passing the main ranch house and Eli’s. A little farther down the road was Luis and Solana’s home.
Luis had come to work for Wymon’s father years earlier. With his dad’s death just a year and a half ago, Wymon and his brothers relied on Luis, who was the best ranch foreman of anyone around. Solana, the housekeeper at the main ranch house where his mother lived, had become a permanent fixture in the Clayton household.
Wymon’s place was farthest up the road. After parking his truck next to the Audi at the side of his log cabin-style house, he headed for the kitchen. Once he’d pulled a cold beer from the fridge, he took the stairs two at a time to the loft.
When he’d moved into the two-bedroom house six years ago at the age of twenty-two, it was only one story. Since then he’d slowly had renovations done and it was now a two-story house with a bedroom, bath and loft on the second floor.
He loved sleeping upstairs in his modern bedroom where he could look out at the stars and the Sapphire Mountains while he lay in bed. The floor-to-ceiling windows made him feel as if he was sleeping outside.
The scenery drew him like a magnet. He took the lid off the bottle and drank half of it while he looked out at the vista that now included one crumpled blue-and-white Cessna. The sight of Jasmine Telford courageously trying to pull the pilot out of the cockpit would never leave him. Neither would the picture of her lying on the hospital bed, looking so beautiful. Those green eyes of hers had mesmerized him.
Over the last few hours he’d had time to put the pieces together. The two crash victims had been on their way to Seattle, no doubt in love and eager to get away for a vacation. With both of them coming from political backgrounds, they were well matched and well heeled. Particularly Robert Farnsworth, whose father and grandfather had made millions in oil.
She’d make a gorgeous wife for the aggressive Montana Representative. Give the man another eight to ten years and Wymon figured he’d have aspirations for something bigger in the future.
Was she as ambitious? Did she look forward to a life with him? Possibly in Washington, DC? Wining and dining with other One Percenters for the rest of their lives?
Wymon wished he didn’t want to know the answer to that question. He had to think back to his bull-riding days in high school to remember what it was like to be this attracted to a woman on sight.
Sheila Rogers, a popular, attractive girl from his high school, had been the daughter of a local rancher. Wymon had fallen hard for her. They’d planned to get married after college. But she’d enrolled in a study-abroad program in Italy and met a guy there who was on location making a Hollywood movie.
When she returned home she had stars in her eyes. She wasn’t the same girl who’d sobbed in his arms before leaving for Europe and had promised to email him every day and send pictures.
Sheila had broken up with Wymon, telling him she couldn’t imagine living on a ranch with him for the rest of her life. He knew she hadn’t intended to be cruel about it, just honest, but it had hurt him badly. Her honesty had broken his heart, but it also taught him a lesson. Before he knew it, Sheila had married the guy she met in Italy and moved to California, excited to embrace a brand-new way of life.
Since then he’d dated his fair share of women. But he didn’t like it that after all this time he once again found himself attracted to a woman who’d purposely put herself in a position to embrace an exciting life far away from Montana with a man of prominence and means.
Though Wymon didn’t have an idea of the perfect woman, he hoped one day to meet someone who wanted the same basic things from life that he did. So far she hadn’t come along. And if she never did?
He wheeled around and bounded back down the stairs, setting the half-empty bottle on the kitchen counter before leaving the house. Needing to channel his frustration, he raced up to the barn and saddled his quarter horse.
“Let’s get out of here, Titus. We both need a workout,” he said and headed off into the mountains to clear his head.
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