Page 9 of My Cowboy Valentine

“The rodeo one.”

“Dammit, Billy. You know I never use that one.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort.”

Logging into it on my phone, I frown. “I see it now.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want you to find out from the news or anything,” he explains, slurring his speech a little. I wonder if he’s drunk, although it’s hard to tell with the poor connection.

“Funny story,” I say, trying hard to fight the angry tension twisting my core. “You want to know how I found out? Your sister barged in here less than ten minutes ago, trying to take control of everything. She interrupted the completion of an otherwise successful fit testing, acting like she owns the place. I had her handcuffed and removed from the premises, but thanks to your dumb ass, now I’ve got to let her back on the property. Even worse, what the fuck’s this deal about an engagement?”

“That was not me,” he replies emphatically.

“Please don’t tell me this was Red’s idea,” I groan, unable to wrap my head around what that might imply or entail.

“No, Malia, the reporter wanted to add it for good measure. And as far as I look at it, no harm, no foul.”

“Red and I can barely stand being in the same room together. How are we supposed to pull off a fake engagement?”

“Do what I told her. Fake it ’til you break it. Let it run its course over the next few weeks, and then call it good. Believe me, once you see how Red and Rowdy are trending today, you’ll thank me for the priceless publicity.”

“Nope, never. You’ll never get a thank you out of me for any of this. I’d rather burn the company and everything I’ve worked for to the ground than spend another minute withyour sister.”

Billy sighs. “I swear, the way you two hate each other, you’d think you dated or something.”

I growl a warning.

He laughs. “I know she was a pain in the ass when we were kids, but seriously?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I remind, “The worst beating I ever took from my father was the result of Red’s loose lips. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut, always having to be right at the expense of others, and I paid a price for it that still puts a cold sweat on my forehead.”

Billy goes silent on the line, and I wonder if I’ve lost the connection. My ears strain until I hear crackling and a jumble of words that morph into intelligible speech again. “…A tough deal. But how could anyone know your old man would react that way?”

He has a point. Billy and Red’s parents were downright laidback compared to my dad, a widower and drunk. The bottle had as much, if not more, to do with my punishment that night than Red. But in the mind of a nine-year-old, it was a lot easier to blame Billy’s bossy, snitching older sister.

“Besides,” he adds. “You more than got back at her.”

“Not really.”

“Need I remind you that you egged and toilet papered her first car, eavesdropped on her and her boyfriends, making kissy noises and mocking their lovey-dovey comments at the most inopportune times, put frogs in her bedsheets and books in her pillowcases, stink bombs in her room?—”

“You were just as guilty as me. Besides, those were the stuff of childhood pranks.”

Billy laughs. “True, but I’m her baby bro, which means I can get away with more or less anything. You, on the other hand? Not so much.”

I frown, adding, “I was close enough to a second baby bro for her to boss the hell out of. The happiest day in my life, apart from your parents convincing my father they should raise me, was when ‘big sis’ left for New York. Good fucking riddance.”

“You two!” Billy exclaims, frustration coloring his voice. “Let bygones be bygones already. If you’d both quit holding grudges against each other, you’d quickly realize the brilliance of my plan.”

“If you call hare-brained brilliant,” I grumble.

“Sometimes the most brilliant ideas seem hare-brained at first.”

“Maybe for Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking. But not for a retired team roper who’s had enough concussions to name his own wing of a hospital neurology department.”

“Whatever the case, you two need to call a temporary truce and get as much publicity out of this fake engagement as possible…”

His voice dies away, and I wonder if I’ve lost him. Still, I hear some crackling, so I wait. Finally, I make out a phrase. “Lesley’s texting and calling me as we speak. Boy, did you kick a hornet’s nest. You might want to consider letting her back onto the property when she shows up tomorrow.”

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