Cowboy to the Core

by Maisey Yates

  It was not the kind of thing he needed to think on.

  Jamie Dodge had already given him a few too many things to think on today.

  He was not going to add the way looking at him had affected her to the list.

  * * *

  JAMIE WAS OVERLY HOT, flustered and cranky by the time she was in her truck and headed back to Get Out of Dodge.

  The trail ride with Gabe had been... Well, it had been nice. She had enjoyed spending time with him, and she enjoyed watching the way that he worked with horses. He was more relaxed out here in the mountains than he’d been that first day. And she could see his ease with them.

  But then he’d lectured her about what she needed to do and didn’t need to do to get to know herself. And then there had been that moment when he’d looked at her.

  There had been something in those blue eyes she couldn’t read.

  But that hadn’t even been her first thought, trying to decode that. Oh, no. Her first thought had been...wow, his eyes are so damn blue.

  And that just felt...not like her. But no matter how unlike her it was, she couldn’t seem to shake the thought, or the response.

  Her little escape had turned into something sharp and edgy and she just wanted...something comfortable.

  The horses weren’t it. Not now. Not thanks to Gabe.

  She needed her family. The familiar.

  She might be annoyed with them, but they were her constant.

  It was a little late, but she imagined everyone would be in the mess hall. Unless they had other plans, they usually ate there after a long workday. She figured they’d be finishing up, but she should be able to grab a plate and some company.

  But by the time she got into the mess hall, all the lights were off, and it looked like everything had been cleaned up and put away.

  Jamie let out a feral growl and stalked back out of the room, heading toward her brother’s house. When she arrived, she tromped up the front porch, and then knocked, feeling hungry and impatient. And unaccountably wounded that something else was not the way it should have been.

  It took a few moments, but Wyatt finally appeared, looking freshly showered and overly happy.

  Happy.

  She wasn’t happy.

  “Hey,” he said. “What brings you by?”

  “I’m starving,” she said. “And everyone seems to have eaten without me.”

  She sounded whiny as hell but she felt...off. Tender and maybe a little bit bruised and she had no idea why.

  “It’s seven o’clock,” Wyatt said. “We finished eating a half hour ago.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she said. “Nobody thought to leave me anything in the kitchen?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I would have assumed that you have eaten already, on account of the fact that it was late.”

  “Well,” she said, “I didn’t. And if you and everybody else feel so sorry for me, it seems to me that you could translate that into something useful, and feed me. Poor, motherless Jamie Dodge, who is incidentally starving to death because her asshole brother didn’t save any dinner for her.”

  Why was she freaking out at Wyatt? She didn’t know. She’d never been like this. Never been...emotional. She’d always kept her feelings on lockdown, and when they did escape they took the form of anger. Right now her voice was shaking and it was perilously close to being on the line of something other than anger.

  “Hey,” Wyatt said, “I thought you were covered. You didn’t tell me that you needed dinner.”

  “Well, you’re useless,” Jamie said, turning on her heel and stalking down the stairs.

  “Why don’t you come in the house and I’ll find you something to eat.”

  “No,” she said, waving a hand. “I’m sure that I have an onion and a bottle of beer in my fridge.”

  “Jamie, I don’t know what the hell your problem is, but if you want to be treated like an adult, maybe don’t slide into acting like a child whenever it suits you. Either I need to feed you every day, or you’re a strong, independent woman who can handle her own self. But you’re going to have to make up your mind on that.”

  “It’s not about being strong or independent, jackass,” she said. “It’s about expectation. Which is that we would eat together, since we always eat together.”

  “Not always,” Wyatt pointed out. “Anyway, Lindy and I just brought food back to the house tonight. Bennett and Kaylee never even came by today. Grant and McKenna worked their shift and then they went back to their house. We don’t live in each other’s pockets these days, and we don’t have to.”

  “No,” Jamie said, “of course not.” She felt deflated, and more than a little bit irritated.

  “Are you still mad about last night?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m mad. Because you can’t have it both ways, either. You can’t treat me like I’m independent and tough, and then like a lost little girl. You can’t talk about how everyone feels sorry for me and then expect me to just get my own dinner.”

  “Jamie, I’m confused as to how these are part of the same fight.”

  “You know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It mattered enough for you to come up here guns blazing and get in a fight.”

  “Well, how would you feel if you found out that...nobody actually thinks you’re a great rodeo rider? And everybody just thinks you’re kind of a sad, delusional sparrow that they’re humoring?”

  “Jamie...” His voice softened. “It’s not a bad thing to have people feel some sympathy for you.”

  Except it was. And he wouldn’t understand. Because it was useless damn sympathy. No one had... No one had offered her any help. No one in the town had given her anything to assuage their guilt over her status of sad half orphan. And she was questioning every interaction she’d ever had with anyone and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

  More to the point, it made her feel...

  Lonely.

  Which was a strange reaction to the whole thing, and she knew it. But that she was doing one thing, while so many other people seemed to think something else, while her brothers knew something else...it was really isolating. And she was already feeling...

  Left behind. Extraneous. Useless.

  She’d always been the only girl. She’d done her best to close that gap by being as tough as possible.

  Now everyone was a couple. And she was the only in another way.

  She was alone.

  She looked at Wyatt, standing there with the porch light on behind him, and for the first time she was struck by how different the house looked all of a sudden. There was a wreath hanging on the door, and there were little potted plants everywhere. New covers and cushions on the seats that sat beneath the windows.

  It was so very much not the house she had grown up in. Not anymore. Wyatt and Lindy had a life. They had a home.

  So did Kaylee and Bennett.

  Grant and McKenna.

  Luke and Olivia.

  Her friend Beatrix and her fiancé, Dane.

  Everybody had a life except for Jamie.

  Sad Jamie, who was apparently pitiable, and not a competent, tough Dodge woman like she had always imagined.

  She felt like she was standing outside her life, looking at herself, and there was a strange and horrible clarity to it that she didn’t like at all.

  And she didn’t know what she was angrier about.

  Everything that Wyatt had said to her last night, or the revelation of why it all bothered her so much.

  Of the fact that she was...

  Not jealous. She didn’t want to be paired off with someone, not necessarily. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that she was the only single person left in her family. In her group of friends.

  Her stomach tightened, a strange metallic taste in
her mouth.

  Fear.

  She’d ridden a horse up a mountainside today. Had weathered the animal getting spooked, and hadn’t even felt the slightest lick of nervousness.

  But for some reason now she was afraid.

  Realizing she didn’t fit. That there was no place left for her anymore.

  “Look, whatever,” she said, shaking her head and trying to get a handle on the strange feelings rioting through her. “I’m going to go...make some nachos. And maybe...maybe we could sit together?”

  Wyatt rubbed the back of his neck and looked toward the house. “I’m, um... I mean we’re...”

  Of course.

  Of course he wanted to spend time with Lindy. And of course it wouldn’t occur to him that Jamie was feeling low because they never talked about things like that and she never asked for him to take care of her, or baby her or anything like that.

  If she said she needed him he would probably set aside how much he wanted to fool around with his wife. But she wasn’t begging her brother for attention. No thanks.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  She waved Wyatt off when he took a step toward her, and got in her truck, turning the key in the ignition.

  And as she drove out toward her cabin, she felt some foundation in the deepest part of herself crack, shift. She had always felt like she knew who she was. Certain of her place in the world around her. And now she felt like she was looking inside at something she couldn’t understand, her face pressed against the glass.

  People saw her as sad, apparently.

  Everyone around her was involved in relationships, and she’d never been in one.

  She’d never even wanted to be.

  But right now all of that just made her feel rootless, adrift and very not like herself. Or maybe that wasn’t even the problem. Maybe the problem was it made her not want to be herself at all. And it made her feel a whole lot closer to that sad, motherless girl than she had ever wanted to be.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  EARLY THE NEXT morning Gabe’s phone rang.

  It was Beatrix Leighton, and it didn’t surprise him that it was regarding an animal emergency.

  “Do you have room for another horse?”

  “Sure,” he said, shifting his phone from one ear to the other, looking around the stable at all the empty space. “What’s the story?”

  Bea filled him in on the details, which involved an injured barrel racer who’d needed money and had sold her horse to pay medical bills. The horse had ended up at a farm, which had numerous animals that had been abused and neglected for years. Thankfully, the horse hadn’t been there long and was in decent shape.

  “Well, this would be a good place for her,” Gabe said. “And I’ve got one of the best trainers out there working for me.”

  There was a smile in Beatrix’s voice. “I know. I almost called Jamie directly, but I don’t know about the space at Get Out of Dodge, and since you’re actually running a rescue, I thought I would just go ahead and give you a call. Since I knew that Jamie would end up riding the horse, anyway.”

  “Where’s the horse right now?”

  “Right now? Gem’s in my field. But if you want to come by and get her, I’ll have her ready to go.”

  “Will do.” He hung up, wondering when he should head out, and if he should wait for Jamie. He knew she’d want to be involved in the situation, but he also figured time was of the essence here.

  As if on cue, Jamie Dodge’s truck pulled up to the barn.

  “I have an unexpected mission for us this morning,” Gabe said as soon as Jamie’s boot hit the gravel.

  “What’s that?”

  “We have a new acquisition. Beatrix Leighton just called me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A former rodeo horse, apparently. Not retired. But one that’s been in a rough situation for the past month or so. A whole bunch of animals were just removed from the home. The horse is in better shape than the others. Beatrix is managing the rest of the animals, but she figured that we might do the best with the horse.”

  “Well, then, let’s go,” Jamie said, immediately gung ho.

  This morning she was wearing that same black hat she’d been wearing yesterday, and had a long-sleeve flannel over the top of a white tank top. It completely obscured her figure, but now he had a much better idea of what it looked like after yesterday. So his mind did a good job of filling in the blanks.

  She was toned and slender, strong from all the hard work she did. Her breasts were small, but they were a thing of beauty. And her ass was perfection from lifting, squatting, riding and everything else she did on the ranch.

  He shook his head and opened the truck door for her. She stopped and stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You don’t need to open the door for me,” she said.

  “We could save a lot of time if you didn’t protest my being polite.”

  Her lips twitched, and she climbed up into his truck, settling into the passenger seat and buckling herself in.

  He closed the door behind her and rounded to the driver’s side, climbing in and starting the ignition. “Would you guide me while I hitch up the trailer?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  A few moments later they were around the back of the barn, and he was getting into position to back up to the trailer. Jamie hopped out and waved him along, and in pretty much record time they were ready to go.

  It was a quick drive through town down to Grassroots Winery, where Beatrix’s animal sanctuary was. There was a private access to her portion of the property.

  “I’m still surprised that Lindy was able to relinquish enough control on this place to let Bea open her sanctuary,” Jamie commented as they turned down the gravel drive that would take them to the barns.

  “I don’t know Lindy well enough to be surprised by it, I guess. She seems nice to me. Like somebody who would be completely on board with an animal rescue.”

  “Well,” Jamie said, “she is. But she’s, you know...she’s fancy.”

  He laughed. “Okay, yeah, she’s a little fancy.” The sleek blonde Wyatt had married definitely had a lot more sophistication than he did.

  Jamie looked over at him, her eyes shifty, like she was about to let him in on a deep secret. “Did you come to the Christmas party she threw?”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t. I think I wasn’t invited because the situation with McKenna was complicated at the time.”

  Last Christmas was right around the time his father had told McKenna that she should take a payout and leave, rather than being a part of their family. At that point McKenna had been involved with Grant Dodge, who had understandably not taken kindly to the whole situation.

  “She served tiny little chickens,” Jamie said, her voice rising up half a step in incredulity. “And mini pies.”

  “Tiny chickens?”

  “Cornish game hens,” Jamie clarified. “Or so I was told.”

  He laughed. “And that offended you?”

  “I wasn’t...offended. I just think that kind of thing is mystifying. If you like steak, why not have steak on Christmas, too? Why be fussy?”

  “Some people get enjoyment out of a little fancy, Jamie.”

  She shifted in her seat, her shoulders going all indignant. “I prefer to be practical.”

  The way she said it. As if the idea of anything other than pure practicality was an affront in some way. Or like it scared her.

  It made the strangest urge roll through him. To give her something more, something deeper than practical.

  “Practical is pretty good for every day,” he said. “But don’t you ever just like to indulge?”

  He wasn’t going to think about the kind of indulging he liked to do. Not here. Not now.

  “No,” she said, her voice ti
ght.

  “My family likes comfort. Though it’s straight trailer park fancy. But then, the Daltons have never worried about looking sophisticated a day in their lives. It’s part of our charm. Or something.”

  The decor around the family home seemed to prove that well enough. It was tacky, and over-the-top, and it was one of the things that Gabe had always appreciated about his parents.

  They were who they were.

  It was also the thing that often bothered him about his parents.

  Because who they were was...flawed.

  Especially Hank.

  And there was a whole trail of pain he’d left in his cheerful, selfish wake that Gabe had gone out of his way to not put too much thought into. Something that galled him more and more the older he got. The more he realized what it said about him.

  Hank had a whole heap of consequences for his actions he’d avoided having to contend with.

  And Gabe could have done something to make his father pay. But he hadn’t. Because when it had come down to it, he’d wanted to keep his mother safe from them. He hadn’t wanted to destroy it all.

  And part of him, a part he’d hated, had understood.

  Because when he’d been seventeen and he’d faced down his own unintended consequence, all he’d wanted to do was run.

  He could still see his girlfriend’s tearstained face when she’d told him she wasn’t pregnant, after all. And he’d been entirely made of relief, and she’d been devastated. The resulting fight had put Tammy and Hank Dalton to shame, and at the end of it Gabe had been left with a lot of hard truths about himself.

  The one girl he’d ever cared about and he’d failed her. He’d gotten to know her in study hall. Had become obsessed with making out in cars and then later sex in cars, because of her.

  A high school boy’s dream. Love at only seventeen and nothing but the future in front of them.

  He’d thought with all the feeling between them they could have made something. Something that could have lasted forever.

  But oh, he’d been wrong. And he’d seen how stupid you could be for a feeling you told yourself was love.