“I guess we’ll tolerate it,” Beau said with a wink.
Gerome chuckled. “Have a seat. We have some news.”
We have some news could mean a lot of things. But judging from Gerome’s relaxed demeanor, it wasn’t anything too terrible.
They sat just as Claire waltzed in, baby Rosa in her arms. All four of them immediately jumped back up, seeing as how a woman had entered the room.
Claire rolled her eyes. “Good Lord. Would y’all please sit down?”
They did, and Claire deposited Rosa in Gerome’s lap, where the baby immediately became enthralled with the snaps on her grandfather’s starched white shirt. “I can tell by how calm they are that you haven’t told them yet,” Claire said, nodding her head in Beau and Bryce’s direction.
Bryce looked at Beau, eyebrow cocked. What could this be about?
Beau shrugged. No idea.
Bryce snapped his fingers and narrowed his eyes. You brought that bull to the pens like I told you to. Right?
Beau rolled his eyes and shook his head. Of course, I did . . . Asshole.
“Are you two finished having your creepy telepathic conversation?” Claire asked.
Their mama always told them it made folks uncomfortable when they communicated with facial expressions.
Gerome cleared his throat. “Because of the drought, we need to thin out the herd.”
Bryce stretched his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Mother Nature’s an indecisive bitch, isn’t she?”
Big Verde had suffered a catastrophic flood a little over two years ago, and now they were in the middle of a drought.
“We’ve got some cows that haven’t calved in a couple of seasons,” Beau said. “And quite a few bulls to take to auction. How big of a cut are we talking?”
“We’re not going to actually get rid of any cattle,” Ford said. “We’re just going to move them.”
“Where? Are we leasing a place?”
Gerome grinned at Claire. “You tell ’em the plan. I don’t have the balls.”
Claire leaned against the desk and crossed her arms over her ample chest. She might be curvy and gorgeous and in possession of way more tiaras than the average person—rodeo queen, homecoming queen, prom queen, and Queen Crispin of the Big Verde Apple Festival—but she still typically had the biggest balls in the room.
“Have you heard of the Rockin’ H Ranch?” she asked. “It’s outside of Austin.”
Bryce and Beau looked at each other and shrugged. “The only Rockin’ H I know of is a dude ranch,” Beau said. And then he laughed, because there was no way Gerome Kowalski was going to have any of his purebred, grass-fed, organic, free-range cattle lounging around a dude ranch while fake cowboys played guitars and sang songs around the campfire.
“That’s the one,” Ford said.
“What?” Bryce said. “You’re kidding, right? We’re moving our cattle to a—”
“Damn spa!” Beau said, interrupting. “I’ve seen their ads. They’ve got a swimming pool—”
Bryce cut in. “A restaurant—”
“Actually,” Claire said. “The restaurant has closed.”
Beau didn’t really care about the restaurant. He just couldn’t believe their cattle were headed to a resort. It didn’t sit right. He prided himself on being a real cowboy. There weren’t that many of them left. And on Rancho Cañada Verde, they did things the old-fashioned way. On horseback. No helicopters. No feedlot. They even still branded the old-fashioned way, with the same branding iron that Gerome’s great-grandfather had used.
“And,” Claire said, clapping her hands and bouncing on her heels. “There’s more.”
“Claire,” Gerome said. “Don’t go whistling before the water’s boiled.”
Claire actually did look like a teapot about to start whistling. She practically had steam coming out of her ears. “We’re buying the whole place,” she whispered.
Ford and Gerome sighed in unison.
“I’m hoping you two can keep a secret better than Claire,” Ford said. “It’s not a done deal. There’s still financing and paperwork and whatnot.”
“We’re buying a resort?” Beau said. “Seriously?”
Gerome stood up and handed the baby back to Claire. Then he leaned over and got right in the little one’s face. “Why don’t you stick that chubby little fist in your mama’s mouth instead of your own?”
Ford grinned. “What Princess Blabbermouth says is true. Initially, we were just looking to lease some land for grazing. But the Hills are itching to unload the place, and—”
“And it will be one more way that Rancho Cañada Verde can diversify,” Claire said. “The property is a mess at the moment, but I feel confident that we can turn it around.”
Gerome sat back down. “But for now, all we’re doing is leasing a gorgeous one-thousand-acre paradise of irrigated pastureland.”
That part of it sounded like a dream. Especially since most of Rancho Cañada Verde’s twelve thousand acres were currently brown and crunchy.
Gerome smiled. “I’m looking for a cowboy who’s willing to wrangle some cows on a dude ranch on the weekends, and if we do end up buying the place—”
“Which is likely,” Claire said, eyes aglow.
Gerome shot her a side glance. “As I was saying, if everything goes through, I’ll need someone to move there permanently. We’ll know more in a few weeks.”
Beau shook his head. Who the fuck would want to do that?
“I’ll do it,” Bryce said.
Beau gawked at his brother. What the hell had possessed the fool to say such a thing?
Gerome laughed. “I figured you would.”
He did?
“If this goes through, you’re both getting raises,” Gerome said.
“Both of us?” Beau asked. “Why me?”
“You’ll be the lone foreman on Rancho Cañada Verde,” Gerome said. “You’ll have more responsibilities and a bigger workload.”
Beau clenched the arms of the chair as his world tilted. Other than the one semester that Bryce had spent at Texas A&M, they’d never really spent much time apart. And he fucking needed Bryce. How was he going to get through all the paperwork and correspondence by himself?
Ford slapped Beau on the back. “What do you say? Pretty exciting stuff, right?”
Bryce was now inspecting the hat in his lap with intense curiosity, as if he might pull a rabbit out of it.
Beau swallowed loudly. “Yeah. It’s exciting.”
That was a lie. Bryce was the only person in the
