Page 6 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

He picked his fork up again and left her to stew in it.

Annie swept up to the table with a sweating pitcher, topping off glasses nobody had emptied. “Elise! You two getting acquainted? Stephen’s the best hand on the whole Bolton place. Runs the north line slick as clockwork, don’t you, Stephen. You’d have a world to talk about, the pair of you, what with you running Robert’s whole office and him running half of Bolton’s.”

“Annie.” Robert’s voice drifted over from the next table, mild as milk. “That pitcher’s empty.”

“It is not.” She tipped it. One drop fell. “Well. Now it is.” And off she sailed, pleased as a hen with a fresh egg.

Elise looked at the cowboy. The cowboy looked at his iced tea. Whatever grand conversation Annie pictured for the pair of them had died on the table between them.

Across the lawn, Kelly and Annie stood by the lemonade with their heads tipped close, two conspirators who went still the second Elise glanced over. Annie’s hand bobbed up in a wave a beat too slow. Kelly discovered an urgent fascination with the dessert table.

Elise’s eyes narrowed.

The seating change. The flimsy excuse, and a silent stranger dropped at her elbow who happened to be single and somewhere near her age.

No.

Kelly wouldn’t. The woman had a ranch to help run and a hundred better things to meddle in than Elise’s love life, which Elise had retired from on purpose and with paperwork.

She brushed it off. Folks tipped their heads together at barbecues. That was the entire point of barbecues.

Besides, the cowboy plainly wanted no part of her, which suited the theory poorly. A man steered into a setup generally made some effort. This one acted as though she’d been seated beside him for a penance.

When her glass ran dry, she carried it across the lawn to the coolers, glad of the errand and the pocket of quiet on the far side of the crowd.

Robert’s voice pulled her up short.

He stood behind the equipment trailer with Kelly, his back half to Elise, his words pitched for one set of ears.

“…leave her be, Kelly. I mean it.”

Elise stilled in the trailer’s shadow.

“I’m not doing one solitary thing,” Kelly said.

“You’re doing the thing you always do. Whatever you’ve got cooking over here, leave Elise out of the pot. She’s got plenty on her plate without your help.”

“You fret too much, Robert Shipley.”

“And you scheme too much. Give me your word.”

A beat. “Fine. Spoilsport.”

Elise eased off before they caught her there, glass empty in her hand, the words rattling around without a hook to catch on.

Whatever Kelly had simmering, Elise wanted none of it. The woman always had something on the stove. Last spring it ran to a surprise anniversary trip that took three months and four bald-faced lies to pull off. Whatever it was this time, it would surface on its own the way Kelly’s schemes always did, with fanfare and a cake. Elise had learned the hard way not to go digging. Digging only got a person handed a role in the production.

She filled her glass and returned to her seat, where the cowboy had cleaned his plate and sat angled toward the band tuning up, easy as a man who didn’t owe the world a sentence.

Both times her rounds carried her past the smoker line, it moved easy, folks loading pie and slaw as they shuffled, nobody bunched up and snapping. The coolers stayed clear of the children. Six years, he’d said. He’d been right, and he hadn’t gloated about it, which sat worse than if he had.

The night rolled on the way ranch nights did, fiddle music and a pack of kids wound up on root beer. Elise worked the party the way she always did, half guest and half staff, never able to leave a thing un-tended. Over at the serving tables, Midge had the hired caterers moving to her count, the way she ran the Bolton kitchen the rest of the year, and the two of them fell into the easy shorthand of women who handled things for a living. Elise topped off the sweet tea urn and dug a power strip out of the supply tote. When Dewey’s youngest came up sniffling over a skinned knee, she had a bandage out of her purse before the boy got the whole sentence out.

“You come prepared,” Midge said.

“I come employed.”

She slipped away as the first stars pricked through.