THE CORBIN BROTHERS: The Complete 5-Books Series

by Lexie Ray

  Foreclosure notice.

  “This can’t be right,” he said finally, flipping the envelope open and nearly tearing it in half in his haste to open it. “I know we’re late on the loan payments, but I had it all worked out with Will Barnes. We were going to take care of it in installments — with interest. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all worked out.”

  He read the single sheet of paper the envelope had contained, checked the back as if it might have some other explanation, and read it again.

  “Well, fuck,” he said at last. “The bank’s trying to take the ranch.”

  When I’d collected that envelope, part of me had been joyful. If the bank took the ranch, all of us could go our separate ways and make our own lives in the world. I hadn’t even been out of the state of Texas before, and there were lots of places I was eager to explore. But to see just how gutted Chance was, to understand that the rest of my brothers would be just as devastated, made me regret that initial happiness I’d had at the prospect of getting off the ranch.

  Maybe I didn’t want to be here. But that didn’t mean I could wish this place away for everyone else.

  “You still have all those numbers floating around up in your head?” Chance asked me, still looking at the letter.

  “Pretty much,” I confirmed.

  “Well, then, come on,” he said, crumpling the piece of paper into a ball and throwing it on the ground. “We have a meeting with the bank.”

  The meeting wasn’t scheduled. That much was clear when we arrived. Will Barnes, the loan officer who Chance had dealt with on this thing in the first place, seemed downright shocked to see us, dusty clothes and all.

  “We’re about to close, I’m afraid,” Barnes said.

  “You’ll hear me out,” Chance said. “I’m sure you know what this is about. I thought we had a deal.”

  “We did have a deal,” the banker said, working a finger underneath his collar.

  “Did?” my brother repeated, emphasizing the past tense.

  “Let’s just be honest with each other, here,” Barnes said. “You were never going to raise enough money to repay the loan in full.”

  Chance drew himself up to his full height and leaned menacingly close. “Are you suggesting I would’ve tried to cheat you on this?”

  “No, no, no,” Barnes said, cringing away from my brother. “That wasn’t what I meant to suggest at all. The only thing I’m saying is that I know how hard it has been for you ranchers.”

  “Not hard enough to think about cheating the bank.” Chance was honorable in every way. The idea that he would just declare bankruptcy or do something else to avoid repaying the loan was laughable. But what was even more laughable was the idea that we would be able to repay the loan at all. Barnes was right. It was hard to be a rancher right now.

  “The thing is, you’re already late on the repayments,” Barnes said, looking like it was painful for him to say it. He was probably just afraid Chance would send him through the wall. “You signed an agreement stipulating that once it was time to start making the repayments — with the increased interest, of course — that being late on these payments, already adjusted for lateness, would initiate foreclosure proceedings.”

  “Can’t you have a heart?” Chance asked. “You said it yourself — it’s hard for ranchers. The money will come. I know it will. And then you’ll have your repayments — with interest.” It was hard to watch my brother wheedle and intimidate and negotiate and finally beg. He had too much pride for that, and I took no pride in watching the loan officer slowly break Chance down.

  “Until when?” Barnes asked. “Until the next drought? The next disaster? The next loan?”

  Chance raked a hand through his hair. “What would you have me do? Take out another loan to pay your loan? Get a credit card?”

  “I don’t believe you could get either, given your current credit — and the credit of the ranch.”

  “What can we do?” My brother’s big, dirty hands hung uselessly at his sides. “What can we do to try and hold off foreclosure?”

  Barnes heaved a sigh. “I have nothing but respect for the work that you and the rest of your brothers do, Chance. Ranching is noble business. If there was a way for you to liquidate some assets, sell some machinery or cattle off and repay this loan in full by the end of the month, I’d call things off. But I’m not naive, and neither are you. Do you think you have the assets to liquidate right now?”

  “Avery?” Chance turned to me, circles dark under his eyes.

  I shook my head. There wasn’t enough machinery we could pawn, and if we sold the entire herd to relieve the debt, it would be a death sentence for the ranch. What would we do without cattle? Ride our horses around all day? There wasn’t any money in that.

  “There might be one thing we could do,” I said hesitantly.

  “Well?” Chance looked at me impatiently. “What the hell is it, then?”

  “You’re not going to like it.” He really wasn’t.

  “What makes you think I like any of this?” he demanded, gesturing at the loan officer. “Tell us.”

  “We could parcel off some of the land to developers,” I said. “If we sold the cattle, we’d kill the ranch. Maybe if we carve off some pieces of it to interested parties, we’d be able to keep the rest and our business, too.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Barnes said, lifting his eyebrows at my brother.”

  “That’s never going to happen,” Chance said, cutting the air with the side of his hand, his word apparently final.

  “Cut off the hand to save the arm,” I tried again, but he wasn’t having it.

  “That ranch has been in our family for hundreds of years,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I’m the first one to fail our family’s legacy. We’re not going to sell any of it.”

  “I don’t have another solution for you,” I said. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I’m sorry, Chance. I really, really am. But if you can’t repay the loan in full by the end of the month, the bank will repossess your family’s ranch.” I could say this for Barnes — it looked like it gave him no pleasure to say those words. “Now, please. It’s past closing time. If you would like to discuss this further, we can set up an appointment.”

  “No.” Chance turned toward the door, and I followed suit. “I think everything that needs to be said has already been said.”

  “Have a good day,” Barnes called, but my brother was already shoving his way outside in his haste to get back to the truck. I cast a backward glance at the loan officer before leaving. The fact that the ranch’s demise was imminent should’ve brought me joy, but it didn’t. I only felt sadness.

  Chance looked so defeated that I had to glance away.

  “We’ll get this figured out,” I said, sounding like a fraud and knowing it. Us figuring out how to stave off this hostile takeover of our family’s ranch was about as likely as the skies opening up and pouring and ending this yearlong drought. At this point, getting our fair share of rain wasn’t even likely to change things much. We could stop buying extra feed for the herd, sure, but that didn’t mean it would suddenly rain enough money for us to repay the loan — and all of the interest — in full, all in one sweep.

  “Avery, I really need you to look at the cattle logs and keep better track,” he said, his voice quiet.

  “All — all right. I’ll do better.” But only because I felt bad for Chance. Not because I actually cared about the ranch.

  “Because unless I might be going crazy — and God knows I actually might be — I think something underhanded is going on,” Chance said. “I think we have cattle missing.”

  All of the air went out of me in one whoosh. “What?” What the hell else could go wrong? Only a fire sweeping through the ranch could cause more damage than this, if Chance’s instincts were on target.

  “Not many,” he said. “But enough for me to check the cattle logs.”

  And without the updated records, there was no way t
o know for sure. I felt like both an asshole and an idiot, now.

  “You know, I think I’m going to stay in town for a while,” I said.

  “I just want to get back to the ranch, Avery,” Chance said, sounding much older than his 35 years.

  “You can go ahead,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll find a ride back.”

  He sighed. “Call one of us if you don’t. Don’t try to walk all the way back home.”

  “I only did that once, and never again.” The ranch was so far removed from town that I’d found myself still walking at first light and all of my brothers out looking for me, worried and angry.

  “We have beer at home, if that’s what you’re after,” Chance tried again. “You could save your money and drink at home.”

  “I think I’ll leave that to you,” I said. “I’m guessing you’ll need all the beer you can handle.”

  “Thinking about picking up another case at the gas station,” he admitted. “Try and be back before first light this time, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  My guilt released me a little as I watched Chance drive away, the truck idling for a moment at the last stop sign before revving and motoring away. I felt best when I was in town, and when I was alone. Solitude was pretty hard to come by in this family, even if we did work such a large piece of land. We had to work it together, and as often as I did want to be alone, I wasn’t. The single greatest gift Hadley had given this family was coercing me to move into the travel trailer she got Hunter to fix up. That was my fortress of solitude. I could, for once in my life, be separate from my brothers. Our parents had had us with such regularity that I was never even in school by myself. Hunter always trailed me, or once, notably, I was in the combination middle and high school with Emmett and Tucker, right after Chance had graduated. None of the teachers ever called me by the correct name until they evidently met by committee and just started calling us collectively “Corbin.” It was an easier identity for everyone to remember, the Corbin boys of the Corbin Ranch, than to try and ferret out any of our individuality.

  Okay, fine. Maybe I was a little thankful to be with my brothers in school when our parents died. That was the only comfort I had then — strength in numbers — to try and forget our grief.

  I was starting to get maudlin and I wasn’t even drinking yet. There was only one thing to do about that.

  Pointing myself in the direction of the only bar in town, I walked with a purpose to my steps. I wanted to drink to forget all of this bullshit — the foreclosure, the ranch, the disappointment in my brother’s face, the idea that he’d have to break the bad news to everyone, everything. Every single thing. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to even daydream about what I might want to be doing once the ranch was repossessed. That used to be my favorite distraction, the surefire way to make the hours working the ranch fly by — playing the game of what if my parents hadn’t died, what if I didn’t have to work on the ranch, what if I had a choice to do anything I wanted to do in the world instead of this. I could usually come up with some pretty interesting — if unrealistic — possibilities. I could’ve been a football star, I was convinced, if I’d been able to stick with it instead of help out on the ranch. In school, I was better even than Chance on the field — everyone said so. Even if I’d never make it to the NFL, then at least I could get paid to play on an arena team or some other squad. I was used to not having money. I could find ways to make ends meet.

  Or maybe I’d just travel the world, doing odd jobs to fund my tickets and accommodations. This was my favorite alternative to ponder. I would select a destination at random and point myself in that direction, letting the wind blow me all around the world. I’d cool my heels beside magnificent swimming pools at all-inclusive resorts — my odd jobs were always somehow very lucrative — and have a different lover for every single city I experienced. Why couldn’t that be possible?

  Tonight, though, I had one purpose and one purpose only: to forget all of my problems, all of my family’s problems. To forget, even, that I was a Corbin.

  This town was too small for me to go unrecognized, but maybe I could pretend not to notice all the nods I got bellying up to the bar. The bartender slid me a beer — I never had to ask for what I wanted to drink — and I looked to drown myself in it. If not this one, the next one. I’d drink until I could forget about all of this, taking great care not to think about how this kind of drinking almost did my baby brother in, that after I got drunk, passed out, and woke up again the next morning, all of the problems would still be there. Fuck it, and fuck them. At least for tonight, I was going to drink until I didn’t have any worries.

  My vision was already swimming when someone sat down next to me much too close for comfort, the length of a thigh pressed against mine.

  “Avery Corbin,” a woman’s voice purred. “You are positively drunk. I can see it and smell it a mile away.”

  I narrowed my eyes to try and focus on the person who’d interrupted my binge and shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “This is exactly what I don’t need right now, Paisley. Go away.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, pouting. “It’s no fun drinking alone. I won’t let you do it. I care too much about you.”

  “Get out of here.” I waved my hands at her like one might shoo a fly. I wanted nothing to do with Paisley.

  “Don’t you want to have a beer with an old school chum?” she asked, covering my hand with her own until I yanked mine out from underneath. “Don’t be like that, Avery.”

  “I want to be by myself.”

  “Rough day?” She fluttered her long eyelashes at me. “Tell Paisley all about it. I love to hear about long … days.”

  It wasn’t my imagination. Paisley Summers was coming on to me. I’d never sampled the fruit from that tree and had never so much as fantasized about it. Well, that was a lie. Any man with blood running through his veins had to have fantasized about being with Paisley Summers before. She was gorgeous, the only daughter of a wealthy rancher, and had a way of making men feel like they were the only person on the planet when she was around.

  I just didn’t like her. I never had. I never would. She came on too strong, was somehow too into me when she could have anyone else in town. Even now, even as it made me hopelessly dizzy to turn my head and check, men in button down shirts and baseball caps and the odd tie here and there were eyeing me with no small amount of envy. They saw me with Paisley and assumed I had something they didn’t have.

  Well, I supposed I did have something they didn’t have: the Corbin name. That was, after all, why Paisley was so interested in the first place. My name.

  “Don’t you want to go somewhere?” she was busy warbling as my thoughts meandered. “Keep this drinking up much longer and you won’t be able to find your way home.”

  “I know my way home,” I said gruffly, “and I don’t need any help from you.”

  “You’ll probably get a public intoxication charge if you try and walk out there,” she said.

  “I will not.”

  “Resisting arrest.” She smiled at me as if the idea pleased her. “Drunk and disorderly conduct.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I could take you home. Free of charge.”

  “Just leave me alone, Paisley. Christ.” She was like a gnat, but I didn’t know why that shocked me. She’d been that way all our lives.

  “Touchy,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “That’s probably why you’re not very popular with the ladies here. You need to work on your manners — and your sense of humor.”

  “What can I do to make you go away?” I groaned, gripping my head tightly between my hands. “You don’t even ever come to this bar.”

  It was true. Even though Paisley’s father’s ranch backed up to a quadrant of the Corbin Ranch, Paisley never came out drinking — at least as far as I knew. I was sitting on this very barstool at least three times a week, and sometimes much more often than that. I would’ve not
iced if Paisley came in here. Even if it would’ve ruined my buzz, like it was swiftly doing tonight.

  “Can’t two old friends catch up?” she asked, examining her pristine manicure. God. Each and every one of her gestures seemed perfectly calculated. She was such a princess. That — among other reasons — was what turned me off about her. God only knew what she did with her days. I could only imagine — manicures and pedicures, massages, online shopping, trips to the city. If anything, I felt sorry for her father. Sam Summers was a hell of a rancher — one who deserved sons or something to carry on the name of his ranch. Paisley sure as hell didn’t seem like she was very interested in carrying on the work that was so important to her father.

  But then, look at me. I certainly wasn’t very interested in carrying on my parents’ work, my family’s heritage. Maybe Paisley and I had more in common than I thought.

  “Fine,” I said. “If you cover my bar tab, you can sit here.”

  The corners of Paisley’s mouth curled upward. “I’m already sitting here, silly.”

  “You can sit here without me getting up and leaving,” I amended.

  She propped her chin on her fists, those clear hazel eyes shining. “I made a mistake leaving you alone for so long, didn’t I?”

  “Are you going to cover the tab or not?”

  “Avery Corbin,” she sighed. “Always the man with the plan. Good business acumen. You’ve got a deal, then. I’ll pay your bar tab, and you’ll be nice to me.”

  “No promises,” I muttered.

  “Then no bar tab,” she chirped, patting my shoulder. “A deal’s a deal, Corbin.”

  “Don’t call me Corbin,” I said, scowling. “It’s Avery.”

  “Of course it’s Avery. Now, do we have a deal, or not?”

  I thought about the foreclosure, about the cattle logs, about Chance going back to the ranch alone, despondent, casting around for a good way to tell everyone else about our ranch’s misfortune. I thought about the tab I’d racked up to try and avoid thinking about all those things, about the money I had in my own measly bank account that would probably have to be pooled together with the rest of my brothers to see what we could do about the repayments to the bank. I was stupid to blow so much money on alcohol. Chance was right. He was always right about everything.