The Cowboy's Secret

by Riley Knight

  She didn’t answer, which gave him all the reply that he needed. But he still waited, because while she had clearly been the one who did it, he wasn’t sure that he quite understood her motivations.

  Eventually, she let out a soft sigh.

  “It was money. I guess you’ll figure it out as soon as you look at my computer. My husband left me with debts, as you know. I started to take money from the ranch. But I took too much, so when Wyatt offered to pay me to work undercover with him, I took that money, too. I thought I could pay back part of what I had taken. Cover my tracks. And it was safe enough. I knew that Malcolm would never sell.”

  Kyle looked into her eyes, and she dropped them. He had been angry, and frightened, but now that he was confronted with her face to face, he found that he pitied her more than anything else.

  “I won’t press charges,” he said again.

  “But you’re going to have to leave, obviously,” Malcolm said, his arm tightening around Kyle’s shoulders, his words dripping icicles. Kyle knew that Malcolm didn’t trust very many people, so the betrayal here must be unimaginable. Those words, cold and cruelly matter-of-fact, made Anna wince and pull back more than anything else that happened had.

  This place, Kyle had picked up, had been Anna’s home for a long time. He wasn’t sure exactly how long, but apparently Mary Anne had been born while Anna was living here, so it had been awhile.

  “I’ll go pack,” she said, her head held high, and she swept out of the room without so much as a glance back over her shoulder. But Kyle was willing to bet that she was just going out of sight before she started to cry, and the pity that he had unexpectedly felt only grew stronger.

  “Please don’t make me leave.” Mary Anne rushed over to Malcolm and looked up at him plaintively, her eyes enormous and her face very pale. “Please. This is my home. I kept my mom’s secret, and I’m so, so sorry. She said it was the only way, and I think it was, but please don’t make me go. I’ll do anything. Please?”

  “Malcolm, she’s just a kid,” Craig commented, and Derrick nodded. Both of Malcolm’s brothers looked overwhelmed, as well they should. Anna had been a constant in their life for a long time. “Can’t we just …”

  “You can stay,” Malcolm interrupted. “You’re family, kiddo. You’re not getting away that easily.”

  It wasn’t much, maybe, but it was something—the first signs of healing. Anna had, after all, been desperate, and desperation, as he well knew, could drive people to things that they would never do. Not that that made it okay for Anna to have stolen. Or, Kyle could see now, for him to take the job trying to force Malcolm to sell, which he’d had bad feelings about from the beginning.

  On the other hand, if he hadn’t taken it, he wouldn’t be here now.

  It would remain to be seen how things would work out with Anna. Malcolm was upset now, but he had the biggest heart of anyone that Kyle had ever met. Once his anger faded, he would be more likely to be willing to consider other options.

  “I have a phone call to make,” he announced, changing the subject. He had been so afraid to look around the room before, but now, he did it without fear, because he didn’t see any trace of displeasure in the eyes of anyone in the room. Not Logan, who just looked relieved, and not Malcolm’s brothers. Not even the very obviously military Craig.

  They were all smiling, all of them. Even Skyler, just a little, though Kyle knew he was going to have to have a more private conversation with his best friend. After all, Kyle was about to make the phone call that was going to make his struggling law office have to shut down.

  Well, no. It wasn’t struggling. That would imply that it had ever had a chance, that it did now, which it didn’t. He had been doomed from the start, but there were other law firms. He had arrogantly assumed that he could do on his own what no one did. That he could skip the steps, not have to pay his dues.

  Of course, it was hard to regret, because again, it had brought him here.

  He made the call right there, so that Malcolm could hear, and so that the rest of the Hart boys would know very well that there was no chance of the ranch being sold. Wyatt was on his own on this one, unless Derrick or Craig wanted to work with someone like Wyatt, which neither of them seemed exactly thrilled about.

  “Hello, Wyatt,” Kyle said, and he barely gave the other man the chance to reply to his greeting, cut him off before he could say more than a few words.

  “Kyle? It’s about time, tell me that you have—”

  And that was when Kyle interrupted him, and it felt glorious. If he’d had any doubt that this was the right thing to do, he would have known, at that moment, that it wasn’t. It was perfect, glorious, even.

  “I quit. And Anna does, too.”

  That was it. That was all it took, those few words, to free him from the shackles of a life that had been repressing him for longer than it took. For the first time, he felt free, and the pure joy of it was so strong that he felt like he could fly.

  And it was all thanks to Malcolm, who had shown him what strength was.

  Kyle didn’t wait for Wyatt to sputter at him that he was going to ruin him. Kyle knew it was true. His business was over, done for, kaput, he would never work in Seattle again. Fine. He had known that very well.

  “Kyle,” Malcolm murmured, and when Kyle looked up at him, he saw those brilliant emerald green eyes glowing at him. Kyle ended the call before Wyatt could so much as comment, before he could say anything, and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Uh, maybe we should give the lovebirds a few minutes,” Derrick commented, before turning to leave. Logan made a face, but left, too, after a muttered comment under his breath about how it was his damn room. But he left, and so did Craig, and then Skyler, looking confused and out of his element. Which he undoubtedly was. Skyler had lost everything here, just like Anna had, only he had deserved it much less.

  He would find a way to make it right. He wasn’t sure how just yet, but he wasn’t going to leave Skyler high and dry.

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” Kyle admitted. “I’m finished in Seattle, maybe even anywhere along the West Coast. But I was sort of hoping …”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said without hesitation, and Kyle let out a soft, delighted little laugh.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, I do. You want to live here at the ranch,” Malcolm informed him, showing that being a hot, rugged, gorgeous hunk of a cowboy didn’t mean that a guy couldn’t have a brain. He had pulled that together nicely enough.

  “I was hoping. Maybe I can get a job somewhere close. If you want me around, that is.”

  “I already said yes,” Malcolm told him, grinning. Well, that was fine with Kyle, because he wasn’t able to pull the insane smile off of his own face. His cheeks hurt, but he was too happy to stop.

  Malcolm slipped his arm down around Kyle’s waist, tugging him close against himself, and then sat down on the edge of Logan’s bed and pulled Kyle onto his lap. Then he kissed him, and it was a kiss that was completely unlike anything else that Kyle had ever experienced before in his life. It was not only a kiss of desire but one of promise, of binding themselves to each other.

  There was no more pretending, not from either of them, that they weren’t into men, or that they hated each other. The fear that had gripped Kyle for so long was gone, and for the first time in his life, he felt like he could be true to who he was. He could tell anyone who asked that he was in love with Malcolm. It might be difficult to get him to shut up about it.

  And all because of the magic of this ranch, and Malcolm. Because of a job that he should never have taken, he had found someone who made him choose love over fear, who made him realize, partially through Malcolm’s own insecurities, that there were worse things than the world knowing just who he was.

  They kissed like their lives depended on it, and Kyle knew that it was not the beginning of the end like h
e had thought each kiss before then might be. It was just the end of the beginning, the very first part of their relationship before they could truly commit to each other.

  “You’re not getting away now,” he informed Malcolm, wanting to be very sure that Malcolm knew what this was to him, that while it was too soon to talk about marriage, that was what he had in mind for the future. If everything worked out, he fully intended to make this really, truly permanent.

  A smile curved Malcolm’s sinfully full lips, and he leaned in to whisper into Kyle’s ear.

  “Do you really think I want to?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Everything was ready for his dad to come home. Malcolm had been over everything with a fine-toothed comb. His father was weak, not able to go up the stairs to his own bedroom, so Malcolm, Kyle, and Logan had brought all of his stuff down to a room on the ground floor.

  “Hey, you okay?” Kyle asked as they stood in the doorway of Malcolm’s father’s new room, gazing around at everything. Malcolm sighed and shook his head a little bit. That was a hard question to answer, and if it had been anyone but Kyle, he probably would have made a sarcastic comment and changed the subject.

  “Not really,” he admitted instead and turned to look down at the man who was, by some miracle, his. It helped, seeing those big brown eyes gazing up at him, the concern written on his face. He honestly didn’t know how he would even be able to handle this, if not for Kyle being there by his side.

  Kyle wrapped his arm around Malcolm’s waist, just a silent gesture of support that meant more than all the words in the world would have. It was Kyle’s way of showing that he was there, and that meant more than anything else ever could have. He had come so close to losing this man—so close to never having him.

  “Are you sure that you can miss work?” Malcolm asked. Kyle only worked part-time at the local law firm, which luckily paid him enough that it was worth it for him. The rest of the time, he helped Malcolm with the never-ending work on the ranch. So far, it had worked out well, but it did mean that missing one day of work was a bigger deal for Kyle than it was for most people.

  “Yes,” Kyle told him, his voice firm enough to dispel any remaining doubts. “I owe your dad a lot, you know. He convinced you to let me stay.” And they both knew that, without that endorsement, Malcolm might never have opened up enough to let Kyle anywhere near himself.

  “Yeah,” Malcolm said, smirking as he leaned down to kiss his gorgeous boyfriend’s nose with pure affection in the gesture. “Which shows what bad taste he has, I guess.”

  He was teasing, and it was clear. Some people would have gotten upset about it, but Kyle just shot back a wicked grin.

  “Not as bad as my taste is,” he teased right back, and Malcolm surprised himself by laughing. He had been surprised, at first, that Kyle’s slightly dark, twisted sense of humor could always make him smile, but he had gotten used to it in the months that he and Kyle had been together.

  “Same here. Lots of bad taste going on,” Malcolm drawled, which made Kyle laugh. Kyle stretched up on his tiptoes and pressed a sweet kiss to Malcolm’s lips, just lightly teasing at them with his own in a way that could turn serious quite easily, as Malcolm knew to his great pleasure. If only they had the time.

  “So how is he?” Kyle asked, and Malcolm swept the smaller man into his arms and down the hallway, collapsing on the couch and pulling Kyle with him. It was a hard question for him to look at, but one thing that he had learned from this whole crazy experience was that ignoring something didn’t make it go away. It had taken him decades to learn that one, but he had picked it up eventually.

  “The cancer isn’t getting worse, for now,” Malcolm said slowly because saying the words out loud was harder even than he had thought it would be. “But it’s not getting better, either. And you know the odds are against him.”

  Kyle nodded soberly, and Malcolm kissed him almost desperately before he spoke again.

  “Whatever happens, I want to make it good for him as much as I can.” It was a strange prospect, taking care of the man who had parented him, but by that very same reasoning he figured that he owed his father that much, at least.

  “He’ll be happier here,” Kyle told him, snuggling up onto his lap. How strange was it, Malcolm suddenly realized, that he was cuddling on the couch, right out in the living room, with another man? Things had changed so much and in such a short period of time.

  “You’re right. Did I ever tell you that I was thinking of selling?” Malcolm asked, and Kyle gave a surprised little noise. “Yeah. Back when I realized that I was in love with you, but I never thought that you would leave the city. I thought I could sell and go with you.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know that.” Kyle sounded amazed but rallied quickly. It was hard to knock him down for long. “I’m glad you didn’t, though. Because the whole time, I was just trying to figure out how to tell you that I had fallen in love with you.”

  That made Malcolm smile, and he rested his chin on Kyle’s shoulder, feeling the sweet press of his body against his, the way Kyle snuggled up close to him without hesitation.

  “I wouldn’t do it now. My dad did everything to keep this ranch going, and I’m going to do the same. I’ll never sell.”

  “Good,” Kyle murmured, his lips lingering in the crook of Malcolm’s neck. “I’ve gotten used to being here and I don’t like being uprooted.”

  Malcolm laughed, and then they both heard the low rumble of an approaching car. Craig had gone to pick their father up. The three brothers had decided that one person was going to be less overwhelming for their father than all of them, and Craig had decided that he should be the one to go. Which was a good thing, because Derrick didn’t seem all that interested and Malcolm had had a few last touches to put on his father’s new bedroom.

  It was sort of good having his brothers around again, though he had no idea how long that would last. For now, at least, they both seemed to want to be around, which meant a lot to him, because for a long time, Malcolm had felt like he was alone with all of this. Now, he not only had Kyle, but he had his brothers, too, at least for now.

  “He’s here.” Malcolm jumped to his feet, and Kyle managed to scramble out of the way just in the nick of time. Taking a deep breath, and very deliberately folding his fingers together with Kyle’s, Malcolm went to meet his father and, although he had never thought he would be brave enough to do it, he was going to introduce Kyle as his boyfriend. Of course, his father had met Kyle before, but never with Malcolm being open about who Kyle was to him.

  It was time to stop hiding.

  * * *

  The first day that his father was back was nice. Malcolm knew that his father was tired, but even just having his presence around was a good thing. And Kyle was great. Kyle had a quiet way about him that Malcolm knew he himself didn’t have. Kyle was comfortable playing chess for hours, for instance, and Malcolm would go insane if he even tried something like that.

  His father and Kyle talked a lot, though, and Malcolm found himself wondering just what they were talking about. Malcolm’s father had taken the whole disclosure about Kyle and Malcolm quite well. He had, in fact, asked Malcolm what had taken him so damn long to tell him, because he had apparently known that Malcolm was more or less gay for years now. He had just been waiting for Malcolm to trust him enough to tell him.

  So many years he had wasted. So much time that he could have been being himself, instead of trying to hide. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  Late that night, Kyle came into the room where Malcolm was already ready for bed. They didn’t have separate rooms anymore. The guest room that had been Kyle’s had been fixed up, and while it was being renovated, Kyle had moved in with Malcolm. Even when the room was finished, he hadn’t moved back, which was just fine with Malcolm.

  “Hey,” Malcolm murmured, shooting his lover a smile and patting the bed beside him invitingly. Kyle seemed thoughtful as he settled down onto the bed, and Malcolm pulled him clo
se and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “What’s going on, babe?”

  Kyle gave him one of those brilliant smiles, the one that could light up the room as opposed to the snarky smirk that had been most of what he had worn in the first little while of them knowing each other.

  “I’m not going to say that it’s nothing,” Kyle replied, somewhat mysteriously, “but trust me, it’s nothing bad. I just had a really good talk with your dad.”

  Malcolm arched an eyebrow, and despite the reassurance, a faint worm of anxiety wound its way through his stomach.

  “Was it about me?” he demanded, and Kyle smiled wider and rolled on top of him, his slender body the exact perfect weight as it settled on top of him, familiar and safe while at the same time deeply thrilling and arousing. But Malcolm wasn’t going to be distracted by sex.

  No, really, he wasn’t. No matter how good Kyle felt on top of him.

  “Yes,” Kyle replied, his full lips nuzzling at the tender skin of Malcolm’s neck, then parting so that he could nip lightly there, just hard enough that Malcolm could feel it. “But don’t worry. It’s nothing bad.”

  That didn’t help that much, and Malcolm groaned and tried to focus on the conversation, even though Kyle’s hips had started a slow, delicious, grinding dance against his own, and Malcolm could feel how hard Kyle was.

  “If it’s nothing bad, then tell me,” Malcolm managed, and Kyle pulled back to look down into his eyes, his own sparkling with mischief and delight. It was more reassuring than even the words had been because Malcolm knew Kyle well enough to know that he wouldn’t be giving him that bratty look if something were wrong.

  “You’ll find out. Eventually. Just trust me, okay?” Kyle shifted down, his lips tracing a line of sparks down Malcolm’s neck before they settled on his right nipple and started to suckle at him. Malcolm groaned helplessly.