Dearest Cowboys Box Set

by Mia Brown

  “I see you’re available immediately,” Mr. Stanley said.

  I nodded. “I’m staying at the Roper Ranch now.”

  “Ah. That tells me everything I need to know about you.”

  I blinked at him.

  “They’re good people, great name around town. It will do you good to stick with them.”

  I smiled politely. I intended to do just that.

  “So, shall we look at Monday?” Mr. Stanley asked.

  “To start?”

  He nodded. “We want to get you fast-tracked, show you the ropes so that come the new month, you’re up and running.”

  I smiled. “Monday is perfect.”

  Mr. Stanley shook my hand when the interview was over, and I left the bank feeling wonderful. My future was bright, and I was going to be able to stay in Odessa. I could pay off my loans. My life would become amazing, and it would all be because of me and no one else.

  I got into the truck and put it in gear, pulling out of the parking space in front of the bank. When I pulled out, a woman walked behind me. She wore a jacket. It was heading toward summer, and it wasn’t cold at all. In fact, it had been hotter than usual for this time of year. She had a bob, and she looked familiar, but she turned her head the other way so that I couldn’t see her face. She crossed the road and disappeared into the coffee shop. I didn’t have a chance to see her again.

  I was getting to know the people around town lately. Maybe it was someone I had seen or run into before. I had started to make Odessa my home, getting to know more and more people, and I felt at home here. I had grown up in Cleveland, and I had always considered myself a city girl. I had liked being a nameless face, and I had never thought that I would end up on a ranch.

  But now that I was here, I enjoyed it. I quite liked it when people recognized me, and I recognized them. Where there were only so many people that I could know and that knew me. Being a part of a community that cared was so much better than being a nobody in a place where no one cared.

  The drive out to the ranch was beautiful. The trees were green, the landscape was rolling and inviting, and the air was fresh. My position in life was looking up. It was the same as my new job at the bank—entry-level but with room for growth. And just like my job, it was all I needed.

  Everything was working out. It had been the best move I could have made to take Ace up on his job offer to work on the ranch. I had thought he was nothing more than a womanizing asshole, I had thought that being on a ranch, doing something I thought I hated, would be the job from hell. I had taken it only to get away from my family.

  Instead, I had found my passion; I had fallen in love, and I had created a life of my own. The best had come of a terrible situation, and I was in a good place.

  I was in the best place, in fact.

  When I got back to the ranch, Ace was on his way out of the barn. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he looked buff and handsome as hell. His skin was a deep tan, not peeling anymore, only hot now. His dark hair was messy, and he grinned at me with an irresistible smile.

  I hopped out of the truck and walked to him.

  “How was it?” he asked. He put his arms around me, pulling me closer, and I got butterflies in my stomach. I always did when I was this close to him. I would never get used to it.

  “It was great,” I said. “They hired me. I start on Monday.”

  “That’s great news!” he said. “Well done. They would be fools not to hire you, of course.”

  He kissed me. It was a chaste peck on the mouth, nothing serious, but it made me shiver with the memory of his skin on mine, my body pinned beneath his.

  “It’s bottom-rung,” I said, trying to pull myself back to the conversation and not think about the epic sex I had with Ace. “But I can work my way up, and I can pay my loan, which is the most important.”

  Ace shook his head. “If you just told me, I would have been able to help you out, sweetheart,” he said.

  I frowned. “How?”

  “With money,” he said. “I can pay it all for you, and then it’s over and done, and you can be here all day.”

  I shook my head. “How can you say that?” I asked. “I don’t even know where we stand, and you want to pay for everything like you’re my sugar daddy or something?”

  Ace laughed. “What do you mean you don’t know where we stand?”

  “I don’t know if we’re together or what’s happening. You haven’t told me anything.”

  “Don’t be silly. Of course we’re together. How can you doubt that?”

  I tried to push him away, but he held onto me, and I had to admit that being in his arms felt good enough to not fight too hard to get away from him.

  “I can doubt because you haven’t asked me to be your girlfriend. And we haven’t talked about where we stand since—”

  “Since you told me you only slept with me because of the alcohol,” he finished the sentence for me, and I blushed. He was right, of course. It was the last time we had spoken about any of it, and it wasn’t like I had given him a lot of encouragement. But it had been like another lifetime then. So much had happened since, and I had learned that Ace wasn’t the womanizing dick that I had thought he was. Sure, that was in his past, and sometimes it made me unsure about where we would be heading, but in general, I had come to know the person he was underneath it all, and he was really a nice guy.

  But maybe it was partly my fault that nothing had been verbalized. Maybe I should have given him a better indication after my first and only communication to him had been that I wanted to pretend I had done something out of stupidity.

  God, that had been a dumb move, and it wasn’t like I had tried to fix it since then.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. That was the last time we’ve spoken about us. But I don’t do no communication well. I want to know where I stand. To hear it put into words.”

  Ace nodded, his dark eyes on me, and they were mesmerizing.

  “Okay, well, now you know where we stand. We’re together.”

  He pulled me in for a kiss, and I got lost in it for a moment. I came to my senses, though, and pushed against his chest. This time, he let me go.

  “Just like that?” I asked. “You’re not even asking if it’s what I want?”

  “Isn’t it?” he asked.

  I sighed. “It is, but that’s not the point.”

  Ace shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be so complicated. You like me; I like you. We want to be together, so we are.”

  I didn’t think he would understand what I meant. I sighed. How was I going to explain it to him? I didn’t think he thought the way I did. I didn’t want him to assume we were together. I wanted him to ask me so that I could say yes. Even though it was what I wanted all along.

  But maybe I wouldn’t win this one.

  “Fine,” I said and laughed. “Then we’re together.”

  Ace flashed a cocky grin at me and grabbed my face, kissing me hard. When he let me go, I was dizzy and flushed and happy.

  “Does that mean I can move out of the bunkhouse?” I asked.

  Ace nodded. “For sure. You can come to my room.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I laughed.

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  “We should go bed shopping,” Ace added.

  “What?” I laughed again. Ace was in a good mood today. I wasn’t sure what it was about, but I was glad. It had been hard right after Jaclyn had died, and a lot of us had been worried about him. But he seemed to have worked through whatever big stumbling block had been before him. And even though there was still a long road ahead—dealing with the ranch and handling her death—he would be alright, now.

  “Well,” Ace said. “The number of times either of us has nearly fallen off the bed is an indicator, I think. And, I’m moving into my mom’s room, so it would be good to have a fresh start.”

  I was surprised. It was a big step to move into her room, to take that role at the ranch. It was very f
inal, and it had seemed very quick for Ace to take that step. Again, I was happy for him. I nodded.

  “Alright, then,” I said. “We’ll make it happen.”

  Ace pulled me closer for one more kiss before he sighed.

  “I have work to do,” he said. “I’m going to love and leave you.”

  I nodded. “I have work as well. I’ll see you around.”

  He winked at me and walked off. I watched him saunter away as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and a small part of me felt warm and fuzzy. It wasn’t how I’d wanted it to happen, but we were together.

  Thirty-Three

  Ace

  When everything followed the normal routine, and it was business as usual, I didn’t notice my mom’s absence so much. Sure, we did more work around the ranch, and she wasn’t there to make breakfast or lunch or insist we drink water. She wasn’t there for motivation or a tidbit of wisdom, for sharing news and achievements. But we still carried on.

  It was when the bigger things happened that it really hit me. Like this morning, when the guys from the auction called for us to enter the animals we were putting up for auction. I had never been a part of the process before, mainly because it had been my mother’s thing.

  This year, I had to do it. I had to tell them how many animals and all the particulars. I had to decide how we were going to go about it, and I had to make it happen. It wasn’t hard; it was just strange.

  And it made me miss my mom so much. I wanted to tell her that I had managed to do it all on my own, that I felt capable and grown-up because I had been pushed into something I hadn’t done before and succeeded. I wanted to share with her that I was now the proud half-owner of a ranch.

  But if she were here for me to share it all with, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Still, I wanted her to know that I was becoming the man she might have wanted me to be. The last couple of years I hadn’t been on that track. I had been heading in a different direction. The last few months with her had started me on the right track again, but this was different. This was with a goal. And I wanted so badly for her to know that.

  I was in the office. We had one, but my mom had barely used it, running the ranch from her kitchen table. The office was a great place to do it all, and I had decided we would use it. I fired up the computer to capture the information for the auctions; we would get a secretary of sorts for this later, I imagined—and noticed right away that the computer was in dire need of an upgrade. It was very slow, and I was sure there was better software out there.

  Seeing that I was planning to digitize everything, updating the computer was one of the first things that needed to happen.

  The first of many.

  I took out a notepad and a pen and listed a few things I could think of that needed upgrading. The last couple of years had been hard on my mom and Andrew because they’d had to get by without me—something I felt bad about now. My mom had also gotten slowly sicker, and it had become harder to keep up the pace. Which meant that only the necessary things had been taken care of, and the updates had fallen behind.

  She should have gotten someone else to help, but my mother wouldn’t have replaced me. I was both flattered by it and feeling guilty at the same time.

  When I was done with the list, I realized it was a lot more than I’d thought. And I’d only written down the first few things. There would be more, I was sure. The thought was daunting, and I was struggling a little to stay on top of things.

  When I was done with the admin, I headed out to find Lance. As the new foreman, there was a lot to discuss with him. I was happy about the choice to make him foreman, though. When I’d brought it up with Andrew, it had seemed like the most logical idea, something neither of us could believe we hadn’t thought about before.

  I couldn’t find Lance to discuss it in the bunkhouse, and when I returned to the house, a woman stood on the porch. It was the same woman I had seen in town after Andrew and I had visited the lawyer, wearing a jersey in the heat. Her body was shaped a little weirdly, too. When I came closer, she looked more and more familiar.

  “Can I help you?” I asked when I reached her.

  “Hello, Ace.”

  I looked at her, and slowly, pieces fell together. I knew her. I knew her quite well. I had slept with her. The only reason I hadn’t recognized her the other day was because she had been out of place in Odessa, not the normal setting for that face. What was her name again?

  “Lily?” I tried.

  She smiled. Right name, then. “I was worried you wouldn’t be here.”

  “No, I’m here,” I said. It was my home. “How did you find me?”

  “I looked you up,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

  The more she spoke, the more I remembered her. She had been at the university. She’d studied something else—I couldn’t remember what—and she’d been quite forward in her attempts to get in bed with me. The only reason I had slept with her was because I’d felt like getting laid, and she was willing. In hindsight, it sounded terrible. She had been one of the last girls I’d slept with.

  “Okay?” I said. I couldn’t imagine why she would be here. We had nothing in common. Unless she was looking for Vanessa. Hadn’t they been roommates or something? But she’d said she’d looked me up.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  Blood drained from my face. I felt a little dizzy, but that couldn’t be right. I was always responsible—it was something I prided myself on. Vanessa walked past and noticed me talking to Lily on the porch. She frowned and came closer. I willed her to walk away again. This was the last thing I needed her to hear. I couldn’t deal with this right now. There was no way I was the father.

  Vanessa stepped onto the porch just as Lily spoke again.

  “It’s yours,” Lily said. She put her hand on her stomach, and I noticed her belly. I realized now why she’d been wearing jackets. She’d been trying to hide it.

  “What’s this?” Vanessa asked.

  Lily turned. “Oh,” she said when she saw Vanessa.

  “Lily?” Vanessa asked. “What are you doing here?”

  I was gaping at Lily. Lily stared at Vanessa as if she didn’t know what to say. Vanessa looked down at Lily’s tummy and came to all the right conclusions by herself.

  “Are you being serious?” she asked me.

  “I just found out about this,” I said. “And it’s not mine.”

  “It is,” Lily said. “This is your baby, Ace. You can’t just deny it.”

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe. There was no fucking way this was happening. Vanessa looked like she was hanging between crying and blowing up. She was leaning more toward blowing up, from what I could tell. When she looked at me, I shook my head. This wasn’t happening.

  “I only slept with her once,” I said.

  Lily looked like she wanted to cry. “Once is all it takes, Ace. You should know that.”

  I groaned. “Yeah, because I go around thinking this one time I’m going to get you pregnant?” I was freaking out, and anger was the best way to go.

  “Let me get this straight,” Vanessa said. “You’re here because you’re pregnant with his child.”

  Lily nodded.

  “But he disagrees. Do you have any proof?”

  Lily looked offended. “Do you think I’m like that? That I wouldn’t know whose baby it is?”

  Vanessa sighed. “We were roommates for a short while. I’m pretty sure I got an idea of who you were.”

  “That’s not fair,” Lily said, and her voice was thin.

  “It’s not true,” I said again. “It’s not my baby.”

  “I don’t even want to hear your side right now,” Vanessa snapped. “How the hell am I supposed to deal with this?”

  I held up my hands. “If you want to be mad that she’s here, go ahead. But you can’t be mad at me. I didn’t do anything.”

  “You slept with her,” Vanessa snapped. She had a right to be upset. I would have been too.
But there was jealousy involved as well.

  “It was before you,” I said. “You know that.”

  Lily looked from me to Vanessa and back again. “Are you together?” she asked.

  Vanessa nodded. “Yeah, so you can imagine how wonderfully timed this is.”

  Lily looked at me, and she looked genuinely hurt. “You told me you didn’t date.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “But things change.”

  Lily looked closer and closer to tears, and I willed her not to cry. I couldn’t deal with a crying woman, much less a pregnant one. Vanessa didn’t look sympathetic at all. In fact, if I had to allocate an adjective, it would be “murderous.” I tried to figure out how I would feel about it and couldn’t.

  “When did you sleep with her?” Vanessa asked me.

  “It was the weekend before graduation,” I said.

  Vanessa glared at Lily. “The weekend you were supposedly visiting your gran?” she asked.

  Lily shrugged. “I lied to my parents. I had to lie to everyone else, too, so it made sense.”

  Vanessa shook her head. “How far along are you?”

  “Four months,” Lily said. Which would have made sense if it were true, but Lily looked like she was much further down the line. She looked like she was about to pop. She didn’t hide her belly for nothing, and I may not have known much about it all, but I knew women couldn’t get much bigger than she seemed to be.

  “I think you’re lying to me,” Vanessa said.

  “Are you a doctor?” Lily snapped. She was getting upset, but I had the feeling it was because she felt cornered. This wasn’t going in a good direction.

  Vanessa must have seen it, too, because she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Let’s all go inside,” she said. “It’s pointless to fight about it out here on the porch. I’ll make us some sweet tea, and we can talk this through.”