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After the final prayer and after the guests had left for the reception hall, I stood with Boone out on the front steps of the church. It had rained during the service, but now, the sky was clear, and the air smelled fresh and clean. It wouldn’t last long though. Soon enough, the smells of the city would reestablish their dominance.
I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the sinking sun, letting the warmth and light wash over me. If I ignored the sound of traffic and shoes clicking hurriedly past on the sidewalk and just focused on the sound of Boone breathing beside me, I could almost imagine I was back in Wyoming. Almost.
I turned to face him and found him leaning against the railing, watching me. He’d returned his hat to his head, casting his face in shadow.
“Nice hat,” I said.
The corner of his lips twitched into a smile. “Nice boots.” He nodded at my feet.
I looked down. At the last minute, I’d chosen to wear my Justins. They made me feel grounded and strong, and I’d needed that today. “I hope you didn’t come all the way out here hoping to take them back. I paid for them fair and square.”
His eyes burned as they held mine. “I didn’t come for the boots, Richard.”
My mouth went dry. “No? What did you come for?”
“You.”
My heart skittered wildly in my chest. I wanted to squeal with happiness and joy, but there was something Boone needed to know first. “My father’s net worth when he died was 1.75 billion dollars. He left it all to me.”
Boone whistled. “No more couch surfing or shit slinging for you, then.”
I reached for the stair railing behind me, gripping it tightly. “But he left it to me on one condition: I work for the family business for five years.”
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded slowly. “All right. Five years isn’t so long. We can make it work. Jed can run things well enough without me most of the time. I’ll have to go back to the ranch during the busy seasons, but—”
I frowned, not understanding. “What do you mean?”
He pushed off his railing, drawing closer to me. “I mean I want to be with you, Richard. Wherever you are. Whatever it takes. Even if that means moving to the city.” He pulled his hat from his head, making sure I could see the truth of his words in his eyes. “If you’ll have me.”
I blinked, sure I hadn’t heard him correctly. The ranch was everything to Boone. I couldn’t imagine ever asking him to give that up. “No. No way,” I told him, shaking my head.
He pulled up short, his head jerking back as though I’d slapped him. “You won’t have me?”
“No!” I said, reaching for him. “I mean yes.” I grabbed his hand in mine. “I mean… I turned it down. I said no. I don’t want it. It was my father’s dream for me to run the family business, not mine, and I’m done letting him or anyone else dictate my life. I know what I want.”
In the end, it had been embarrassingly easy to figure that out.
Last night, I’d lain awake for a long while in the perfect, artificial stillness of the brownstone. The weight of grief and of my new inheritance had sat on my chest like twin anvils, and despite my fatigue and the luxurious mattress beneath me, I couldn’t sleep. Outside, mere steps away, a dozen potential distractions waited for me—parties and clubs, handsome men just waiting for me to buy them a drink—but none of my usual escapes had held any appeal at all.
Instead, I’d stared at the shadows on the ceiling, and for the first time in a long time, I’d let myself remember all the things I usually tried to forget.
The mistakes I’d made.
The new careers and life schemes I’d tried and abandoned—both the ones James had brought up on our call and the others, like my frantic, desperate attempts to resuscitate our flagging relationship that he’d been too kind to mention.
All the boxes I’d tried to shove myself into, hoping to earn my father’s approval.
All the times I’d heard—and repeated, because I’d started to believe it too—that I was spoiled and easily bored. A magpie flying toward the next shiny thing.
But in a single day, I’d been handed a fortune—over a billion shiny things, a magpie hoard—and also lost any chance of reconciling with my dad. And it was only then that I realized that excitement had never been what I was looking for.
I’d been searching for a purpose. For something real. For a life where I, with all my faults and imperfections, mattered more than the boxes I’d never fit in. And somehow, accidentally, I’d found it.
As the grandfather clock in the sitting room had chimed two low gongs, I’d rolled over in the darkness, wanting Boone with a deeper craving than I’d ever felt for anything or anyone. I’d literally ached to be back in his bed at the Silver Fork, not because I’d thought I’d find some idealized version of cowboy life there—I knew better—and not because I’d thought it would magically transform me into the kind of person my father would be proud of, because I knew that wouldn’t happen either.
