When the Dust Settles

by Mary Calmes

  “Hey, take this out to the table, will you?”

  I moved fast to do as he asked and grab the dish, closing the distance from the living room to him, marveling as I always did at the man Rand loved. Before I met Stef, I had no idea men could be that pretty. I never dreamed that I’d meet a man with such beautiful, delicate, angelic features, golden skin, and thick blond hair that fell to his shoulders. It had been, it turned out, the final brick in the wall. Me seeing Stef, noticing everything about him, his face, his skin, the way he moved and the sound of his voice, all of it, even my long-dead desire for him, had finally made something crystal clear in my head. I was tired of wrestling with the whole question of whether I was gay. Meeting Stefan Joss, the partner of the man I’d thought was my cousin, sealed the deal.

  Again, Rand was a sore point with me, beyond his having the ranch and the monogamous partner and basically everything I’d thought I wanted. Two years ago I found out my father, Rayland Holloway, sired not only my brother, Zach, and me, but also Rand Holloway, the eldest child of my Uncle James and his wife, May. It was bullshit someone should have told the whole family years ago. It took Stef looking at Rayland and looking at Rand to figure it out—which was just ten kinds of stupid, because who looked at someone and thought, “Hey, those eyes of yours ain’t right.” It had mostly been Stef thinking he knew something and his assumption being correct. Which pissed me off to no end, because like he was frickin’ Sherlock Holmes or some shit. It was really giving him way too much credit, the whole uncovering of the big hush-hush family secret. But without him talking to May and Rand, neither would have ever come clean, and the rest of the family would have remained in the dark. So while I appreciated what Stef had made everyone admit to, I was still really annoyed that Rand and I now shared a closer biological bond—and that my bond with Zach was no longer unique. It was like I got Rand, whom I’d never taken a shine to, and lost my one claim to Zach, who I’d always thought was my sole blood brother. But now I had two siblings, neither liked me, and both got on together just fine, leaving me firmly out in the cold.

  Worst of all, my father was trying so hard to mend fences with Rand that he’d forgotten I was alive, and Zach was now working on Rand’s ranch.

  It had hurt me in more ways than one. My father, who promised to help me with a down payment for my restaurant, backed out to expand the family ranch, the White Ash. He was exploring the land for mineral reserves and oil and that took cash. It was, he said, an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, and the money he promised me was quickly committed elsewhere. Zach, at least, had an excuse I understood. He couldn’t help me because he was working for Rand, and the Red took up all of his time. In the end I sold everything I owned but my horse—I could not be parted from her—and had just enough to get the restaurant off the ground.

  So my life basically boiled down to coming out, telling my father I wanted to open a restaurant instead of work on the White Ash, and my family—such as it was—abandoning me. I always missed my mother; there was a hole in my heart where she had been, but I had not felt her loss as sharply as I had when I was first trying to get my dream to take shape and she wasn’t there to stand beside me. My father and Zach abandoning me would not have been so crushing if she’d been alive to take their place. As it was, I grieved all over again and felt the pain of her passing like it was brand new.

  Had the restaurant not taken off like it did, everything would have been shit. The fact that it had, though, the realization that I was part of a whole new family and didn’t have to bother with my old one no more—that was my salvation.

  “What are you doing?”

  I realized I had not moved from the time Stef put the platter in my hands.

  He was squinting at me.

  “Sorry,” I grumbled, stepping around him to head toward the kitchen and out the back door to the picnic tables.

  He moved fast, getting around in front of me. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re letting Rand use me for a cattle drive, Stef.”

  “A baby drive, not a real one.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “And this way you can bond with Rand and reconnect with Zach.”

  I scowled. “I ain’t fixin’ to do shit but drive them cattle.”

  “You could try and put forth a little effort.”

  “Pardon?”

  His eye roll made me smile. “Just take the bacon out, and don’t give any to the dog, no matter what.”

  That made no sense. “No matter what?”

  “She’ll try and tell you she’s starving to death and that only bacon will save her. These are silly torturous lies.”

  He was weird and that was certain. “She’s only a dog, Stef.”

  “That’s what she’d like you to believe.”

  Snorting out a laugh, I brushed by him and left the house through the kitchen door, Bella trailing after me. I stopped quickly, gave her a slice, and then continued on, walking around the side of the house to the picnic tables set out under the huge English oak. Normally the tree gave off an amazing amount of shade and the temperature could be counted on to be several degrees cooler beneath the canopy, but at the moment, so early in the morning, it was simply cool everywhere. Rand’s men yelled greetings as I put the platter down, and people reached for it, adding bacon to the eggs, biscuits and gravy, grits, hash browns, fried green tomatoes, and country ham. There were lots of pitchers of orange juice and pots of coffee. It looked like a special occasion, but it wasn’t. The hands ate there daily, and every Sunday Rand and Stef had breakfast for everyone who lived on the ranch. It was a family on the Red, and while I appreciated that, I had my own. Finally.

  I turned to go back to my truck but was yelled at to stop. Pivoting around, I found Rand Holloway himself standing there, arms crossed, scowling at me, looking big and somewhat scary, with the extra four inches of height he had on me.

  “And where are you scuttlin’ off to?”

  “To my truck,” I said shortly, leaving him there.

  As I walked, I looked up at the hills and saw the silhouettes of the wind turbines I knew were there. Between those and the solar panels on all the houses on the ranch, The Red Diamond was completely self-sufficient, no longer dependent on the county grid for electricity. I didn’t know the difference between a windmill, a wind pump, or a wind turbine, but Rand did. And of course since I had to know, I had asked him what if it rained every day for a month and the solar power went kaput, and what if his pinwheels couldn’t spin? What were they going to do then?

  Apparently energy could be stored, and more importantly, he was working on using the waste from the stockyards for methane gas that would aid the wind power he already had at his disposal. That was next on Rand’s agenda, and fruition was apparently imminent. Rand was always thinking, and he had Stef to do the cost analysis and basically help him make whatever dream he had into a reality. They made a great team, and while I had been very thankful for Stef’s help myself, it was disappointing that I was going to have to pay for it with three days of sheer torture.

  “I thought you didn’t drive stock anymore.”

  My day was getting worse and it hadn’t even really started yet. First Rand, and now, somewhere behind me, talking, giving me shit so goddamn early, was Mac Gentry.

  And honestly, his smoke- and gravel-filled voice, sultry and sexy at the same time, would have gone right to my dick if he wasn’t the biggest asshole I knew aside from Rand.

  “Glenn?”

  I ignored him, continued on to my truck, got out my duffel, pulled on my shearling-lined denim jacket, put my phone in the glove compartment, and closed the door. I knew I didn’t have to worry about the truck while I was gone. On the Red everything was safe.

  When I turned, Maclain “Mac” Gentry was standing in front of me. He was tall like Rand, six five, and 240 pounds of hard, heavy muscle. I knew that because I overheard him tell one of the other men once. It was funny; it never bothered me to have to look up to Rand, but it bugged the hell out of m
e that Mac was bigger, more thickly muscled, with broader shoulders and a wider chest. I felt small in comparison to the foreman of the Red Diamond, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  “Move,” I groused, meaning to brush by, only to have him take firm hold of my bicep. I snapped my head up and my eyes met his smoky gray gaze.

  “I don’t want you on this drive if you’re going to whine the whole time.”

  Even though he was giving me the same grief he always did, I found myself focusing on the way the faint light from the porch caught in his dirty blond hair, sparking over the stubble on his cheeks and upper lip, caressing his brows and the tips of his long lashes. With the dark hair and eyes I shared with all the Holloway men, I was lost in the shadows. But not him, not in all his golden glory.

  “Don’t worry,” I snarled, mad at myself for even noticing how roughly handsome the man was, yanking my arm free with much more force than needed. “I swear that none of y’all will hear a word outta me.”

  He scowled and I walked away. I didn’t have time for his regular macho bullshit. We had established from our initial meeting, when Mac looked at me like I was the most useless person on the face of the planet, that we would never get along. Zach he liked because he worked on the ranch with Rand. My father he liked because he owned a ranch just like Rand. But me, the guy who quit ranching to own a restaurant, me he didn’t understand, and so didn’t like. Not that I cared. Maclain Gentry was a dick and I had no use for him either.

  Returning to the tables, I put my gear down by everyone else’s and took a spot at the end so I could eat. It was going to be a long drive and I at least needed sustenance.

  I DIDN’T ride with Rand and Mac and Zach because I didn’t want to get into it with any of them. Instead, I rode in the truck with Pierce and Chase, Tom, Dusty and his son, Rebel—I swear to God, only in Texas—who was driving the truck and horse trailer back to the Red after dropping us off. I had no idea who was driving Rand’s rig back.

  We were missing one of Rand’s best guys. Everett and his wife, Regina, were brand-new parents and he wanted to stay with her and their new baby girl. Since his daughter was just three days home from the hospital, Rand said of course he could stay behind. I was sure he remembered bringing his own son home and what that felt like.

  Rand’s half sister, my cousin Charlotte, had given him the gift of an egg, and he and Stef had a surrogate carry the child for them. Wyatt James Holloway was born in the middle of July and just celebrated his second birthday a month ago. I didn’t see him often, as I was not much for being at the ranch, but it was cute how he waved good-bye to all of us as we got into the trucks. He was an adorable little boy, even if he did look just like a miniature Rand with his same jet-black hair, but with the dark blue eyes Charlotte shared with her father, not the turquoise Rand shared with mine.

  I could tell the leaving was hard on Rand. The tightness in his jaw, the way he held his son and clutched at Stef… he didn’t like going one bit. I knew that Rand would stay home all the time if he had his druthers; it was his favorite place to be. Being away from Stef was always hard for him, and now there was his son as well. All things considered, I was looking at pain when he turned to leave with us.

  When Stef called him back, he whirled around and ran. They made a nice picture there on the porch, Stef with his hand on Rand’s chest and Rand’s on his cheek, the toddler between them as Rand bent and kissed Stef’s forehead. He seemed better when he finally joined us, but then everything was gone—sadness, yearning, all of it—as his mask slid into place. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t let anyone see him vulnerable, except Stefan. He was all walled up before we got underway.

  Since I didn’t have to drive, I pulled my hat down over my eyes and took a nap. I woke up when we stopped an hour later, surprised when I looked out the window at the large transport van that a few people were being loaded into.

  “The hell is going on?” I asked Dusty.

  “Well, since not all the guests were already out there at McNamara’s ranch, Rand volunteered to pick ‘em on up along the way.” He told me cheerfully.

  “So we’re makin’ a few stops?”

  “We are makin’ a helluva lot more’n a few,” he snickered.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” I groaned.

  “Here’s hopin’ it’ll still be light out when we get there,” Pierce grumbled from the passenger seat. He didn’t sound any happier than I did.

  “I dunno,” Dusty said, still grinning. “It’s an awful lotta people to fetch.”

  Oh it just got better and better.

  We finally got lunch many hours later, and I was surprised when Zach came over from eating with Rand and the others and took a seat beside me. His scrutiny was unnerving because he looked so much like my mother, and I still missed her. He had her same big brown eyes; it was too bad he had his own mouth.

  “You lost a shitload of weight, Glenn. You sick?”

  “Not at all,” I answered tightly.

  He rubbed the back of his knuckles over my beard and then, before I could pull away, jabbed at my mustache with his finger. “And what’s with all this hair on your face?”

  Holloway men were usually clean-shaven, so the facial hair—though the beard was barely that—I’d let grow in was just another way to distinguish myself from them. “I’m busy,” I said defensively, hating that he’d even brought it up.

  “How busy can a restaurant be?”

  I didn’t take the bait since the comment was just plain ignorant.

  “It was a joke!” he crowed, whacking me hard on the back. “For fuck’s sake, Glenn, not everything is meant to be taken so serious.”

  My back hurt a little because he was stronger than he gave himself credit for, but I didn’t want to fight. “How’re you doing on the Red? You still like it?”

  And he was off, telling me about the calves that were born and how many, and the horses he’d helped break and how good they looked, and how one of the Red’s bulls was just sold for some ungodly amount of money.

  “It’s hard to be away, but this drive will settle Rand up with Hawley McNamara, and it’s a short trip, and since we’ll have regular folks with us—”

  “Regular folks?”

  “Well, yeah. The cattle have been grazing on McNamara’s dude ranch since Rand wanted to keep ’em separate from the regular herd.”

  I was bored already. “And?”

  “Can you hold on a minute?”

  I grunted.

  “So,” he said loudly. “Since we couldn’t afford to send any men off the Red, Rand reached out to McNamara to see if his men could work the cattle and he’d pay their wages.”

  “Sure.”

  “But McNamara said he didn’t need money. He needed Rand to take his guests with him and drive the cattle down to the Red.”

  “I see.”

  “Easy enough, right? And it oughta be nice to break things up.”

  “Break what up?” I asked honestly.

  “Doing the same ole shit, of course,” he replied, squinting at me. “Man, you are a prickly piece of crap.”

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Yeah ya were, you know you were.”

  “You know what, Zach,” I snapped. “I think your master’s callin’ you.”

  “Fuck you, Glenn,” he retorted, getting up, but not before knocking my glass of ice water into my lap, just to be a dick.

  Everybody laughed, and I was left with a wet spot on my crotch that made me look like I pissed myself. And people wondered why I didn’t spend more time with my family.

  Walking back from the bathroom over loose, rocky gravel, I tripped and would have done a nosedive if someone hadn’t closed their hand tight around my arm.

  “Careful.”

  I would have rather wiped out than talk to him twice in one day.

  “Watch what you’re doin’.”

  “I’m fine,” I growled at Mac, cursing my annoyance and the sort of daze I was moving around in. I
was usually more coordinated.

  “No,” he contradicted. “You were about ready to fall on your face.”

  “Yeah, so? Ya wanna medal?”

  He shook me and I lifted my head so I was gazing up into his eyes.

  “You should go home, Glenn. Go back to your restaurant where you belong.”

  “I can’t,” I griped. “I’m covering for Everett and—”

  “We’ll get along just fine without you.”

  I knew he would, they all would, but I was paying Stef back, and that was more important than anything else. “Oh, I’m sure you will,” I said snidely. “But I’m here to do the job that was asked of me.”

  I tried to tug my arm loose, but he was bigger than me, and stronger, so until he wanted to let go, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “We don’t need you to do nothin’.”

  I sucked in a breath because the silver flecks in his eyes were really something to see.

  “You hear?”

  I’d never asked Mac where he was from because, honestly, wherever it was, he should have stayed there, but it was definitely not West Texas like the rest of us. His voice was softer, richer, with a sprinkling of something in it that only came out when he was mad.

  “What?” he asked suddenly, scrutinizing my face as though something had changed.

  I shook my head because there was no way I was ever going to tell him the warmth of his voice could have gotten me right out of my clothes. For one, straight men didn’t tend to enjoy hearing things like that, and for two, he was a prick.

  He jerked me closer and I had to lean my head back farther—he was so damn tall—and his stormy eyes narrowed to slits.

  “How come you’re so skinny?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I ain’t skinny,” I assured him. “I’ve just been busy. Most days I don’t get a chance to eat.”

  Slow nod from him. “But other days you run?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’ve seen you running at night.”

  “How?” I asked, trying to wiggle my arm out of the death grip he had on it. “Aren’t you in bed at like nine or so since you gotta be up by four?”