Yes, there was more money floating through this section of Montana than they held at Fort Knox, but no one was arrogant; no one had a superiority complex. They might make megabucks off the rich land filled with good fields, healthy livestock, and oil — actually, good investments in the stock market had played a larger part for many of them — but at the end of the day, all they needed was a cold beer and a hot fire.
Colt’s idea of heaven was lounging around on the edge of his lake with a fishing pole, a cold bottle in his hand and his hat pulled low over his eyes. Once nighttime hit, of course, he didn’t mind having a fine body — like the one Brielle was sporting — to climb on top of him and take him for much longer than an eight-second ride.
Colt knew he could draw in the ladies. Hell, he’d learned that in second grade, when little Sally had come up and kissed him right on the lips and begged him to run away with her. He’d been horrified.
Then.
Now, well, now he just appreciated a fine woman on top or beneath him — either way, he didn’t mind. Or side to side, or standing up, or… He was equal opportunity all the way. And he always made sure the women in his bed left with a smile on their faces and him on their mind.
He wasn’t ready to settle down. Hell, he’d only just turned thirty-three. Who could possibly object to his bachelor life?
Okay, he knew three people who seemed to object mighty loudly. Those women! The terrible trio! Maggie, Eileen, and the worst one of all, Bethel!
They were somewhere in their sixties, he believed, not that anyone knew for sure, as the women didn’t speak of their age. They acted more like teenagers than grandmothers. Though he had a soft spot in his heart for each one of them, lately he and all the other single men in town had been running as fast as they could away from the three.
Those meddlers clearly wanted to see all the eligible men married and producing babies. Not for him — not yet, at least. Colt had done a damn fine job of steering clear of the trio, because every time they saw him they mentioned all the attractive single women around. It didn’t do a man any good to date a woman in Sterling, because sure as the sun rose every morning, the minute that happened, the poor sap would be heading down the aisle within a year.
That’s what was expected here. First comes love…and then a whole brood of rug rats biting your ankles and playing havoc with your sleep.
He hadn’t really meant what he’d said about making a lot of babies, but when he’d pressed up against Brielle, she had sent a surge of lust ripping through him that he hadn’t experienced since he was sixteen and Margie Thomas had thrust her newly developed br**sts against him in the locker room. Damn, the feeling he’d felt with Brielle had been even stronger. And Colt hadn’t ever thought that was possible. No. But anyway, he had a few good decades in him before any woman made a fool out of him and his sperm.
He almost swaggered into the large horse barn on Brielle’s property. He knew he’d find her foreman, Tony, coddling the horses. Tony had worked on the Ponderosa Pines Ranch since before Colt was born. What little hair the man had left was now completely white, but his skin was leathery and his body was slim.
“Hello, Colt,” Tony said with his typical scowl. “What are you doing out here?” A stranger would consider Tony intimidating, but Colt knew that beneath the gruffness, the man had a heart of gold. He was a big baby when it came to kids, little old women, and newborn animals. Tony didn’t smile much, but when he did, even more wrinkles appeared around his eyes and mouth.
“You know I had to show up and check out my competition,” Colt said with a laugh.
“What did you think?” Tony asked.
“Ha.” Colt didn’t elaborate. He stepped up on the rail and stood next to Tony as they looked out at the men training a new horse that Arnold’s widow, Candice, had bought right before she passed away.
“Aw, hell, Colt. No city girl will know how to run a ranch. It won’t be long before she sprints out of here crying, and then the land’s all yours,” Tony said with his version of a chuckle. Then he turned his head and spit out a long stream of tobacco-colored saliva.
“Yeah. Well, I still wanted to meet her.” Colt remembered the shock in her almost translucent green eyes. Shaking his head to clear it, he turned back to Tony just in time to catch his friend’s words.
“What’s she like?”
“Exactly what we expected, Tony. A city girl, one who showed up in tight jeans with sparkly little jewels on the ass so every man has no choice but to look down, and a silk blouse that will be destroyed by the end of one day here in the country. Red hair, and even redder high heels, and those fancy nails city girls like to wear. I don’t think she’s ever so much as rinsed her own plate before.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Tony turned back toward the horse just in time to see him rear up on his hind legs in all his glory.
“He sure is a beauty,” Colt said with a low whistle as the ranch hand got the horse to settle back down and began walking him in circles through the training ring.
“Yeah, he is. That was a good move on Candice’s part. I just wish she’d stayed with us long enough to ride him one time.”
“Yeah. This one is taking a lot longer to train. I hate that he was abused.”
“He’s doing much better now. The hands have been working with him a little bit more each week. It won’t be long now,” Tony said with no little pride.
Tony had more patience than most people could ever dream of, but when he did finally lose his temper, watch out. He might have been getting up there in years, but it wasn’t his fault the Ponderosa Pines Ranch had been failing. Arnold and Candice had just run out of funds, and instead of asking a bank for help, they kept silent, making Tony do the same.
By the time Candice had departed the world, the ranch was in serious need of cash and an owner who was willing to invest time and effort into replanting the wheat, bringing in more cattle, and doing much-needed repairs.
When Richard Storm had shown up and scooped up the property, Colt had been surprised and then furious, in part because no outsider could give the Ponderosa Pines what she needed. But at least Richard had ensured that Tony would stay on by increasing his pay. Richard had also asked the foreman to see that his daughter learned how to run a ranch.
Colt had just so happened to be in on that meeting and he’d ended up walking out. Raising Richard’s child wasn’t Tony’s job. Tony had laughed at the request, though. He’d seen city girls come to Montana before. Then he’d watched them leave quicker than a tornado that had destroyed all it was prepared to destroy.