Million Dollar Cowboy (Cupid, Texas #5)(81)

He winced. The company he was dealing with had specific ideas about how business should go, and sending an underling instead of the president of the company could be taken as a sign of disrespect. Navigating a foreign culture could be sketchy. But first things first. El Paso. Duke. Coronary bypass surgery. Then he could deal with business.

It was then that Vivi decided to break the quiet. "Well," she said halfway into the flight, "are we going to discuss the eight-hundred-pound elephant?"

"Gorilla," he said.

"What?"

"The phrase is 'an eight-hundred-pound gorilla.' Elephants weigh several tons."

"Oh." Vivi crinkled her nose, and said with complete sincerity, "Maybe they're talking about a baby elephant."

"You're mixing metaphors."

"Huh?" Vivi blinked.

"It's two different sayings," he explained kindly. "It's either the eight-hundred-pound gorilla, or the elephant in the room."

Her brow furrowed. "So which one do I mean?"

Ridge shrugged. "Elephant. Gorilla. Whatever animal you want to call it. We do not have to discuss the situation. In fact, let's not and say we did."

"That won't work."

He sighed.

"Don't sigh," she said. "You always used to do that when I tried to talk to you about serious things. Listen to me, please. I need to get this off my chest. We never got closure because you ran off."

"What did you expect me to do?"

"Stay, fight for me."

"Like it's my fault you tumbled into my bed with my father?"

"I didn't say it was your fault, but you were always working, and I was lonely."

"So instead of talking to me about it, you went for my dad?"

"I tried to talk to you about it. You were always too busy to listen." 

"To support your spending habits."

"Oh don't put that in my lap. You enjoyed buying me things. You liked showing me off." She inhaled deeply. "When it suited you."

"Yes, okay. You're a gorgeous woman and I liked having you on my arm. And we both know we weren't in love, but that was no excuse for stabbing me in the back . . ." He ground his teeth. "With my father."

"Ridge." She snorted and stomped her foot against the floorboard. "Will you just give me a chance to explain?"

"All right," he said. If she needed to unburden herself to feel better, he'd suck it up and hear her out. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was past time to get over this uncomfortable discussion. Get closure. It wasn't like he had much of a choice but to listen if she started talking. They were trapped in a plane together.

"This has been eating on your father too," Vivi murmured. "In fact, I bet your homecoming triggered his heart attack."

Ah, so that was his fault too?

"I'm not blaming you for the heart attack." Vivi read his mind, and frankly, her insight surprised him. Generally, in his experience, she was pretty much all about Vivi. "I'm just saying he's been on edge ever since he heard you were coming back for Archer's wedding. Drinking too much, eating foods that aren't good for him."

"How is any of that my fault?"

"If you'd ever bothered to call or come home, you'd know he wasn't well," Vivi said. "But you were too stubborn or too selfish to forgive him."

"It's a two-way street, Vivi. He was the one in the wrong. He should have been begging me to forgive him."

"You know he's not built that way."

"Neither am I."

"So here we are." She fell silent.

For a moment the only sounds were the plane's engine. "How come you offered to host the wedding?" he asked.

"Archer is our foreman. It seemed the right thing to do."

Our foreman. As if the Silver Feather belonged to her too.

It hit him then, a load of emotional bricks dropped onto his head. Legally, he supposed it did. If Duke died without a will, Vivi would inherit the ranch. Did his father have a will? Surely, Duke had a will.

Ridge had no clue-zero, zilch, zip-what he was going to do if the old man didn't pull through, hadn't left a will and he and his brothers were left to battle Vivi over the future of the ranch that had been in his family for six generations. It surprised him. This territorial feeling. The fact that he cared. He'd had nothing to do with the Silver Feather in over a decade, and yet now the thought of losing it twisted him inside out.

Why?

Vivi was busy shredding a tissue into tiny pieces of white fluff. "You might not believe this, but if anything happens I don't know what I'd do without him."

Ridge grunted. He did not believe her. But he hoped for Duke's sake she was telling the truth.



"How was Archer's wedding?" asked Kaia's boss, Dr. Cheri Gunther DVM, bright and early Monday morning as they meet in the scrub room to prepare for surgery. Dr. Cheri was in her early thirties, round of body and face. She possessed an easygoing temperament, a down-to-earth bedside manner, and a new husband who worked at McDonald Observatory with Ranger Lockhart.