Cowboy Professor_A Western Romance Love Story

by Ivy Jordan

  She looked nearly like a skeleton sitting in the chair, not because of her weight, but because of the vacant expression on her face. I wondered for a moment if she was even there to see me, or if she was there to see somebody else. The last I’d heard, Stacy was in a rehabilitation center. She’d been arrested for drug use, and the judge offered her rehab instead of jail. It was incredibly rare for that to happen, and yet it tended to happen to her quite a lot—the family suspected it was because the Black family had friends in the local court office.

  I almost walked by her, but she looked up at me when I started to walk past. I couldn’t miss the piercing glare of those sharp brown eyes, set deep into her pale, freckled face.

  “Quinn, hey, are you busy?” she asked. Her voice was raspy, a smoker’s voice. She tended to smoke cigarettes when she wasn’t doing drugs. I wished sometimes that I could have her as a patient—she would be absolutely fascinating to evaluate, even if I knew that that wasn’t the best way to look at people, let alone my cousin who was dealing with very serious drug problems.

  “Hey, Stacy.” I didn’t want to ask right out of the gate whether she was supposed to be in rehab. “Did you need to talk?”

  “Yeah, kind of,” Stacy said. “If you’re not busy or whatever.” She raised an eyebrow like she was daring me to tell her that I didn’t have the time to see her. She had a way of being commanding without even making demands.

  She hadn’t lost her flippant way of talking. I turned around and led her back into my office, closing the door behind us. We were roughly the same age, but I somehow felt much older than she was—not superior, or smarter, but older, because I’d watched her grow up from an outsider’s viewpoint and heard everyone else talk about me like I was older than her. It was awkward for both of us to be so different in the family. We got compared and contrasted in ways that were unhealthy.

  “To answer your question, no, I’m in not in rehab anymore,” Stacy said.

  I didn’t remember asking, but I supposed that that wasn’t the point.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, um…. why not?”

  “Because rehab is bullshit,” she informed me. “All that the fuckin’ therapists do is bullshit. I don’t know if you do the same thing, but they all preach and preach about independence and how bad drugs are for you. Most of them haven’t even done drugs. They don’t get it. They don’t care. They’re just there to cash their checks.” She almost started to raise her voice. I’d heard this before from her, the notion that all doctors were businessmen and none of them cared, and that that was why she should be allowed to do drugs. In her mind, drugs weren’t nearly as bad as cheating people to profit off their health disorders—of course, she couldn’t see that she actually did have a health problem that those doctors could arguably help her with if she would let them.

  “Well, you don’t have to do drugs to know that they have a detrimental effect on the brain,” I reasoned. “The science behind it is solid enough to tell without actually doing them. And the rehabs here are some of the best in the state. I think those programs are really worth your time.”

  “Of course you do,” Stacy said. “You’re a part of the system.”

  “I’m not part of that system.” It was strange that she’d decided to come here just to nag on me about my job. “Did you tell Janet and Jesse that you’re back yet? They’re probably worried about you.” They worried endlessly when she was gone because sometimes, even when she got out of rehab, she wouldn’t tell anyone for weeks.

  “Janet and Jesse aren’t my fucking problem,” Stacy said. It made me cringe to hear her call them by their first names and speak as though they’d wronged her. I’d watched Janet and Jesse do everything in their power to keep her on the right track, and she’d spit in their faces time and time again. Still, they gave—I got the feeling they would never turn her away.

  “I can do what I want. And I found out that rehab is just where they put me so they don’t have to deal with me anymore.” Stacy sniffed when she talked, though she certainly didn’t speak with a defeated tone.

  I was beginning to remember why I refused to see Stacy. It had less to do with the fact that she was in the family and more to do with the fact that I couldn’t stand her attitude. Sawyer had dated this girl? I shuddered to think of the type of guy he was to put up with someone like this. It didn’t matter now, of course; he’d changed for the better. But I still had to wonder what he’d been like before he’d gotten his life in order.

  As if she could read my mind, Stacy said, “I heard Sawyer got back from wherever the fuck he was.”

  “He was in the SEALs, so he… he never really says where exactly he was,” I said. “Not sure if it’s confidential or if he just keeps it to himself.”

  “You spend a lot of time with him?” Stacy sounded almost sarcastically interested in hearing an answer.

  “Well, since he got back, I…” I trailed off. I didn’t want Stacy to go after Sawyer. If she thought that he was available, it would be all the more likely that she would do that. I needed to do something to protect him, or at least to sway her from finding him when he was vulnerable and bringing him back down with her.

  “We’ve been seeing each other,” I said finally. “Not anything really serious, but, you know.”

  Stacy snorted. “You’ve been sleeping with each other. Cute. I always knew you had some slut in you.”

  I didn’t appreciate the derogatory term, but Stacy didn’t look like she’d meant it as an insult. That, or she really didn’t care that she’d insulted me. I blinked, unsure how to respond.

  “I mean, I don’t care,” Stacy said. “I have a boyfriend and shit to do in town. Sawyer hasn’t talked to me in five fucking years. I don’t give a shit what or who he’s doing.”

  I colored a bit at the mention of ‘who’ he was doing, but I couldn’t help but find it reassuring that she had other goals in mind. Still, I didn’t understand why she’d turned up at my door. Perhaps to gather information—I also expected her to ask for money or a place to stay. She might not be able to go to her parents. I would rather give her money than have to watch those sweet people dole out another dollar to her nonsense. She’d stolen from them, too, and would probably do it again.

  “I’m glad you’re alright with it,” I said. It was for the best that we could be civil about this. I’d seen Stacy act as a vengeful ex before, and I wanted no part in that. I really didn’t want her on my bad side at all. We resented one another because of the positions that our family put us in, but there was a common enemy there that kept us from really and truly going after each other. We only argued at opportune moments, and even now, when the moment was opportune, we were speaking civilly.

  Still, there was the damned question of what she was doing in my office.

  “Of course,” Stacy said. “We’re all fuckin’ adults here.” She smiled, probably at the small innuendo she’d made, and then she stood up and walked out without another word. There was no malice in her voice, and she didn’t glare at me, and Stacy had always worn her emotions on her sleeve. I had no reason to think that she wouldn’t tell me if she were angry.

  So she wasn’t angry, then. That’s what she’d told me, that’s what her expressions led me to believe, and that’s what I had to infer based on all my previous experience with her. But I still couldn’t come up with a good reason for her to stop by, ask a few questions, and then leave. Not unless she was upset about something, and not unless she wanted something from me.

  Stacy only talked to people when she needed something from them. It was the reason her relationship with her parents was so toxic, and it was the reason why I was suspicious now. I even went through my office briefly to check up on all my belongings. She hadn’t taken anything, though.

  She’d told me she wasn’t angry. I wasn’t so sure that I could, all things considered, believe her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  SAWYER

  When I woke up on Saturday morning, I could smell breakf
ast—eggs, pancakes, bacon, all of it, hitting my nose in a fantastic moment. As I began to get dressed, I heard voices—women’s voices, chattering at a normal tone. I could make out my mother’s, and not quite the other. I took about fifteen minutes to shave before leaving my room and going towards the kitchen.

  The sight of Quinn, relaxed against the counter with a coffee mug in her hand, talking to my mother as she flipped pancakes caught me by surprise. I hadn’t been in touch with her since the last time we’d slept together, and though I certainly wasn’t hostile towards her, I had some things I was trying to work out on my own. Still, I could hardly duck back into my room and pretend I hadn’t seen her. She smiled at me and waved me over.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  I offered her a smile in return. Did my mother call her over? The more disturbing thought was that she’d hunted my address down to talk to me. Mom was making pancakes, though, not asking questions as I knew she would if Quinn had sought her out.

  “Sawyer, aren’t you going to say anything?” Mom squeezed my shoulder.

  “I…”

  “He smiled,” Quinn defended. She handed me a mug of coffee. “Is Sawyer always quiet?”

  “We thought he was mute for a time,” Mom said.

  “Mom,” I protested. I carried a platter of pancakes to the table and mentally prepared myself to be ruined for ever being taken seriously by Quinn again.

  “It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption,” Mom pointed out. “You didn’t say anything until you were almost two and a half. And then you spoke in complete sentences!”

  “What?” Quinn raised an eyebrow.

  I wondered if there was some sort of psychology that revealed itself to her when she learned that. If, by knowing that I was a late talker, she could deduce everything about my personality. I frowned and began to serve myself as everyone sat down.

  “It was the darndest thing!” Mom exclaimed. “One day we were all sitting around the table, and Sawyer looked up at me and said, ‘May I be excused?’”

  Quinn laughed as she served herself a pancake.

  “Scared the devil right out of me and his father both.” Mom shook her head.

  I didn’t see Dad around. I presumed he’d gone to work early. Being an accountant, I imagined, was a terribly high-stress job that demanded intense hours on the weekends—that or he was avoiding me again.

  There was a slight lull in conversation, so I thought to ask the question that bothered me most.

  “Quinn, what brings you by?” I asked. I tried not to be too point-blank about my questioning. I knew I tended to be too blunt and I didn’t want her to think I didn’t want her there. Although, part of me didn’t.

  “I called her over,” Mom cut in. She raised an eyebrow at me like she knew exactly why I was suspicious and didn’t want me raising hell about this. Which was absurd—I wasn’t particularly offended, or even upset. I was just confused as to why Quinn was in the kitchen on a Saturday morning.

  “She just wanted to talk to me,” Quinn said.

  “I thought I ought to get to know her better,” Mom said. “Since she’s been helping you out in therapy and all.”

  The woman knew how to play her guilt cards. Both of these people knew I’d skipped the last meeting, and without even saying it outright, they’d brought that issue front and center, forcing me to acknowledge what I’d done.

  “I will certainly do what I can do make the process easier,” I said since that didn’t explicitly state what I’d done wrong.

  “I’m not worried about it,” Quinn said. “Honestly, three times a week is a lot to keep up with. A little room to run around is good for some patients. It helps them to develop independent plans.”

  “I don’t know that Sawyer has those quite yet,” Mom said. “All due respect, honey, just that you got back so soon.”

  I took a sip of decaf. “Actually, I had some plans of my own,” I said.

  “Oh?” Quinn and Mom both looked up.

  It was hard not to feel bad that they were so shocked to hear I was getting a move on from the whole therapy business. The truth was, I didn’t feel like it could help any more. Talking to Quinn probably could, but I didn’t need to be in therapy to talk to Quinn. At least, I didn’t think so. There was so much we still needed to talk about.

  “I wanted to go out and look at houses today,” I said. “I don’t have a lot saved, but I have enough to start seeing what’s available.”

  “That’s a lovely idea!” Mom cheered. “You know, you should take Quinn. She knows the area!”

  “I know the area,” I retorted. I didn’t need to be chaperoned.

  “A lot has changed since you left,” Mom said. “And the real estate market has changed enormously, especially in the city. It wouldn’t hurt to have someone around who knows it.”

  “I bought my house pretty recently,” Quinn said. “But if you want to go alone, I understand.”

  “No, no.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “It’s a lot first thing in the morning,” Quinn reasoned. She smiled, and I couldn’t see any trace of irritation on her face. How she managed to remain so patient with me, I would never understand.

  When we finished breakfast, I started to do the dishes.

  “No, I’ll take care of it,” Mom said. “You two go on.”

  “You made breakfast,” I insisted.

  “Don’t you argue with me, Sawyer.”

  And so we went. I led Quinn out to my car and held the door open for her. I wasn’t sure exactly what to say to her. The last time we’d spoken, I’d run off, and I’d made a big deal about ignoring her since.

  She spoke first as I pulled out of the driveway.

  “Where are you looking to get land?” Quinn asked.

  I twisted my mouth to the side, thinking. “I’m not sure exactly where,” I said. “I know I want somewhere with some land. I want some kind of a farm, not anything huge, but you know. Away from the noise, with some dirt.”

  “Doesn’t your friend Pete have a farm?”

  “Yeah. But I’m not looking for something that big.”

  “Well, you won’t find anything in the city, then,” Quinn ascertained. “There’s a suburban area right outside of Austin, but I think you’re looking for something a little past that. There’s a good stretch of nothing if you take thirty-five; you get to a bunch of farmland that way.”

  “That’s where Pete’s farm is,” I said. The very first time I’d visited, years ago, I’d accidentally ended up in San Marcos because I’d missed that exit. “I don’t want to get too close to the college in San Marcos, though. It can get kind of backed up, and they party a lot there.”

  “I know,” Quinn said. “One of my old boyfriends from college went to school in San Marcos. He was barely ever available outside of parties.”

  I made a face. “That’s not a good look.”

  “Nope. But dating in college is largely stupid.”

  “I don’t feel like I missed out on anything,” I agreed. From what I heard, it was a lot of angst and tests, and even if I hadn’t had a massive issue that led to me needing to join the military, I probably would have done it anyway. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand college.”

  “Really?” Quinn leaned back and set her hand on the side of the door, tapping the window button but not pressing it. “I loved college. You just take your tests and don’t worry about anything else.”

  I nearly shuddered. “Yeah, but all those classes? Hours and hours of lecture, sitting at a desk, learning about some shit that happened years and years ago…”

  “Maybe in history,” Quinn said. “But that stuff is still important.”

  I shrugged. “I’m certainly glad that you went to college. It wasn’t ever going to be for me.”

  “Can’t you get college for free with veteran’s benefits?” Quinn asked.

  “I think. I’m not sure.” I yawned and started getting off the freeway.

&nbs
p; The first patch of land we found was ideal. It was a small house, two bedrooms and one bathroom, with a decent kitchen and a little living room. The people selling it weren’t home, but I sat outside with the paper from the sign outside for a moment, looking over what it said sat in the interior. There was a nice porch in the back, and in the front, too. It came furnished, which was a big plus.

  “Is this enough land?” Quinn asked. She held her hand to her forehead, squinting at the sun as she looked out onto the area. Now, in the spring, it was as alive as it was going to get, with bluebonnets sprawling in every direction and some Indian paints twining up to meet them. I set a hand on my hip and looked out onto the scene.

  I could see a vegetable garden being set up behind the house. It sat on a small hill, not so big as Pete’s but then the area wasn’t as big either. A vegetable garden would fit nicely behind the house, and then downwards I could do something with that land or just let it grow. I took a few steps to get a better look behind the house and saw a tank.

  “Oh, shit.” I grinned to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. “There’s a tank back there.”

  “A tank? Like a military tank?”

  I laughed. “No, no, like a small lake.”

  Quinn peered around the house. “They’re called tanks?”

  “Yeah, they’re manmade. You can put fish or whatever you want in ‘em.” I rubbed the back of my neck and smiled. “They’re great for fishing in the spring and fall. You can get catfish, too, for the summer.”

  When I turned around, Quinn was watching me with a sort of all-knowing smile on her face. “It’s definitely quiet,” she said. “You don’t think it’s going to be too isolated?”

  I shook my head. “Couldn’t get too isolated.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s not that I hate people,” I said. “I just like the quiet. It gets to be too much sometimes, all the people with their cars and impatience and nonsense. Out here all you have to do is work a little and mind your own business.”