Winning the Cowboy Billionaire - Emmy Eugene Page 0,1
that surrounded her family farm.
She hadn’t quite been stood up at the altar, but almost. Her fiancé had called the morning before the wedding, mere hours before the final rehearsal dinner. She’d invited her whole family to that. His too.
I can’t do this, he’d said. It has nothing to do with you, Olli. I swear.
She almost scoffed right out loud at this wedding, five years later. She’d been in enough relationships to know that when one ended, it had something to do with her, even if her contribution was small.
She put her ex out of her mind as the wedding march started to play. Olli stood with the rest of the crowd, and she turned to watch the most beautiful woman walk down the aisle, one slow step at a time. She wasn’t hanging on the arm of her father, obviously, as the man escorting her appeared to be about her same age.
Olli’s curiosity lifted, as she loved getting to know people and learning their stories. Did she speak to her father? Was he alive? Too sick to walk her down the aisle? What was the story there?
Olli loved stories, and the more personal, the better. She could take those ideas and transform them into scents for her perfumes and candles, and she’d always found the best inspiration from real life.
She sighed as the bride moved past her, and she enjoyed watching Theo and Sorrell get married right there in their own back garden. She’d been resistant to coming to this wedding with Ginny, but Ginny had pulled the best friend card, and Olli had been helpless at that point.
She’d bought a new dress, packed a bag, and come to Texas, a state she’d never visited before.
“Sorrell,” Theo said. “I’ve loved you for seven long years. Eight maybe.” He ducked his head, and Olli sighed again, this time pressing her hand over her pulse. She’d always had a weakness for soft-yet-tough cowboys, and Theo seemed like exactly that type.
“I promise to love you and take care of you for the rest of my life.” He looked up at her, the joy on his face something Olli wished she could bottle and sell.
Radiant joy, she thought. Smells like sunshine, weddings, and… She cast a look to that flower, thinking it would be perfect for her bright yellow Radiant Joy candle. The one she hadn’t developed yet.
“Theo,” Sorrell said. “You’ve shown more patience than any man I’ve ever met. I love you, and I’m grateful for you. I know we’ll have an amazing life together, no matter what comes our way.”
Olli couldn’t help smiling as the pastor pronounced them man and wife, and Theo leaned down to kiss his new wife. She’d been to plenty of weddings in Kentucky, with plenty of cowboys, but the whooping and heehawing that erupted from this group was enough to startle her pulse into overdrive.
“My goodness,” she said, looking at Ginny. They burst out laughing together, and Ginny leaned toward her.
She had to practically yell, “Texas cowboys are different than Kentucky cowboys, I guess,” for Olli to hear her.
Olli looked around, thinking that they might be louder, but to her, the cowboys here looked and smelled and acted a lot like the ones she knew back home.
She was fine being friends with them. She just didn’t want one coming into her life and trying to take over her business—or her heart—again.
“What do you mean?” she asked a few days later. “The grant didn’t say anything about being married.”
“You don’t need to be married, Miss Hudson,” the man on the other end of the line said, his tone somewhat rounded and clipped at the same time. He definitely wasn’t from the South, and Olli wished her accent wasn’t quite so thick. “Mister Renlund simply wants to make sure his investment is going to a family company.”
Olli didn’t know what to say. She’d missed that requirement in the grant application.
“He very much likes your proposal,” Benjamin said, continuing despite the tailspin Olli’s thoughts had gone into. “He found it so different from what we usually get. You’re on the list of his top five, and he comes around and visits everyone and their businesses before he decides on the grant money.”
“You’re kidding,” Olli said, looking around. Her perfumery sat in a state of chaos at the moment, with vials and bottles all over the place. She’d learned the flower in Texas was called a gladiolus, and she’d already ordered several varieties to be delivered in the next week