Page 60 of Eighteen Bowties and Counting
“Wow,” she said to the dogs. “We are feasting tonight.”
The following morning, Charlotte left her bedroom and glanced across the hall to Beau’s. She’d done this every day since she’d moved in, and every day, his door had been open. He always got up ahead of her, as he had to get outside and stage himself for his Sunrise Cowboy broadcast.
Alarm tugged through her, because the sunrise couldn’t be far away. True, it had started happening later and later in the morning, as they moved into the winter months—if Texas truly had any of those.
She’d been told the Panhandle did occasionally see snow, and Charlotte secretly hoped for that. But she knew Beau would be out there in the morning, doing his sunrise live-stream, even in the bad weather.
So why wasn’t he out there today?
She moved over to his door and twisted the knob quietly, just like she did to let the dogs into his room at night. They’d both gotten off the bed already to greet her, and she whispered, “Hey, guys. Go to the back door, and I’ll let you out.”
Both Pepper and Ruby trotted off, but Charlotte peered into the dark recesses of Beau’s bedroom. She had not been inside it, not one time, and now, she clearly heard the soft, steady breathing of the cowboy she lived with.
He had not gotten up, but he was clearly still alive.
A wild idea formed in her head, as quickly as tornadoes formed and touched down. She stole across the room to his nightstand and picked up his phone. He kept his tripod in the loft, and Charlotte left as quickly as she’d come, and she closed his door behind him.
With the dogs waiting for her at the back door, she went up into the loft and got the tripod. “You can’t go out in your pajamas.”
Moving fast now so she could beat the sun, she dashed to the back door and opened it for the dogs. Then she flew back down the hall to her bedroom, where she shed her silky pjs in favor of jeans and a sweatshirt.
“You don’t have to be on camera,” she said. “You just have to find a place to film the sunrise and talk about the ranch.”
She knew what Beau did, because she watched him every single morning. He’d even called her out once or twice, naming her as his girlfriend.
Calling her his.
Her heart pounded and swooped to the soles of her feet. “Calm down.” She took a big breath and tried to slow everything in her body as she pulled on her running shoes. Then she grabbed his phone and the tripod and followed the dogs outside.
She had no idea if Beau planned his sunrise shots or not. In her mind, the prettiest place would be on the other side of the stables, with a shot of the pastures Courage Reins used for their horses.
For Charlotte, it always came down to horses.
It wasn’t completely dark, and she couldn’t whistle like Beau, but she did her best to call the dogs as she hustled toward what she felt certain would be the perfect place for the Sunrise Cowgirl to do her first live-stream.
Chapter Twenty-One
Beau woke up to sunlight streaming into his eyes. Disoriented, he shot straight up, his pulse knocking against the back of his tongue. “Where—?” He recognized his bedroom then, though he rarely saw it in such glorious light.
And Pepper and Ruby were absent. He immediately turned to pick up his phone to see what time it was—and it wasn’t there.
Now feeling completely discombobulated because of the loss of his device—the thing he used to keep track of everything from the name of Charlotte’s heart condition to how much he owed Bennett for groceries—Beau stumbled to his feet.
His head positively pounded, and he sank back to the mattress. He couldn’t make sense of much more than the pain in his head, but he knew one thing: He’d missed the sunrise.
Disappointment cut through him like a hot, sharp knife. He hadn’t missed his sunrise live-stream in years. He hadn’t posted that he wouldn’t be there, and he wondered for a brief moment if anyone actually cared.
His thoughts cleared, the way thunderclouds dissipated after they’d dropped their rain. “Of course people care,” he said, echoing the voice in his head saying the same thing. “People care about you, Beau.”
Just because he was forty and unmarried didn’t mean he didn’t matter.
He got to his feet again, and he managed to pull on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He made it into the kitchen, where the clock on the microwave told him it had just passed nine o’clock.
“Oh, boy, Beau,” he said to himself, trying to remember what day it even was. Did he have a meeting this morning? Assignments to hand out? Why hadn’t anyone awakened him?
“And where’s Charlotte? And my phone?”
She’d retreated, but he’d thought they’d made great progress in the past few days. Why wasn’t she here? “She could’ve at least left me a note,” he grumbled.
