She snorted. “That’s true.”
We ended the call, and I made myself a cup of coffee on my Keurig. Then I finished the emails I needed to get done, and started on one of the trickier rescues we’d had for a couple of weeks now. She seemed ready to start trusting people again, and I wanted to use that momentum to see where she was at.
A couple of days passed, and I got word that the mare would arrive in two days. I was happy with that schedule, even though it kind of coincided with Demi getting closer to popping.
I wanted to be there for her, even if half of the family, including Emery and Demi’s fiancé, Luke, were already hovering like crazy. It was interesting how an unflappable doctor like Emery lost his cool when it was about his twin.
Luke was better, but he’d also kind of freaked himself out along the way by reading too much about things that could go wrong in twin pregnancies. Mom had tried to talk him down a little, since she had actual experience of having two sets of twins, but we all knew Luke wasn’t doing well the closer the birth came.
I could always tell my oldest brothers, Bodhi or Crew, to be there for Demi and they would be. Hell, our sisters would be too. I just…. I wasn’t sure why I felt like I needed to be there, as well.
When I told Russ this, he chuckled and squeezed my shoulder. “It’s because you know you’re the calmest one in a crisis, and she knows this, too.”
For a Marine, Bodhi wasn’t great in a crisis when it came to family. He tried to be, but we all knew how much it got to him. Crew was unflappable, but he was such a kid person that he would be worrying more than me to start with.
I, on the other hand, didn’t really mind kids. Hell, I happened to like some of them—like Mal’s too-smart-for-anyone’s-good son Payton who had just turned five—but I never wanted kids of my own.
Growing up as the seventh of ten children, I’d gotten the solitary gene from somewhere. I hadn’t liked kids much when I’d been one, and I’d had no way of getting away from my siblings. Except trying to live in a hut in the woods for a while when I was like six, but that hadn’t lasted for long.
So there I was, faced by the mare coming in and needing to call Carter Cahill.
I’d googled the guy before I’d agreed to work for him, of course. He’d made a lot of money from some startup or otherback in the day. He was in his mid-forties and seemed to be the type that thought that money could buy him everything.
Including a snowflake appaloosa with black base coat, with just the right amount of spotting. Which… yeah. There wasn’t an abundance of those to buy. We’d gotten lucky, and we had paid a lot for his mare, but the fact that he’d casually wired me over double of what we’d paidbeforethere was any idea if we’d even find a horse, thinking that money solved everything, including making a horse like that materialize? Yeah.
I was pretty sure it would be great to be just wealthy enough to not have to think about where to scrounge up the money for any upgrade you needed to make, but to put the kind of money into a horse for the looks only? That the fact of having to pay even more to get me to train her too was barely an afterthought?
Something about all of this made me dislike Cahill on principle. I just hoped he was a decent horseman, or at least trainable, because there was no way I would let anyone be crappy to a horse as special as this one.
It was Thursday evening when I finally called Cahill to tell him that the mare would arrive at Blue Creek Ranch on Saturday afternoon. Then I crossed my fingers that everything would go okay. You never knew, after all.
Chapter 2
Carter
Iwas bored. So unbelievably bored. And the problem with unmitigated boredom was that it led me to make impulsive decisions. Usually, they were good ones. Okay, almost always. I had a knack for making good decisions when I didn’t think too much about it beforehand.
Like the choice to make my partners buy me out last year. I read the writing on the wall when they refused to see it. I’d been on the ground floor with Todd and Ray when we started Omicron Corp straight out of college. Todd’s vision for new coding software had been genius. For the past twenty years, we’d grown an astronomical amount. But things had shifted, the market for such programs was wholly different, and where Omicron had once been cutting-edge, the company was now lagging behind. Despite my protests, nothing changed. When Ichose to sell, Todd and Ray readily cut the deal. They thought I’d made a stupid decision.
Now I was sitting on millions of dollars and they were laying off hundreds of employees. It wouldn’t be long before the doors shut for good. My former friends refused to speak to me. Perhaps the “I told you so” when they’d come asking for a cash influx had been too much.
But Ihadtold them and they didn’t listen.
“Are you paying attention, Mr. Cahill?”
I turned from the window of my penthouse—the view of the San Francisco Bay was spectacular no matter the time of day—and focused on my personal assistant. Marielle Bronson was a new addition to my staff, added when I’d left my former position as CFO of Omicron. She was supposed to keep my social calendar straight and make all the calls and appointments I didn’t want to. And a whole host of other things for me as well.
“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Carter?” I chastised with a grin. I ambled over and flopped down on the other end of the couch from where she had a bunch of papers spread out before her. Her laptop was set up on the end of the ridiculous glass coffee table. I hated the thing, but I hadn’t objected when the interior designer I’d hired when I bought the penthouse had suggested it.
“At least a few more,” Marielle shot back, amusement in her expression. She was cute, and affable, and had a real talent for keeping me on track. Best decision I’d ever made was hiring her.
That had been spur of the moment too.
“You’re going to keep working remotely for me once I move, right? Considering I can’t get you to move with me.” I sat up. “I’ll triple your salary.”
“I’ve seen your accounts, sir. You can’t afford that long term.” She smirked, then added, “And you’re never going to get to move if you don’t pay attention.”
I laughed. “All right, all right. What have you got for me?”
