Page 66 of Cowboys Next Door

I wince at the old nickname that no one has used since my very early childhood, but I stand to oblige her request. When I return to the living room with the water, Katherine pretends to be asleep. I stare at her dubiously.

“Really, Miss Katherine?” I ask skeptically.

She peeks at me with one eye open and sits up, reaching for the water. “Thank you, darling. You’re too smart for your own good.”

I sit back down, and she takes a long sip as I lean forward expectantly. “Well?”

Blinking innocently, she returns my stare. “Well, what?”

“Miss Katherine, I love you, truly, but I’m not stupid. Who else has stakes in the BB? Eli? Hudson?”

Her already waxen complexion shadows, and she seems to melt into the wing chair. “You have to understand, Connor, I was desperate for help,” she murmurs. “The ranch had failed, and Jake was gone?—”

“So you went to Hudson or Eli?” I demand, rising from the sofa, my face flaming in humiliation.

“Neither,” she counters. “I went to their fathers.”

I fall back into my seat. “Both of them?”

“I went to your father, too,” she explains, but trails off as more embarrassment washes over me.

“But he was broke,” I recall. “Because my mother took off with the ranch hand and all our savings. That’s what killed him in the long run, wasn’t it?”

Katherine releases a long sigh. “It was a long time ago, darling, but the land passed down. And besides, look at what you’ve done with your inheritance. Your ranch earns more income than both Eli and Hudson put together.”

I say nothing. It doesn’t matter that I have more money than all my neighbors. It matters that nobody told me that I wasn’t included in their little deal.

Katherine reads the blend of sadness and frustration etched in my expression, a clear sign of feeling excluded. “I thought someone might have told you already.”

“Nope,” I laugh mirthlessly. “They all kept me in the dark.” I stare at her accusingly. “Does Rose know about this?”

“It has nothing to do with Rosie,” Katherine says firmly. “It happened well before she was around. You were all still children at the time.”

“But she knew, didn’t she?” I growl.

“So what if she did? It wasn’t her place to tell you, Connor?—”

I’m on my feet again, stalking toward the door.

“Connor!” Katherine calls out for me, but I don’t return to the house. I want to leave the property altogether, but I don’t dare, lest something happen to Katherine. But I am seething as I sit on the steps, waiting for Rose to return.

For years, they’ve hidden this little nugget from me. I wonder what else they’ve been keeping from me.

I am livid, hurt, betrayed… but somehow unsurprised.

The old, rusted truck finally reappears, almost an hour later, and Rose waves at me through the windshield with a grand, deceiving smile on her face, but I’m already crossing the property toward the tree line.

“Connor?” she calls, but I don’t turn around.

I can’t look at her right now. Maybe it really is best that she’s going to Seattle. Maybe she shouldn’t have come here at all.

CHAPTER23

Rose

By the third hour stretch of my drive into Washington, I wish I’d taken Eli up on his offer to accompany me, but I remind myself now that he’s most needed back home with Gran while I do what I’ve come to do in Seattle. Perhaps if everything hadn’t gone down with Gran the way it had, I would have taken him up on it.

Home. Gran.

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