The Last Real Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  A stranger who couldn’t think of a single reason why, if Amanda Kittredge was out here looking for trouble, he couldn’t be the one to provide it.

  But he kept his hands to himself.

  Somehow.

  “You’re not going back in the bar,” he said, his voice flat now. Granite and fury, like Gray when he was giving orders. “I’ll stand right here and watch you walk up to your apartment, like a gentleman. But if you go for the bar door, so help me, I will cart you up those stairs and lock you in myself.”

  “I think you’re full of it.” She tossed that at him like she was throwing knives. A skill he expected Jensen might have gone ahead and taught her, now that he considered it. “What do you think my brothers would say if they discovered that anyone was manhandling me? Even if it was you? I get that you’re not afraid of them like everyone else in the entire state of Colorado. But are you actively suicidal?”

  “Your brothers would thank me,” Brady told her, with a grin that felt like a threat on his own mouth. “They’d call me a hero and throw me a party.”

  “You wish.”

  “Why do you think I’m here?”

  For the first time, Amanda looked uncertain. Something on her face changed, making her look entirely too vulnerable, suddenly, for his peace of mind.

  It was exactly what he should have wanted.

  There was absolutely no reason on earth he should have felt like such an ass.

  “I should have realized.” Her voice was too quiet, then. He found himself missing that strange defiance of hers that had enraged him all of three seconds before. “Of course that’s why you suddenly care what I do. You’re my guard dog, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I would consider myself a guard dog. A concerned friend, maybe.”

  Amanda gazed up him for a long, surprisingly uncomfortable moment, making no effort to hide the vulnerability on her face. Making no move to hide anything at all.

  It was excruciating.

  “A concerned friend,” she said quietly. “But not my friend.”

  Then she left Brady to work out why that got to him the way it did.

  It was like she’d actually started throwing knives and had sunk one deep into his chest when he knew she hadn’t. All she did was turn and slowly, carefully, noisily make her way up those stairs toward her apartment.

  Step by tottery step on her ridiculous heels.

  It gave him ample opportunity not only to question why he felt so unnerved by her, but to contemplate that backside of hers, swinging this way and that like she was trying to hypnotize him.

  Long after the door slammed behind her, Brady stayed where he was, grappling with the unwelcome notion that like it or not, she already had.

  He was hypnotized, all right. And he needed to wake up.

  6

  A few days later, Amanda was wiping down tables in Cold River Coffee, brooding over her failed attempts to kickstart her social life, when she looked up to find Hannah Everett walking toward her.

  Sauntering, more like. Because former rodeo queen Hannah never walked when a strut would do.

  Amanda straightened. She was suddenly and pointedly aware of the fact that she was wearing her work uniform of a T-shirt and jeans with the usual stains from a day’s work, complete with a messy bun.

  “You’re staring at me like I picked up an extra head on the way through that door,” Hannah drawled as she approached, with that Georgia accent of hers that made a meal out of every syllable. Listening to her talk was like chugging molasses.

  “Just one head,” Amanda replied, because she was used to the pangs of jealousy she got every time she was near Hannah. It made her painfully aware of the fact she still looked like the half-feral tomboy she’d been as a girl. “One head with perfect blond curls, gorgeous blue eyes, and that’s not even getting into the whole rhinestone situation everywhere else.”

  Hannah grinned, not the least bit uncomfortable with praise. Amanda admired that as much as the curls. Maybe more. What would her life be like if she didn’t want to sink through the nearest floorboard and die any time someone looked like they might say something nice or kind to her?

  “I always tell myself I’m not going to be flashy for once,” Hannah said as she ambled even closer. “But I can’t help myself. I’m a magpie, plain and simple. If it shines, I want to wear it. With everything else I have that also shines, and then look at that, I’m a big old walking glare.”

  She dropped onto the low couch with a bit of theatrical flourish. Then she pulled a fat paperback out of her bag. Amanda leaned against the sofa’s wide arm, because it was nearing the end of her shift on this fall afternoon and the coffeehouse was pleasantly quiet. There were a couple of teenagers handling things behind the counter, the way Amanda had when she’d been their age. She could take a minute to herself.

  It also wasn’t the worst thing to remember that as much as she wanted to shake up her life, there were parts of it she loved as is. Like sweet afternoons in this pretty place, all brick walls and cheerful tables, a giant bookcase and couches set up around a fireplace. The sound of Noah, the owner and chef, slamming pots around in the kitchen. The occasional roar of the espresso machine. And the music playing softly on the speakers.

  “Mama and Aunt Bit have finally settled into their cute new house,” Hannah said in her chatty way that made Amanda imagine they were neighbors leaning over a picket fence somewhere.

  They had been actual neighbors all summer, but there was no direct road from the Everett ranch house to her parents’. It was about ten miles as the crow flew, occasionally dangerous on the dirt lanes here and there, and longer still by circuitous county road. And there were no picket fences to mark the transitions between Everett and Kittredge land. Just historical squabbles, fencing to keep the cattle contained, and the odd old river or seasonal creek.

  “It’s on a sweet little street, barely five minutes away from this very coffeehouse. They love it.” Hannah sighed happily. “And now that they’re settled, they’ve demanded their usual time with Jack. Who am I to refuse?”

  “Is it weird not to live with them anymore?” Amanda asked.

  Hannah had spent the first part of her marriage to Ty thinking that he didn’t want any part of her or their baby. She’d accordingly lived back in her Georgia hometown in the house where she’d grown up with her mother and her aunt, who’d moved here not long after she had this summer.

  Hannah laughed. “Whether it’s weird or isn’t weird, Ty was of the opinion that I could continue to live in the same house with my mother and her sister, or I could be married to him. But not both.”

  “I can’t say I blame him on that.”

  Hannah’s grin said she didn’t blame him either. “And now I get this lovely afternoon to myself while my mama gets her grandmother on. I’m going to read a book and drink coffee, and then I’m going to go home and meet my husband when he comes in from doing something appropriately manly out there on the range like a true cowboy. Everybody wins.”

  The first time she’d seen Hannah, Amanda had been having dinner with Kat under the watchful eye of her brothers at the Broken Wheel Saloon. Hannah had sauntered in, all rodeo queen curls and that swagger, and had clearly had the otherwise unapproachable bull rider Ty wrapped around her little finger in seconds. Amanda—and most of the town—had been in awe.

  But Amanda and Hannah were friends because Amanda had also seen her less certain and a whole lot more vulnerable the next morning.

  “Was it hard?” Amanda asked now.

  “Was what hard?”

  “All of it. Everybody thinking your life is going to be one thing, and then it’s another. But they still think they get a vote.”

  “In my case, they often did get a vote. If you mean the rodeo.”

  “I moved out of my parents’ house,” Amanda blurted out.

  Hannah’s grin widened. “Oh, I heard. I approve. You told me you were going to blow everything up, didn’t you?”

  �
��I don’t really consider getting an apartment any kind of a bomb.” Amanda smiled, though it felt thin. “It’s a reasonable life choice, I would have said. But it turns out, everybody else thinks it’s a declaration of war.”

  “If I’ve learned anything this summer,” Hannah said after a moment, as if she was picking her words carefully, “it’s that you can only be responsible for the fires you set. You’re not required to make everybody else’s raging wildfire your responsibility. No matter how much they might act like you should get out there with your bucket and a hose and get to work.”

  “Okay, but I wish that everybody wasn’t treating me like a pyromaniac when all I did was light a tiny little match.”

  When Hannah laughed at that, a too-knowing look on her face, Amanda found herself flushing.

  “Are you sure part of you doesn’t like it?” Hannah asked lightly. “Because I’ll tell you something, sugar. When I walk into a room, I expect to get noticed. Or I wouldn’t bother.”

  “Well, sure. But you’re … you.”

  “I like to make an entrance. I’m at peace with that.”

  “The rhinestones help.”

  Hannah looked down at what was, for her, a restrained outfit. That still meant she glittered. “Rhinestones, in my opinion, help with everything. But you don’t have to wear a rodeo queen costume to make an entrance. And I’m not saying that you want that much attention anyway. What I’m saying is, if you do? Own it.”

  “That sounds like excellent rodeo queen advice, but I make coffee. And now tend bar. Both are less about making entrances than getting the orders right in a timely fashion.”

  Hannah lounged there on the couch, the very picture of a woman at ease. Except for one manicured finger that tap tap tapped against the bright cover of her book. “Did I tell you that Ty and I are thinking of opening a little rodeo academy? He could train up some new bull riders, I could train up some queens, and really, I can’t think of a better use of all the years we spent on the circuit.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “The question is whether or not I can handle all the mamas who think their precious little daughter is just right for a crown when she can’t sit a horse or answer the simplest question.”

  “In any battle between a proud mama and you, Hannah, I’m putting my money on you—the woman who tamed Ty Everett, which anyone in Cold River would have told you was impossible.”

  Hannah laughed at that, but there was an undercurrent in it that made Amanda sit a little straighter. There was a joy in it, sure. But there was also something so knowing that Amanda had no doubt had to do with things like sex and connection, love and intimacy.

  Amanda was fed up with not knowing.

  “I’ll give you a little preview for free.” Hannah’s blue gaze was very direct, then. “You don’t win over a crowd by second-guessing yourself. Crowds feed on confidence, period. So when I advise someone to start making an entrance, what I mean is that once you do, people start to expect it. They think there should be fanfare when you enter a room, because you’re in complete control of yourself and everything around you. Fewer accusations of pyromania that way, is all I’m saying.”

  “It’s a lot easier to be in complete control when you don’t have a gang of obnoxious cowboys coming out of the woodwork to tell you how every decision you make about your life is wrong.”

  Hannah reached over and patted her on the leg. “Don’t I know it.”

  “All I want is a life,” Amanda said.

  It felt like she’d said that or some version of it approximately eighty million times today already. And every day.

  “You already have a life,” Hannah drawled. “You just don’t like yours very much.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Amanda looked around the coffeehouse, every inch of which she knew as if she’d built this place with her own two hands. “I’ve been working here since high school. And it’s great. But people have already started telling me that I’m following in Abby’s footsteps.”

  “There are worse footsteps.”

  Amanda liked that Hannah and Abby, openly sisters-in-law now, got along. But that didn’t change her life. “I love Abby. I always have. My brothers have been bossing me around since I was born, and then I started working here and finally found myself the perfect older sister.”

  Abby had coached Amanda through all the things Amanda had been too intimidated to talk over with her own mother. Because Ellie was excellent at giving chilly instructions about how one ought to behave, but she wasn’t a safe space to talk about high school concerns. Or boys, God forbid. Or really any of the kinds of private, mysterious girl things that didn’t seem to touch Ellie at all.

  Amanda had always had Abby for that.

  But she didn’t want to be Abby.

  “These days it looks like a happy ending was always lurking there, just out of sight,” she said. “But I remember how it actually was.”

  “How what was?”

  “Abby,” Amanda said. “Her life. Everyone used to cluck sympathetically about how single she was. Then sometimes they switched it up and made a big deal out of telling her how capable she was too.”

  Hannah looked mystified. “Is that an insult?”

  “You might as well compare her to an orthopedic shoe.” Amanda shook her head. “I don’t mind telling you that I want, desperately, to be pretty much anything but an orthopedic shoe.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being capable,” Hannah said carefully. “It’s better than the alternative, surely.”

  “But it’s not a compliment, is it? If someone walked up to you and smiled sadly, then told you they were just tickled that you were so capable…?”

  “I see your point.”

  “I like knowing that orthopedic shoes exist, Hannah. But I don’t want my life to be supportive footwear. I want it to be…” She waved her hand at Hannah and all her flash and sparkle. “Rhinestones. Bright and fun, totally unnecessary, and yet what outfit is complete without them?”

  “I haven’t found one yet.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Mind you,” Hannah said with a laugh, “not everybody on this earth appreciates shiny things. I don’t understand this point of view myself, but it’s tragically true. However, you are not required to tolerate their commentary on it. Remember that.”

  Amanda was feeling a whole lot better about things when her shift ended a little while later. She left Hannah to the coffeehouse and her book, and set off down Main Street. It was an achingly perfect September afternoon. A bright blue sky above, setting off the Colorado mountains. Crisp weather, just this side of a little cold snap. She could almost sense the coming sharpness in the air, waiting to happen.

  It had been so nice when she’d woken up that she’d decided to walk to work this morning, taking advantage of the fact that she could walk to work. Living in town gave her a new take on Cold River and the Longhorn Valley, both of which she would have said she knew inside and out. She’d been born here and had lived here all her life, after all.

  But she hadn’t lived here, she’d lived a thirty-to-forty-five-minute drive out in the far reaches of the valley. And that was in good weather.

  She remembered the nights she’d stayed over at Kat’s house in her early high school years, because by the time she was finished with work or extracurriculars, not to mention any homework, it didn’t make sense to drive all the way back out to the ranch with someone who would have to turn around and drive her back too early the next morning.

  Amanda had always understood her family’s connection to the land. The ranch. She felt it like the blood in her veins. Her grandparents had built themselves a smaller house on the property when they’d decided they were old enough to be done with the day-to-day running of things, and there was no greater happiness on this earth than walking across that crisp meadow on weekend mornings, profoundly aware of the great expanse of Kittredge land all around her. Nothing but mountains, horses, and what those who shared her name
had been fighting for long before she’d been born.

  All that Colorado sky, bright and beautiful, and the demanding earth below.

  But at the same time, she had envied Kat her town life, and not only because there was no chance Kat’s family would find themselves cut off from town for a week if the winter decided to throw a big fit. There were also no chores in the barn every morning.

  And it was amazing how decadent it felt to simply walk wherever she wanted to go.

  But she felt significantly less rhapsodic about walking today when the door to Capricorn Books swung open, a woman barreled out, and Amanda found herself face-to-face with Rae Trujillo, her former sister-in-law.

  Or as she was known around the Kittredge dinner table on the few occasions the family talked about her or acknowledged she both existed and had once been married to Riley, her.

  “Oh.” Rae looked as taken back as Amanda felt. “Amanda. Hi.”

  “Hi,” Amanda replied.

  Then they stared at each other.

  Amanda felt torn, the way she always did. She’d loved Rae. Adored her. Abby had been a big sister to her, and a confidante, but Rae had been her sister in fact. She and Riley had started dating in high school, and Amanda had been so deeply invested in their relationship and their subsequent marriage that she’d treated them the way other girls treated their celebrity crushes.

  Their divorce had flattened her, and there had been no discussing it. Not in the Kittredge house. Once it was clear it was over, it was as if Rae no longer existed.

  All these years later, Amanda didn’t know whether she was supposed to cry when she saw Rae, or angrily defend her brother’s honor. Not that she would do either. But this was a small town. Every interaction was packed full of all the things everybody knew, but didn’t say. All that history and rumor crammed into a perfectly polite hi.

  “I hear you moved out,” Rae said, and Amanda both admired how easily conversational she sounded and was deeply offended by it at the same time. Because nothing could ever be simple or straightforward. There was too much history, even if none of it was hers.