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“You can come visit anytime. You know that, right?” Beau spoke up. “Honestly, we’ve got more than enough room.”
“Yeah, Olivia. You should come if you really want to.” And I meant it. I would have loved having my best friend here. As much as I loved the Hamiltons and was excited to get to know Beau better, everything was so complicated. It would be amazing to have a friend here to discuss everything with.
“Well, I’ll see if I can get some time off and stuff. That would be cool, though. I’ll speak to you later?”
“Okay. I’ll speak to you later. Bye, girl. Let me know.” I hung up the phone and then put it back into my handbag. “Sorry about that. Olivia can be a little over the top.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “She looks really nice.” He paused. “So, is she single too, or …?”
“Yeah, we’re both single.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Yeah. I think she could have been a model if she really wanted to, but she’s not into that sort of stuff.”
“Oh, no? What she into?” Beau paused. “Well, listen to me. I’m being all nosy. You don’t have to answer that.”
“No, it’s okay. I like that you’re interested in my friends.” I was about to tell him more about her when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I had a feeling that Austin was somewhere nearby.
“Howdy, y’all,” a deep, smooth voice said, and I turned around. It was uncanny how I’d known he was about to enter the stables.
“Hi,” I said somewhat coldly, not wanting him to know how happy I was to see him.
“Hey, what’s going on, brother?” Beau nodded.
“Dad needs you inside. He’s got a call with the developers in about an hour, and he said you guys need to go over some numbers.”
“Dang it.” Beau looked at me and then looked at Austin. “I completely forgot about that. I just promised Lucy that I’d take her on a ride. She’s taken a liking to Sally, and Sally has taken a liking to her.”
“I guess I could take you if you really want to go,” Austin said somewhat unenthusiastically.
“That’s fine. We can go another time, Beau, when you have time.”
“No. Austin can take you,” Beau nodded. “He knows Sally far better than me, and he’s actually more of a horse guy than I am. He can take you on one of the trails and show you around the rest of the ranch.”
“I mean, I don’t want to put you out.” I looked at Austin and tried not to roll my eyes.
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to put me out?”
“No. I mean, if you have other things to do.”
“Well, I can spare some time. That’s why I offered.”
I knew that we could go back and forth for the next hour and I didn’t want Beau to be suspicious, so I just nodded and offered Austin my sweetest smile. “Well, thank you very much, Austin. I really appreciate that. Though I thought you had a lunch date or something.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I thought you were going to meet up with the Hawkins girl,” Beau said.
“What?” Austin looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Where did you get that from?”
“Mom made a comment to me or something.”
“Well, Mom was wrong. There’s no way I’d be going to meet up with her.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to go and chat with Dad. You guys have fun, okay?”
And with that, Beau left the stables, and Austin and I were left standing there staring at each other.
