Catching the Cowboy_A Royal Brothers Novel

by Liz Isaacson

  “I don’t know,” Shane said. “Maybe she doesn’t want to?”

  “I met her,” Dylan said, blurting the words out.

  “What?” Shane pierced him with a glare. “When?”

  “She’s the one with the German shepherds,” he said. “Hazel and I went out to Triple Towers to look at the pups last night.”

  “So you’ve already been there?” Shane’s voice was so incredulous that guilt drove into Dylan’s heart.

  “Sort of. I didn’t see much. The homestead. The dogs were in one of the garages.” He glanced at Austin, who also wore a look like he’d been punched. “It was no big deal.”

  Shane held his gaze for another moment and then returned his attention to Chase. “Should we take pictures or anything like that?”

  “Sure,” Chase said. “Look at everything. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid. But most of all, pay attention to how you feel while you’re there.”

  Dylan nodded, and Shane did too, and that was the end of the conversation. The topic shifted to Chase and Maggie’s life in town, and how they were adjusting to their new neighbors who had six dogs and three cats.

  Help us, he prayed as the lunch broke up and he headed back outside for an afternoon of work. He couldn’t articulate much more than that, but then again, maybe God didn’t need a long, drawn-out plea to be able to assist Dylan and his brothers regarding this new ranch that could become their new home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hazel left the office fifteen minutes later than she’d planned. Then choosing the right clothes to tour a ranch seemed impossible. She’d already laid out a simple pair of khaki shorts and a purple tank, but that hadn’t seemed right once she’d made it home.

  Now she wore a light yellow blouse with tiny red flowers on it and denim capris. Total ranch tour attire. She hoped.

  Harried and nervous, she kept the speedometer above the legal limit so she wouldn’t miss going with Dylan and his brothers to look at the Triple Towers Ranch.

  She pulled up to his cabin at four-ten to find him sitting on the front steps, his lips puckered into a whistle. Relief cascaded over her, and she jumped out of the truck. “Sorry I’m late.”

  He patted the step beside her and cut off his brilliant whistle. “We’re not leavin’ for a few more minutes.” He wore his usual jeans, cowboy boots, and short-sleeved shirt. This one was a button-down the color of raw salmon, and it made his dark cowboy hat stand out.

  She sat beside him, her emotions one big jumbled ball of yarn. Of course she wanted to be here with him. She was thrilled he’d included her in this major event in his life. Though she’d only been involved with him for a month, she felt like he’d been building to this moment in his life for years and years.

  It felt huge, and all-encompassing, and it choked off anything she might have wanted to talk about before they left. He went back to whistling, and she smiled as she hugged his arm to her body and laid her cheek against his bicep.

  She really wanted him to get what he needed to be happy. An image of her discarded salon chair flashed in her mind.

  What did she need to be happy?

  Hazel hadn’t thought she was unhappy, at least not until she’d met Dylan and decided he was worthy of more than one date. Sure, she’d known her life wasn’t what she’d hoped it would be, but she had a good job, and friends, and she hadn’t had a problem getting a date. What she’d had issues with was letting someone into her life that might stay. Might blow up her carefully hollowed out life and make it complicated.

  She swallowed hard, wishing she didn’t feel so unsettled. The front door opened, and a dog came clicking down the wooden steps, pausing at her side. “Hey, girl.” She stroked Cinna once and then stood with Dylan.

  “Ready?” Shane asked, a pair of sunglasses already covering his eyes. He clutched his fiancée’s fingers. “Austin said he’d ride with us.”

  “Sounds great,” Dylan said, his voice a bit on the strained side. Of course it was. He had all his hopes and dreams riding on this tour, and Hazel found herself thinking a constant prayer as they walked over to her truck. “You’ll drive?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She pasted on what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “You ready for this?”

  His eyes seemed focused on something else, but he nodded. “Yeah. Been waitin’ all day.”

  “How’d the meeting with Chase go?”

  “Great.” He let go of her hand and moved toward the passenger side of the truck. Hazel hurried to climb in and reach over to rake the trash and clothes off his side of the seat. He’d never said that her messiness bothered him, but he did tidy up whenever he came to her house.

  Once, she told herself. He’d only been to her house twice, and he’d cleaned up her counter and loaded her dishwasher the second time. She wasn’t sure if it was a statement or just something he’d done. She’d said nothing about it and neither had he.

  No matter what, his heightened anxiety bled into the atmosphere, and Hazel found herself clutching the steering wheel too tight, too tight. She breathed in, trying to relax.

  “So do you want my opinion?” she asked. “Or just moral support?”

  Dylan finally looked at her like she wasn’t a stranger. “Both.”

  Hazel was glad for such a direct answer, but she wished he would give her more than one-word answers.

  The ranch sat down the road, on the other side, about another ten minutes, and they arrived right behind Shane, Robin, and Austin. The sign over the entrance had beautifully carved cattle, walking toward three towers in the distance. She hadn’t noticed the towers when they’d come last night to see the puppies, but she saw them now as she turned onto the property.

  One looked like a water tower, or a stock tank. The other was a feed silo, and the third a tall grain elevator. They sat to the south, directly in front of Hazel as she completed the turn. The homestead waited down the road a ways and faced east, something she hadn’t noticed last night. She rounded the garage and parked next to Shane but didn’t cut the engine.

  “All right. This looks nice.”

  They’d been here last night, and Dylan had sort of fallen into a trance. He was doing the same thing now, his eyes glued to the sprawling homestead, with its freshly painted white trim and the deep blue of the rest of the house pretty, at least in Hazel’s opinion.

  “Looks like they’ve been working on it,” she said. “Painting and whatnot.”

  “Yeah.” He reached for the door handle and they got out of the truck and joined the others. There was no grass in the front, but several rows of rose bushes that Shane looked at like he’d never seen a flower before.

  “Those will require work,” he said.

  “I’m handy with clippers,” Robin said, threading her arm through his and leading him toward the steps.

  A man opened the front door and came out onto the porch, which wrapped around the side of the house away from the three-car garage, where Hazel knew housed a half a dozen puppies at the moment.

  “You must be the Royal brothers.” He smiled from his mouth to his eyes, and when he walked, he had a definite limp that made Hazel’s heart twist.

  He wore a black cowboy hat he tipped at each of them before shaking their hands. “I’m John Hatch.” And he was very clearly at least seventy years old—much too old to be running a fifteen-thousand-acre cattle ranch, with eleven hundred head of cattle.

  Heck, Hazel didn’t even know if Shane, Dylan, and Austin could do it. That was a a lot of land, and a lot of cows, and pastures to rotate, and equipment to maintain, and the buildings….

  She cut off her thoughts, her negativity not going to help anything.

  “Let’s start with the house, shall we?” He led them inside, and the work that Hazel had seen on the outside extended within the walls too. Everything had been repainted—walls, ceilings, baseboards, even the kitchen cabinets. The windows along the back of the house were huge and let in a lot of light, and for the first time since Sunday morning when Sha
ne and Austin had came bounding down the steps with excitement about this ranch, Hazel felt it too.

  Dylan’s hand found hers and squeezed. They toured the bedrooms and went up to the second floor. The house was huge, with a large multi-purpose room over the garage. Two families could easily live here, if they were willing to share a kitchen.

  “You don’t have family, sir?” Shane asked, getting the obvious question out of the way.

  “One daughter,” he said, and Hazel thought of the red-eyed woman from last night. Was she sad she was losing her ranch? Or had she been crying for some other reason?

  “She joined the Army,” John continued. “She’s not interested in the ranch. She’s out there somewhere.” He didn’t speak in an awkward or unkind voice, but the tension in his mouth was obvious to Hazel.

  The backyard was fully fenced and evidence of dogs and puppies lay everywhere. “She raises German shepherds,” he said. “She uses this yard a lot. Put in the fence herself.”

  “Is she Shayleigh?” Shane asked, flipping a page in the folder.

  “That’s right.”

  “This says she stays on as an ranch hand for twelve months after the sale.”

  “That’s right.”

  Shane exchanged a glance with Dylan, but Hazel couldn’t decipher the meaning. The yard was well-kept, with several trees that would provide shade in the brutal Texas summers.

  John showed them the garage and then headed past all the roses to the barns, sheds, and pens that lay down the road a bit.

  “There are two open-air barns,” he said. “The cattle are all free-range, and they sell well. I’ve got a hundred chickens, and I go into the Farmer’s Market every few days to sell the eggs.” He pointed to the huge chicken coop, as well as the enclosure where they slept. Beside that sat one of the open-air barns, with a long pasture behind it.

  “Equipment sheds down on the end,” John said, pausing. Apparently, they weren’t going to go all the way to the end. They stood in a crossroads, with the road continuing east in front of them, north to the equipment sheds, and south toward the towers.

  “All the equipment comes with the ranch. It’s included in the price. Some of it is in need of repair, but nothing too major that Berkley can’t fix.”

  Tyson Berkley ran a farm machinery shop in town—even Hazel knew that. Dylan nodded and nudged Austin when another building came into view. “What’s that?”

  It looked like another house, but it wasn’t as well-kept as the main homestead.

  “That’s the cabin I converted into my offices,” John said. “My wife got tired of everything being stacked on the kitchen table.” His smile was wide, but this time, it wasn’t nearly as blinding or happy as before. “So I converted a small cabin into the business hub of the ranch.”

  “How big is it?” Dylan asked.

  “Standard. Two bedrooms. Could be three, if someone was willing to put some work into it. A bathroom. Kitchen. Living room. You could easily put two ranch hands in it tomorrow.”

  “How many ranch hands will we need to keep the ranch going?” Austin asked, taking the folder from his brother. “We can see that Shayleigh Hatch, Oaker Donovan, and Carlos Caza are contracted to stay on for twelve months. Will that be enough?”

  John shook his head. “With the three of you, and the three of them, and the work that needs to be done around here, I’d say you’d need about ten more ranch hands.”

  “Is there housing for them?” Dylan asked.

  “Right down this way.” John pivoted and limped away from the equipment buildings, as well as the second open-air barn and what Hazel guessed were stables along the road that continued east.

  On one side of the road, trees as tall as skyscrapers billowed in the breeze. They cast shadows on a row of cabins opposite them. One, two, three, four, five, six.

  “Enough for twelve men,” Dylan said, not really asking.

  “This first one is where Oaker and Carlos are living,” John said. “Shayleigh is in the homestead right now, but she knows she’ll have to move out.”

  “So she’ll take another one,” Shane said. All three brothers looked like they were working through the logistics in their minds. “And that leaves four. Eight more men. And the three of us.”

  “There’s room for more cabins,’ Dylan said quietly.

  “Are you going to build them?” Shane asked without a hint of anger or sarcasm in his tone. He genuinely wanted to know.

  “Yeah, I can build them.” He looked at Hazel and then Shane. “There’s that house back there too. That could be….” He lifted one shoulder in a powerful shrug. “And if we added, say three more cabins here, maybe making two of them larger, we could have another house for one of us, as well as a bigger, better place to offer our foreman.”

  “One of us won’t be the foreman?” Austin asked.

  Hazel’s mind spun with how much they needed to sort out, and her first inclination was to run from a task this large. But she admired Shane, Dylan, and Austin, who all stood there, thinking, sharing, and tackling their dreams.

  She turned away, wandering further down the road. What would her life out here be like if she continued dating Dylan? Surely Shane would take the homestead, though it was extremely large and more could fit. Maybe all three of them would live there together until everything was built and decided.

  She didn’t know, and she didn’t have to decide. The tour continued, and she kept her hand in Dylan’s for moral support. She didn’t know how to offer him her opinion. He didn’t seem to have a problem discussing things with his brothers, or asking questions of John. So she let him.

  Hazel also let her mind wander down a path she hadn’t been on in a long time. Fear filled her as she thought about living thirty minutes outside of town. Thirty minutes from a grocery store. Forty minutes from work. From her friends.

  She also didn’t know where she fit in this family, since she wore no diamond and had only been dating Dylan for a few weeks.

  You don’t have to know right now, she told herself. But she still felt unsettled and uneasy about the whole thing.

  “So,” Dylan said once they’d buckled their seatbelts behind the safety of the closed doors of her truck. “What did you think?”

  Hazel looked at him and saw the hope, the anticipation. And she had no idea what to say.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dylan waited while Hazel went under the ranch sign and checked before she got on the road leading back to Grape Seed Ranch. Like there would be any traffic out here. Dylan had checked the road past the ranch, and Triple Towers was the only other destination out here.

  When she still didn’t answer, Dylan felt the need to fill the silence. “I thought it was fantastic,” he said, finally releasing the breath he’d been holding during the hour-long tour. “The main homestead was huge.”

  “It was,” she finally said. “What are you guys thinking?”

  “Well, Shane’s getting married.” He exhaled again. “I’m sure they’ll have a family. I want to get married someday. Austin too, eventually. We all need a home to live in on the ranch.” He looked out the window at the ranch land passing by. “There’s plenty of land for more homes.”

  “So it would be the Royal compound, is that it?”

  “Royal Ranch and Compound.” He chuckled, reaching across the distance between them and taking her hand in his. “I like the name of Royal Ranch.”

  “So you’re going to buy it.”

  “The numbers looked good yesterday. We can all buy in, be three-way owners of the ranch. John spoke true; the cattle he raises sell well.”

  “Then why is he selling? Didn’t Shane say the ranch was bankrupt?”

  “He spends more than he makes, and has for years. He’s bankrupt, but the ranch should be profitable if run properly. We learned all that yesterday, and we decided if we felt good while we were here that we would buy it.”

  “And you feel good about it?”

  A smile burst onto Dylan’s face. H
e’d been nervous at first, walking around someone else’s house, looking at someone else’s family pictures on the walls. He’d seen a family of three for a house that could easily accommodate fifteen, and he’d noticed a few pictures with just John and his wife. Then the rest of the photos were just John and Shayleigh.

  There was a history there, and Shane wondered if it was as rocky and potholed as his. At the same time, the ranch held absolute hope for him and his brothers. A way for him to have everything he’d worked for, if only fifteen years late.

  “You wanna go to dinner?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered instantly. “How do you feel about barbeque?”

  “Don’t all good Texans love barbeque?” He gave her a wary look. “What does this barbeque come with? Line dancing? Poetry reading?”

  Hazel laughed, and for the first time since they’d driven onto the Triple Towers Ranch, Dylan felt her relax.

  “As a matter of fact, Blue’s Street has live bands that play almost every night. If we’re lucky, whoever’s there tonight will have good equipment.”

  Dylan watched her, admiring the laugh lines around her eyes and the way she could flirt with him without even looking at him. “Good equipment? What does that mean?”

  “Every artist has to bring in their own stuff. Mics, amps, that kind of stuff. Sometimes, if they’re just starting out or not used to playing live, the sound is too loud or too quiet. Sometimes they’re not that great, but I’ve never been disappointed when I go to Blue’s Street.” She gave him a sultry look that made him want to kiss her. “The food is always great.”

  Dylan wanted great food. Great music. His beautiful Hazel. And the ranch.

  “I’ve never even heard of Blue’s Street,” he said. “Where is it?”

  “It’s on the end of the Donut Street, down by the industrial district.”

  “Oh, so the wrong side of the tracks. No wonder I haven’t heard of it.”

  “Oh, because you’re so prim and proper?” She snorted, and Dylan was glad she’d pulled herself out of whatever funk she’d fallen into. He couldn’t really blame her—he felt like a completely different person now than he had while touring the ranch.