The Billionaire's Matchmaker(19)

Charlie shifted in the seat and placed a paw on her lap. The anger eased in Gabby’s heart, and she gave the dog a tender pat. “Just you and me, buddy. For a gazillion miles.”

She had twenty hours of drive time and four states to go. It would probably take her three days to cover that much ground and work in the destinations and photo shoots along the way. The worst part about driving was how the endless miles made her mind wander. She kept trying to focus on why she was on this trip but all she could think about was T.J. The man she thought she knew—and clearly didn’t.

She chided herself, forced her focus back to the approaching exit. Her work would eventually take the place of the hurt.

Why had she thought they could make this work? She should have known T.J. would just leave her behind while he went on his next adventure. Except this time, he’d be doing it in a Lear jet.

Focus on work. Not T.J.

“Charlie, ready to be the star again?” The dog’s tail slapped against the seat, and he popped to his feet. Gabby pulled into a parking lot, grabbed her camera bag, and got out of the car, shading her eyes against the bright winter sun.

A few hundred yards away sat her photo destination for the day, a rough-hewn, dune colored pyramid. Hand built in the 1880s, the pyramid stood as a tourist stop for railway passengers. It had been dubbed the Ames Brothers Pyramid, after two men who worked for the rail company. The railway had long ago been shut down, and today, held no tourists, save for Gabby. A long dirt path wound up a low hill and around to the structure. The wind cut across the empty Wyoming plateau surrounding the pyramid with a low, lonely howl. “Seems like an appropriate place to be, huh, Charlie?”

The dog didn’t respond, just walked along beside her, quiet and somber. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was depressed that T.J. wasn’t with them.

She reached the desolate pyramid and looked around at a whole lot of nothing. Okay, so maybe she should have picked someplace happier. Perkier. But this place, with its solitary existence, mirrored the emptiness in Gabby’s heart.

She sighed. “Back to work, Charlie.”

Gabby lay on the hard earth, raised her camera to her eye, and waved at Charlie to go ahead. The dog did as she asked, dashing up to the stone building then turning back to face Gabby. “Good boy. Now, stay.”

The angle made the terrier look huge against the tall pyramid, and she managed several great shots before Charlie got distracted and dashed around the building. Gabby started packing up her things. Maybe by the time she reached California, her heart would stop aching.

Charlie barked, a frenzied, happy bark. The slow whop-whop-whop of helicopter rotors grew in volume along with a black speck that morphed from a dot in the sky to a mid-sized chopper. A moment later, the machine landed far behind the pyramid, sending a mini tornado of air spinning down the prairie. Charlie tugged on his leash, yanking it out of Gabby’s hands, and took off across the ground. Gabby called for the dog but Charlie was already bounding toward the chopper.

The door opened, and T.J. emerged. He gave a wave to the pilot then bent down to greet an overjoyed Charlie, who leapt into his arms and slobbered all over his face. T.J. rose, the dog still cradled in his arms, then slipped off his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. His gaze swept across the flat land and stopped when he spotted Gabby. Even from here, she could see his smile.

Her traitorous heart skipped a beat, even as a part of her still sparked with anger at him lying to her, and him keeping his success a secret, especially after she’d told him about the mural debacle. She wanted to run, to hide, but out here in the middle of the wide Wyoming expanse of nothing, there was nowhere to go. So she stood her ground as T.J. approached. Charlie trotted along at his side, looking up at him every few feet as if making sure his new friend really had returned.

The chopper’s rotors whirred a while longer, then whined down to a stop. T.J. closed the distance between him and Gabby. “What are you doing here?” she said. “And how did you find me?”

“After you left, I remembered you said Wyoming was next, so I looked up tourist stops here. I figured there was no way you’d resist seeing a pyramid in the middle of Wyoming.”

Maybe it was a sign that there was something between them—or maybe she was looking for something that wasn’t there and never had been. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“I’m keeping my promise. I said I’d go with you to California, and I will.”

“No, you said you’d go with me because your car was dead and you needed a ride.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I fell for that whole job-interview-Grandma-gave-me-a-box-of-stuff-I-need-a-ride-thing. You lied to me, T.J. You’re rich. That couldn’t come up in conversation sometime in the last, oh, five hundred miles?”


“My grandma did give me a box of stuff. And I didn’t lie about my car, it is dead. I’ve been driving the same Jeep Cherokee for eight years and it finally bit the dust a couple weeks ago. I did need a ride to California, which is where my office is located.” He shrugged. “I just happen to own the company, and I lied about the job interview part because I didn’t want to lead with my wealth. Too many people only see that, not the real me.”

She waved toward the helicopter. “You don’t need to go with me. It seems to me you already have a ride.”