Page 5 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

Trust me. The two words Kelly Shipley reached for whenever the truth got inconvenient.

The joint barbecue ran the same every June, two ranches’ worth of folding tables dragged under the live oaks, Bolton hands and Hickory Hollow hands trading the same stories they’d traded last summer and meaning every word as much as ever. Elise had ordered the brisket and chased down the county permit for the bonfire, all so two hundred people could pretend the food turned up by magic. It was her favorite sort of work, the kind nobody clapped for.

Elise found her reassigned seat.

The man in the next chair didn’t rise and didn’t offer his hand. He gave her a short nod and turned to his plate. Hat on one knee, sleeves rolled past forearms the color of a man who earned his living outdoors. A stranger. At a barbecue she’d planned down to the toothpicks, parked at her table, working through her caterer’s brisket, and not one word for her.

“I’m Elise.” She set her plate down. “I run the office over at Hickory Hollow.”

“Stephen.” A pause. “Garrett. Bolton crew.”

Three words and a surname, dished out as though she’d charged him by the letter.

“So you rode over with the Bolton bunch.” She aimed for bright. “How’s Chad treating everybody these days?”

“Fine.”

“All this rain hasn’t bogged down the fence work?”

“Mostly.”

She reached for the rolls and came up a foot short. The basket slid into her hand before she’d finished stretching, and the cowboy hadn’t so much as glanced over.

“Thanks.”

He dipped his chin.

“You been on at Bolton long?”

“Few years.”

Two words that time. Practically a soliloquy.

She’d carried on richer conversations with the answering machine.

She sized him up as one of those men who’d run clean out of words the same day they learned to back a trailer. She turned to her brisket and let him be.

A man like that would never carry their side of a friendship, or any relationship most likely. Elise had learned to read people fast, sorting the ones worth her energy from the ones who’d only drain it, and this one she filed under not worth the postage. Pleasant enough to look at, maybe. Useless across a dinner table.

The longer she sat, though, the more the layout of the whole thing nagged at her.

“Whoever set this up ran the coolers clear across the lawn from the food,” she said, mostly to her plate. “And the smoker line bends right around the dessert table. Give it an hour. Those pies’ll be a casualty.”

The cowboy laid down his fork.

“I set it up.”

Oh, shoot.

“Coolers sit across the lawn so the young ones quit crowding the smoker,” he said, even and unhurried. “Line runs past the desserts so folks build a plate while they wait, instead of bunching up hungry and short-tempered at the meat. Works fine. Has for six years.”

The most words he’d spent yet, and every one of them earned at her expense.

Heat climbed Elise’s neck. She’d taken a chunk out of a man’s work to his face, the lone subject he’d open his mouth for, and she’d done it sitting close enough to pass him the salt.

“It’s a smart setup,” she made herself say.

“It is.”