The Last Real Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  Brady wished his friend were less supportive. Particularly when he’d be anything but supportive if he knew where Brady’s attention had been focused these past few weeks.

  “I’ve already seen what I can do,” he said. “We won the state championship twice. I got a full ride to college, and the only way to keep my scholarship was to get straight A’s. So I did.”

  “Yes, Brady. You’re like a god among us.”

  Brady made a show of scratching his jaw. With his middle finger. “Every single person in my family has always hated bankers. So I decided I might as well become one, more or less, to see what all the fuss was about. To demystify them.”

  “I didn’t realize there was anything mystifying about banking in the first place.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Riley. Some people—my father, for example—always treated math like a list of suggestions. Suggestions he could shrug off whenever he didn’t like the answers. Folks treat finances the same way.”

  “If you say so. Why are you lecturing me, again?”

  “The fact of the matter is, I’m actually really good at almost anything I put my mind to.”

  To his horror, he started thinking about Amanda again. More precisely, sex with Amanda. All those glorious hours he spent tucked away in that apartment of hers, teaching her every last thing he’d ever known about pleasure.

  Then letting her practice on him.

  His temperature rose two degrees. Instantly.

  Riley was right next to him. Right there.

  “I’m not going to deny that you’re good at things,” Riley said, shifting to look at Brady directly—the last thing Brady wanted. “It’s annoying, actually.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that.”

  His friend was clearly trying to say something serious, because he let that pass. “But being good at things isn’t the same as doing something because you love it.” Riley’s dark gaze met Brady’s for a moment, then dropped. “You’re the one who told me that. A long time ago.”

  Brady remembered. It had been after Riley and Rae had broken up, and Riley was down in Denver, trying to figure out what to do with his life now that it was no longer the one he’d had planned.

  The memory only made him feel that same mix of guilt and temper all over again. How was he in this mess? And why hadn’t he extricated himself already? What did he think was going to happen here?

  “We’ve always been the same, you and me,” Riley said quietly. “You love this land. You let Amos chase you away. You let Gray make you feel bad about coming back. But now you finally have a chance to do what you’ve always wanted to do. What I can’t figure out is why you’re dragging your feet.”

  Brady saw a flash of honey hair across the table. And the line of Amanda’s pretty neck that he’d had his mouth on. Repeatedly.

  He needed to get it together. Now. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you?” The corner of Riley’s mouth kicked up. “Both your brothers faced their demons and came out happier for it. You have to be wondering what happens if you don’t.”

  “Hey. Kittredge. Mind your own business.” Brady laughed while he said that, but he wasn’t sure he was kidding. “You want to sit here and talk about your problems?”

  “I deal with my problems,” Riley replied, something not quite a smile playing in the corner of his mouth. “I see my problems on the street all the time. There’s no need to talk about my problems, because they’re probably sitting at the next table, having a few beers.”

  “I don’t know which is worse.”

  This time, Riley really did smile. But there was nothing nice in it. “I do.”

  Brady told himself he hadn’t been watching, or waiting, but he noticed the second Amanda detached herself from her group of friends and headed toward the back of the saloon in the direction of the bathrooms. He should have let her go. He should have used it as an opportunity not to follow her. Not to invite speculation.

  Brady waited maybe three seconds, then excused himself.

  It was ridiculous. It was lunacy, in fact. He was begging for trouble—

  But it didn’t matter. The bathrooms of the saloon were in a small hallway in back, but the hallway then curved around toward the kitchen. A person could go around that corner and keep out of sight of anyone else who came back here.

  Brady caught up to Amanda easily. Too easily. She had her hand on the door to the women’s room, but he helped himself to a sturdy grip on her elbow.

  She jolted as she looked up at him, but she didn’t jerk away, so he propelled her farther along the hall. Then safely around the corner.

  “Careful,” she said, glaring up at him when he backed her into the wall. “I wouldn’t want you to get a headache. I left my aspirin at home.”

  “What did you want me to say?” And like that, any lie he might have been telling himself about how he hadn’t been primed for exactly this fight—since the moment he’d looked up and seen her—fled. “This is supposed to be a secret, remember?”

  “I remember. Believe me, I remember.”

  “That’s what we agreed, Amanda. Do we need to have a broader discussion about boundaries? Expectations?”

  He knew they did. Why was he asking instead of telling her what she needed to know?

  Because you think it will crush her, something in him said, very distinctly. And that will crush you.

  “I don’t know,” she shot back at him. “Do we? Do you actually know what boundaries are?”

  She wasn’t cringing, there with her back against the wall. Not his Amanda. She glared. And then she surged forward and thumped a finger into his chest.

  Because she had absolutely no fear of him. Something he thought he should probably celebrate, but not now. Not right now.

  “You’re the one who chased me back here, Brady. Why did you do that? Do you need me to break down how this thing between us works? You show up at my door. We pretend you don’t. Sometimes we talk on the phone, but we don’t admit that. And we certainly don’t act like we know each other as anything more than distant family friends when we see each other in public.” But the temper drained away somewhere in that last sentence. “That would be a disaster, obviously.”

  Brady wanted to hold her, soothe her, make it better—and that only made him angry.

  “Two of your brothers are out there tonight, Amanda. I was sitting at a table with them. Did you miss that?”

  “I’m not afraid of them. I thought you weren’t either.”

  He wanted to punch a few holes in the wall. In case he needed reminders of whose son he was. “I’m not afraid of your brothers. The same way I’m not particularly afraid of elk or bears, but I wouldn’t lie down and let them trample me or eat me for dinner either.”

  “I get it,” Amanda said, in a small voice that announced that she did not, in fact, get it. “Believe me, I get it. I’m fully aware this is what we agreed.” The way she looked at him made his chest hurt. “I guess I wasn’t prepared to watch you lie about it, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t lie about anything. Directly.”

  But as he said that, it dawned on him that he’d lied to Becca. And to Gray. Making this a third lie, and him a whole lot further down that slippery slope than he wanted to admit.

  And Amanda knew it. How did she know it when he didn’t?

  “Oh, come on,” she said, her eyes a bright gold while she looked straight through him. “Don’t lie to me, Brady.”

  He was filled with things he didn’t understand. Frustration. Need. A kind of fear. A very deep panic. And threaded through all of it, holding it together and making it hurt all the more was that particular intensity that he’d only ever felt about this one woman.

  He couldn’t name it.

  He refused to name it.

  Brady didn’t know how long they stood there like that, entirely too close in a tiny spit of a hallway, only steps away from where most of their friends and too many members of her family waited.

  He
didn’t know how long they stood like that, so close. So connected, though they were only almost touching.

  It felt like a kiss, though his mouth wasn’t on hers. It was that deep. That all-consuming. It was ripe with all the things that passed between them, that swirled around them. Knowledge and acceptance, resignation and something else. Something far more permanent than he was prepared to admit.

  “Amanda…”

  “Careful, Brady,” she whispered, though her voice had a catch in it. “We’re in public. Someone might hear. Someone might know. You might have to mean it.”

  Then she ducked under his arm and walked away, her back straight and tall.

  He needed to let her go. He knew that.

  But that didn’t prevent him from driving across the river later that night. Or from hiding his truck a ways up the hill, deep in the trees, then picking his way back down to her building.

  It didn’t keep him from making her sob for him, or burying himself in her with a ferocity that bordered on sheer, dizzying panic.

  He had to let her go.

  Brady told himself that again and again as he watched her sleep hours later, curled up in a ball with her hands beneath her cheek, and a faint frown marring the perfection of her face.

  He was betraying his friends. He was betraying himself. He was betraying her too, by making her sneak around. When any man in his right mind would be nothing but proud to let the whole world know he was with a woman like her.

  You need to let her go, he growled at himself.

  Because Amanda was the kind of woman a wise man married.

  But Brady wasn’t the marrying kind.

  That was the beginning and the end of everything.

  A few days later, he saddled up his favorite horse and rode out to the land he’d finally claimed as his. He rode the perimeter, explored the acreage, imagining the things he could do with it. He camped, out there in the cold rush of fall, between snowstorms. And when he looked up at the brooding mountains that kept him company out there, he didn’t lie. He didn’t pretend the land wasn’t in him, deep.

  Out there, there was nothing but wind and fields, and the Rockies standing tall, telling tales of endurance. Of stability. Of the profound beauty in simple survival.

  He woke in the frigid mornings and coaxed the fire to life, then sat there as the sun poked its head over the eastern range. The rays of light danced over the valley, gilding all of it from field to cattle, river to ranch.

  This land he’d been given at birth. This land he’d chosen now.

  The cold sun made things clear. At last.

  Amanda might not know her future, but Brady did. She was going to settle down. She was going to stay right here in Cold River, with that beautiful smile and those dreamy golden eyes, because this was where she belonged. The only reason she’d looked his way was because he’d decided years ago that he didn’t belong here too. That he was better off in the city.

  She’d chosen him to educate her because he was never meant to be anything but a fling. And better still, one with an expiration date, because everyone knew Brady Everett was going to keep his year-long promise to his brother, then leave again.

  But now everything was different. Because now he was staying.

  Which meant he needed to cut her loose.

  Because if he didn’t, if he held onto her when he knew better, sooner or later he was going to break her heart. Break her heart, crush her spirit, ruin her. He was already well on his way.

  And if he knew all that and did it anyway? Then he really would be no better than his father.

  He and his brothers all had a bit of Amos in them. They’d all been infected with that poison early on. But then, that was the Everett way. They lived out here, drowning in the elements, and it left them feral. More than a little mean. And very often horrifically drunk to boot. Accordingly, they often took it out on those closest to them. It was a tale as old as the pioneers who’d claimed these fields in the first place.

  But he thought about what Riley had said in the Broken Wheel. That Gray and Ty had fought their demons and won.

  Brady had every intention of doing the same thing.

  He could live for the land like his ancestors always had, out here where loneliness was as much a part of the landscape as the snow in the mountains. He could find new ways to love, and he could love things that he couldn’t wound. The land would never love him back, and that meant he couldn’t poison it slowly, or bruise it, or destroy it. It would outlast him.

  There was a freedom in that. A stark sort of joy.

  He could do these things for Amanda, if not for himself. Brady vowed he would.

  No matter how much it hurt.

  16

  Amanda woke up Halloween morning to find Brady still sprawled out in her bed.

  That had never happened before.

  She’d seen him almost every night this month, except when he’d been out camping, and he never, ever stayed over. That hadn’t surprised her. She assured herself it was because he needed to get back home for that four thirty start of the typical ranch morning.

  And maybe for other reasons, but that was the one she clung to.

  Amanda sat up, her toes curling a little as the movement reminded her of the things they’d done in this bed last night. The things they’d done all over this apartment.

  The things she would have done in the back hall of the Broken Wheel Saloon, even though her feelings had been hurt. And despite the fact her brothers and friends could easily have caught them.

  Kat had asked her what had taken her so long, and Amanda had still been all riled up and reckless. She’d almost answered the question honestly. Almost.

  But Amanda knew perfectly well that what happened between Brady and her had to stay a secret. Or anyway, she’d agreed that it would.

  What she knew and what she felt didn’t necessarily match.

  She’d accepted that.

  Because she was in love with him, and she didn’t know how to change that. She didn’t want to change it.

  Surely love made the wild pleasure that he could wring out of her, over and over again, that much better—whether she told him how she felt or not.

  He made her blush. He made her sob. He made her wanton and wicked, and she loved it. She loved him.

  But she still wasn’t foolish enough to say it out loud.

  This morning he was still here, so Amanda took the opportunity to study him as he lay there beside her, one arm tossed up over his head and his eyes shut tight. This never happened either. She didn’t get the opportunity to stare at Brady as much as she liked, without him witnessing it. He’d kicked off the covers on his side of the bed, which suited her fine.

  Because he was perfect.

  She tried to resist, but gave in almost before the thought was fully formed in her head. Amanda reached over and carefully traced that mouth of his, stern and soft at once as he slept. His jaw was rough, darkened overnight, and it amazed her how much she liked the contrast.

  Amanda trailed her fingers down his chest, liking the roughness mixed with the smooth. Liking everything about him. She wanted to shout her love for him to the whole world. She wanted to claim all this as hers.

  She loved him so much, it actually hurt, and maybe she liked the hurt too, because here she was. Still. And when he’d showed up at her door after that painful little scene in the saloon hallway, it hadn’t occurred to her to do anything but let him in.

  You can start yelling about how much you love him, she told herself, or you can find another way to entertain yourself.

  Amanda chose the second option. Especially when looking at him already made her feel overheated and melty. She crawled over him, exulting in the heat he gave off and the small sound he made. Then she let her mouth follow the same trail her fingers had made, tasting him as she went.

  Salt. Man.

  Brady.

  By the time she got to that fascinating V cut into his low abdomen that she liked to trace with her fi
ngers—and now got to taste—she was shivering with her own excitement.

  Especially when she saw that at least one part of him was already awake, and just as interested in what she was doing as she was.

  He’d let her taste him there, but only a little. Only on the way to other things. And all those other things had made her dizzy with delight, so she had been happily distracted.

  But there was light coming in her windows and he was still here. There was nothing to distract her now.

  Amanda arranged herself there between his legs, her gaze on the most fascinating, most unapologetically male part of him. She flicked a glance up, and with a jolt, found him watching her.

  His dark green eyes were at a lazy half-mast. He didn’t tell her to stop. Instead, he grew harder as she watched.

  So she did what she’d wanted to do since the first night. She tilted herself forward and took him deep in her mouth.

  This was better. This was perfect. Because she could hardly cry out that she loved him when her mouth was full of him, could she?

  Instead, she told him with her tongue.

  Again and again, until she was shuddering, she liked the taste of him so much.

  Slowly, with a deep groan she could feel as well as hear, he began to move with her. Lifting his hips, then dropping them at her pace, until she found it hard to tell the difference between them. What she was doing, what he was.

  Only that it was all still so perfect.

  His fingers sunk deep into the morning mess of her hair, and she liked that too. Even when he got more and more tense, and she thought he might try to pull her off of him. She didn’t want that, so she wrapped her arms around his hips and held on.

  And she felt it when Brady let go.

  Then everything was the thrust, the heat. Her hands and her mouth. And when he surrendered completely, flooding her mouth with salt, she found herself shuddering straight over the edge too.

  It felt like a magic trick.

  “You’re killing me,” Brady growled.

  The way he often did. Though he always lived.