Page 13 of Wrangling Hearts
There was a fire in her eyes. A determination that burned inside her just as fiercely as it burned in me. It only made me that more excited for the upcoming weeks. I had to really pull all the stops out now, and I couldn’t wait to see how Claire would react.
I sent Anna a text, telling her I was coming over for dinner. I needed to get started on this first project for Cavendish if I was going to beat Claire, and I needed Joseph’s insight to do just that. Because honestly, Claire was right: I knew jack shit about breeding and training horses. Our horses at Circle M came to us pre-trained, so we could get straight to work, but it was long overdue that I learned.
The first requirement Cavendish had was to submit a formal proposal to them about our plans for the partnership that was due in three days. And while I had ideas, I needed to run them by Joseph to see if they were even plausible.
When I walkedthrough Anna’s door, I got hit with the sweet smell of vanilla. Her house always smelled like something was baking, a welcoming scent for a worn-out cowboy after a long day of work. While I had my “games”, as Mount called them, I still spent most of my days out in the pastures wrangling cattle, which left me bone tired. I knew my father thought I was cutting corners by implementing technology into the ranch, but I would rather die than do a disservice to my family’s legacy like that.
Knowing that my father thought so little of me to even imply that stung. Badly.
I typically spent most nights alone, so going to Anna’s was a nice change of pace. For the most part, anyway. Most of the time, I left feeling a little…envious.
“BoBo!” my nephew, Henry, flung himself at my legs as I walked in the door. He was in nothing but his underwear, a Superman cape, and his boots.
My knees cracked as I knelt down in front of him. “Hey there, big man.” I wrapped him in my arms and kissed the top of his head while he squeezed my neck almost too hard.
“I missed you,” he said, pulling away and looking at me like he genuinely meant it, and my heart nearly exploded. He had Joseph’s blue eyes and Anna’s blonde hair, a perfect mix of them both. It was an indescribable feeling to see a little human who my baby sister created and notice little pieces of her in the way he acted and the expressions he made.
It made me wonder what a little one of my own would look and act like. They’d probably be a little terror, just like the one I encountered earlier this morning.
I cleared my throat. “I missed you, too, buddy.” I stood, ruffling his hair. “I gotta go see your mama.”
Henry’s boot-clad feet pattered on the floor after me as I walked to the kitchen. Anna was standing over the stove, stirring something. She turned, and her belly was a little bigger and rounder than the last time I saw her.
When she grinned at me, I nearly stopped in my tracks. She resembled our mother so much that I could barely stand to look at her sometimes. She died right after having Colt thirty years ago, a complication that I still didn’t quite understand. Anna was only two at the time, so she didn’t really remember her.
But I did. Sometimes I wished I didn’t, and then I beat myself up for being a terrible son.
When our mother died, all the warmth in our father went out like an extinguished flame. He scolded me every chance he got, wanting to mold me into a man at the ripe age of five. He could barely tolerate holding Colt, carrying a bitterness towards him that I thought he still did, but kept buried deep.
But Annabelle? Headoredher. She could do no wrong and had him wrapped around her finger. I resented her for it for a while, but then I realized that if he felt that way about her, then maybe there was a chance he could feel that way about me again.
That remained to be seen.
“Long time no see, BoBo,” Anna said, coming around the island and kissing my cheek.
“Hey.” I sat on a stool while she handed me a beer. “Whatcha making’?”
“Nothing fancy. Just spaghetti.” She placed her hands on the counter, letting out a long breath. “Saw you were in theWhispers,” she said with a smirk. “I guess we’re the McCoys now.”
I took my hat off, setting it on the counter, and rolled my eyes. “Such B.S.” I took a long sip from my beer. “And then she had the nerve to show up at Circle M this morning, guns blazing. Talking like I owed her.” Owed her for what exactly, I wasn’t sure. Her family was the one who screwed over ours. If it weren’t for her grandfather being a backstabbing coward, Circle M and Golden Bridle would be united right now.
Anna’s eyes went wide, her brows raised. “Claire?”
“Yeah. She had the whole ranch giving me shit all day after that. She’s a little spitfire that’s for sure.”
The memory of Claire standing by the barn, arms crossed, dark brows pinched together, glaring at me while I easily had at least eighty pounds and a foot on her should’ve been flat-out laughable. But she didn’t let it intimidate her—not my size, or the fact that she was on my ranch.
She grabbed the bull by the horns and yanked. Hard.
And for some reason, that had been lingering with me all day.
Anna smiled with a kind of fondness that only nostalgia offered. “Always has been.”
“Well, it’s fu—” Anna shot me a glare before her gaze darted to Henry in warning. “It’s freaking annoying.”
She chuckled to herself, shaking her head while going back to the stove.
“What?”
