it’s my birthday.”

His best friend’s face burst into a grin. “Oh, that’s right. Happy birthday, brother.” He hugged him again. The line inched forward and they went with it, now standing more side-by-side.

Mason still had a couple of people in front of him, both being helped by people behind the counter. “She’s doing okay? No fainting spells?”

“She’s great,” Beau said. “One of the best people I’ve seen work with horses.”

“Right,” Mason said. “But she’s okay?”

“I’ve been keepin’ an eye on her,” Beau said. “Like you asked.” He gave his friend a side-eyed look. He hadn’t really been watching for slips in Charlotte’s health for a while now. He trusted her to tell him when she wasn’t feeling well, and she did.

“She just doesn’t say much to us,” Mason said. “She’s an expert at keeping secrets.”

Beau hadn’t known that to be true. Charlotte did like to hold things close to the vest until she was ready to talk about them. It didn’t mean she was secretive.

“She’s had a couple of incidents,” Beau said. “I didn’t think?—”

“A couple of incidents?”

Beau turned around to find Charlotte standing there, her purse slung over her shoulder. “You’re reporting about me to my brother?” She threw a furious look at Mason and then fixed those blazing hot, angry eyes on Beau.

“It’s not like that,” he said.

She held up one hand. “They were out of steamers.” She spun on her heel and marched away from him, leaving Beau torn about going after her and waiting for his fly control spray.

Go!

He wasn’t sure who spoke, but he took it as a command from God, and Beau didn’t even offer an explanation to Mason. He simply ran after Charlotte, calling, “Little bird, wait.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Little bird.” She scoffed as she stormed out of the feed store. Beau would only be a moment behind her, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t his little bird—at least not one he held gently in his hands and cherished.

He viewed her as something broken and helpless. Something he had to cage behind closed fingers and keep close, because she couldn’t take care of herself.

“Charlotte,” he said as he spilled out of the store.

“Go get your stuff,” she said over her shoulder. She yanked open the passenger door of his truck and glared at him, daring him to come closer. He seemed to sense the danger, because he stopped on the sidewalk. “I’ll just sit here and wait. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Charlotte, of course not.”

She vaulted into the truck and slammed the door, refusing to look at him again. Petty, perhaps. Childish, for sure.

But she did not need the mighty Beau Peterson to protect her. Or spy on her and send reports to Mason. She blinked, and everything in her life turned red. Charlotte took a deep breath and prayed, “Lord, help me to calm down.”

Her heartbeat raced, and then it suddenly stopped. Her head felt too heavy and then too light, and she looked over to Beau. He stood on the curb, watching her with a frown etched in all the lines on his face.

Charlotte’s throat closed, and she couldn’t get a breath to go into her lungs. Whiteness started to crowd in around the edges of her vision. She pressed her first and second fingers together and started to lift her hand, but Beau was already moving toward her.

A moment later, before she’d completed the nonverbal sign that she needed help, he pulled open the passenger door and said, “Hey, hey, hey.”

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