giving an inch. “I suppose you can also excel at all the ranching chores, like help check the fencing and gather eggs and muck the stalls, too.”
“Of course,” he said, his mouth running without his brain because all he could think about was how badly he wanted to kiss that knowing grin off her face right now. “By the end of the week, your relatives will be thinking of me like I’m just another cowboy in the family. They’re gonna love me.”
Hadley scoffed. “No. Fucking. Way.”
“Wanna bet?”
He had no idea why he was doing this. Proving her wrong about his abilities to wash dishes or muck fences or mend stalls or be a beloved member of her family wasn’t on his agenda. He was here for one reason: to convince her to take her gold-digger hooks out of his brother. She was priming Web, softening him up for the taking. He’d seen it before—lived it—and the pattern was the same as what Mia had done to him. Start with friendship, add in some damsel-in-distress bullshit like her I-really-need-you-to-go-to-my-sister’s-wedding ploy, and then go in for the multimillion-dollar kill.
“So do we have a bet or not?” he asked.
“Bet on what?” she asked as she pantomimed pulling finger guns from a holster on each side of her round hips and shooting them into the air like a trick shot. “That you can become a rootin’ tootin’ city slicker cowboy much beloved by my family in a week? It’ll never happen.”
Oh, it was definitely happening now. Winning was his specialty. There was no way he’d lose to her. “If you lose, you leave my brother alone. If I lose—which isn’t going to happen—I’ll never mention you being a gold digger again, and I’ll get out from between you and my brother.”
Hadley released a dramatic sigh and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Oh no, all my plans to marry a billionaire are in jeopardy.”
Such a smart-ass.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
She crossed her arms, cocked her hip, and considered him for a moment before saying, “You bet your never-seen-a-cow-patty-before boots.”
Then, in a repeat of what had happened at the airport, she turned and walked away, going up the steps of the ranch house’s front porch.
She was confident, he’d give her that. Too bad for her, he was a man who never lost—not in business and not when it came to protecting his family.
Hadley Donavan was about to find out firsthand just how good the bad Holt twin could be.
Chapter Six
Hadley was going to love watching Will have to shut up already about his totally wrongheaded belief that she was friends with Web only because she had plans to steal his money. Really, how many bad movies had he watched to come up with such an inane plot? All of which would make seeing him end up falling on his tight-Wranglers-wearing ass at the end of the week even sweeter.
Petty?
Her?
In this case, she so very much was and could accept that about herself. If anyone deserved to come down a few pegs, it was Will Holt, CEO of Holt Enterprises and perpetual pain in her ass.
“That’s some smile that fella has you wearing,” Aunt Louise said as she stood by the screen door in her usual uniform of jeans, a seed company T-shirt, and worn baseball cap with her iron-gray hair pulled back into a French braid that reached all the way down to the middle of her back. “I like to see it.”
Oh, this was perfect. Her aunt Louise—who’d run her small ranch by herself since her husband, Dexter, had passed away forty years ago—would talk Will’s ear off about all things ranching related. By the time she was done, his brain would be filled with so much cattle-related minutiae that he’d admit defeat on the bet before it even got started.
“Aren’t you sweet for saying so,” Hadley said. Could this get any worse? But she knew for sure they couldn’t sell “serious relationship” with how often her family was going to notice they wanted to kill each other. Time to change the subject. “However, he is really interested in learning everything there is to know about the cowboy life,” she said, lacing her voice with enough oh-my-gosh-gee-willikers insincere sweetness that there was no way Will would miss that she was setting him up.
“Really?” Aunt Louise’s eyes lit up with interest and she turned her full attention to Will. “What do you want to know?”