One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas #3)(67)

“You know how I feel about Leah, and this thing is a distraction, nothing more.” He held up the cuffs. “Nothing but a nuisance until it’s over.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Have you told her that you are in love with her?”

He stiffened, and she wiggled her cuffed hand against his. “You haven’t told her, which means you aren’t sure, which means I can change your mind in twenty-four hours. Besides, remember what Mavis said. If Leah doesn’t break it off with you, she’s lost her free five-star hotel. I wonder if she even knows how to do laundry or pick up her own clothes. She’s been spoiled rotten her whole life.”

“And you haven’t?” Rhett asked.

“Darlin’, I can work a ranch as hard and good as any man. My granny trained me from the ground up. I was cuttin’ hogs and cattle when I was ten years old and brandin’ them at eleven. I didn’t get sick one time either. Listen to me. You need a woman like me, and I can offer you Wild Horse.”

“I’ll never be a kept man,” Rhett said.

“Who said you’d be kept? Honey, we’d work side by side to make it even bigger and better than it is now.”

“And if you don’t like me once we got to really know each other?” he asked.

She scanned him from bare feet to eyes. “That’s not even a possibility. Besides, my granny wants this to happen with Tanner and Leah. But if Leah isn’t willing, there’re always ways to take care of things so that Mavis still loses her.”

“Is that a threat of some kind?” Rhett’s heart stopped and then raced.

“It’s stating facts. This new phase of the war has taken on the style of the old ways, and in those days, people disappeared.”

“Naomi wouldn’t hurt Leah, would she?”

“Not if Tanner wins her hand when it’s all said and done.”





Chapter 21


Rhett stood under the shower for a very long time, washing away sweat and the feel of Betsy’s hands from his arms, his face, even his thigh. Not even hot water could take away the feeling that he’d not only cheated on Leah but that he’d also disappointed her. He finally turned the water off and wrapped a towel around his hips. Leaving wet footprints across the floor on his way to his room, he heard his phone ringing.

He raced across the floor, grabbed the phone without looking, and said, “Leah?”

“No, this is Gladys. I think Polly had a heart attack. I called Jill, but she and Sawyer are in Gainesville at a movie with their phones turned off.” Gladys’s normally gravelly voice had a high pitch to it, her words coming out in breathless jumps and starts.

“I’ll be right there. What do you need me to do?” Rhett flipped the towel onto the floor and opened a dresser drawer for a clean shirt.

“Would you drive me to the hospital? They won’t let me ride with her in the ambulance, and I’m too shook up to drive,” Gladys asked.

“Give me five minutes to get dressed,” Rhett said.

“I can drive from here to the bunkhouse. I’ll be waiting out front.”

He was putting on his boots when he heard the gravel crunching beneath the truck tires. He shoved the bunkhouse keys, his phone, and his wallet into his pockets and crossed the living room in long strides with Dammit and the cats following him single file.

“Sorry, old boy. You can’t go this time. You take care of the cats, and I’ll be back soon as I can,” he said as he rushed out the door.

Gladys was in the passenger’s seat with a big black purse on her lap. She started talking before he even got the door shut. “I told her she was overdoing it, but she wouldn’t listen to a damn thing.”

“Maybe it’s not a heart attack.” He backed the truck out of the driveway and headed toward the main road.

“If it’s not, then we’re going to have a serious talk about retiring. We’re past eighty years old. It’s time for us to slow down,” Gladys fussed.

His phone vibrated in his shirt pocket, and Gladys looked at him, wide-eyed with tears. It was written all over her face that she was hoping for the best but thinking the worst.

“I gave the EMTs your number because my cell phone was dead. I left a message on Jill’s phone to meet us at the hospital.”

He handed her the phone and pressed the gas pedal down harder.

She chuckled as she read the message.

“Good news?” he asked.

“Depends on who we’re talking about. It’s a message to you from Leah. She’s sorry about the way things went to day and she wants you to call her.”

“Call her, Miz Gladys. Tell her what’s going on. I can’t drive this fast and talk.”

“You drive. I’ll text her rather than calling. It might embarrass her if she thinks I read her message,” Gladys said. “Just tell me the words.”

“Polly on the way to the hospital. Taking Gladys that way. Talk to you later.”

With the speed of a teenager, Gladys hit the keys with her thumbs and sent the message. In seconds, another one came back, and she read, “‘Miss you. Call ASAP.’”

She handed him the phone, and he shoved it back into his shirt pocket. “What did the EMTs say about Polly when they got to the house? Did they think it was a heart attack?”