Christmastime Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  If Finn had his way, he would essentially keep the status quo. But between Lane and Liam he’d encountered a constant push for change. For growth.

  He knew that Finn hated that. But Liam was good at it. He was good at start-ups. He was good in investments. And, if the expansion of the Laughing Irish went to hell, he had a shit-ton of money to back it all up.

  Money that just kind of sat there now. Money that didn’t seem to mean anything or accomplish anything. He didn’t have much else to offer. He had capital. Which, when you were kind of an asshole, was always the smart thing to lead with.

  “It went well. I’m going to be working with Sabrina Leighton on the project.”

  He started to walk past Finn up the porch and into the house, then turned and caught sight of his brother’s expression. It was just a little too hard. A little too insightful. “Did you have a comment, Finn?”

  “I have a lot of comments. But because I’m not entirely sure what went down with you and Sabrina—or really, what went on in your life at any point when you weren’t on the ranch—it’s tough for me to pare it down to the most effective one.”

  “Good. You’re easier to deal with when you’re at a loss for words.” Liam let out a breath. “I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a history with Sabrina. I do, in that she hates me.” It wasn’t that he didn’t know why. And, no matter how committed he was to the denial of having led her on, he did have to admit at least to himself that he hadn’t been neutral about her.

  No matter what she’d thought, when he’d left he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t regret the way he’d done it either. She might be mad at him, and he could even understand that. But it had been the right thing to do. The fact that she was still angry at him thirteen years later for about the most honorable damn thing he had ever done didn’t really seem fair.

  Honorable and self-serving, maybe. But the honor was definitely present.

  “And you’re going to be able to work with her in spite of that history?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t think it’s the history you think it is. When I worked for Grassroots she was seventeen, Finn. I never slept with her. She got her hopes up that I would. That’s it.”

  “So she turns and runs the other direction every time she sees you coming because she had a crush on you thirteen years ago? That’s it?”

  Liam gritted his teeth and spread his hands. “That’s about the size of it. Apparently, I’m ruinous to women even when I don’t have sex with them.”

  “I feel like you meant that to sound badass, but mostly, I just think it’s true.”

  Liam shrugged, not even caring if his brother was insulting him. Not even caring if his words had been chosen poorly enough that he’d insulted himself. “We had a meeting today, and everything seems like it’s going to be fine. I don’t think she’s going to spend the entire time plotting my downfall.” He took a few more steps and walked into the house. Then stopped and turned. “Unless this is all an elaborate ruse to get revenge on me by destroying the Laughing Irish. In which case, Finn, I’ll go back to New York and leave you here in the smoldering wreckage.”

  Finn glared at him and slammed the door behind them, enclosing them in the large entryway of the custom log cabin their grandfather had built about five years ago.

  “The funny thing, Liam,” Finn said, sounding like he found nothing at the moment funny at all, “is that I think you believe that. But I know you wouldn’t. I know that you actually want this to succeed. Maybe not because you love the ranch. Maybe not because you love me. But most definitely for your damned stubborn pride.”

  Liam rubbed his chin. “I do like my pride.”

  “Yeah, you do. And I don’t think you would ever allow a ghost from your past to be responsible for your failure.”

  They were just ribbing each other, and Liam knew it. But there was something a little too close to the truth in those words, and they gouged him in tender places. “Whatever the reason,” he said, “I’m not going to hang you out to dry.”

  “You’ve gone soft.”

  “If I have, it’s because of your wife’s cooking,” he responded. Then he slapped his hand against his stomach—which was still rock hard, thank you very much—for good measure.

  “What’s your timeline to get the shop up and running?” Finn asked, crossing his arms over his broad chest, clearly done with the banter. Finn had limited patience for banter when it came to discussions of the ranch.

  “I’m not sure. We’re going to look at property sometime this week. I have to get in touch with Gage West. I think once we start in on it we should be able to get the sale to go through quickly. But if something happens with the loan, I have the cash to front it.”

  “I’m not having you do that, Liam,” Finn said. “I’m not putting your finances at that big of a risk.”

  Liam bit back a frustrated curse. His brother didn’t understand because to him, that amount of money had more value. And Liam could understand that. He’d come from poverty. But now he had money. And he didn’t know how the hell else he was supposed to contribute. “What do I care? Do you see me spending money?” He looked down at his boots and lifted them up, tapping them on the floor, a sprinkling of mud landing there on the hard wood. “How old do you think these boots are?”

  Lane, Finn’s wife, appeared from the kitchen, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her brown eyes glittering. “I don’t know how old your boots are, Liam Donnelly, but if you want to live to be any older than you are, I suggest you clean up that mud mess because I sure as hell am not going to do it. I’m not your maid.”

  He bit back a comment about her being the cook. He had a feeling that right now, she would launch rockets from her eyes and leave him reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash. He didn’t know what the hell Lane’s problem had been lately but she’d been in kind of a mean mood for a while.

  “I’ll clean it up,” he said. Though, not anytime soon. “I was just telling your husband that I don’t need all the money I have sitting in my bank account. I can afford to invest in the expansion of the ranch.”

  That turned Lane’s focus to Finn.

  Finn shot him a deadly glare. “Just because you can doesn’t mean I’m going to let you. This venture is ours, it’s equal. We can all put the money back into the storefront that we’re making on the ranch. We don’t need you to invest that much capital up front.”

  “But I can,” Liam said.

  And damn it, there had to be some use for that money. For that money that just felt like a weight. He had busted his ass, worked himself blind from the time he had been given the money to go to college. Twenty years old, coming in late, working up from a deficit, and he had done every damn thing he could to make sure that he succeeded. He didn’t graduate early. He didn’t graduate at the top, but it didn’t matter, because when it came to work, nobody was more willing to beat their knuckles bloody pounding the pavement than he was.

  He worked long, and he worked hard. And he had amassed a fortune for himself working at large corporations and major cities. Investing in start-ups that became wildly successful, funding businesses and increasing profits.

  And then one day he had stood in that corner office and looked out over Manhattan, in a position in life a boy from the sticks certainly had never imagined he’d be in, wearing a custom suit and honest-to-God Italian leather shoes and he had felt...

  Exactly the same as he had twelve years earlier.

  He didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel different. He didn’t feel healed. He didn’t feel any different from the boy who’d been stuck in his home. Afraid to make too much noise. Afraid to breathe wrong in case it brought his mother’s wrath down on him.

  That was when he had gotten word that his grandfather had died and left him a quarter of a ranch in Copper Ridge, Oregon, and he had thought it m
ight be time for him to go back.

  For him to go back for the first time since Jamison Leighton had sent him packing with a bribe.

  There was more here. More here than in that corner office. He wasn’t exactly sure he liked it or wanted it, but at least it offered a change of pace.

  And his brothers.

  He hadn’t grown up with Finn or Cain, and living with them, getting to know them had been... Well, there was something in that. Being around Alex again, the brother he had been raised with... That was always a little bit of a mixed blessing.

  Not because he didn’t love Alex, he did. Alex’s happiness was the proof that he had done something right early in his life.

  Their life growing up had been awful. But Alex’s had been a little less awful. Because Liam had been the lightning rod. And Alex had never even known it.

  So yeah, he felt like he was on the right track here. And after all that emptiness, that seemed like a pretty good deal to him.

  “Fine,” Liam said, “using my money won’t be the plan. But if loans or anything like that hold stuff up, let me do it.”

  Finn opened his mouth to argue.

  “Let me, Finn,” Liam said. “Let me give you this.”

  His brothers seemed to give with themselves all the damn time and he couldn’t figure out quite how they did it. He knew how to create things. Knew how to make money. And he knew how to give money.

  That was what he did.

  “Fine,” Finn relented. “If we get into dire circumstances, I’ll let you throw some cash at it.”

  “What’s the point in having a rich brother if you don’t use him?”

  “I do use you. For hard labor. Which frankly I find more useful, Liam. I can earn more cash. I can’t grow another pair of hands.”

  Liam shrugged, then started to walk toward the stairs. “Liam!” Lane called after him. “Clean up the mud! I’m trying to plan a Thanksgiving menu and you’re tracking mud all over the place.” She whirled around and went back into the kitchen, leaving a trail of sulfur in her wake.

  “Boy,” Liam said, “she’s about as fun as a bee-stung wolverine at the moment, isn’t she?”

  Which wasn’t fair. He knew that Lane was putting a lot into her and Finn’s first married Thanksgiving. Even though he was a jackass, Liam understood that.

  “Hormones,” Finn said.

  Liam’s eyebrows shot up. “Hormones?”

  A slow smile spread over his brother’s face. “She’s pregnant.”

  “Holy hell.”

  Finn laughed. “Definitely putting that one in the baby book. What your uncle Liam said when we told him you were going to be born.”

  “Why haven’t you told us yet?”

  “Lane wanted to wait. You know, something about the second trimester, or something. But it’s close. And, I don’t want to keep it a secret anymore. So, congratulations. You’re going to be an uncle.”

  “I’m already an uncle,” Liam said. “It’s just that my niece is almost an adult.”

  “I wonder what Violet is going to think,” Finn said with a grin.

  “A baby cousin might be something she can’t play it cool about.” Cain’s daughter was in the throes of teenage snark and angst, so it was difficult to guess how she’d react to much of anything.

  As far as Liam went, he was happy for his brother. But it kind of underscored the fact that everyone around him was living in a completely different phase of life than him. A different phase of life than he was ever going to live. Marriage. Family. Babies. None of it was his cup of tea. Not at all. All that happy family stuff was just a load of crap as far as he was concerned.

  Yeah, he knew some people were happy. But it had never been him. And he didn’t know why he would sign on to that kind of thing. Not again. He had grown up in a house with a mom and dad. They had been in love.

  And it had been awful. Vile and toxic.

  Full of drama and cheating. His mother taking her anger out on her sons—most especially him—and eventually the inevitable meltdown of the relationship.

  Still, he hoped that Lane and Finn would be happy. They would keep being happy. As far as he could see, they were. And it wasn’t some kind of Leave It to Beaver fantasy. Where everybody acted like they had a lobotomy just because they had fallen in love and gotten married. No. They were real people still. They were just people who seemed committed to making a life with each other. People who really loved each other. But Finn and Lane had been best friends before they had fallen in love.

  As for his brother Cain and his wife, Alison, it was a second marriage for both of them. They both knew what hadn’t worked the first time around, and they seemed settled this time. He figured if you were going to do it again, you had to be pretty damn sure.

  And Alex... The youngest of the Donnellys had recently gotten engaged to his fiancée, Clara. And Liam thought that Clara particularly was a little young for all of that. But like Alex always was, he was happy. Reckless and certain. Liam was glad that Alex had that certainty even after their growing-up years.

  Liam didn’t. More than that, he didn’t want it.

  It didn’t mean that watching all this happiness unfold in front of him didn’t make his chest feel weird though. Didn’t make him feel like he was in a strange space of longing for something he knew wouldn’t actually suit him. Like being allergic to peanuts and wanting a Snickers bar.

  It was a reminder. A reminder of that small, bright window of time where he had thought that maybe, just maybe, he could have something more. More than what he had ever imagined. More than what he had thought someone like him could ever hope to touch.

  That summer with Sabrina.

  He’d made the right choice then. He was confident in that.

  And he didn’t like dredging up all this old crap.

  But, since he was trying out having a family rather than existing in isolation, he figured he had better smile and say something that wasn’t profane. “Congratulations,” he said finally. “That’s great.”

  “I’m not sure you really think it’s great,” Finn said, a slight smile on his lips.

  “It’s great for you,” Liam said. “I want a wife and kids like I want a suspicious rash.”

  “Given your behavior, the suspicious rash is a lot more likely.”

  Liam flipped his brother off, then continued up the stairs. He needed something. To change before he went outside and worked. To take a hot shower. Something. Something to keep his head on straight. He had to call Gage West and figure out when he and Sabrina could meet up to deal with that real estate stuff. Which meant seeing Sabrina again.

  He had gone thirteen years without seeing her, and it had worked out pretty well. Seeing her, he supposed, didn’t really have to mean a damn thing.

  If he kept repeating that to himself, he might just start believing it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SABRINA WAS SURE that Liam was out to ruin her life. Because not only did he manage to make their appointment to go look at the building the very next day after she had already shared the same airspace as him, but he made the appointment at 7:00 a.m.

  Scowling, she charged into The Grind and shook the dampness from her boots, curling her toes and trying to stave off the chill. The coffeehouse always had a warmth about it, with its exposed brick walls and rough-hewn floor. It created a stark contrast with the stormy gray outside.

  There was a line, because it was six forty-five, and she supposed that everybody was rushing to get their caffeine fix before they went about their days. Though there were also some retirees sitting, using social media on their tablets or playing crosswords in the newspaper. As if they had all the time in the world. Sabrina supposed they did.

  There were a few people that look like they might be students, or graphic design types,
wearing flannel with messy buns tied high on top of their heads. Men and women alike.

  She envied them. She wanted to sit in the coffee shop all morning by herself on her computer. She did not want to contend with reality. She did not want to deal with Liam Donnelly, and yet, here she was about to be dealing with Liam Donnelly at far-too-early-o’clock.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and hopped in place, distracting herself with her movements more than actually needing the warmth.

  When she reached the front of the line, the girl behind the register smiled. Sabrina didn’t think she possessed the ability to smile at the moment. “Just a coffee,” she said. She was tempted to add that the girl was welcome to hold the cheer. “Room for cream.” She made no comments about cheer.

  That was the worst part about living in a small town. You really couldn’t let yourself have a bad day. Because if you did, inevitably the person whose head you bit off today was the daughter of someone you needed to approve a permit tomorrow. Or the person writing up your bank loan.

  Or just uncomfortably, someone you had to see day in and day out forever after and pretend that you never had a tantrum wherein you acted like a petty child that one time.

  Small-town politics were a thing. A thing that left very little room for cranky faces and sharp remarks.

  Though she was ever grateful for the etiquette that allowed two people to ignore each other as long as they could successfully not make eye contact. The tacit understanding that you could both pretend you hadn’t seen each other so that you could get on with your day.

  That brought to mind the shock of running into Liam. That first time. They had definitely made eye contact. There was no way she could pretend she hadn’t seen him. And so she had fled Ace’s bar like a scalded cat.

  Her pride had yet to recover from that. Because she had some difficulty explaining it the next day to her sister-in-law.