Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
I just wish I had other options.
My memories of the first six years of my life on the ranch are, like the city skyline, hazy at best. But they aren’t all bad. I remember riding a pony, Dad leading the horse in a slow circle around a corral. I remember Mom in the front seat of an ATV, the breeze catching in her hair as she turned around to smile at me in the back. And I can still smell the leather-and-hay scent of the horse barn.
I jump when my phone chimes. It’s a Gmail notification: my business checking account has reached zero dollars.
I think about Goody’s email. The one that detailed how much money I’d get at the end of every month if I lived on the ranch.
What if I go back to Hartsville? Just for thirty days, only long enough to get paid? Maybe Mom’s lawyers will have gotten a judge to strike down the stipulation by then. Wheeler and I crushed an interview with an influencer earlier today, and we only have two more meetings set up this week. Surely, she can handle those while I’m gone?
I jump again when my phone vibrates. Wheeler is calling.
A white-hot flash of pain slices across my middle. Shit.
Shit-shit-shit. She definitely saw the notification from our bank too. We’re both on the account.
Wiping my eyes, I move my thumb across my screen.
“Hey, Wheeler. I’m so sorry I keep missing you. I’ll handle the negative balance.” I take a deep breath. “I’m going back to Hartsville.”
“Wait.” She pauses. “You’re going? As in going, going?”
“I’m done waiting for our lawyers to figure this shit out. I’m going to get us our money.”
Another pause.
“Mollie, you don’t have to do this.”
“I do, though. I don’t see any other way to keep us from going under.”
“Let me go with you, then. You can’t walk onto your dad’s ranch by yourself.”
My eyes burn at the thought. Still, I say, “We need you here in Dallas for meetings and social media outreach. I can’t imagine there are many influencers or boutiques in Hartsville that are up for a collab.”
“We could open one,” Wheeler replies with a laugh.
“Next to the tractor supply store? Somehow, I don’t think Bellamy Brooks will fit in.”
“Every woman likes to feel pretty. Even cowgirls.”
“Not the kind of cowgirls you’ll find there. At least that’s what Mom says. I got this, Wheeler. Really. I can do anything for a month.”
“Maybe you’ll end up doing some cowboys while you’re at it.”
I scoff. “No thank you.”
“I swear, you’re the only woman on earth who isn’t into dudes in Stetsons with Wrangler butts.”
“Have you met my mother? And let’s not forget the lovely Cash Rivers.”
I told Wheeler about what a dick Cash was when I called her a week ago on my drive home from Hartsville.
“Fair point. Although I can’t imagine all cowboys are like that.” She lets out a breath. “Are you sure about this, Mollie? Ranch life and you…well, y’all don’t exactly go together like peas and carrots.”
“No shit, Sherlock. I don’t plan on doing more ranch stuff than I have to.” Although, if I’m being honest, my heart does a little flip at the prospect of being on horseback again. I don’t have many memories of life on the ranch, but riding horses is one thing I do remember. I loved it as a kid.
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“And send pics. Preferably of all the Wrangler butts you’ll see.”
I laugh. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Attagirl. Keep me posted. Godspeed, friend.”
“Wheeler?”
“Yeah?”
“I know we’ve talked theoretically about helping each other bury bodies. But would you actually be my accomplice? If I need you?”
I hear the grin in her voice when she says, “You say the word and we’ll ride at dawn, shovels in hand.”
CHAPTER 5
Cash
ROPE AND RIDE
There are hundreds of them.
Some are compiled into little green booklets from the pharmacy. Others are stacked together, bound with rubber bands. Still, others are loose, tossed into the safety-deposit box, seemingly without order.
The one thing that unites all the pictures: they’re of Garrett, Aubrey, or Mollie, or some combination of the three.
Who goes through the trouble of actually developing physical photographs anymore? And why lock them away in a bank when they’re clearly meant to be enjoyed?
Frowning, I spread them out across my desk in the ranch’s office. Garrett converted an old pole barn into a workspace not long after my brothers and I arrived on Lucky Ranch. On hot days, like today, you can still smell the fresh, clean scent of hay, the scent baked into the walls over countless decades.
My desk is tidy, empty, save for a laptop and a small stack of paperbacks. Nonfiction mostly—biographies, histories—with the odd thriller or Stephen King thrown in there. I’m technically off two days a week, but I always come into the office anyway. Usually, I’m busy, but when I’m not, I never want to be without reading material at hand.