Page 89 of Awaiting the Storm
“Yeah. Okay,” she agrees.
I give her an appreciative smile before turning and getting back in my truck. I turn the ignition with a mix of dread and determination.
She’s not at home.
She’s not answering her phone.
Which means she’s somewhere, trying to make sense of what she saw.
I pull my phone from my pocket and try to call her one last time. Because if I don’t explain right now, I might not get a chance to. Trust is fragile, and I shattered hers.
The call goes straight to voicemail. I close my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Matty.” I end the call and throw my phone across the cab.
Iturned off my phone and tossed it into the bottom drawer of my nightstand without listening to any of the messages that Caison had left.
It’s been two days since I saw him at The Buckhorn, clinking glasses with my horse trainer. Two days, and I’ve only grown angrier.
I glance down at the folder of résumés sitting on my desk. Barn manager, grooms, ranch hands, and a horse trainer—we need them all. Now that Holland Ludlow’s money has finally hit our account, we can afford to hire them. I should be happy, but I find myself staring at the folder instead of reviewing the applicants’ qualifications.
Frustrated, I push it aside and open the ranch’s email. There’s a message from Ironhorse. I click on it, and it’s addressed from the desk of the ranch manager, Caison Galloway. The message contains just three words.
Can we talk?
No, we cannot. We will not. I don’t need an explanation to understand exactly what that night meant. He was never on my side. He never really saw me. I was a box to check on the way to Holland Ludlow’s big expansion. Just an insignificant bump in the road to Ironhorse glory.
So, now, I’m done. With him. With all of them.
Shelby tried to talk to me yesterday. She said I should hear him out, that maybe there was more to the story. I told her to stick to barrel racing and leave my love life to me. Charli—God bless her—tried as well, but she’s always been more loyal than logical, and even she’s angry.
Carl, of course, is acting like he deserves a medal, showing up at the barn yesterday as if he were expecting a parade. While I appreciate him clueing me in about what was happening right under my nose, I’m not about to hop into his arms. God knows I considered it for one brief moment. I thought about backtracking to the time when theranch was thriving and I was happily engaged, but you can’t go back. All you can do is move forward. So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I’m done with men.
The only men I need in my life are Grandpa, Daddy, Uncle Boone, and Cabe. They’ve never lied to me, never pulled wool over my eyes. Perhaps not everyone gets the fairy-tale love my parents had. Maybe not everyone finds a soulmate. Maybe true love isn’t meant for someone like me.
And you know what? That’s fine.
I’ve got the ranch. Horses. Family. I’ve got work to do.
I accepted Giles’s resignation without making a scene. He showed up in the barn on Monday morning with his hat in hand, looking like he’d aged a decade overnight. I wasn’t moved. I didn’t make it easier for him.
“You don’t need to work the two weeks,” I told him. “You can pack your things and go today.”
His jaw tightened. “Matty, I didn’t mean for it to go down that way. I was going to tell you, but Caison wanted to talk to you first.”
“Doesn’t matter. I saw what I needed to see.”
“I loved my time here,” he said quietly. “I came to think of you Storms as family.”
I nodded once. “Good luck, Giles.”
And that was it.
I exit the email without responding to Caison, pull up the client list, and begin sorting through it. I mentally assess which clients we may be at risk of losing to Ironhorse. If they’re bringing in a team of top-notch trainers with Giles overseeing their program, many people may decide to leave us.
You’re creating problems that don’t even exist.
