Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
“He’s going to take them if they’re gay,” Gigi said with a sigh.
“He is not. He has a boyfriend.” Olivia watched in horror as Bobby walked up to the two men who were ordering from the open bar. “That’s why he’s coming out. He wants to take Mark to Will’s wedding. And now I have to tell my parents I’ve been lying to them for a couple of years.”
A good reason to get some stress relief in. She promised to stick close to home while her brothers were on their honeymoon. She was usually the one on the road, but she was going to take over Josh’s work in the office. She was supposed to work with some lawyer her uncle was sending out to Willow Fork next week. It would be boring.
Shouldn’t she have some fun?
It was only one night.
When they walked her way, she sat up and decided to make it a memorable one.
* * * *
Garrett Pace tried not to look at the redhead who seemed to be the bride’s sister. Wasn’t that usually the person who took the maid of honor position? He wasn’t sure, but then it wasn’t like he’d been to a bunch of weddings. They didn’t look alike, but she was the maid of honor. Maybe they were nothing more than best friends. He felt bad that he missed the part of the reception where they made toasts. He would like to have found out her name, maybe gotten a chance to get an introduction.
“Did the call go okay?” His best friend sat down next to him.
Keane Rollins had been around for most of his life. Keane was the only person in the world he knew he could count on. He was rapidly coming to trust his new bosses, but for so long it was only him and Keane. Through the roughest times. Through the times he wasn’t sure they would come out alive.
“It was an accounting error,” he replied. “I had a long talk with them about being more careful, but I’m absolutely certain it wasn’t on purpose. The money was in another account, but it was a business account, not anything personal. I’m far more worried about Gladen Farms. There’s some weird accounting going on there.”
The good thing about a collective was everything they could do together. They were far more powerful than they would be on their own. The Barnes-Fleetwood Collective had grown to the point that they had a whole legal department that served the ranches. Legal. Accounting. A head office that ensured everything worked right.
The bad part? If one ranch didn’t follow the rules, it made them all look bad.
“Are you going to deal with it while we’re in Willow Fork?” Keane asked, and his eyes trailed away.
Was he looking for a woman? It had been a while since either of them had a girlfriend. Since they started working for Barnes-Fleetwood, they had taken to an entirely different lifestyle. While Garrett worked for Barnes-Fleetwood directly, they lived in Deer Run. Keane took over the day-to-day running of the ranch so Aidan O’Malley could focus on his family and the business. Aidan’s partner, Lucas, was the one who hired him as an intern and helped him out when he passed the bar, bringing Keane along for the ride. Keane only had to work on the ranch for six months before Aidan started delegating a lot of the management to him. He’d recently been promoted to foreman.
It was weird to be at a high-society wedding. He didn’t fit in here. Despite his law degree, he was still that eight-year-old kid whose life fell apart when his mom died and no one wanted to take him in.
“Yeah, we’ve got some time there. One of the things I want to talk about is doing a complete review of every ranch in the collective.” His job could be done over the course of a week, but Keane was taking over as foreman while the guy who usually ran the Barnes-Fleetwood Ranch was on his honeymoon. So they would be in Willow Fork for a few weeks.
“Do you ever think about it?” Keane’s eyes stopped on a table toward the front of the room where family and close friends were.
Garrett was almost entirely sure he was looking at the redhead. The gorgeous, curvy, probably had a smart mouth on her redhead. A brat. He fucking loved a brat.
“Think about what?” He was pretty sure his friend was asking him about the woman in particular.
Keane turned his way, his eyes going serious. “About trying to have a relationship like Lexi and Aidan and Lucas?”
The O’Malleys. Lexi was Jack Barnes and Sam Fleetwood’s stepdaughter. She had two husbands, Aidan O’Malley and Lucas O’Malley, who changed his name when they married. They were happy. They were a solid unit raising kids and building a business and loving each other. The fact that he caught Lucas and Aidan kissing as much as he did the two of them with Lexi didn’t bother him a bit. In fact, it made him wonder.