“Anyway,” I started, drawing out the word. “What I wastryingto say was that we were in the basement and Beau grabbed this bottle of wine, and when he pulled it out, there was a paper with it.”
“A paper,” Colt deadpanned. “You’re calling all of us about a paper.”
“Consider me on the edge of my fuckin’ seat,” Weston said, glancing between the camera and whatever was going on at the rodeo.
“A real nail-biter,” Delilah added.
Beau groaned. “Fuck off, all of you, and just let her finish.”
“Aw, he’s defensive of her,” Anna cooed. “So cute.”
“You, too, Annabelle,” Beau said with that deep, authoritative voice that always got to me. But now wasn’t the time for that.
I cleared my throat. “It was the original contract of the merger from the seventies. Signed.”
Everyone’s teasing smiles dropped. Silence crackled between the nine of us, the air tense. It just showed how much this one thing had loomed over us and our families for years. And all the more reason why I wanted to end its reign of terror.
“Like,themerger?” Emmett asked cautiously.
I nodded. “Yeah. Our grandfathers must’ve never filed it. They wanted the land to stay in our families,together, indefinitely. While it’s not legally binding, it’s obvious what they wanted.”
“While Claire and I are technically the owners of Circle M and Golden Bridle now that Mount’s out, we wanted to run it by y’all first.” Beau let out a heavy breath, glancing at me briefly. “But we want to do it. We want to fulfill their wishes and merge the two ranches.”
There was more silence, and my stomach twisted with doubt. Was this a mistake? What if none of them wanted it? There was no way Beau and I could do something of this magnitude without consulting them; they were our siblings, and it affected them as much as it did us.
But now that the idea was out there, I wanted it more than anything.
“What about Cavendish?” Delilah asked. “We just signed the contract with them, bear.”
“We’d have to ask them about it, but since they had originally offered the partnership to Beau and Joseph anyway, I don’t see why they’d have an issue.”
“They’d probably be all for it,” Joseph said. “They’d have what they were planning with Circle M and the veteran outreach.It’d be more land, more opportunities, which means more money. They’d be stupid not to be okay with it.”
“Well, that aside, this would be big forus,” Beau said. “Lots of changes to each ranch's infrastructure, combining of assets, probably a bunch of other shit I’m not thinkin’ about. Are any of y’all against it?”
My hand curled on the edge of the counter, and I waited with bated breath as everyone gave their answers.
One by one, everyone agreed to go for it.
Relief crashed into me like a tidal wave. They didn’t really have a reason to shoot it down, but there was no telling with our group.
Our group. We hadn’t been a group since we were kids, and now here we were, all talking together for the first time in almost twenty years. It felt like listening to your favorite song or watching your favorite movie—familiar, comfortable, easy.
I bit my bottom lip, smiling ear to ear. “I guess we’re doing it then.” I looked up at Beau, and he was smiling just as hard.
“How would that even work, though?” Emmett asked. “Golden Bridle is horses, and Circle M is cattle.”
Beau shrugged a shoulder. “I guess we’d keep doin’ our own things, just under one ranch. Training horses, raising and herding cattle, and we’ll have the veteran outreach program on top. It’s just a matter of merging finances and that kind of legal stuff.”
“Good thing we have a lawyer in the group,” Anna said, now sitting outside without Joseph. Weston’s camera jerked, and he stared down at his phone intently, laser-focused. More than he had been the entire call.
“Yeah, I could extend my leave from work and stay in Wild Creek to help out with the legal side of things,” Savannah said, her camera still off. “It’d be nice to get away from Dallas for a while, and be home for longer than two days,” she continued.
I frowned slightly. She hadn’t mentioned anything about not being happy in Dallas. If anything, it was the opposite.
“Our cousin, Levi, works at Wild Creek Law; he can help you out, too,” Beau added.
“He’s a Hollis, Beau,” Weston said, voice tense. “She can’t trust him to help out with something like this. He’ll just go take it to Sterling.”
