Cowboy Up

by Stacy Finz

  “Never married. The girl’s mother died last week. Stage four breast cancer.”

  “That’s awful.” It made Aubrey realize her problems were minimal in the grand scheme of things. “No wonder Cash seems so depressed.”

  Jace shook his head. “It isn’t like that. He barely knew her and only found out he had a twelve-year-old a couple of weeks ago. But that’s his story to tell, not mine.”

  Aubrey was dying of curiosity, but she knew better than to probe. When Jace was keeping someone’s confidence, he was locked up tighter than a vault. Unlike the rest of this town, he didn’t gossip or give away secrets, not even to her, and she was one of his best friends. Aubrey supposed he’d only told her about Cash because it was common knowledge and she was out of the loop these days.

  “You see Brett?” he asked, and they exchanged a glance.

  “On my way in. He looked chipper.” Her lips pressed together in a slight grimace.

  Jace rubbed the back of his neck and let out a long breath. “Ironic, but he’s trying for Jill’s sake.” He stared out the window, disappearing for a while. Jace, Brett, and Mitch had been best friends since elementary school. She’d only seen Jace cry twice in her life: the day his ex-wife failed to show up for their six-year-old’s birthday party and the day Brett Tucker came home from Afghanistan a different man than when he’d left.

  She waved her hand in front of his face. “Earth to Jace.”

  “Sorry.” He took a sip of his coffee. “What are you planning for the day?”

  “I’ve got to finish emptying out my desk, then maybe I’ll brush up my résumé. I don’t know if I can scrounge up enough work going solo around here.” Working for a developer was the way to go in her line of business and Reynolds Construction was the only game in town. “It certainly doesn’t help that Mitch is bad-mouthing me to everyone.” She slid a glance at Laney.

  “The best defense is a good offense.”

  She let out a mirthless laugh. “I guess so. You know what’s weird?” Her sandwich and drink came, and she waited for the waitress to leave before she continued. “I feel like a thousand pounds have been lifted from my shoulders. The wedding, the house, Mitch…I’m not even a little sad, and just a few weeks ago I was about to marry the guy. What does that say about me?”

  “It says it wasn’t the real deal.” Jace snatched a fry from her plate.

  Then why had she stayed? She’d always thought of herself as a romantic, someone who reached for the stars. Yet with Mitch, she’d grown complacent, or perhaps she’d simply gone along with what everyone else had expected of her. Even her mother was disappointed that Aubrey wouldn’t be Mitch’s bride, despite what he’d done.

  “I guess not,” she said absently. “Thanks for letting me stay at the ranch. You don’t have to if you think it’ll affect the election or the boys. I’d hate for any of the rumors to reach Grady and Travis.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He waved her off. “It’ll blow over.”

  “What about Mitch and your friendship?” It hurt to know this had caused a rift between them.

  “I’ll deal with him in my own time and in my own way.”

  “Will you tell him you know what’s going on, that I told you I caught them together?” She took a bite of her sandwich, even though she’d lost her appetite.

  “He knows I know. Why else do you think he dragged me into this with a bullshit story of how I stole you from him?” Jace rolled his eyes. “Back to the best defense is a good offense.”

  “I wouldn’t have told you if I hadn’t needed a place to live. You know I’d never want to come between the two of you.”

  “I’m glad you told me. Like I said, the gossip will eventually blow over. As soon as Cash’s daughter shows up, everyone will have something new to talk and speculate about.”

  Indeed they would. Cash wasn’t a Dry Creek native, but his grandfather had been a beloved fixture here. By association that made Cash a local, even if he’d only started living here full-time after Jasper Dalton died.

  “What’s the girl’s name?” Aubrey asked and sipped her iced tea.

  “Ellie. I think it’s short for Eleanor. She lives in Boston.”

  “Didn’t you say Cash is a San Francisco FBI agent?” She wondered if he was taking time off because of Ellie.

  “Former FBI agent.” Jace said it in a way that implied there was a bigger story there. Aubrey waited for more, but he clammed up like he always did. Sometimes she wondered if he did it on purpose. Dangle something juicy, then pull it away.

  Jace checked his watch and frowned. “Shit,” he muttered. “I’ve got to be somewhere.” He pushed away his coffee mug, pulled a few bills out of his pocket, and laid them on the table. “See you later.”

  After lunch she paid her bill at the ancient cash register. Laney didn’t even bother to look up. Jimmy Ray waved from the kitchen, but he didn’t come out to say hello like he usually did. Yep, they were definitely on Team Mitch.

  She opened the door and immediately missed the coffee shop’s cool air. July in Dry Creek. Aubrey walked up the hill to Main Street. Despite being the central artery through town, most of Dry Creek’s businesses were on Mother Lode Road, like the coffee shop. The City Hall complex, a gas station, the post office, the high school, the Greyhound bus terminal, a storage company, and Reynolds Construction made up the bulk of Main Street, just a two-lane road that bisected miles of pasture and rolling hills.

  She crossed at the light and cut through her former employer’s small parking lot and let herself in through the double front doors. Mercedes was on the phone at the reception desk, and Aubrey tried to sneak by. Mitch’s executive assistant—Mercedes didn’t like being called a secretary—ruled Reynolds Construction like a dictator, chopping off heads for infractions as minor as forgetting to wash out the coffeepot.

  “Mitch changed the lock on your office,” Mercedes called as soon as Aubrey snuck around the corner. There was a smile in her voice, Aubrey could hear it.

  Shit.

  She stopped, backed up, and put her hands on her hips. “Come on, Mercedes, let me in. I know you have the key.”

  “No can do,” Mercedes said in a singsong voice that told Aubrey just how delighted she was to be Mitch’s gatekeeper.

  “Oh for God’s sake. It’s my personal property.” Paint, wood, and wallpaper samples she’d purchased with her own money. Magazines and books she’d collected since college. Furniture catalogs from all the major distributors. And her family pictures.

  “Talk to Mitch.”

  “Come on, Mercedes. He’s being vindictive.”

  “Can you blame him?” Mercedes stood up. Only a skosh over five feet, she had the bearing of an NBA center. “You broke his heart, and with his best friend no less. And to add insult to injury, you stuck him with the wedding bills.”

  “Don’t drag Jace into this. He had nothing to do with it. Now let me in my office before I call my lawyer.” She was bluffing, because she didn’t have a lawyer.

  “I’m not getting involved. It’s between the two of you.”

  Not getting involved, yeah, that was rich. “Come on, Mercedes, just let me in. It’ll take less than thirty minutes.”

  “I won’t go against Mitch’s wishes. He’s a good boy and you’re a selfish girl. And Jace…I thought better of him.”

  “Jace and I are not an item. I don’t care what Mitch told you, it’s not true.”

  Mercedes rolled her eyes and walked away.

  “Dammit, Mercedes!” Aubrey called to her back.

  “Don’t make me call security, Aubrey.”

  “You’re actually kicking me out of the building? The same building where I’ve worked for ten years?”

  Mercedes turned around, looked down her stubby little nose at Aubrey, and lifted a perfectly penciled eyebrow. “You bet your ass I am.”

>   Aubrey folded her arms over her chest. “You can forget me getting you that coffee table at cost.” She rushed past Mercedes and let herself out the door before the witch sicced Leroy on her. The big lug was Mitch’s cousin and was what passed for security around here.

  She pretended to walk to her car, then cut around the side of the building. It was a two-story, circa 2010 stucco number with a flat roof. The window to her office was on the first floor, but still too high to reach from the ground. She looked around for something to climb on, remembered she had a folding lawn chair in the trunk, and headed back to her Volvo. A few minutes later, she pulled around the corner, parked her station wagon out of sight behind a dumpster, and unearthed the chair from under a stack of blueprints.

  The nylon webbing was as old as Mercedes, and when Aubrey stood on it, her right boot went through the seat, nearly taking the rest of her with it. She caught her balance with her left foot and grabbed the window ledge to hold herself up. One-handed, she managed to pry out the screen and immediately went to work on the window. Thank goodness no one bothered with locks in Dry Creek. But when she tried to slide the window open, the damned thing wouldn’t budge. Finally, after tugging with all her might, she got it to move a smidge. But not enough to wedge her arm, let alone her butt, through the crack.

  “Dammit!” What she wouldn’t do for a can of WD-40?

  With her shoulder shoved into the sash pull, she pushed as hard as she could, feeling it give a little bit more. “Come on, you son of a gun.”

  The heat was stifling and Aubrey could feel a pool of perspiration collect in the bridge of her bra. At least her cowboy hat shielded the sun from her head and face.

  “Come on, come on, come on.” This time she jiggled the handle as she gave it another shove. Slowly, it began to move. First, just enough to slip her arm through, then wide enough to fit her head.

  A truck whizzed by on Tank Farm Way and she held her breath, worried that someone had seen her trying to jimmy the window. Burglary was all she needed to add to her résumé after “cheating” and “breaking poor Mitchell Reynolds’s heart.” She laughed to herself, because Mitch didn’t have a heart. What he had was an overactive penis.

  She waited a beat, listening for sirens, hoping one of Jace’s deputies didn’t show up. But all she heard was a tractor in the distance and a few cars on Main Street. Relieved, she resumed her efforts. Whatever had jammed the bottom rails must’ve come loose because all of a sudden, the window slid open as slippery as the roads in winter.

  Aubrey tossed her hat on the ground, grabbed hold of the sill, and hoisted the top half of her body through the window. Flopping around, trying to wiggle the rest of the way through, her skirt hiked up, giving anyone who drove by a nice view of her ass.

  She reached back to quickly pull it down when a deep voice—one she recognized—said, “How’s it going up there?”

  Aubrey squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten. “Uh…good.”

  “Seems like you’re stuck.”

  “No.” Her voice squeaked and she desperately searched for an excuse why she was dangling out of a window but came up empty. “Just hanging out.”

  “Hanging out, huh? Last I looked, breaking and entering was illegal.” Spoken like a true FBI agent. Former FBI agent, Aubrey reminded herself. “You sure you haven’t been drinking?”

  He wasn’t going to let that go.

  “Quite sure,” she said. “This used to be my office. I’m just getting a few sundries, that’s all.” She reached behind her to smooth down her skirt, hoping beyond hope that everything back there was covered.

  “I guess this is easier than using the front door.”

  She couldn’t see him but was pretty sure he was laughing at her. Funny, because she’d surmised that Cash Dalton didn’t have much of a sense of humor. She supposed they were even now. Well, not quite even. His butt was a heck of a lot better than hers, and she’d seen much more than his ass.

  “All right, if you must know, Mercedes wouldn’t let me in.” The news of her being booted from her old office would be broadcast all over town by tomorrow anyway.

  “Ah,” was all he said.

  “Give me a hand, would you?” She wanted him to boost her the rest of the way in.

  “And be an accessory to a crime? I don’t think so.” He was still laughing, she could hear it in his voice.

  “Fine, then go about your merry way.” She wondered what he was doing in town in the first place, hermit that he was.

  But instead of taking off, he hoisted her up by her legs. “Be careful.”

  “Just a few more inches.” Okay, that sounded weird. Oh for crying out loud, get your mind out of the gutter, Aubrey.

  He gave her another push, and as soon as her hands touched the carpet, she was able to flop her legs over the side. Thank goodness for men over six feet tall. She scrambled to her feet and went back to the window to find him still standing there. “Thanks,” she called.

  “How do you plan to get back down?”

  She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’ll figure something out.” She waited for him to walk away, but he remained as if he were contemplating what to do next.

  “I’m only taking what’s mine,” she assured him.

  He deliberated, then walked closer to the window. “Throw the stuff down to me.”

  She nodded, because she didn’t know how she’d do it on her own.

  “But hurry. I don’t have all day.”

  She dashed to her credenza, grabbed an armful of catalogs, found a few empty storage boxes in the closet, and packed them with as many belongings as would fit, then tossed them down to Cash. For the next twenty minutes, she ran around the office like a chicken with its head chopped off, collecting her things. Paint chips, wallpaper books, wood samples, fabric swatches, tile boards, and anything else she could stuff in a file box or carton. The rest she’d have to come back for later, after she had her come-to-Jesus talk with Mitch. She loaded up her family pictures, wrapped them up in an old pashmina she’d found on the coatrack, took one last look around the room, and bid the place goodbye.

  “This one is kind of fragile,” she called to Cash, who stood below with a scowl on his face. She noted that despite his surliness, he’d organized all her worldly possessions in a neat pile on the ground.

  “Just throw it down.”

  “Be careful, they’re glass.” She tossed the pouch over the ledge and he caught it with ease. The tricky part would be getting out the window without mooning him. This time, she planned to go headfirst.

  She leaned out, hung her head and shoulders over the ledge, and lost her nerve. Time to go to plan B. Aubrey pulled back inside and straddled the ledge with one leg, silently berating herself for not wearing jeans.

  Cash tilted his head up. “You planning to fly?”

  “I’m just assessing the situation. Jeez.”

  “Swing your other leg over and jump. I’ll catch you.”

  She wasn’t a bundle of picture frames and outweighed the carton of tile boards she’d dropped down by at least a hundred pounds. “That’s okay. I can do it.”

  “By using your skirt as a parachute? I don’t think so. Just jump.”

  Jace’s cousin was awfully bossy, but Aubrey was running out of options. So, she flipped her other leg over the windowsill and perched precariously on the ledge. “You sure?” It wasn’t all that far down but enough to get injured if he didn’t catch her.

  He held his arms out and motioned impatiently with his hands for her to jump.

  “Just give me a second.” She held her breath and slowly lowered herself, using her forearms as leverage on the sill.

  Impatient, Cash reached up, hooked his arms around her waist, and pulled her feet first to the ground. He let go too fast and she nearly lost her balance. After all that, wouldn’t it be just like her to fall on her ass?


  “You good now?” he asked, and she gazed around to see if anyone had witnessed her cat burglar routine.

  “Uh-huh. Thanks for the help.” She wiped down the back of her dress and felt around to make sure everything was covered. “What brings you to town?” Inane question, but he didn’t seem to leave Dry Creek Ranch too often, and she felt like she ought to at least make conversation with him after he’d gone out of his way to help her.

  He nudged his head at the storage company at the intersection of Main and Tank Farm. “I was headed to my unit to get a few things when I saw a suspicious woman climbing the building. Where’s your car?”

  “Behind the dumpster.”

  He hefted one of the boxes onto his shoulder and started for the Volvo. “This is really your stuff, right? You’re not stealing from your ex?”

  She shot him a look. “Of course they’re mine; tools of the trade.” Items she’d need when she found a new job, one hopefully as lucrative as working for Reynolds Construction had been.

  Mitch’s company developed ritzy planned communities across Northern California. Aubrey had been responsible for staging models and ultimately working with buyers on picking out everything from their flooring and wall colors to their countertops and bathroom fixtures. Besides being a nice living, Aubrey had enjoyed the work immensely.

  She lifted the tailgate, and Cash made room in the trunk for the box. Aubrey considered asking about his daughter but wasn’t sure whether Jace had breached a confidence by telling her or not. Besides, Cash didn’t seem like a sharer. He’d said more to her today then he had in the entire two weeks they’d lived next door to each other. And, still, it wasn’t much.

  He made a couple of trips back and forth, loading the car with her stuff, occasionally grunting something unintelligible, which Aubrey suspected had to do with the lack of space in her Volvo. Before Mitch canned her, her car had been a mobile office and was still filled with samples and paperwork from various jobs. She hadn’t bothered to clean out the detritus, focusing on her living situation instead. For a week after the breakup she’d couch surfed. When Jace offered her the cabin, her brother drove from Seattle and helped her move out of Mitch’s to Dry Creek Ranch.