Page 60 of Winning His Wager

He just kept walking, cursing when he startled three fucking deer and they took off across the snow.

Will looked up. There was a light in the window. Fletcher’s house.

The house was a good distance away from where he was now. But there were people silhouetted in that window.

He darted behind a tree, and stayed there. Had they seen him?

He didn’t want to have to deal with a trespassing charge or something like that.

Everyone in town was so on edge lately, since all the OPJ supply chain was getting so screwed up and everything.

Cops screwing with him now would mess everything up. He had a general idea where that missing shipment was. He just needed his truck, and time, to get it to it. The road was probably still iced over. His old truck wouldn’t get up there to it right now. Or until the snow melted a little and it wasn’t so damned wet out, either.

Will was planning. He was going to take that OPJ and move it right down the line. He’d get enough. He’d buy a ranch of his own nearby, and he’d rub it in his dad and Abby’s faces. He’d let Abby live with him if she wanted, though. If she cooked and cleaned for him. His dad’s friends wouldn’t paw at her like that any longer. Those assholes had been doing that for as long as Will could remember—it always made Abby uncomfortable, but their dad never stopped it. It just pissed Will off.

For now, though, he stayed right there behind the pine tree and watched.

He knew who they were in that window. He just did.

Dylan.

And that son-of-a-bitch Fletcher.

And they were holding each other. Probably screwed each other already tonight. Maybe even right there in the window.

It disgusted him. She could do so much better.

What was so special about Fletcher Tyler anyway?

41

The snow was melting off.Fletcher was outside, playing Science Cowboy with some of his equally delicious cousins. He had a real nerd side too. And Dylan was fascinated by what Travis Deane had shown them would be implemented on Fletcher’s ranch over the next three years.

And drones. The drones would be there any day, coming by special courier. She couldn’t wait. Fletcher was going to use the drones to monitor Fletcher’s herd and the crops he’d planted for feed. He only had about a thousand acres, he’d told her, and it wasn’t the most profitable land, but it stretched up behind the house and all the way up the side of the mountain. He had herds in various places, and he was going to put different sensors in different places. Well, Travis’s company was going to come install them. Fletcher was going to use the drone system to monitor them—the fields that had patches of forest between them.

He was like a tweenage boy with video games.

She wasn’t much better.

Travis Deane had let them both take turns operating the four different sized drones. It had been a lot of fun.

Dylan had discussed the science behind it with Travis. It thrilled her that Fletcher was getting to be involved. The system wouldn’t even hit the market for another two to four years. They were using small ranches around the country to test how it worked in different environments first. Fletcher wouldn’t become super-rich like Gil was—Gil had inherited Vince Preston’s much larger estate, something that had been built over generations—but Fletcher would make his own impact on the ranching world.

It would grow. For his Fletcherlings and grand-Fletcherlings someday.

And she thought that was what mattered to him most. Leaving something worthwhile behind. For the ones who came after.

He had told her about how the technology was projected to increase return on investment by up to twenty percent. But more importantly, it would allow for more sustainable food production. And the other stuff he and Travis were talking about partnering on, like microorganisms to help with soil health and even eliminate cow emissions. He was helping bring ranching into the future—and would make considerable profit, since he had invested heavily of his own funds.

She felt very proud of that man. He hadn’t told her, but she knew he had been feeling a little bit left out with his brothers and sister. Their lives were moving forward, they were working on what was important to them. Now he was making an impact.

Travis Deane had already nicknamed three of the four drones he was going to have Fletcher use the “Tyler Drones.” She’d gotten a kick out of that.

Fletcher had ordered a stack of tech and ranching magazines. Her seed order was mixed in with those. It was a bit late for starting seedlings, but she was going to try. Fletcher said it was a bit cooler and wetter than it usually was this time of year—she was hoping that would make slightly later seedlings work well. She had some, but she had found more heirlooms that she wanted to try, after speaking with Travis’s agronomists about what she was looking for exactly.

Dylan was most fascinated by the way field management and crop management and soil monitoring could be accomplished with the drones. She was doing more research in that area while Fletcher was focusing on herd management.

She was humming as she flipped through the magazines. The last few days—with Fletcher—had been completely amazing. She wasn’t letting herself think of anything beyond each day, not when it came tohim.But being with him was nothing like what being with her ex Brody had been like before. It just wasn’t.

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