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“I’m Finn Ackerman,” he said pleasantly. “My parents own the ranch.”
Charlotte swallowed as he picked up a laundry basket with hangers and framed photographs. “Thank you for your help.”
“Of course,” Finn said, as if he just loved helping a total stranger move in.
As she watched, the rest of her boxes and items got picked up and taken inside, and Charlotte had nothing else to do but follow the cowboys helping her.
She’d just reached the top of the steps and started to cross the porch to the open front door when she heard Mason say, “Yeah, her heart condition.”
Panic seized her pulse, and Charlotte ran to the doorway if only to use it for support. Only Beau and Mason stood in the living room, thankfully. But Beau wore the ultimate look of confusion.
“Heart condition?” he repeated.
“She didn’t tell you?” Mason’s features transformed with fury and disbelief. “I can’t believe this.” He turned toward the back door. “Where is she?”
Beau looked to the front door, and he sure didn’t look happy either. Their eyes met, and Charlotte had so much to say to him.
Don’t tell anyone else, please.
I was going to tell you, I swear.
Why are you so mad about this?
“She’s right there,” Beau said darkly. Mason turned toward her, and if Charlotte didn’t want a huge scene wherein everyone in the Texas Panhandle and all of Oklahoma would find out about her very mild heart condition, she had to act.
Fast.
So she rushed into the house and said, “You guys are overreacting.” She gestured wildly down the hall, where she assumed the other cowboys who’d come to help her move had gone. “Can we not talk about this here, right now?”
She switched her glare to her brother. “And it’s not your thing to talk about at all, Mason.”
“You didn’t tell him,” he hissed.
“Just because I don’t do things according to your timeline doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to do it.” She cut a quick look at Beau. “And you know what? It’s really none of your business either.”
“None of my business?”
Mason glanced past her, and movement caught her attention too. The other cowboys spilled into the room, all of them chatting about something. “She’s right,” he said quietly. “You two can talk about this in private.”
Beau got the hint, and he nodded like his neck had suddenly turned to wood. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Charlotte said. Then she turned to thank the men who’d helped her bring in everything she currently had to her name. She could deal with Beau and her overbearing brother later.
Much later.
Charlotte liked the way the green grass sparkled like emeralds down at the end of the white-rock lane. The gravel at her feet looked like it had just been replaced and raked out, and uncracked sidewalks led up to every log cabin where the other cowboys and cowgirls lived here at Three Rivers Ranch.
At the end of the gravel lane, the grass of the homestead took over, and someone had already set up white folding tables and chairs, and currently, several cowboys worked on fitting together poles for a tent shade that would go over them.
More than one, it turned out. Charlotte stood on the fringes of the group and activity, as Beau had said almost nothing to her since he’d learned about her heart condition from her brother. She’d thanked everyone, grabbed her water bottle from her backpack, and taken it and her purse down the hall to her bedroom.
Her new home.
She’d spent the next ninety minutes unpacking her boxes, hanging up her clothes, arranging her photos on the provided desk, and testing out the bed. When Beau had called and said, “Lunchtime,” she’d opened the door and joined him in the kitchen. “You ready?”
So she’d gotten three words from him since then, and as she watched him smile and talk with someone she hadn’t met yet, he reminded her of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Because she could feel his simmering anger from where she stood.
“You must be Charlotte,” a dark-haired woman said.
