Colt, for once in his life, ignored the rest of the world, and instead of heading back to the stables and the myriad number of responsibilities on his to do list, he headed home with Tank. They had a private barn where Tank would be housed for the night. Tank wouldn’t mind the change of scenery, and Colt just didn’t have it in him to be around people.
And it would give him time. The time he needed before he faced the world again. Because regardless of how his relationship with Avery had ended, he was forever altered by her short presence in his life.
15
She sobbed under the hot spray as she washed away traces of semen from between her thighs. Avery couldn’t believe he thought she’d told him that she loved him because of money. That wasn’t something she cared about. He could be a billionaire or a pauper. None of that mattered, because she loved him.
Deeply, truly loved him.
And he’d cast her aside as if she had meant nothing to him. As if their time together had been all fun and games.
She sobbed even harder at that thought. Until this moment, Avery believed she’d known what it was to hurt. That Matt leaving her at the altar had been the worst thing to happen to her. But this… Colt spurning her love, while he’d still been inside her, only to withdraw and accuse her of being a fortune hunter.
The irony of it all was she had more money than she could feasibly spend in five lifetimes. Her grandfather had made his fortune in the stock market before her dad was born. He’d been a brilliant investor with the funds he’d been given in his marriage to her Grandma Gertie who, as it so happened, was a member of the British aristocracy, with wealth dating back to the time of Cromwell.
If Colt had bothered to do his research, he would have discovered that Avery had no need of his fortune because she was loaded.
But that time had passed. By the time she emerged from the shower, she knew she couldn’t stay here. Not when every part of the cabin, inside and out, reminded her of him. Avery dressed and started to pack. She began with her clothes and toiletry items, got that all put together inside.
Then she headed outdoors and saved all the data her equipment had recorded before she started breaking it all down, piece by piece. She loaded her gear and tent into the back of the SUV. She trudged back inside to get her personal items, and glanced at the box near the door.
Fury rose inside her. She dug in her backpack for her wallet and the envelope she needed. On the table, she counted out enough cash to cover her stay and the groceries. She slipped that into the used envelope from the accounting firm. On top of the envelope, she wrote: Payment for cabin rental and groceries. Then, on the second envelope, just his name: Colt.
She laid the key to the cabin next to the envelopes.
With her heart in pieces, she made sure she put her wallet with the rest of her cash, identification, and credit card in her backpack, dug her car keys out of her pocket, slung her backpack over her arm, and grabbed the handle of her rolling carry-on. She glanced around the cabin.
Here, she had discovered the greatest love she had ever known, and experienced the greatest heartbreak inside of two weeks. Avery walked out, locking the door behind her as she left. She tossed her suitcase in the backseat, and backpack on the passenger seat.
When she drove away from the cabin, even though she knew that she was leaving her heart behind, she didn’t look back. Instead, she looked forward, and to what she needed to do to mend her broken heart.
Avery drove until she was exhausted. She found a small hotel on the side of the highway in Utah, and stayed the night. She was so tired when she got into her room and did a nose dive onto the bed, that not even the agony shredding her heart could keep her awake.
In the morning, she refused to think about Colt. Instead, she showered, dressed, packed her suitcase, and checked out. She grabbed a breakfast burrito and coffee for the road. Then she drove the last two hundred miles to Vegas—or, as she liked to call it, home.
It wasn’t until she made it through her front door, tipped the bellman for getting all her things into her place, and he had left, that she was finally able to fall apart and grieve. Avery crawled into her bed, not even bothering to take off her jeans, pulled the covers up over her head, and didn’t plan on leaving until she had to on Saturday night.
Hopefully by then she would be able to breathe again.
16
“See, I told you guys he was passed out on the couch,” a feminine voice said nearby that Colt recognized as his sister’s. He wanted to shut the voice out and go back into his dreams where yesterday had never happened.
“You weren’t kidding.” He recognized Lincoln’s voice.
“Nope,” Amber replied.
“How long has he been like this?” Duncan asked.
“And Jesus but that’s a lot of bottles on the coffee table,” Maverick stated.
Colt cracked open an eye then hissed in a breath at the sharp stab of pain from the lights. “Turn the fucking lights off,” he grumbled from his prone position on the living room couch. When he’d made it to the house the previous day, after the disaster at the cabin with Avery, he’d plunked himself in the living room with a few beers.
“Dude, do you have any idea what time it is?” Lincoln asked him.
Colt kept his eyes closed and replied, “No. I don’t really give a shit, either. Why?”
“It’s noon, man,” Maverick stated.
His eyes shot open once again and he winced at the pain. “No. It can’t be. I just closed my eyes for a minute.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “Colt, my dear sweet big brother, you were already shit-faced when I returned last night at seven, and kept drinking steadily through the night.”
“You passed out, is what you did,” Duncan commented. “Mind enlightening us as to why? We’ve never known you to blow off work the way you did yesterday and today.”
“It’s that woman who came to the stables the other day, isn’t it? Avery, I think her name was,” Maverick said.
“That was her, wasn’t it, at registration? The one you’ve been seeing secretly. What did you do to mess it up?” Amber asked him.
“I didn’t do anything. She found out I owned the place, and then it was talk of love. It’s over, so what does it matter?” In between that, he’d experienced one last taste of heaven before being shot into hell.
“You think she wanted your money like Carly did?” Duncan asked with a frown.
Colt nodded and then regretted the action immediately. “Yep.”
His sister sighed. “Mom told me in confidence that she dropped him on his head a few times when he was a baby. That’s why he’s so dense.”
Colt glanced about the living room at the crowd, feeling like he had alcohol oozing out of his pores. “What are you talking about?”
“Carly was a fucking moron, Colt. And you’re an idiot if she’s the yard stick by which you’ve been measuring women. Not all women want your money,” Lincoln said, like Colt was a few beers shy of a six pack.
“And if I have? Carly said she loved me, just like Avery did yesterday. I’ll go apologize to Avery once I sober up a bit. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t interested because of my money.” Although his logic on that—in the light of a new day, with the drumbeat pounding at his skull—was thin when he thought about the days before Avery knew he owned the ranch.