The Rancher's Fake Fiancée. Amy Vastine

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СКАЧАТЬ time. I wouldn’t worry.”

      Not worry? He didn’t know her very well if he thought she was capable of not worrying. Meeting the family was nerve-racking when she was the real girlfriend. Being the fake one made it a thousand times worse.

      * * *

      TYLER KNEW TWO of his brothers had way too much going on in their own lives to worry about his. Ben and Jon weren’t going to pry too much. Ethan, on the other hand, could be a problem. He was running the ranch presently, which made him troublesome. But there was one person who might be more of a hard sell than his brothers.

      “I think the only person I’m really worried about is Katie, our ranch hand. Growing up, she was like the annoying little sister we didn’t ask for. Always in our business. Ratting us out for everything we did. She’s the one we might need to be wary of.”

      Hadley paled. “Wait a minute, I didn’t realize we had to outsmart a woman. Not that I haven’t been nervous about pulling the wool over your brothers’ eyes,” she quickly clarified. “But women are more attuned to the intricacies of relationships. They pay attention to things like body language and the details that are shared with them.”

      She had to be kidding. Katie was female, yes. But honestly, she was more like one of the guys than a woman “attuned to the intricacies of relationships.” Annoying? Yes. In touch with her feminine intuition? No.

      Tyler chuckled. “Then maybe we should be more worried about Grace, my brother Ethan’s pregnant fiancée.”

      “Pregnant!” Hadley was loud enough to attract the attention of more than a few people sitting near them. “Pregnant?” she repeated in a whisper.

      Tyler was confused by her outburst. “What’s the matter with being pregnant?”

      “Pregnant women are freaks of nature!” Hadley threw her hands up. “They have superpowers you can’t imagine. Do you even realize the amount of blood flowing through their bodies, feeding their brain? Not to mention the fact that all of their senses are in overdrive during pregnancy. She might be able to smell our lack of pheromones.”

      Pheromones? Tyler was quickly reconsidering his lack of a plan. Not because he feared being unable to convince everyone because of Grace’s apparent bloodhound sense of smell but because Hadley was hysterical. He had chosen her because she was the smartest, most put together person in the office. He hadn’t expected her to lose it over pheromones.

      He placed a hand over hers. “Look at me,” he said as calmly as he could. Her blue eyes locked onto his. The vulnerability he saw there was definitely new and created this strange sensation in the center of his chest. It was such a foreign feeling, he forgot what he was going to say.

      “Are you going to tell me we’re going to be fine?” she asked.

      That was it.

      “We’re going to be fine. Grace and Katie will be preoccupied with a hundred other things while we’re there. We’ll just have to save our best stuff for the few times we’re around them, okay?” he said with a wink.

      The tension seemed to leave her body as her shoulders relaxed and she gave him a small smile. “You’re right. We’ll be fine.” She thankfully sounded sure. “Good thing you got me that upgrade. We’ll have plenty of time to cram.”

      “Cram?”

      The gate agent announced they were ready to board first-class passengers. Hadley stood up. “Get ready to learn everything there is to know about me. I know I can’t wait to become a Tyler Blackwell expert.”

      Tyler swallowed hard. No one was a Tyler Blackwell expert. He never let anyone get that close and he wasn’t sure he could start now.

      * * *

      THEY’D BEEN IN the air for over an hour and Hadley was already a lifelong fan of first class.

      “Favorite color?” she asked, starting with an easy question to get Tyler to open up.

      “Don’t have one.”

      “Come on, everyone has a favorite color.”

      “Not everyone because I don’t. I have no preference.”

      Of course he was going to be difficult. “Favorite food?” she tried.

      Tyler glanced out his window. They were flying high above a white blanket of clouds. “Nothing really stands out as a favorite.”

      “Favorite movie?”

      He stared blankly back at her.

      “Book? Television show? Band? Coffee shop? Come on, Tyler.”

      “What? I’m not a favorites kind of guy.”

      Hadley took a deep breath to keep her anxiety at bay. She’d told Tyler everything she could think about herself. Perhaps embarrassingly too much about her obsession with Harry Potter during middle school. The important thing was he’d be prepared with plenty of Hadley knowledge.

      He seemed determined to leave her completely in the dark about himself, however. She couldn’t go into this knowing next to nothing.

      “Tell me about your brothers. What are they like?” she asked, hoping he’d be more willing to discuss the other Blackwells.

      “Jonathan is my oldest brother, the only one who isn’t a twin, but he does ironically have twin girls.”

      “What’s Jon’s wife’s name?”

      “No wife. Jon is divorced. Although, he recently got engaged to his nanny, Lydia.” Tyler raised his eyebrows like it was a bit scandalous.

      “He left his wife for the nanny?”

      “No, no. His ex has been out of the picture since the twins were born.” The invitation to talk about someone else was all it took to open up the floodgates. “Jon’s the quintessential good guy in the white hat. He’s a hardworking cowboy. He was my dad’s favorite, probably because they were so alike. You’ll never see the guy in anything other than jeans, a plaid shirt and cowboy boots. Total opposite of Ben. Ben is all city boy. I’m sort of shocked he gave up his life in New York to settle back down in Falcon Creek, especially since he got dumped at the altar a few years back. No one likes getting dumped, but it was worse than that. She left him for our grandfather.”

      “Whoa, wait. What?” Hadley knew about family dysfunction, but that was really messed up.

      “Trust me, I think Ben got the better end of the deal. Zoe was nothing but a superficial gold digger. Ben deserved better and I’ve always thought that maybe Big E proposed to her because he knew Ben would have been miserable if they had ended up together. Ben has always been our grandfather’s favorite. The two of them have the same cutthroat mentality.”

      “What’s keeping him in Montana, then?”

      “Since he’s been home, he somehow managed to fall in love and get married to Rachel, an old friend whose family lives on the ranch next to ours. You’ll meet her, too.”

      Fantastic, another woman in the mix. Hadley СКАЧАТЬ