Secret Nights with a Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  And the worst year was that knife that still drew blood, deep inside her.

  There before her in Abby’s arms, Bart was sleeping heavily with his face nestled into the crook of his mother’s neck. His little cheeks were red and flushed, as if it were hard work. And Rae had spent enough time around him to know that he certainly wasn’t some perfect angel of a child. He was a perfect little boy, was what he was. Stubborn, willful, adorable, and more often than not, sticky for no discernible reason. He liked mud, dirt, sitting up on the saddle with his papa, all kinds of machines, and making an earsplitting sound that could set the livestock off on a stampede and deafen multitudes.

  And yet.

  “I want a baby,” Rae announced. Just throwing it out there, that wildfire longing she’d been denying for much too long.

  Once again, her friends stared back at her, wide-eyed.

  Rae met their gazes. She made herself sit still. She would keep herself from fidgeting, she would not run away, and she would wait to see what happened now that she’d gone ahead and put it out there. Bold, unvarnished.

  For years, she’d been sure that if she said it out loud it would kill her, and yet here she was, still breathing. If a little quickly.

  “You always said you didn’t want children,” Abby said softly. “Any children, ever. You were absolutely positive.”

  “I was a kid myself.” Rae’s voice was unsteady, and she hated it. She knew better. Show vulnerability, get hurt. Her grandmother had taught her too well. She cleared her throat. “What does a fourteen-year-old know about how she’s going to feel when she gets older?”

  But Abby was right. Rae had been more than positive she didn’t want children. She’d been certain and stubborn, and like most things, once she decided on something, there was no telling her otherwise.

  Yet however little she’d wanted children, Riley had wanted them even less. He’d been dead set against the very idea. He’d always shaken his head sadly when another person they knew announced a pregnancy or brought a child into the world. Like he was mourning their loss while everyone else was celebrating.

  I have too much family already, he’d always said. No need to add more Kittredges to the existing mess.

  Rae really had to stop thinking about him.

  Hope was tapping her pen against the pad. “How do you want this baby?”

  “What do you mean? The usual way, I guess?”

  “Do you want to adopt the baby, or do you want to actually have the baby?” Hope asked with exaggerated patience. “If you want to adopt, excellent, let’s start thinking about the paperwork. If you want to have the baby yourself, are you thinking an anonymous donor through a lab? Or are you thinking about something more traditional?”

  Until five minutes ago, Rae hadn’t been thinking about this at all. But oddly, having questions fired at her in Hope’s cool voice … helped. It made her feel settled. It made her think about what she wanted, not what she’d lost.

  “The traditional way, I think,” she said, testing the words as she said them. “Which I guess means…”

  Abby made an encouraging noise. “If you mean fully traditional, that would mean a husband. But maybe that feels a little out of the flame, into the fire for you right now.”

  “Only in your version of marriage.” Hope laughed at Abby. “Not everybody jumps right past the whole dating part, straight into the marriage, and hopes for the best.”

  “Maybe they should,” Abby said loftily. “I recommend it.”

  “There’s a no-flame, no-fire, happily lukewarm middle ground, Abby.”

  “The problem is the modern-day version of dating involves all that online stuff.” Rae wrinkled up her nose. “And I think I’d rather die alone, fighting with my mother and grandmother, until the end of time.”

  Hope rolled her eyes. “There’s no need for a dating app in Cold River, Rae. You sweet little innocent. You can just stand out on Main Street and look one way, then the other way, and see who’s around. Cell service is iffy, anyway.”

  Rae couldn’t keep the vaguely horrified look off her face. She told herself it was because she couldn’t imagine the trials of modern-day dating whether it was on her phone or out in the street. She told herself it was because she had only ever dated one man her whole life. That was why she felt like there was a stone inside her, weighing her down. Change was good, but no one said it wasn’t hard.

  She made herself smile brightly. “I guess I should go out onto the street, then. Maybe throw a rock and see what I hit.”

  “But I’m the weird one,” Abby murmured.

  “No need for rocks,” Hope said grandly. “I have personally made a study of all the reasonably attractive single men in Cold River. One of them is your brother, Matias, of course.”

  “Ew, Hope.”

  Hope shrugged. “Sorry. He’s hot. If scary.”

  She did not look scared.

  “Please don’t make me think about you and my brother,” Rae begged her. “Ever.”

  Hope leaned back in her seat, grinning. “Moving on. There are your brothers-in-law. All those Kittredge boys, just waiting around for some enterprising woman to claim them.”

  “She’s not looking to date one of her in-laws,” Abby chided her. “Come on.”

  “And even if I wanted to, which I luckily do not,” Rae said dryly, “they all hate me. And Riley would kill them. So.”

  There was a pause, and it took her a moment to realize it was because she’d said his name. Just said it out loud like it was nothing. Like she said his name all the time and hadn’t forbidden it to be spoken in her presence for literally years.

  You might as well be Inez, she thought, slightly dazed.

  It wasn’t only the flair for flowers. It was the silent treatment too. Maybe their execution had been a little different, but wasn’t it all the same in the end?

  God help her, but Rae did not want to be like her grandmother.

  “First, we have our bad boys,” Hope was saying. “If we weed out the actually scary ones, we’re left with two reasonably bad selections.”

  “What’s reasonably bad?” Abby asked.

  Rae considered. “I’m guessing … not currently in prison?”

  “Wyatt Hall,” Hope intoned. “Rumored to have done a great many bad things, but yet still manages to run that shop of his. Last I heard, he’s not only capable of fixing any engine that comes his way, no matter what vehicle it comes from, but is more than capable of using that same magic touch on the women of his acquaintance.”

  “When you say Wyatt Hall,” Abby said slowly, “are you referring to that Hall family…?”

  “Hope. I don’t want to date bad boys.” Rae made a face. “And I certainly don’t want to date a member of the Hall family, who would probably rob me in my sleep. And anyway, I thought they were all in various prisons?”

  She was being dramatic. But only slightly.

  “A common misconception.” Hope waved a hand. “But no, not all of them.”

  “Artificial insemination is looking better and better by the second.” Rae tried to imagine kissing Wyatt Hall. Touching him. Letting him put his distinctly un-Riley-ish hands all over her. She gulped. “This is a farming community. How hard could it be? Everybody breeds livestock left and right.”

  “Tate Bishop,” Hope said, ignoring her. “A former bad boy who’s now done very well for himself.”

  Rae actually considered that one. They’d known Tate in school. He’d gone through a rough spot, then had disappeared, and had come back to Cold River about a year ago. Since then, he’d established himself as one of the new crop of young entrepreneurs who’d either come to Cold River or come back to Cold River, and were committed to reviving and elevating the local economy. His microbrewery was due to open next summer.

  “Noah Connelly,” Hope continued, nodding at Abby. “You might know him as the gloriously grumpy chef who is also Abby’s boss, owner of this very coffeehouse where we find ourselves sitting today, but perhaps
you’ve forgotten that he is also a single, good-looking man.”

  “That’s actually true.” Abby sounded almost surprised. Probably because the only man she’d ever really been aware of was Gray Everett. Rae could relate. She’d only ever seen Riley.

  They all sat quietly for a moment, listening for the telltale signs of Noah and his mood, out there in the front of the coffee shop. He liked to slam his pots and pans around, all the time, but no one complained about it. Because the grumpier he was, the better his food tasted.

  And also because he looked a lot like a Viking.

  “And since you don’t want any of the more questionable characters lurking around here, I would say that the other single man you should think about is Jackson Hale.”

  “Does Jackson date?” Rae asked. “I thought he just loomed around in the Broken Wheel, talking about beer and investment opportunities.”

  “He doesn’t loom,” Abby protested. “He owns the place.”

  Hope smirked. “Also, have you looked at him? He definitely dates.”

  Rae had looked at him. But she hadn’t looked at him. When she conjured up an image of him in her head, sure, she could see that he was good-looking … though it didn’t really land.

  You have your Riley filter on, she reminded herself. You’re going to need to turn that off.

  Hope opened her hands as if she’d performed a magic trick. “That’s off the top of my head. I’m sure that if I put my mind to it, I could think of more. This is Colorado. There’s no shortage of gorgeous, outdoorsy types wandering around. And if that’s not what you want, no problem. We can go down into Denver and find you a city slicker.”

  “What I don’t understand is why, if there are all these eligible men milling around this town, you’re still single.” Rae eyed her friend. “This isn’t more of that Mortimer family curse nonsense, is it?”

  “An excellent question,” Abby said.

  “What makes you think I don’t have my own secret life?” Hope asked lightly. “Like you’ve apparently had for the past, oh, six years?”

  “Not racing to file for divorce isn’t the same thing as having a secret life,” Rae said, aware that she sounded all the more self-righteous because she was lying.

  And only once she’d said it did she recognize the fact Hope had maneuvered the conversation away from her apparently deeply held belief that all the women in her family weren’t simply alone—they were cursed to remain alone.

  “Everyone’s entitled to their secrets,” Abby said calmly. “I have my own secrets.”

  Hope and Rae both turned to her. Abby stared back.

  “You do not,” Rae and Hope said at the same time.

  Abby laughed. “Well, I could. I’m no longer the vestal virgin of Cold River. I don’t walk around like a billboard of sadness these days, thank you very much.”

  “I think that’s me,” Rae said, and she’d meant that to be a joke. To be funny, poking fun at herself and her situation in her life, for that matter.

  But that wasn’t how it came out.

  “Not anymore,” Hope said with conviction in her voice. “There will be no more billboards. No more sadness.”

  “No more curses?” Abby asked.

  Hope ignored that. “No more wafting around chained to the decisions we made a thousand years ago for no good reason.”

  “Amen,” Rae said then, fervently.

  She was sure it would all be smooth sailing from here.

  The first day of her new life was going beautifully. She’d admitted the past—or parts of it, anyway. She’d set the wheels in motion to divorce Riley and move on, and it was okay that it hurt, because it should. He had been her whole life even when she was pretending otherwise.

  She’d even told her friends things she’d never said out loud before.

  “Here’s to a brand-new life,” she said, smiling at her friends and feeling … almost light now. And sure she could handle this storm she’d put into motion. “How hard can it be?”

  5

  “I get that it’s your goal in life to brood yourself to death,” Riley’s older brother Jensen said a few days after Rae had dropped her bomb, in his usual too-loud, too supposedly amiable way. Riley knew perfectly well Jensen did it deliberately, because everything was a show where the second-eldest Kittredge was concerned. “But you’re starting to scare the horses.”

  The colt Riley was currently grooming, a glorious quarter horse descended through the stellar bloodlines that made the Bar K one of the premier quarter horse operations in the West—if not the world—tossed his head. Then snorted as if he found Jensen as irritating as Riley did.

  “Maybe they smell all those fires on you,” he replied, not bothering to look over to where Jensen was lounging at the door to the stall as if he were on a break. On a beach somewhere instead of here in the middle of the Rockies at the tail end of a frigid October. “And shouldn’t you be running off? Something must be burning somewhere.”

  “I’m real sorry that saving lives offends you, Riley,” Jensen said piously.

  In the next stall over, Riley heard their youngest brother, Connor, laugh out loud. Though it was hard to tell at who. Probably both of them.

  “Do you need something?” Riley asked, leaning back from the colt to study his brother. Jensen looked the way he always did. Big, tough, and deceptively lazy. “If you’re looking for something to do, there are always stalls that need mucking out. I know it’s not as flashy as fighting fires and bragging about it, but it still needs to get done.”

  “Do you hear that, Connor?” Jensen asked, pitching his voice to be even louder than usual, but not shifting his gaze from Riley. “Stalls need mucking out.” At Connor’s inevitable, profane reply, Jensen laughed. “Next time, be born sooner, little brother. Problem solved.”

  Riley couldn’t quite keep himself from grinning when Connor appeared, glaring at Jensen on the off chance he was kidding. The bland look Jensen presented him said he wasn’t.

  “Stalls,” Jensen ordered, nodding down the line. In the kind of hard voice he only used on Connor, because it was entertaining all around to treat him like he was still a kid.

  He wasn’t. But Connor still muttered something predictably filthy, the way he would have if he’d still been fifteen instead of twice that. It only made Jensen let out that booming laugh of his again as Connor stomped away.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t torture him,” Riley said, mildly enough. “One of these days, he really is going to stick a boot where he keeps promising you he will.”

  Jensen looked wholly unconcerned with that prospect. “He can try.”

  “Not that I’m not entertained. But you should know I’m going to be just as entertained when he does it.”

  “This sounds like a whole lot of younger-brother whining to me,” Jensen observed, his gaze gleaming. “I think we all know the order of supremacy around here, Riley. Or are you suddenly confused about that?”

  Riley was not confused about much. Just the one overarching thing he was trying his best not to think about. As usual.

  “Grandpa, then Dad,” he said. “That’s the order of things. You’re nowhere in that lineup. Probably because you take a five-month vacation every year.”

  “Two things.” Jensen shoved his cowboy hat back on his head and made a production out of lounging there. “One, only you would call smoke jumping a vacation. It makes me worry about you, Riley. Truly it does. And two, you better not let Dad hear that you think Grandpa is still in charge around here. He might actually … react.”

  “He almost frowned at me the last time I said it.” Riley rolled his eyes. “It was chilling.”

  Jensen laughed at that, not that it was all that funny. It was just life out here on the Bar K. Donovan Kittredge might as well have been one of the mountains that rose around them. He was about as chatty and communicative. Riley and his brothers had grown up crushed under the weight of all that silence. Donovan didn’t fight. He simply disappeared, there in plain sight,
leaving nothing but his mountainous disapproval. Meanwhile, their mother, Ellie, had spent the better part of their childhood battering her head against Donovan’s silence, poking and prodding until she got a reaction.

  Their oldest brother Zack had taken the same tack with Donovan, which was probably why he’d found himself a different career path and was now the sheriff of Longhorn County. He’d walked away from the Kittredge family business, leaving the ranch to his brothers. The first firstborn Kittredge son to turn his back on the Bar K since the beginning.

  Riley wasn’t the only one of his brothers who found the memory of their mother’s tears hard to forgive.

  Donovan reacted rarely. But when he did, it had always been terrifying. Not because he broke things, handed out beatings, or anything like that. Instead he was … quietly devastating. A few well-chosen words that would inevitably cut whoever he was talking to in half.

  Riley was older now. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t surprising that a laconic man like their father had been unprepared for four rowdy sons, close enough in age to present endless opportunities for fireworks over … everything.

  Zack had yelled. Jensen had attempted to make everyone laugh instead. Riley had brooded, and Connor had shouted until everyone had laughed at him, as the youngest brother. Which was when he punched things. Walls, the table, or more foolishly, one of his older brothers.

  It had been tense or it had been chaos. They’d all been sure their parents would break up, and Zack had actively agitated for it.

  Instead, Ellie and Donovan had gone ahead and had Amanda, who was a solid ten years younger than Riley. And whatever their relationship was behind closed doors—a great mystery to all—they had remained a united front ever since. Something that usually only frustrated their sons more.

  As ever, thinking about his parents made Riley deeply, ferociously glad that no matter what other mistakes he and Rae had made over the years—and they were legion, clearly—they’d always agreed on one thing. No kids. No carrying on the family drama.

  This meant, among many other things, that there weren’t innocent children caught between them now. It felt like cold comfort this morning, he could admit. But it was comfort all the same.