Cowboys Don't Have a Marriage of Convenience, page 10
part #5 of Sweet Water Ranch Billionaire Cowboys Series
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not divorcing you.”
“I don’t think you will.”
She noticed that he didn’t say he wasn’t leaving. It was a question she wanted to ask, especially if they didn’t get her inheritance, but she clamped her mouth shut over the words.
He pulled out his phone and did some clicking and typing. He slid it across the table. “Those are my accounts. A business and personal checking and a savings.”
She twisted her head to look at the screen.
“Go ahead. Pick it up,” he urged. “Look at the accounts. That’s everything I’m bringing to the table. We can’t make any decisions if you don’t know what kind of hand I’m holding.”
Gingerly she pulled his phone closer and looked at the screen. It didn’t take her long to look through the accounts which contained about thirty thousand dollars total.
He was waiting for her to look up, although he didn’t push her to hurry. “I don’t have any big bills. Just living expenses, health, and auto insurance. Phone bill. Two grand a month. Most of that’s health.”
She handed his phone back to him.
He took it from her, their fingers brushing. A casual brush that didn’t mean anything. She knew that. But her crazy heart kicked up, and her breath caught at the tingle in her hand.
She filled her lungs and pulled herself together. He’d been very transparent. More than she expected and certainly more than she deserved.
“You’ve seen the letter.” It was on the top of her pile, and she held it up.
He didn’t reach for it. “Yeah.”
“You know the cattle that I have. Three horses that aren’t worth anything. Ten thousand acres with the lake you saw. Maybe a quarter of that on the eastern side is tillable. The rest is pasture and, of course, hay.”
She pushed the stack of envelopes in front of her over. Most of it was bills. “I had to take a second mortgage out to pay James off when he divorced me.” Because of North Dakota’s law where marital property was split fifty-fifty. “The mortgage and second mortgage are the big bills.”
She shut her mouth and allowed him to look through everything. He took his time. She wanted to twist in her seat and fiddle with her fingers. She hadn’t paid either of last month’s mortgages nor January’s.
His face probably showed when he realized that, but she didn’t watch. Couldn’t. She was supposed to have married him then gotten enough money to pay it off. She certainly didn’t plan to sit at the table and have to admit that her bills were past due.
But she saved the worst for last.
When he looked up, all traces of humor gone from his eyes, thunderclouds taking its place, she pushed the last two papers over. “Bank statements,” she said by way of explanation, although she was sure he didn’t need to hear it.
She had three dollars in one account and seventy-two cents in the other.
His body had stilled. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing. White-hot anger seemed to roll off him in waves.
Her hands slid under the table and clasped together to keep them from shaking. Rem was finally face-to-face with everything she didn’t have, and it was obvious he wasn’t happy about it.
James had gotten angry. More than once. But he’d never hit her. She didn’t think Rem would, and if he did, if he lifted a finger, she was taking her children and calling the cops. Although he was so big and strong, she supposed she should be more concerned about surviving first.
She was being dramatic, and she knew it. He wasn’t going to hit her. Sure as she was sitting here, she knew that.
But his anger, quiet and controlled, billowed thick in the air around them. It seemed to expand and grow, hot and heavy and on the verge of exploding.
He stood so fast his chair flew backward and slammed against the wall with a reverberating crash. He stormed to the door, grabbing his cowboy hat and shoving it down on his head.
“I’m going out,” he said, the low tones of his voice completely at odds with the flying chair and his short, angry movements.
He slammed the door on his way out hard enough to knock his coat, which he hadn’t taken, and hers to the floor.
Elaine sighed, almost a sob, and put her forehead on her hands.
Three seconds later, the diesel motor in his pickup roared to life. The windows rattled as the engine revved and bellowed, the sound slowly fading away.
He hadn’t taken his stuff, not even his coat. He was probably coming back. Although if he were like James, it wouldn’t be until morning. She might as well plan on doing the feeding herself when she got up.
“What happened, Mommy?”
She lifted her eyes. All four of her children stood in the kitchen doorway. Eight worried eyes looked first at her, then at the chair that lay on its side against the wall, and finally to the coats that lay in a heap on the floor.
“Did Mr. Rem leave us like Daddy did?” Heaven asked in a soft voice that shook.
Gabe’s eyes were just as big and scared as hers, but his chin was up. Elaine thought again of what Rem had said about sharing her problems with the kids. Not so they could handle them for her, but so they could help. And watch how she handled them.
The tears that she’d held back easily when Rem walked out—she wasn’t crying over another man, not ever again—pinched in the back of her throat, and her nose tingled.
“No, honey. He just went out for a little bit.”
“Daddy always did that too,” Gabe said, a hint of bitterness in his little boy tone.
She pushed back away from the table and held her arms open. Carson shoved his siblings aside and came running, his thumb in his mouth and his blanket trailing behind. By the time she had him settled on her lap, her other children had piled on. They all squeezed against her, their little bodies seeking comfort and reassurance by human contact, and again she was hard-pressed to keep her tears in check. But she didn’t want her children’s memories of her to be constant sobbing every time a man left. She was stronger than that.
She swallowed, the burn in her throat almost more than she could stand.
Maybe she wasn’t stronger. She could distract them, though.
“How about I go in and we’ll finish watching your rodeo together.”
The kids’ cries of excitement were a little more subdued than usual, but she knew she’d get them with that, because the only thing better than watching TV was watching TV with Mom.
They settled on the couch, Carson and Elijah on her lap, with Heaven and Gabe snuggled against her sides.
And of course, as life would have it, the next bull rider to come on the screen was a slightly younger version of the man who had just walked out her door.
Chapter 12
Rem gripped the steering wheel tightly, the windows down, letting in the sub-zero North Dakota night. His radio was up as loud as it would go, and his truck hadn’t seen double digits on the speedometer since he’d passed the last exit.
That was one nice thing about this frozen hellhole—there was plenty of empty space for a man to work out his anger.
At one twenty, his needle tacked out and his right wheel had a little shimmy. He was angry, not suicidal, so he slowed back down to one ten.
The straight, flat road disappeared past his headlights, the yellow dotted lines blurring together.
He didn’t even know where he was going. Nowhere, really. Just needed an outlet for the fury that burned hot and deep inside of him.
He’d never been a brawler, but he’d sure wanted to grab a hold of James.
How could a man treat a woman, his wife, the way that man had treated Elaine?
She’d taken out a second mortgage to give him his half of the ranch. He wasn’t paying any support—not for his wife, not for his kids—and Elaine was struggling to even put food on the table.
Rem’s hands tightened on the wheel, and his boot had the accelerator floorboarded again. He forced the appendages to relax.
He wasn’t going to be able to think about James. Obviously the guy was a jerk who didn’t deserve a family like he’d left, but that didn’t keep Rem from wanting to punish him for the position in which he’d left his wife and kids.
Elaine was partly to blame. She should have sold the ranch. She could have walked away with a pile of money and no worries.
But Rem could understand the desire to hold on. To have a piece of land one called their own. To work the land one’s ancestors worked. Yeah, he got it.
Especially when he figured that Elaine had married James and borne his children under the assumption that they’d work beside each other for the rest of their lives. He was sure she hadn’t planned on doing it alone.
He wasn’t sure he could see James without feeling the need to rearrange his face, and the hot eruption of anger still bubbled in his chest, but the intensity had lessened. He still wasn’t ready to go back, but he needed to.
All those bills and no money. They needed to figure out a plan. Not tonight. It would be too late when he got back. Tomorrow. Soon.
His money was enough to pay most of her bills and keep them through the winter, but they needed some type of income. Something that generated enough to pay the mortgage at least. Fifty-odd head of cattle with calves by their sides and no feeder steers would keep them for a while, but they were borrowing from their future to sell the cows now.
It was well after one a.m. when Rem pulled his pickup to the barn, hoping that by parking out there it didn’t wake any of the kids up.
The light over the stove was on in the kitchen as he sat and took off his boots. Assuming everyone had gone to bed, he went straight to the small bathroom off the kitchen and took a quick shower, throwing his clothes in the hamper and wrapping a towel around his waist before walking into the living room where he kept his clean clothes in his big duffel behind the couch.
Elaine had mentioned that he could use the extra dresser in her room, but he didn’t think she was actually ready for that yet.
He was halfway to the couch before his eyes adjusted enough to see that there was a pileup on the couch.
His wife sat in the middle, her children huddled close to her.
Guilt slapped at his heart.
He’d scared them, then he’d left.
He didn’t know what James had done, what kind of anger he had shown, but he did know that James had left and never come back.
It hadn’t been that long since Rem had arrived in the kids’ lives, but he supposed that fear—the fear that someone was leaving, never to return—would live in their hearts for a long time.
He shouldn’t have run off, and he’d have to remember that in the future. Although, he doubted he’d ever be quite that angry again. Finding out what a snake Elaine’s ex-husband had been had torched his emotions like nothing had for a long time, if ever.
He wouldn’t think about why it made him so angry, because then he’d have to admit that he wouldn’t be quite as bothered if he didn’t care so deeply for Elaine.
Still standing in the middle of the living room, his eyes had adjusted even more while he considered what to do, and he could now see that Elaine’s eyes were open and on him.
A sleepy smile hovered on her lips as her eyes ran over his uncovered chest. His heart stumbled at the look on her face.
But then, as though she just woke more fully, her eyes snapped to his, the admiration—if that’s what it was—replaced by wariness.
He wanted to go over and bend down in front of her, but he stayed in the middle of the room. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have left.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said, her voice barely a ribbon of sound. “I don’t see how anyone would want to stay and face this.”
It took him three seconds to realize that she thought he left because of the lack of money.
He supposed he had, in a way.
Giving in to the desire to touch her, to be closer, he walked over and knelt in front of her, his hand resting lightly on her knee. Because of the rip in her jeans, his fingers touched a little portion of soft, woman skin.
“My anger wasn’t about the lack of money or the situation we’re in. It was about your ex and the position he left you in.”
Her eyes, gray and wide in the dim light, blinked slowly.
“He took half the ranch, Elaine. And he isn’t paying a dime. That’s not right.”
“That’s what I wanted.”
“Why?” He didn’t understand her thinking, not even a little.
“James didn’t want us. He didn’t want the kids when he left, and he didn’t want me, obviously.” Her hand slowly ran down Carson’s hair, touching it with the love only a mother’s hands could show. “I didn’t want someone who didn’t want us, who could leave us so easily, to have any say in anything I did or didn’t do with my kids. But in order for him to give up his rights, I had to sacrifice something. You understand?”
“So you took the second mortgage out and paid your ex for his paternal rights to your kids?”
“Yes. Basically that’s what I did. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe I was arrogant to think that my kids didn’t need a dad that didn’t want them. In fact, I know it was stupid. You know the stupid mistakes you make that seem like the best decision at the time?”
“Yeah.” He’d made his share of stupid mistakes.
He stayed where he was for a while, on his knees at her feet, his fingers touching the warm skin of her leg through the rip in her jeans. His fingers itched to move, to slide along the softness, but this probably wasn’t the time or place to give in, even a little, to the attraction that tugged at his soul.
A little crazy was in his blood. He couldn’t have been a champion bull rider without it. But where people might not understand it, they at least could condone that kind of crazy. The other kind, the kind where he fell in love with this woman and took her kids as his own, no one was going to think he was anything other than full-on, batwing, flipping nuts.
And what woman would want a man that close to insanity?
Chapter 13
The next few weeks slid by. Literally. They had an ice storm that left a glaze on the twenty inches of snow they already had on the ground. Thankfully it wasn’t so thick that the cattle, with their split hooves, couldn’t break through the crust. However, Rem had never walked on ice before, and he fell a few times before he got the hang of it.
Now he strode in from the barn like an old pro. However, the cold made everything take longer. The water pipe had been frozen this morning, and he’d had to thaw that out before he investigated where the bright red blood on the snow in the barnyard was coming from.
One of the cows had cut her foot on the ice, as far as he could tell. He’d managed to get some disinfectant on it. Elaine’s cows weren’t wild, but they weren’t pets, either.
He shuffled the eight eggs in his hand and opened the door. Ever since he’d said he loved coming into a house that smelled like cinnamon rolls and bacon, Elaine had stayed inside in the morning and had some kind of delicious breakfast ready for him when he walked in. He hadn’t known a man could be so blessed.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he closed the door behind him.
“Not a problem for me, but the kids were sorry they missed you.” She was holding Carson on her hip as she cracked an egg with one hand directly into the skillet while Elijah played with a truck on the kitchen floor. Gabe and Heaven would have eaten breakfast before they got on the bus, of course, but Elaine always waited for him before she ate.
“It should be illegal how early those kids get on the bus.”
“Before daylight right now,” Elaine agreed.
His phone said nine o’clock exactly as he removed it from his pocket and set it on the counter so he could wash his hands.
“Smells good in here.” It wasn’t just the cinnamon rolls. Elaine had a husky vanilla scent all her own, and he breathed deep as he went behind her to the sink.
“Hopefully it tastes as good as it smells.”
He knew it would. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but the ringing of her phone stopped him. He’d only heard it a couple of times before. Each time, it had been her mother reminding her of the birthday party she was planning at their house. Later this week, he thought.
“I’ll watch the eggs,” he said.
She handed him the spatula while she adjusted Carson on her hip and hurried to her purse to grab her phone.
“I think it’s the lawyer,” she said before she answered. “Hello?”
His heart thumped in his chest. He was about to become a billionaire. And just in time. He’d spent his own money to buy parts for the tractor and had it torn apart in the barn. He’d seen some good cattle for sale in South Dakota, and if he’d had the money, he’d have added them to their small herd. He was tired of sleeping on the couch, too.
There were a million things he could spend money on, right now. Hopefully they’d move it to their accounts today. Elaine had insisted that they open two accounts. One for him. One for her.
Elaine gave all her information to the lawyer and told him about the letter while Rem flipped the eggs and reached for one of the plates she had sitting on the counter.
“Oh. Are you sure?”
Rem turned at the distress in her voice. She sank into the nearest chair, her mouth hanging open. She let the baby slide to the floor and put her hand on her chest.
Her eyes closed. “Could you look again? Please?” She dropped her forehead into her hand and waited for what seemed like a long time.
Rem’s stomach turned over. The hunger pangs that had been squeezing it turned into anxious spasms.
“I see.” Elaine took a deep breath, then she seemed to sink farther into her chair. “No. That’s fine. Thanks for double-checking.”
She hung up. Her shoulders slumped. He thought she might even be crying, but after a few moments, her chest rose and she straightened. Her eyes met his head-on.
“The letter was a mistake. There’s no money.”
