My Cowboy's Second Chance Surprise (Billionaire Ranch Brothers Book 1) Read online

  “This is a corner room off the kitchen,” he explained. “We use this as a dining room.”

  She peered in and saw yellow floral wallpaper plastered across the dining room walls. She wanted to cringe. The place hadn't been updated since the sixties, and the decor back then hadn't been kind to the old building, those she dare not say as much to Frasier, who was bent on telling her about how they, “Put this wallpaper up ourselves!”

  “The place is just beautiful,” she said, adjusting her daughter in her arms.

  “Yeah?” Frasier asked, turning to offer her a bright smile. “We poured our heart and soul into this farm. We raised three babies here and a whole lot of cattle.”

  “We hate to go,” Andrea said, pulling a hand to her chin as she looked thoughtfully around the room. “But we just don't have the strength to keep up with it anymore. We're old,” she said with humor, shrugging. “We bought a condo in Florida.”

  “Exactly what we used to make fun of our friends for doing,” Frasier added with a laugh.

  “I promise to pour all of my love into this place,” Sophia said with a smile.

  She meant every word.

  It was clear the couple loved the house. It could have been dressed up in lime green shag carpeting and have a hole in the roof and that Willis’ couple would have adored the old farm.

  Sophia was enamored with her new house.

  Her friend Lauren was not as charmed by the new property.

  “You spent your entire life savings on this?” her friend enunciated five days later when she and her family walked through the front door.

  “You should have seen it when the wallpaper was up,” Sophia said with a laugh, wiping her brow of sweat.

  She had been scraping the remaining wallpaper out of the stairwell all morning, leaving scraps of paper on the entryway floor.

  Her friend Lauren, also twenty-six, had been Sophia’s best friend since kindergarten.

  They met back in Dallas and had kept in contact nearly every day since then.

  Part of the reason why Sophia had looked for a place in Tillsonburg is that it was where Lauren lived with her husband Jake and their little boy, Bertie.

  Near to her best friend? Check.

  Help with Imogene? Check.

  Built-in best friend for her daughter and Bertie?

  Check, check, check!

  “How were the movers?” Jake asked as he walked his son through the bare-bones living room of stripped floors and eggshell walls with chipping paint. “I heard that company is the worst.”

  “Oh yeah,” Lauren chimed in quickly in that way that couples did, knowing exactly how to maneuver around one another's conversation. “Our friend Adam used them when he moved to Knox, two towns over, and said they were total pains. Said they stole things, too.”

  “Well, as far as I know, they didn't steal anything,” Sophia laughed. “But they were definitely jerks. Or, well, not jerks,” she corrected. “They just had a lot to say about my moving here alone.”

  Jake scoffed and shook his head. “You're kidding?”

  “Lots of 'so, where's your husband?' and 'You're raising a kid all alone? You must be crazy!'” she said.

  “They did not say that!” Lauren said with a Southern gasp.

  Sophia grinned. “They did.”

  “They missed the memo that it's the twenty-first century,” Jake laughed.

  “Ahh,” Sophia mumbled with a rolling shrug. “No, I get it. Honestly. Single mom comes to beat-up old farm. Lots of renos needed. Milking cows. It seems like a lot for one person.”

  “But you're not one person,” Lauren scoffed. “First of all, you have Imogene!”

  With that, her friend scooped Imogene into her arms and tapped the end of her nose. “And you're the most helpful little girl there is, aren't you?”

  “Yes!” Imogene giggled.

  “Second, you have us,” Jake added, and Lauren nodded so hard it looked like she was trying to knock something loose.

  “You have us,” she repeated. “And thirdly, didn't the Willis couple say that if you bought the farm, you'd also be taking over their contract with Parmasource Dairy?”

  Sophia nodded. She'd been lucky. The contract was for a fair amount of money, which allowed her to hire four dairy workers to help out around the ranch.

  “So there!” Lauren said, sticking her tongue out. “You’re not alone, and you can do anything you put your mind to.”

  “Here, here!” Sophia laughed. “Now that my cheerleader is done with her pom-poms, do you guys want to go grab some food?”

  “Pizza!” Imogene shouted excitedly. “Please?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Sophia said.

  After she concluded the tour of her house with her friends and got some great advice from Jake on how she could reno the house, the five of them went out to a kid-friendly Italian joint.

  The kids were coloring on the paper tablecloth with Jake and Sophia was happy that the two were getting along so well. She was glad for Imogene to have a friend.

  “So, have you heard from him?” Lauren asked, leaning in close and talking just above a whisper.

  “August?” Sophia whispered back, and her friend nodded. “No. I don’t even think he knows I left Seattle.”

  “Good,” Lauren said, crossing her arms defiantly. “I hope he never finds out; he can just stay in Washington and cry himself to sleep every night forever.”

  “That’s harsh,” Sophia said with a smile. “I love it!”

  Admittedly, things had not gone so well between her and August.

  Things between them moved fast. They were only together for six months, but it felt like a whirlwind romance

  August had been a rich playboy and Sophia had been an absolute cliché, thinking that she was going to change his bachelor ways.

  For a while there, it seemed like she did.

  Sophia met August after he hired her to promote a small hotel he’d bought with his savings. They hit it off right away and had started flirting months before ever having an official date.

  When she told him that she had a young daughter, he didn’t mind one bit. He said he loved kids but couldn’t have any himself.

  “So, it sounds pretty perfect to me,” he’d said. “You, me, us.”

  She knew he’d fallen in love with her—probably the first time he’d ever fallen in love with anybody—when he started spending all of his time solely with her and Imogene.

  He was ditching big parties and sports events to chill on the couch and watch Disney repeats with her daughter and seemed as happy as if Imogene were his own.

  August would even plan fun outings for them to do “as a family” and would seem so excited

  At the time, she’d thought he was her second chance at love.

  After her messy breakup years before, she hadn’t dated anyone. Then she met August, and everything seemed so perfect—too good to be true.

  Turns out, if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.

  When the puppy-love of their new relationship started to wane, so did August’s attention-span. He spent more nights out with friends and, while he still treated Imogene like a little princess, his interest in Sophia had noticeably drained from his heart.

  Things came to a head when she saw a picture of him on Instagram kissing some random girl at a club.

  He apologized, of course, but otherwise seemed surprised at her reaction.

  “I guess I didn’t know we were that serious,” he’d said with the tone that was the verbal equivalent to a shrug.

  Sophia rolled her eyes.

  What did he think spending every waking hour with Sophia and her daughter meant? Were they not establishing a family unit?

  August was a big mistake, and she’d learned a hard lesson. Don’t let anybody in, especially not once you’re a mother.

  Sophia swore off dating for the foreseeable future and hoped her move back to Texas would give her heart time to heal while she focused on her daughter and her
farm.

  Chapter Three

  Nash

  It had been a week since Gage left Nash’s ranch.

  Nash acted strong with his staff—it helped that not many of them knew about his wife’s death—but he couldn’t help the loneliness he felt, especially now that his brother was gone.

  His mother assured him that all of his siblings would make the rounds with him, but it sounded so much like they were coming to babysit him that the very idea made him cringe.

  Once Nash had opened the floodgate of memories about Kenzie, it was hard to make them stop.

  Ever since his brother left, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his wife.

  When he woke up that morning, he could hear her whisper, “Hey handsome,” and it sent a shock through him that he’d never experienced before.

  Suddenly, unwanted memories came alive again.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the drive to the hospital and the overriding fear that had run his blood cold.

  When Nash arrived at the hospital, he was worried, but no part of him believed that whatever had happened couldn’t be reversed.

  Maybe she’d broken a bone. Maybe she’d be in a wheelchair from now on. Maybe she was just a little scratched up—more upset than anything.

  But nowhere in his mind did he think that she was dead.

  When he’d arrived at the hospital, Officer Greene was there to meet him.

  Several times, he’d asked the officer over the phone what had happened, to which Officer Greene would only respond, “I’ll explain everything you need to know when you get to the hospital.”

  He thought the action was strange, but what did he know about police procedure? Maybe that’s what they did. Maybe the officer needed Nash to fill out some paperwork and confirm the details about the car.

  He had no idea that Kenzie had died.

  Since then, he’d learned that it was always police procedure to make the death notification in person—never by phone. It was important to provide the “survivor” some kind of human presence.

  “Mr. Haven?” the officer said.

  He’d looked different than Nash had imagined. He’d thought the man would be middle-aged and staunch, but he was just the opposite. He looked to be thirty, maybe a little bit older, and was tall and fit.

  “Where’s my wife?” Nash asked. The words sounded unreal coming out of his mouth.

  He couldn’t believe he was in a hospital looking for his wife. The very nature of it seemed out of this world.

  The officer had prearranged with the hospital staff to bring Nash into an empty examination room. Once the door shut behind him, he felt the officer’s energy change.

  “What happened?” Nash said, confused as he looked around the empty room.

  “Your wife was driving down the High Five Interchange,” the officer said, speaking of the massive five-lane freeway north of downtown Dallas. “There was an accident involving a transport truck, and I am sorry to tell you this, but your wife has passed away.”

  Nash’s body went numb. He felt a wave of cold wash over him, and he grabbed the handrail on the wall next to him.

  “What?” he asked in a daze. “What do you mean? What happened?”

  Officer Greenwood explained the situation, but Nash wouldn’t learn the true extent of the crash until days later.

  The crash had been all over the news. A truck driver carrying liquified petroleum gas had fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted into another lane, crashing into Kenzie and several other cars.

  The truck caught fire, slamming other vehicles into the guardrail and trapping them there. The officer said the victims might have lived if the deadly tanker hadn’t exploded just minutes after crashing.

  Twelve people died, Kenzie included, and sixty-five were injured.

  Video footage caught by cellphone cameras was played on the news for days after the accident.

  Nash threw up the first time he watched it. The vehicle exploded like a bomb going off. Small wreckage that looked like nothing more than a car pileup and then suddenly the tanker was bursting into flames. Red and orange fire filled the screens until it was all the camera could see.

  As the fire died down, massive plumes of black smoke ascended into the sky.

  The footage was sickening, especially knowing that the blast had been the cause of so many deaths.

  Nash grit his teeth. He didn’t remember what else happened at the hospital that day. He knew that he had asked to see Kenzie, and the doctors and police suggested against it.

  “You don’t want this to be the last image you have of her,” they warned.

  He remembered calling Gage to come to the hospital. His brother responded with calm efficiency, just as Nash hoped he would.

  His family swarmed the hospital, and then it was just a blur of days and weeks and months without her.

  Now another storm was coming.

  The weather reports had been talking about tornados all week.

  On average, more than a hundred tornados touched down in Texas every year, and this year, the media was really hyping it up.

  The news reports were all but yelling “batten down the hatches!”

  Since Nash had newly become a believer in Murphy’s Law—that whatever can go wrong will go wrong—he was doing just that.

  He’d spent the week investing in safety and construction crews to come and tornado-proof his house as much as possible.

  Just because he wasn’t home very often didn’t mean he wanted to arrive to rubble when he was in the mood to return.

  The ranch had been built with fortified doors and windows in preparation for such an occasion, but he’d had his crews inspect Havenview as well.

  After the work was done, the crew said both his house and the ranch were solid, though their confirmation didn’t put his mind at ease.

  Nash lay awake at night, thinking about Kenzie’s death, about the storm, and about whether there was anything he could do—or could have done—to prevent either from happening.

  The next morning, his thoughts twisted to the little farm next to the ranch.

  He’d heard there was just a single young girl living there.

  Nash had worked hard not to be jealous of whoever bought the property.

  Gage had repeatedly suggested that they buy it to expand the ranch, and Nash had been against the idea. And since nothing happened with the Havenview chain without all the brothers signing off on it—and all the brothers felt too sorry for Nash to deny his request—they didn’t purchase the property.

  Now he wondered if he had made a mistake. What if the farm did well? What if people thought it was quaint and charming compared to the corporate dude ranch and spa?

  Nash shook it off.

  The odds that someone would make a business out of the property were slim. As far as he knew, the old owners used it as a dairy farm and had a couple of horses and sheep out there, but it was nothing any tourist would be interested in.

  That being said, Nash knew for a fact that the ranch was old. It hadn’t been updated since the new owner took possession, and he wondered how well it would hold up against the strong winds that would accompany the tornado.

  “Wes,” Nash said into his phone, calling up one of his closest friends in Tillsonburg.

  Wesley Knox worked with the horses at the ranch and was never one to shy away from physically demanding work.

  The two of them hit it off immediately, and if Nash ever felt like socializing, hitting up a bar, or going to a football game, Wesley was the one he called.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Wesley asked casually.

  “You feel like being a do-gooder today?”

  There was a momentary pause before Wesley answered. Then, with a verbal shrug, he said, “Sure, why not?”

  “Meet me in the parking lot in ten,” he said. “We’re gonna go help the little-farm-that-could.”

  Within half-an-hour, both Nash and Wesley had loaded Nash’s truck up with various supplies—
nail guns, boards to cover windows, and other braces.

  “So, why are we doing this?” Wesley asked with a laugh as he hopped into the passenger seat of the red truck.

  “We’re being neighborly,” Nash said with a smirk, pulling the vehicle into reverse and leaving the ranch driveway.

  “Ah,” Wesley nodded. “We’re spying.”

  “No, we’re not,” Nash scoffed. “We’re doing the nice thing and checking on the poor farm girl. The odds that her place is fit to withstand a tornado is basically one in ten billion.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “So we’re going to go over there and help her out as best we can,” he said with a shrug. “Introduce ourselves, make a good name for the ranch.”

  “And spy.”

  Nash couldn’t help the grin that pulled against his mouth. “And if we happen to get a feel for what she’s doing with the farm, then all the better, yes.”

  Wesley shook his head, but Nash knew he was equally as curious about the farm girl. Everybody was.

  After all, who would buy that property? The owners were asking way too much for it, and it still needed several months' worth of renovations to it. Why even bother?

  Pulling up to the house, Nash set his jaw. The house was much prettier than he had been expecting.

  It was a Victorian farmhouse, built in 1885, and looked like it should have been surrounded by lush trees and hanging Spanish moss.

  The two-story house was white and had a wrap-around porch and a garage with a stone façade.

  Nash felt even more jealous of his missed opportunity as he walked up the front steps.

  The house had a lot of visual interest. The Victorian architecture ensured there were plenty of beautiful bay windows and vaulted turrets to catch one’s eye.

  “This is pretty neat lookin’,” Wesley commented as he ascended the steps to the porch. Without another word, he gave three powerful knocks to the front door.

  They waited a minute, and when nobody answered, Nash began to feel irritated.

  “Hey, look,” Wesley said with a laugh. “Noah.”