Cowboy Up

by Stacy Finz

  She responded with radio silence. So he watched over her until her breathing became even and her small back rose and fell with slumber. Watching her like that, so small and innocent, gripped him with emotion. And without thinking about it, he leaned over her and kissed the top of her head, whispering, “Night, Ellie.”

  Back in his room, he stared out the window into the darkness. Aubrey’s front porch light was on, and he wondered if she was still awake. Nah, not likely at two in the morning. But it would’ve been nice to have someone to talk to about Ellie, and Aubrey seemed to click with his daughter. And he seemed to click with Aubrey in an entirely different way, which, given his newfound circumstances, wasn’t good.

  It took him an hour of tossing and turning to finally fall asleep, only to have dawn creep through his shades. He considered turning over and going back to bed when he remembered he had a kid to feed breakfast. It struck him that Ellie changed everything. He was no longer a bachelor, free to roam. He had someone who was completely reliant on him. The weight of that revelation pressed heavy against his chest. He pushed back and got up to take a quick shower.

  In the kitchen, he found Sawyer pawing through his refrigerator.

  “Did you eat through Jace’s already?”

  “Nope, just seeing what you’ve got. A lot of healthy shit.”

  Cash put on a pot of coffee and grabbed two mugs from the cupboard. “How’s the book coming?”

  Sawyer let out a loud yawn. “It’s coming. I stayed up all night working on it.” He’d always been a night owl and yet he was here at the ass-crack of dawn. “How’s the kid doing?”

  Cash groaned. “She’s having trouble with the transition.”

  “Transition? It’s only been two days.”

  “A decade in preteen years.” Cash rubbed his hand down his unshaven face.

  “I guess. You try buying her off? That’s what my folks used to do with Angela.”

  Yeah, and look how well that turned out. “Anything new from that PI you hired?”

  “Nada.” Sawyer swiped a carton of milk from the fridge and poured himself a cup of coffee before the machine was finished brewing. “She’s like a ghost.”

  Or worse, she was dead. In this day and age, even people who intentionally tried to disappear had a hard time doing it without leaving some kind of bread crumbs. But Cash didn’t voice his thoughts. Sawyer knew his sister better than anyone, and it didn’t take a hardened journalist to know that Angela lived a high-risk lifestyle.

  “I miss her,” Sawyer said, surprising Cash because his cousin rarely talked about Angela.

  “We all do.” Cash poured his own cup and they stood against the counter, sipping coffee.

  Sawyer nudged his head in the direction of Ellie’s room. “She’s not up yet?”

  “Rough night. She cried most of it.”

  “Ah, crap. Poor kid. You got plans for her today?”

  “Aubrey’s coming over at ten to help decorate her room. From what I can tell, it’s going to involve a lot of pink and a lot of pillows.”

  Sawyer raised a brow. “Aubrey, huh?”

  “It was Jace’s idea. Ellie seems to like her.” More than she did him anyway.

  “Don’t act like it’s a hardship,” Sawyer said and lifted that brow again, this time suggestively.

  Cash shook his head. “Yeah, because I don’t have enough to deal with.”

  “She’s hot. Nothing wrong with looking.”

  “I’m not interested in looking at Aubrey McAllister.” It wasn’t altogether true, because he’d done plenty of looking, but that’s as far as it could go. With a twelve-year-old living under his roof, he wasn’t in the market for a woman. “A few weeks ago, she was engaged.”

  Sawyer shrugged. “So? She got herself unengaged, which means she’s available.” He grinned to drive home the point.

  Aubrey was his neighbor and Ellie could benefit from having a woman next door, considering the rest of Dry Creek Ranch was filled with testosterone. Cash didn’t want to screw that up by getting his dick involved. “Well, I’m not.”

  Sawyer held up his hands. “All right, no need to get defensive.”

  Cash heard running water in the bathroom. Ellie was up. “I’m making French toast for the kid. I’m assuming you want some.”

  “Your assumption is correct.” Sawyer made himself at home at the table Cash had pulled out of storage. “You got real maple syrup or that sugary shit?”

  Cash ignored him, got a loaf of bread out of the cupboard, and snatched the milk back from Sawyer. There were a dozen eggs from Jace’s chicken coop in the fridge.

  A few minutes later, Ellie wandered in, wearing the same sweater she’d slept in. The nasty thing needed a washing.

  “Hey, Ellie.” Sawyer pulled a chair out for her by the table. “Your old man’s making French toast.”

  “How many slices do you want?” Cash asked.

  “Two.” She took the seat Sawyer offered.

  Cash took some solace in the fact that she was eating regular meals and dipped the bread in batter, letting each slice soak long enough to get good and custardy. It was the way his mother made her French toast. “You want orange juice?”

  “Yes, please.” She wouldn’t make eye contact, but at least she was talking.

  “I hear you’re getting a bedroom redo.” Sawyer winked at her, then gazed around the kitchen. “The whole place could use a redo, if you ask me.”

  “No one did.” Cash brought Ellie her glass of juice and swatted the top of Sawyer’s head.

  “Hey,” he protested. “Where’s my juice?”

  “Get off your as—butt—and get it yourself.”

  Ellie giggled, seemed to remember she was supposed to be miserable, and abruptly stopped.

  “Don’t be afraid to laugh at Sawyer,” Cash told her. “We all do.”

  “How are you related to me again?” she asked Sawyer.

  “First cousin once removed. But you can just call me Uncle Sawyer.” He put her in a headlock and she giggled again. The sound of it did something to Cash’s insides.

  He’d just put a few of his French toast slices on the griddle when a pounding came from his front door. Both Sawyer and Ellie jerked their heads at the banging.

  “Police, open up!”

  Ellie’s eyes grew large as Cash went to the door and swung it open.

  A laughing Grady fell across the threshold, holding his belly. “Tricked you.”

  Travis followed, rolling his eyes. “I told him not to do it. He’s such a dork.”

  Cash grabbed Grady by his collar and threw him over his shoulder until the boy hung upside down. Grady howled with laughter.

  “Can Ellie come fishing with us?”

  “Where’s your babysitter?” Cash asked and put Grady down.

  “Dad has the day off,” Travis said. “He’s taking us to the lake and said Ellie could come too.”

  “Afterward we’re getting ice cream in Nevada City.” Grady wrapped himself around Sawyer like a monkey. “You want to come, Ellie?”

  “I guess. I’ve never fished before.” She turned to Travis. “Is it fun?”

  “Yep. Do you know how to swim, because we’re taking the boat out.”

  “I know how to swim.” Ellie looked at Cash, who returned to the stove to flip the French toast.

  She might’ve rejected him as her father, but she clearly knew he was in charge and wanted some kind of affirmation that it was okay for her to go. Cash knew Jace wouldn’t let anything happen to her, yet he felt oddly conflicted. “What about Aubrey…your bedroom?”

  “I’m not staying, so I’d rather fish.”

  Sawyer lips curved up. “Ah, let her go, Cash.” A lot of help he was.

  “All right,” Cash told Ellie, though he felt hesitant about it. It was only her third day here.
Then again, being with Travis and Grady, kids roughly her age, might make her feel more at home.

  Grady pumped his fist in the air. “Let’s roll.”

  “Ellie’s got to eat first.” He put plates in front of Ellie and Sawyer as well as a bottle of syrup. “You two hungry?”

  “We already ate,” Travis said, anxious to get started on their trip. Jace didn’t get a lot of weekdays off. As sheriff, he was always on call, even on the weekends and holidays.

  Ellie finished most of her French toast and ran off with the boys to the ranch house. As soon as they were halfway down the driveway, Cash called Jace. “You have an extra life jacket for Ellie?”

  “Travis’s old one. It should fit her.”

  “You’ll keep an eye on her?”

  “As if she were my own,” Jace said. “The boys will watch out for her too. Relax; she’ll be fine.”

  “Okay.” Cash supposed he was being overly cautious. But his last case had done more than screw with his livelihood; it had screwed with his head. Not a day went by when he didn’t see Casey Farmington’s dead eyes staring back at him.

  Sawyer cleared the table and was at the sink doing dishes when Cash got off the phone.

  “Woah, you’re actually doing dishes.” Cash snapped Sawyer’s leg with a dish towel. “I thought you had people for that.”

  “Yeah, you.” Sawyer moved away and waved his hand. “Be my guest.”

  Cash took over. “What are your plans today?”

  “Sleep, maybe head into town later to do a little writing at the coffee shop.”

  “The place even have Wi-Fi?”

  “I talked Jimmy Ray into getting it, told him it would increase business.”

  The old-timers and cowboys who ate at the coffee shop didn’t strike Cash as being too concerned about Wi-Fi, but perhaps he was wrong. “Has it?”

  “Yeah, it actually has. Ever since that Starbucks went in off the highway, Jimmy Ray has seen a slump. He’s hoping the free internet will make a difference.”

  The coffee shop and Jimmy Ray had been in Dry Creek for as long as Cash could remember. Their grandfather used to take them there for chicken-fried steak and biscuits and gravy, delicacies to a city boy who’d been raised by health-nut parents.

  “Progress in Dry Creek.” Cash grinned. “Who would’ve thought?”

  “It’s a good place, Cash, especially to raise a family.” Sawyer gave him a pointed look.

  Cash got the impression his cousin wanted to use the spread as his personal retreat. He’d taken one of the barns on the ranch, hired a fancy architect to turn it into a Manhattan-style loft, and despite Cash’s desire to sell, had begun construction. According to Jace, the project was costing Sawyer an arm and a leg.

  Well, Cash didn’t have that luxury.

  “I’m not saying it’s not. Like you and Jace, I love Dry Creek; always have. But it’s impractical to sit on five hundred acres of real estate and continue to pay property taxes when we can’t afford to do anything with the land.”

  “Jace wants to grow the cattle operation.”

  “Cattle operation?” Cash had to keep from laughing. “Jace runs sixty head. That’s a petting zoo, not an operation.”

  Cash knew Jace sold his calves at market for a tidy profit, but at that scale it was just enough to keep his breeding herd fed and to afford a few splurges, like vacations and minibikes for his boys.

  “We’ll add to it,” Sawyer said.

  “Yeah, and who’s going to oversee a working ranch? Jace has a full-time job as sheriff and is a single parent, and you travel more often than Southwest Airlines.”

  “Yep,” Sawyer said and locked eyes on Cash. “I guess that leaves you.”

  “Uh-uh, not happening.” Minus Cash’s summers on Dry Creek Ranch, being an FBI agent was all he’d ever known.

  Cash’s own father had left the day after graduation and had gone straight into the San Francisco Police Academy. None of Grandpa’s sons had been interested in ranching, except maybe Jace’s dad. He, along with Jace’s mom and baby brother, had been killed in an auto wreck more than thirty years ago. None of the Daltons had ever fully recovered from the tragedy. Even though Cash had been a little boy at the time, he’d never forgotten the pall that hung over his grandparents’ house in those years following the accident.

  “Why not? From where I’m sitting, you’re in need of a job.”

  That was the truth. Instead of searching for one, Cash had whiled away the last four months drinking, dwelling on Casey Farmington and how he could’ve prevented her death, and mourning Grandpa Dalton. Then, two weeks ago, came the out-of-the-blue call about Ellie. Sometime soon, he’d have to knuckle down and get serious about finding himself a new career because his savings would only hold him so long. But ranching?

  “First off, I don’t know shit about the beef industry, and even if I did, we don’t have the kind of capital to start a cow-calf operation that would support the three of us and this ranch, which, if you haven’t noticed, needs a good deal of work. Expensive work.”

  “It’s what Grandpa would’ve wanted.”

  It was the second time Sawyer had thrown around their grandfather’s so-called wishes. “You think he wanted to saddle us with a bunch of debt, huh?” Cash regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. They were harsh and uncalled for. The only thing Jasper Dalton had ever wanted for his grandkids was happiness. And to Jasper, Dry Creek Ranch was the essence of happiness.

  “We can’t do anything without Angie’s permission,” Sawyer said. “She’s on the deed just like the rest of us.”

  Cash didn’t respond. They both knew that if, God willing, Angela was still alive, she didn’t want a run-down cattle ranch.

  “And Jace and the boys,” Sawyer continued. “This has always been their home, Cash.”

  Cash rubbed his hand down his face. “We’ve been over all this before. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. Let’s change the damn subject.” He didn’t want to fight about this now, not with everything else he had to juggle. They had time before the taxes were due; they’d figure it out then. Who knows, maybe they’d win the lottery or strike gold in the meantime.

  “Changing the subject works for me. What do you have planned today? Or should we stick to talking about the weather?”

  Cash wasn’t about to let Sawyer get a rise out of him. “As far as the weather, it’s hot. Just like it was yesterday.” He elbowed Sawyer in the ribs. “If it doesn’t hit a hundred, I might waterproof the shed.” Cash had tripped over one of the file boxes this morning.

  “You better make it critter proof too.” Sawyer glanced at his watch, then grabbed his sunglasses off the table. “I gotta roll; book deadline calls.”

  He watched through the window as his cousin hiked up the driveway. It was less than a mile walk to Sawyer’s loft. Cash shook his head. Who the hell builds a big-city loft in a barn in the middle of nowhere?

  He finished cleaning up the breakfast mess, which Sawyer had largely tended to, and went out onto the porch to assess the shed. The corrugated metal top was rusted and, in one corner, had folded up, leaving that side of the building completely unprotected. The damn thing needed a whole new roof.

  “Morning,” Aubrey called from across the footbridge while trying to balance a box filled with painting supplies, a big leather tote, and her handbag.

  Cash hopped down from the porch and took the crate and tote from her. His hands brushed hers and her cheeks turned an appealing shade of pink that set off an equally appealing pair of green eyes. A man could drown in those eyes. He forced himself to look away and get back to the purpose of why she’d come.

  “Do I need to go to town to buy paint?” He could get it at the hardware store while he was buying roofing materials.

  “There’s leftover primer and white paint at my cabin. I’d like to get a couple
of coats on the walls and give it time to dry before I tape. Then we can focus on getting the right pink. The wrong shade will make the room look like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.”

  “I guess that wouldn’t be good.”

  “Nope.” She shifted her purse to her other shoulder.

  “I can get going on the primer, but I’ll need a roller.”

  “I’ve got ’em over at my place, just couldn’t carry it all.”

  “As soon as I unload this”—Cash shook the crate—“I’ll go back and get it. Watch your step.” The porch stairs were in as bad a shape as the shed roof. He shifted the crate and tote to one arm and gave her a hand.

  “They’re a little rickety, aren’t they?”

  “Another thing I’ve got to fix.”

  She tilted her head and gave him a long appraisal.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just…never mind.” She held the screen door open for him and they went inside.

  Cash took the supplies to Ellie’s room and left them on her unmade bed. “You want coffee?” he asked Aubrey, who had followed him.

  “If you’ve got some already made.”

  “Come in the kitchen.” He checked to make sure the pot was still hot and poured her a cup. “Ellie went fishing with Jace and the boys.”

  “Oh.” She looked at him, paused, and turned pink again. “That’s nice…I mean for Jace, getting a day off. Good for him.”

  Cash enjoyed watching her try to gain her composure. Clearly, she was as affected by him as he was by her. Even if nothing could happen between them, that pull of attraction felt good.

  He pulled the milk out of the fridge and set it out for her, not knowing how she liked her coffee. “I’ll go get those rollers. Where are they?”

  “I’ll walk over with you.” She followed him out, sipping her coffee as they trekked across the bridge.

  She went up the porch stairs first and let him inside her cabin.

  “Whoa.” The house’s layout was identical to his, but that was where the similarities ended. The place looked like a model home. “Did you do all this?” he asked, giving himself an uninvited tour.