Kentucky sure was a slice of heaven to Trey, and he looked up into the sky. It had rained a lot last week, but today the evening sky shone with gold and blue.
He wrestled with himself and whether he should say a prayer or not. Surely the Lord already knew what the issue was, and he’d been decidedly silent.
“Maybe you don’t know how to hear,” Trey muttered to himself. “What can it hurt? It’ll take sixty seconds, and then you’ll get nothing, and you can go find Cayden—or better, Lawrence—and ask them what to do.”
Trey took a deep breath and exhaled. He did that over and over, trying to work up the courage to pray. He knew how; he’d done so as a child and teenager and even into his adulthood. It had just been quite a long time.
“Dear Lord,” he finally said. “Bethany Dixon is a good woman, and I sure do like her. She needs help, and I can help her. Should I marry the woman so she can enter her horse into the Sweetheart Classic?”
The wind kicked up, and a dog barked somewhere in the distance. Trey closed his eyes and tried—really tried—to hear something. He never heard anything with his ears, but rather his heart.
The things he should and shouldn’t do came as feelings, and in that moment, Trey felt like he should help Beth if he could.
“Should I?” he asked again.
There was no squirming in his stomach. The worry that had been needling his mind for weeks disappeared. The unrest in his very soul was simply not there anymore.
Part of him was disgusted, and the other part sagged in relief against the railing on the deck. The sun continued to go down, and the day died degree by degree.
“Why are you standing here?” he asked himself. “Get over to Beth’s and talk to her. The clock is ticking.”
He pushed away from the railing and hurried to his pickup truck. The drive to Beth’s didn’t take long. The longest part of the drive was getting down the dirt lane from the house to the road. Beth’s was just a bit down the road, and he pulled up to the charming, white farmhouse before he knew it.
While he still had a well of courage, he got out of the truck and marched toward the porch. He made it to the door and rang the doorbell.
“C’mon in,” TJ yelled, and Trey took a deep breath.
He opened the door and stepped inside the farmhouse, already looking for the child. In the very next moment, a deluge of cold water hit him straight in the face.
Trey sputtered and reached up to cover his face with his hands. “What the devil?” he asked at the same time wild laughter met his ears. He cleared the water from his eyes and hair—his cowboy hat gone completely—and looked down at his soaking wet shirt. The front of his jeans looked like he’d wet himself, and water ran down his legs toward his cowboy boots.
“That’s not your uncle Hugh,” a man said, and Trey’s eyes flew to an older gentleman whose smile faded right before Trey’s eyes. Beth’s father, Clyde Turner.
“Trey,” TJ said, his smile staying in place. He ran toward Trey, who scooped him up despite being a wet mess. “What are you doin’ here?”
“I…” He looked at Clyde, who’d found a towel somehow and was hurrying toward him too.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m real sorry about the water. We’re expecting Beth’s brother, and I was just showin’ TJ how to set up a prank.” He smiled at the child and exchanged TJ for the towel.
They shook hands too, and Trey used the towel to mop up the water in his hair. This wasn’t a good time to chat with Beth, clearly. Beth’s family was here, and she obviously didn’t know about this little prank lesson going on in her living room.
He didn’t think she’d like the standing water on her hardwood floors, for example.
Trey turned around to find his cowboy hat. He located it sitting in a pool of water, stepped over to it, and had just picked it up when Beth said, “Trey?”
His heartbeat spiked, and he jammed the hat on his head as he straightened and turned in the same movement.
Beth wore a pale yellow tank top that flowed around her frame in a classy, sophisticated way. She made soft, loose pants look like a ballgown, and Trey promptly swept the cowboy hat off his head again.
Aware of water dripping from his ear and sliding down his face, he held his cowboy hat to his chest with one hand and wiped his forehead with the other. “I’ll do it, Beth. I’ll enter the Sweetheart Classic with you.”
Training the Cowboy Billionaire Chapter Two:
“The Sweetheart Classic?” Daddy asked, and Bethany Dixon flew into action. She strode forward and put both hands against Trey’s chest, as if she could really move a man as muscular as him.
He did fall back though, and he turned and walked out onto the front porch, Beth right on his tail. She brought the door closed behind her a little harder than she meant to, and she pressed her eyes closed as she leaned into the solidness of it.
She inhaled through her nose and realized her feet were wet. She opened her eyes and looked down. “Why is my porch wet?”