Special Cowboy Menage Collection

by Morgan Ashbury

  Then, just a few weeks ago, sitting out on Grant’s front porch, enjoying a few beers at the end of a long, hard day, they’d spoken quietly, honestly, about their feelings for Annie, and especially about the woman herself. About all the little pieces of her past they’d gleaned over the last year. In the soft glow of the Wyoming sunset, with the Western wind kissing them and their land, they’d come up with a plan. Since they saw each other every day, they honed that plan, looked for flaws. There really was only one: the lady herself might say no.

  They would do their best to convince her to say yes. Jesse thought it might not be as impossible as they feared. He felt pretty sure Annie was aware of them both as men. He’d caught the odd glance when she didn’t realize he was looking. Once in a while, when he drew her attention back to him when it wandered, a sparkle would light her eyes and a faint pink color her cheek. He bet she felt an attraction to them both regardless of her determination to remain single.

  Jesse threw back the blankets and bounded from the bed. He’d shower and eat. Then he’d head on over to Grant’s, wake him up out of a sound sleep if necessary.

  Today was the day they’d chosen to put their plan into action. He couldn’t wait another day.

  * * * *

  Annie Rutherford opened her eyes to a brilliant day. The bright yellow light of sunrise washed through her window. The sunspot that formed midway down her bed felt warm and comforting.

  Birdsong sailed on the ever-constant breeze, drifting over the bed to serenade her. A year of living in the small town of Branchton, Wyoming, population six hundred and twelve, and she still found it strange, at odd moments, to accept the total lack of city noise.

  She’d never aspired to be a country girl.

  No, I aspired to be a wife and mother and look how that turned out.

  Annie shook her head and pushed away the melancholy. Enough of melancholy, enough of mourning what could never be. This date on the calendar represented the first anniversary of her arrival here, the day she officially ‘started over’. It was time she allowed herself to fully acknowledge her new beginning.

  There were still times when the enormity of what she’d done astounded her. She’d never made any bold moves before, never dared to reach out and take something just for herself. Until one year and one month ago.

  After her husband’s death, she spent some months healing physically and getting used to being free for the first time in her life. She had no idea what would come next. She could return to her part time job as a clerk at De Luca’s, a small dollar-type store in Queens. Life could go on as usual, different, but following basically the same path as always. That would have been the easiest choice, but the image of trudging through the same old, same old just didn’t feel good. Then one evening, casual surfing on the Internet led Annie to wonder about retail stores in other parts of the country. Through the vagaries of cyberspace, she’d landed on a ‘for sale’ listing for a general store in Branchton, Wyoming.

  The sale of the business included the building that housed it with an apartment on the upper floor. Meeting the seller’s price would eat three-quarters of the insurance settlement she so recently received.

  Annie bought it, sight unseen.

  A month later, she’d cut all ties to both her own family and to her late husband, Jim’s. Without a moment’s hesitation, she burned all her bridges behind her. She bought a used car, packed it with her clothes, a few books, and her childhood teddy bear, Mr. Tinkles. Everything else she left behind. The five day journey west brought her farther than just the eighteen hundred or so miles she traveled.

  Annie had never looked back.

  Sliding out from under the blankets, she stood, stretched, and wandered over to the window. The air smelled different here in Branchton than in New York City.

  Pushing the window up all the way, she inhaled deeply. She recalled the first morning she’d smelled this very fragrance from this very window. She tried to identify the scent because it brought back wispy memories of being a little girl, of walking with her mother to the park in on the outskirts of Albany, where she grew up. Then she realized that the scent was fresh air.

  Outside her window, Branchton slowly began to come awake. Somewhere near the edge of the small town, a dog barked. Annie smiled. That would be Elmo, little Judy Fraser’s two-year-old Golden Retriever. Judy got the dog as a puppy for her sixth birthday from her maternal grandfather, who brought the animal all the way from his ranch outside Boulder, Colorado. Elmo always wanted out first thing in the morning, and always barked at any small creature that came within sniffing range.

  Some of the townsfolk would be heading into Laramie for Sunday services. Some would just spend a lazy day at home, maybe doing yard work, maybe catching a football or baseball game on television. In New York City, Sunday had been just another day. Here, Sunday actually was a day of rest.

  Sunday was also the only day she didn’t open her store. Her usual day-off routine consisted of tidying and laundry. She didn’t really have much of either since she lived alone. Annie wished she could find something more to do, more to keep her mind busy so it couldn’t dwell, as it had been doing lately, on how sterile her life had become.

  She winced, wondering why her mind chose to think that word, specifically.

  Turning, she reached for her robe, intent on following her usual routine of shower, dress, and eat.

  The cry of a wild eagle cut through her thoughts, and her eyes were drawn once more to the world outside her window, a world she never imagined would ever be hers.

  Sometimes, she thought she didn’t really deserve this fresh chance she’d taken for herself. She didn’t deserve the laughter she enjoyed from time to time, the friends she’d made here, or the peace she found.

  Every once in a while, a little voice inside her said she didn’t deserve to heal. Annie was getting better and better at silencing that little voice.

  She’d made one bad choice when she was far too young to know better, just one bad choice. In a bid to escape from her father’s house and the emotional battering he heaped on her for the crime of being born his daughter and not his son, she ended up marrying a man who turned out to be just like him. For the next ten years, she endured more of the same verbal and emotional abuse until that one terrible day when her world shattered.

  When she awakened from the coma, she learned her husband had been killed at work during an attempted robbery. His employer carried insurance as an employee benefit, something Annie hadn’t known about until the check arrived a couple of months later. She considered it an act of cosmic justice that handed her the means to escape. Released from the hospital, free from verbal abuse, she discovered the jagged pieces of her self-respect and finally began to put those pieces together.

  Hot water showered down on her, and Annie closed her eyes and focused on trying to relax. As she felt the tension leeching from her muscles, as the grip of the past eased, the sense of loneliness that was never far from her conscious thoughts took its place.

  Annie didn’t often waste time on thinking about what might have been. But since coming to this new and interesting place, she’d had time on her hands, time she filled primarily with reading and thinking and, she guessed, healing. She tentatively made a few friends. She met and liked sleek, sophisticated, worldly Veronica, who had arrived from the east coast just a few months after Annie. She was assistant manager of the local branch of the Hopkins-Wyoming Bank.

  Incredibly, the two people Annie considered herself closest to were men. Despite the fact she felt a hum of attraction for both of them, she hadn’t dated either one. She didn’t really plan on dating anyone, ever. It didn’t seem to make any sense, starting a relationship that had nowhere to go.

  As far as sex was concerned, while she couldn’t claim to actually miss it—her late husband hadn’t been at all interested in her pleasure—she couldn’t help but wonder, now and again, just what she had missed. Jim said she was frigid, but as she managed to give herself an o
rgasm or two since coming West, she figured he probably lied about that as another means of beating her down. She’d begun to really understand in the last few months that he’d lied to her about everything, really.

  Maybe she was better off not knowing what she’d missed. She wished she could turn the wondering off the same way she turned the shower off.

  Besides, if she got into some kind of a relationship and started having sex, sure as hell the man involved would start to act as if he owned her. No. She’d sworn off relationships and for sure sworn off marriage. Best to leave that door closed.

  Grabbing a towel, she blotted the water from her skin and did her best to blot thoughts of what she might have missed from her mind.

  Maybe she would take a drive into Laramie and look for a used book store. She might grab a bite to eat before she came home. That would be a much better use of her time than thinking about the sex she wasn’t likely to have anytime soon, or what might have been if she had made different choices in the past.

  Neither would she allow herself to think about the stray images assailing her at the oddest times, of actually getting close to either of the two men she called friends.

  Surely, if either Jesse or Grant had been interested in her in that way, they would have said something by now. Since they hadn’t, she best concentrate on the here and now. Housework and shopping. She would leave her focus on those and leave it at that.

  To do anything else would just be borrowing trouble.

  Chapter Two

  Rick Rutherford hated the sound of the buzzer, hated it with a passion. That one sound symbolized his life for the last two years, two months, and twenty-one days.

  If he got his way, he would never have to hear it again.

  “I’d wish you good luck, Rutherford. But I’m laying odds you’ll be back here before the year is out.”

  Rick turned to look at the guard whose job it was to escort him to the gate. His sentence was served, every last stinking day of it. He flashed his legendary smile, the one his mother once said was a blessing and a curse. He said, “Fuck you, asshole.”

  It felt good to call that screw Kowalski that and know he wouldn’t be getting a club in the gut for it. He was free, finally. He planned on staying that way. In fact, he planned on more than just being free.

  Before the year was out, he would be living like a king on some Caribbean island. He didn’t give a flying fuck which island, either, as long as there was plenty of warm sand, cold drinks, and hot pussy.

  The steel mesh gate creaked as inch by inch it slid back, creating an opening, a clear path between incarceration and freedom, between then and now.

  Rick walked slowly, relishing the transition. According to the laws and statutes of the great state of New York, his debt to society was paid in full.

  Society could go fuck itself, too.

  His gaze tracked to the parking lot ahead, and the man leaning against an aging Chevy. He hadn’t seen Squirrel since he’d gone inside. He would never tell a soul he was half afraid when he woke up that morning that he would have to hoof it to the nearest town once released. He wouldn’t have been able to hitch-hike. There were signs on the interstate warning drivers against picking up strangers, and the good state of New York sure as hell wouldn’t waste gas trucking his ass to town.

  He ambled toward his buddy, whose real name was Eugene. Nobody called him that. He’d been Squirrel since kindergarten, the moniker earned because of the way he used to squint, before his ma got the state to get him glasses.

  “Squirrel.”

  “Rick.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Where the fuck else would I be? You’re my bud.”

  Rick tossed his knapsack into the backseat. He took a moment, just one moment, to look back at the facility that had been his home for the past two-plus years, the medium-security pen, situated right behind the big one called Attica. A shiver wracked him and he tossed it off.

  Then he got into Squirrel’s car.

  “So, where to? Do ya want a burger? Fries?”

  “Shit, Squirrel, it’s eight o’clock in the fucking morning.”

  “So? Got a cold six-pack under your seat. Thought beer and a burger would be a great way to celebrate getting out of that hell hole.”

  Rick fished under his seat, latched onto a chilled can, pulled it out. He waited until Squirrel had passed through the last security gate and was on public land before he popped the top and guzzled.

  “Damn, that tastes good. Thanks, Squirrel. This’ll be fine until we get closer to the city.”

  “So where am I taking you? Your mom’s?”

  That would be a good start. He knew his mom would welcome him with open arms, fuss over him as she always did. Especially since Jimmy bought it a year ago. So, yeah, he would begin there. After he showered and shaved, he’d go over and pay his grieving sister-in-law a visit.

  He and Annie had unfinished business. He nearly nailed her once, a couple of years back, just before he went to prison. If Jim hadn’t gotten home from work early, he would have been banging that little cock-teaser. Probably would’ve given her a better ride than his prick of a brother ever managed.

  Rick had been a long time without pussy with a lot of fucking to make up for.

  After he fucked her, he’d persuade her to tell him where his brother hid the goods. Wouldn’t be hard. Annie was a born doormat.

  To hell with waiting until the right buyer could be found. Besides, with Jimmy gone, who the fuck could look for a buyer? He’d grab the stuff, roll it. They made a pact to wait it out so they could get premium dollar. But that was when the take would be split three ways. With his brother dead, that cut it down to two. He was all for making it just one, himself. No need to share anything with their other ‘partner’. That had been Jimmy’s deal, anyway.

  “Yeah, take me to Mom’s. She’ll be glad to see her baby boy.”

  He sat back, the feeling of freedom better than the beer in his blood to give him a high. He’d been patient, though it had been hell, and now he was just days—maybe only hours—away from having that patience rewarded a hundred times over.

  Maybe he could get Squirrel to stop, so he could pick up one of those travel magazines on the tropics. He could almost hear the pounding of the surf. He could hardly wait.

  * * * *

  The sound of footsteps coming up the back stairs made Annie’s belly clutch for one horrible instant. Then she exhaled on a laugh, shaking her head slowly. That was a New-York-City-girl reaction, the first in a long, long while. She turned her attention to her screen door at the same time two tall, muscle-bound cowboys appeared on the other side of it.

  “Now what’s a pretty lady doing indoors on such a glorious Sunday morning?” Jesse asked.

  Annie couldn’t hold back her smile. She had no idea why Jesse Conrad and Grant Douglas decided to visit, but in the last year she came to value their friendship, their quick wit, and from time to time, their strong backs.

  She took the two steps necessary to flick open the hook that kept her screen door closed. She locked the door not to protect herself, but because the sometimes strong breeze would whip it open, scattering leaves and dust into her kitchen.

  “I’m doing my usual day-off chores, cleaning and laundry. What’s a pair of ruggedly handsome cowboys doing away from their horses on such a glorious Sunday morning?”

  Teasing banter had taken her a while to relax into, but both Jesse and Grant teased so often and so easily—not to mention so good-naturedly—that by now she was quite used to it and them.

  “Well now,” Grant said, “it just so happens that we’ve come calling to give you these, and to invite you to come out to play with us today.”

  They each extended a bouquet of flowers, yellow sunflowers and the blue-purple daisies she saw nearly every day growing wild in the fields around Branchton.

  “Oh, my…thank you.” They completely surprised her. “Both of you. They’re beautiful.” She was afraid to s
ay anything more because she felt perilously close to tears.

  No one had ever given her flowers before. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and offered her visitors a smile that felt wobbly.

  “You’re welcome,” Grant said.

  Jesse just tossed her a wink.

  She guessed by the tender expression on both their faces that she wasn’t fooling either one. Turning away, she took the flowers over to her sink.

  “I’ll just put these in water.” She didn’t have any vases, unless she went down to the store and purloined a couple. She did have clean, used jars on the shelf under the sink.

  One large jar proved sufficient to hold water and both bouquets. She fussed over them until she felt her emotions were in check. It was only as she turned, bright smile in place, that she recalled what Grant had said.

  “You want me to come out and play?” The notion struck her as a strange one. It seemed ages since she’d done anything that could even remotely be considered playing.

  “We do,” Jesse said. “It’s been a year now, a year that you’ve lived in Branchton.”

  “This means that you’re now an official Wyomingite. You’re no longer an ‘Easterner’.” Grant’s pronouncement made ‘Easterner’ sound like something she didn’t want to step in or touch with her bare hands.

  Annie set the vase of flowers onto her tiny kitchen table, right next to the cutting board she used as a center piece, then turned and leaned against the table and folded her arms in front of her chest. “I suppose you’re going to tell me there is some sort of ceremony involved in becoming an official Wyomingite?”

  “Oh, indeed there is,” Jesse agreed.

  She performed as their straight-man long enough to have provided that opening automatically. Truthfully, she hadn’t blown off a day since coming to Wyoming. Looking around her small apartment told her she really could forgo cleaning this once. Alone, she didn’t tend to make much of a mess. So what if the kitchen floor didn’t get washed today? She could always do it tomorrow after she closed the store. The same held true with her laundry.