Dearest Cowboys Box Set

by Mia Brown

  Fat chance of that happening. When he looked at me, all he saw was a stuck-up city girl. It was plain on his face.

  After he greeted me and we made small talk, I took off my glasses and stuck them on my head. I turned to my trunk to get my bag and tried to wrestle it out. It was heavy and banged against my legs when I pulled it free from the car.

  “Let me take that for you,” Ace said.

  “How nice,” I said, and it came across a little sarcastic. I hadn’t meant it that way. Rugged good looks and manners, I thought. What a combination. If Ace heard the sarcasm, he didn’t respond to it. Maybe he didn’t care about what I thought. Why would he?

  “Come on,” he said, heading away from the main house. I glanced at it. Where would he have me stay? I didn’t ask. Instead, I followed him, jogging a little in my shitty boots to catch up. I tried to lengthen my stride to match his; he was walking quite fast. A man on a mission.

  “How long was your drive?” he asked.

  “I took two days and I put in a lot of hours each time. It was a bit of a trek, but here I am.”

  Ace nodded. “You didn’t want to fly?”

  I shook my head. “I want to have wheels, so I don’t need to rely on anyone,” I said.

  Ace nodded. “You might not need it. I’m pretty sure you’ll have your hands full around the ranch. We work pretty hard and we don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

  I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have to defend myself. Instead, I was distracted by how close he was to me. His skin was shiny with sweat, and when the breeze picked up, I got a waft of his cologne, the smell of hay and sweat, and something else—something earthy and intoxicating. God, I had to keep my head straight if I was going to survive around this guy. I couldn’t afford to be head over heels for someone that made a point of sleeping with any woman that crossed his path. This was a job that I needed to keep if I wanted to stay away from my parents’ place.

  “So, how were things at home when you told your parents that you weren’t going to stay, after all?” Ace asked.

  Right. I had told him a bit about that in the bar that night. I had been angry, already a little tipsy, and I’d unpacked all my personal issues. Not that it had been much of a secret after the scene my parents had made after graduation, but a part of me wished now that Ace didn’t know anything about it.

  “They weren’t thrilled,” I said. “They didn’t have much to say, though.”

  That was a lie. My mom had a lot to say about it. She’d scolded me for choosing to work on a ranch, doing something so beneath me. She had introduced me to someone—a man that had a job in a high position in a firm in Cleveland—and I was pretty sure she wanted me to marry him. Not only because it would keep me there, but it would push me right where she needed me to be—wealthy and with someone who could carry on breeding wealthy babies with me.

  It wasn’t what I wanted. I wasn’t sure that this ranch was what I wanted, but being with Ace—chiseled, buff, and laid-back—was so much better than being with Harold Martin Princeton Jr. and his ideas of what a wife’s responsibilities were.

  “Here we go,” Ace said. We approached a building that looked a lot like a barn.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “The bunkhouse,” he said and stepped through wide, tall doors. Definitely a barn, at least in a past life. “You’ll stay here.”

  We walked into a large, open area, and I stopped and stared. The open space had been divided up by screens to create smaller cubicles. There were beds in each of them. On the other end of the area, I noticed a door that led into what looked like a bathroom. I was willing to bet it had a communal shower. And no gender separation, either.

  “How many people stay here?” I asked.

  “Right now, it will be only you. The few workers we have helping out now all stay in town and travel to the ranch early every morning.”

  Ace put my bag down on the floor. I was relieved to hear that I would be the only person staying here, but I couldn’t say I liked the place. It made me think of stalls for animals.

  “You can choose whichever bunk you like,” Ace said.

  How generous.

  “And through here,” he said, walking toward another door. “Is the kitchen. It has a fridge, microwave, and kettle, and you’re welcome to put some snacks in there, but main meals are served at the house. Join us for them.”

  I swallowed and nodded. I was struggling a little to take it all in.

  “You can charge your phone in here as well. Unfortunately, we don’t have outlets close to the beds.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “And those lockers over there are for your clothes.”

  He pointed to a wall covered with cabinet-like lockers. I didn’t have a lot of luggage—I never traveled with a lot of things—but I wondered how I would get the few things I did bring along into the small space I was allocated.

  When I looked at Ace, he was already looking at me.

  “You can use more than one of the lockers, seeing that you’re the only one here,” he said, as if he could read my mind. I wanted to ask why there weren’t any other workers staying here, why Ace had offered a ranch job to a woman that obviously had nothing to do with this kind of life. They couldn’t be in trouble if the clothes he’d worn on campus and the degree he’d studied were anything to go by. Why did the ranch need my help?

  I didn’t want to ask. Right now, I had to get through this without coming undone at the seams. Which I was on the verge of. But I wouldn’t lose it. Not now, not while Ace was watching. I had chosen to be here, and I would breathe through it.

  Surely, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. The bunkhouse wasn’t what I’d expected, but I’d made it happen at the university dorms before. It wasn’t quite the same thing. In fact, it wasn’t the same thing at all.

  “I have to get back,” Ace said. “I have to take care of a few things before supper time. Breakfast is at 7 tomorrow morning. Go to the main house when you’re ready. We’ll be expecting you.”

  I nodded. Ace looked at me for a moment like he wanted to say something, but turned around and walked away without saying anything more. When he was gone, I took a deep breath and blew it out, slowly.

  I was going to be fine, I told myself. This was like starting at college all over again. It was just a different lifestyle and a different routine to get used to. I had done it before to get away from my parents, and I could do it again. I had to keep my head in the game.

  But I could be a hard worker if I wanted to, and I was sure I could settle in here if I tried. Besides, with someone like Ace to stare at, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. I had to keep focusing on the good.

  And Ace was a lot of good to focus on.

  When I took my phone out of my bag, my battery was low, and I had two missed calls from my mom. I found my charger and walked to the kitchenette, plugging it into the plug behind the microwave. I didn’t return my mom’s calls. If I spoke to her now, she would hear in my voice that I wasn’t delighted, and she wouldn’t hesitate to rub it in my face. So, I texted her that I had arrived safely instead and plugged in my phone, leaving it on the microwave.

  I walked back to my bunk and dragged my bag to the lockers to unpack my clothes. Two lockers, I decided. A part of me was glad I was here. Ace was different than I’d thought he would be, and this was an answer. But a part of me kept asking what I had signed up for.

  Five

  Ace

  The next morning, I was loading the cart with Andrew. He’d run to the hardware store yesterday afternoon and purchased the materials we needed to fix the fence. We had to ride out while the morning was still cool. As soon as the temperature rose, it was harder to work, and I hated having to slave away in the scorching sun. The weather wasn’t so bad yet since we were only at the start of the season—but it was in the air, building.

  “Are we heading in for breakfast before we leave?” Andrew asked.

  I shook my head, carrying a roll of wir
e to the cart. “No, I want to get this done. We can eat later.”

  Andrew made a face. “If I knew you were going to be a slave driver, I wouldn’t have been so eager to have you back.”

  I flipped him off. “You asked. I want to get out there and get it done.”

  Andrew laughed. “You haven’t changed at all. I swear your goal in life is to be an asshole.”

  “It’s good to have goals,” I joked.

  Andrew and I laughed.

  The door to the bunkhouse creaked open, and I looked up. Vanessa stepped out. Her hair was piled on top of her head, and she wore shorts and a tank top. She still looked a lot more fashionable than the other women around the ranch did—like Alana, for instance—but she had lost those silly boots, and I had to admit that her legs were fantastic. She carried a cup with steam curling from the top.

  When she glanced in my direction, she smiled at me. I nodded a greeting toward her. She pointed toward the house, her head tipped slightly to the side. A question. I had told her she could go for breakfast. I nodded.

  She turned and walked toward the house.

  Two seconds ago, I had told Andrew that we would skip breakfast and head out to the fields to fix the fence. I wanted to change that, now. I wanted to go to the house and have breakfast with Vanessa, get another eyeful of that body of hers.

  I wasn’t sure if she knew how hot she looked. Did she walk around like that to get men to stare or was she just being herself? A part of me wanted the latter to be true because I hated women that wanted attention. They were so fucking needy. Another part of me pushed it all away. I wasn’t interested in women, not the way I used to be. If I was going to settle down, it had to be with someone worth my while.

  Was Vanessa worth my while? I barely knew her. I hadn’t brought her here for that, anyway. I’d brought her here to help my mom while she was sick. That was all that mattered.

  “Hey, Romeo,” Andrew said, punching me on the arm. “I’m talking to you.”

  “What?” I snapped, frowning. I shook my arm, but I didn’t rub it.

  “I asked if you left the toolbox in the shed.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Andrew chuckled. “Do you want to get it, or shall I leave you here to ogle while I run to the shed?”

  I scowled at him. “I wasn’t ogling.” I headed toward the shed. “I was just keeping an eye on her,” I said over my shoulder, walking away. Andrew’s laughter followed me. He was such a pain in the ass. I loved my brother, but we barely got along. We were only making it work now for the sake of my mom.

  When I returned with the toolbox, we got onto the front of the cart and Andrew clicked his tongue, kicking the horses into gear. We liked to do things by horseback. A lot of the other ranches were switching over to high-tech machinery and using trucks or tractors for their transport around the grounds, but we were old-school. I loved living the ranch life the way it used to be, and it was different being out there like this, in touch with nature.

  The ranch was doing well despite how few people we had around. It wasn’t a cash flow problem that had us working with so few people. We weren’t turning around as much as we used to so we couldn’t hire as many hands. It was a vicious cycle, but the main reason why we kept everyone at bay was so my mom could feel sick or tired without having to put on a face.

  She didn’t want the whole world to know that she wasn’t doing so well, and I respected that. She wanted to go out with the respect she’d earned—once upon a time she was the respectable wife of a well-to-do ranch owner. We wanted to help her uphold that image. When we died, we were alone, whether we were surrounded by loved ones or not. All we had left was what we had made of our lives, and I wanted her to be able to close her eyes and know that she had been strong, loved, and respected until the end.

  God, thinking about my mom reaching the end put me in a bad mood. I wasn’t going to tear up about it or anything. Men like me didn’t cry, after all. But it broke my heart to know that her book was closing before her story had finished.

  “What’s up with you?” Andrew asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Andrew shrugged. He didn’t believe me, but we weren’t close enough to confide in each other about shit like this.

  “The place looks good,” I said, changing the topic. The fields had all turned to green after the winter had tinted everything a wheat beige, and the ranch looked like a picture.

  “It’s going to be a good season,” Andrew said.

  I had grown up on this ranch. My first memories were of riding out with our dad, herding the cows or helping with the harvest before we could go swim in the lake over the hill.

  During the summers, Andrew and I used to spend days on end splashing in the water or fishing, spending time in the sun until we were tanned and filthy.

  Now we were all grown up, and my father had passed away. My mom wouldn’t be around for much longer, and somehow, as if nothing had happened, the ranch still looked the same.

  “Do you ever think about the future?” I asked Andrew.

  He glanced sideways at me. “What do you mean? I make sure that the future of the ranch is secure, if that’s what you mean.”

  I shook my head. “No, I mean your personal future. A wife and kids, that sort of thing.”

  Andrew snorted. “Who has time for a wife? Besides, have you seen the girls in town? They’re only good for a night.”

  I nodded. I had seen the girls in town, and I knew what my brother was saying. I had looked at women the same way for a long time. Losing our dad had been hard on us both, making us fuck around without getting attached because it was easier than getting hurt.

  It didn’t take a clinical psychologist to know that we were both doing everything we could not to get hurt again.

  But no matter how hard we tried, we were still going to end up hurt again. With my mom in the state she was, we were going to lose her, and no fucking around and staying detached from everyone else would stop that. It made me want to find someone to share the burden of life with, to find someone I could lean on and that I could be there for to lean on me.

  “Are you going to be here for the rest of your life?” I asked.

  “Why not?” Andrew asked. “Dad was.”

  And he was right. My dad had lived and died on this ranch. And Andrew would follow right in his footsteps. He had never doubted where he was headed. I had been the one to run away, to decide that the ranch life was not for me. I had wanted more. Andrew had embraced the memory of my dad and used the pain of losing him to fuel him.

  I had run away.

  Well, I was back now. Since I had realized that Mom was dying, and without her, the ranch was the only thing that defined me, everything had changed.

  We arrived at the broken fence and hopped off the cart, retrieving the materials to fix it.

  It wasn’t as easy as we’d thought. Cows had trampled it by the looks of things, and getting it untwisted and taken apart first was proving to be a headache.

  By the time we finally headed back to the ranch, it was almost lunchtime, and I was cranky. I had sliced myself with the wire cutters on my hip, and it was gushing blood. My hands were sore and riddled with splinters, and I hadn’t eaten all day.

  “That was shitty,” I said to Andrew. “It never takes that long.”

  “Maybe you were distracted by a hot blonde,” Andrew chirped. I wanted to get into a punching match with him.

  “Will you drop it already?” I snapped. Andrew made a face, laughing at me. My reaction had shown him that it was something he could ride me on, and now he wasn’t going to stop.

  Fucking great.

  When we arrived at the barn, I jumped off the cart.

  “You unload,” I said. “I need to get this cleaned.”

  I stormed off before Andrew could reply. I pulled my shirt off—it was drenched in blood at the hem—and pressed it against my hip to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t a very deep wound, it hurt too much for that, but it was blee
ding like a bitch nevertheless.

  I had learned to judge the severity of wounds by the pain that accompanied them. The more it hurt, the less it mattered. Paper cut will hurt more than a bone-deep gash at first. Once a severe wound numbed out, you knew you were in trouble.

  The stinging in my side reassured me that I wouldn’t need stitches.

  I marched into the bunkhouse. There was a first aid kit in the bathroom that I needed. Laughter came from the kitchenette and pulled me up short. Vanessa wasn’t alone in there.

  When I popped my head around the corner, my mom and Alana sat with Vanessa at the small table, and they were sipping steaming mugs of coffee and laughing about something. Vanessa looked at home with my mom, and somehow, she had ended up being friends with Alana. I didn’t know what I’d expected. I had suggested she work with them from the start—but somehow it caught me off guard.

  She looked comfortable and at home with them even though she had only met them this morning. As comfortable as I had been around them my whole life. I didn’t know why it made me jealous, but it did.

  Maybe it was because I wanted my mom all to myself, and judging by the way my mom was laughing with her, Vanessa had gotten right in there.

  I pushed the thought away. It didn’t matter that I had gone away to study for four years. I hadn’t known then that my mom would get sick. I couldn’t feel guilty about it. What mattered was that I had come back when I’d realized how serious it was. Nothing Vanessa did or I didn’t do could change it. I had done the right thing.

  It hadn’t been the wrong thing to leave, then, but it had been the right thing to come back.

  Six

  Vanessa

  Jaclyn may have been sick, but she was a woman with fire in her soul. I’d seen it the moment I’d walked into the main house this morning. She was in her early 50s, but when I’d first met her, I’d pegged her for older. Now that I’d gotten to know her a bit, she seemed so much younger to me. Everything about her was interesting and funny, and it wasn’t hard to see how much she loved the life she lived.