Secret Nights with a Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “I don’t care what Cold River trades on.”

  Rae searched Riley’s face, that strange sensation she’d felt while she was looking at Jackson blooming inside her. She thought she understood what it was now. A kind of uncertainty.

  She wasn’t used to feeling anything like it.

  “You can’t stand here,” she told Riley flatly. “You scare men off.”

  Riley’s grin made her pulse do a very different sort of dance. “Men don’t scare that easily, Rae. If they want something, they usually figure out how to get it.”

  “Whether they want it or don’t want it is something that is impossible to determine when you’re right next to me. Looming over me. You might as well put a dog tag on my neck and yank me around on a leash.”

  She chose not to notice the way his dark eyes gleamed at that.

  “I have no intention of looming over you while you flirt with other men,” he said a little too quietly.

  Not for the first time, Rae wondered what she was doing. Moving on was a great idea. It was long overdue. She knew that. She believed that.

  But no one said she had to do the moving on here. Right under Riley’s nose.

  She could move literally anywhere else and not have to deal with this. Or with him.

  “You want to be friends,” she said, wishing her voice were little bit steadier. “But I don’t think … I don’t know…”

  “It seems to me we have two choices.” Riley grinned again, and she told herself that was better. Because maybe it wasn’t the Riley she knew, but maybe she’d never really known Riley all that well. If she had, surely this wouldn’t have happened. Any of it. “With all of our history and all of these years, we either have to be blood enemies or best friends, Rae. We’ve done the-enemies-in-public thing for a long time. I’m tired of it. The only way forward is as friends.”

  “We’ve never been friends.”

  “So we figure it out.” He shrugged. “We’re already broken up and on the road to divorce, right? That was the hard part. This should be easy.”

  And this time when he aimed that grin at her, she forced herself to return it.

  But deep inside, something shivered.

  A lot like foreboding.

  * * *

  The following night, Rae found herself at her usual place at the table in the dining room in her parents’ house, ordering herself to do the thing she’d promised herself she would. To rip off the Band-Aid, make her announcement and make it real, right here and right now.

  Because it was one thing to say it the back of the coffeehouse with her friends and then basically sit there, giggling about boys, the way they had in high school. It was something else to go out in a party dress and act like a single girl—even if there had been a little too much Riley all over her debut as a dateable option. It was something else again to change her whole life.

  She knew. She’d done this before.

  But a yawning sort of pit threatened to open up inside her at that thought. She did her best to clamp it down, poking at the meal in front of her even though her appetite had fled.

  “I can’t imagine what would possess anyone to dedicate all their time to ungrateful groups of women who will never return the favor,” said her grandmother, supposedly discussing charity groups and well aware that Rae’s mother dedicated huge swathes of her time to a great many of said groups. Because she could never resist a dig.

  Rae’s mother sniffed. “It’s not for everyone, I grant you. There are always those who are far too busy imagining themselves above everyone else. The fact is, Inez, those sorts wouldn’t be welcome.” A point to Kathy.

  Rae did her best not to sigh, as that would only draw fire.

  You have to stop hiding here, she told herself then. Before you become just like them.

  But she didn’t announce that she was moving out, because that would draw more fire. And she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if she didn’t say anything. If she just left. Moved out under the cover of darkness. Would her mother and grandmother stop taking shots at each other long enough to notice?

  She offered to do all the dishes as soon as it was feasible. Not because she was such a great daughter but because it was the quickest means of escape. And she wasn’t entirely surprised when her father came up beside her, carrying a few dinner plates. He set them down on the counter and smiled at her in the reflection of the window before them.

  The dark eyes she’d gotten from him seemed to pry straight into her, even through a reflection.

  “Something on your mind?” he asked.

  This was easier, Rae thought, because her hands were in the sink and there were suds up to her elbows. She didn’t have to make eye contact with her dad—the only member of her family who’d ever been able to read her at a glance.

  “Nothing bad.” She shot him a quick smile before returning her attention to the sink. “The time has come for me to make a few life decisions, that’s all.”

  “Happy to be an ear if you need to talk those through.”

  Rae had a sudden pang of something like hope. Fantasy, maybe. Because she knew exactly what he wanted to hear. He’d given Riley a hard time when they’d been kids trying to date, but the truth was, he’d always liked his daughter’s one and only boyfriend. More than liked him. Rae knew that nothing would give her father greater joy than for her to announce that she was heading back to try to work things out, save her marriage, make it work.

  She could remember, too clearly, how disappointed he’d been in her not just the first time she’d come home. But the time she’d come home for good.

  Nothing will ever make me love you less, Rae, he’d told her. Steady and solemn, which made it worse. But I didn’t raise you to be a quitter.

  It still burned. There in her throat like a sob.

  “I need to get on with my life,” she told him now. “Hope has a spare room in her house in town. I think I’m going to move in. Change things up a little bit.”

  She could feel the burn again, and she didn’t have it in her to look over and actually confirm whether or not he was looking at her in that same way he had when she’d moved back in. Then again, she didn’t need to. She could feel it.

  She swallowed, hard, against the lump in her throat.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it here,” she began when he was quiet.

  “You’re a grown woman, Rae. Of course you don’t want to live with your parents.”

  She couldn’t help herself then. She snuck a look his way, but he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was trained on the door to the dining room. When she shut off the water in the sink, she could hear her mother and grandmother, engaged in yet another one of those conversations of theirs—nothing more than endless battles for supremacy.

  “I love living with my parents.” It wasn’t entirely untrue. They weren’t the real problem. Kathy was lovely when Inez wasn’t around. “And I’m pretty sure that Hope and her sisters spend all their time bickering too.”

  Her father laughed, then reached over to squeeze her shoulder. Just once. In as gruff a fashion as possible while still being affectionate. His trademark.

  “All the comforts of home,” he said.

  There was no reason that Rae should find herself lying awake later that night, staring at her ceiling while she turned that interaction over in her head again and again. Her father had given his blessing. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted?

  And maybe it was only because it was there in the dark of her old bedroom that she could admit to herself that there’d been a large part of her that wanted him to argue. To ask her what on earth she was thinking. To treat her like a child so she could have railed against him. Fought back like he was still trying to give her curfew or keep her from dating Riley, the way he had way back when.

  She tossed and turned, ordering herself to go to sleep and yet unable to find a comfortable position.

  All she could think about was Riley. The many times they’d had a fight, there on hi
s front porch, because that was the best way to make something happen. Because if they fired their little jabs at each other, they could blame what always happened next on their tempers. One passion leading to another and nobody’s fault.

  Was that who she was? Determined to fight no matter what—and especially if it seemed to do nothing but hurt her? Just like the two women she shared this house with?

  God, she was turning into them before her own eyes.

  If you had the courage of your convictions, she told herself—while the only thing she could seem to see was Riley’s face—you wouldn’t need someone to argue with you. You would just be sure.

  For once in her life, Rae wanted to be sure.

  But no matter how many times she told herself that no matter what she felt, she was doing the right thing, she lay there until dawn.

  Wide awake and looking for answers on the ceiling where she knew there were none.

  9

  The old warehouses and barns that lined the river were a testament to a different era in Cold River and had been abandoned as long as Riley could remember. Until his best friend had gone ahead and bought them up, which had been Brady’s way of putting down roots in a town he’d thought had wanted nothing to do with him.

  They’d stood empty until a year ago, when Brady and Amanda had gotten together. Brady had given Amanda one of the old barns, and Riley’s little sister had gone from working in a coffeehouse and a bar to starting her very own budding enterprise. A pretty impressive upgrade, Riley and his brothers had been forced to admit.

  Riley parked his truck out in the gravel lot, peering up at the old barn that he’d helped renovate and the little carriage house behind it that Brady and Amanda lived in these days. For reasons she had never explained to his satisfaction, Amanda had chosen to call her new business the Lavender Llama. Though there were no llamas inside, unless the local yarn section counted, and the only lavender around was in the local specialty teas she sold and what she’d told him were called sachets.

  During her first summer of operation, she’d rolled open the big barn doors and let all the local artisanal goods spill out. But when Riley walked in this morning, he was glad the doors were shut tightly against the mean November wind, coming straight down from the ominous peaks up above with a bitter kick.

  He blew on his hands, taking in the rush of warmth and heat from inside.

  He could admit that he’d been skeptical about this whole plan. And everything else having to do with his baby sister and his best friend, granted, but he’d come around. Still, it was one thing to support their wedding. He and his brothers had all kind of figured that it had to be a shotgun wedding when it happened so fast. But Amanda showed no signs of being pregnant even now, so he supposed it had just been love all along. It was hard to keep being mad about that, though Connor sure seemed to want to hold that line.

  It was this idea of Amanda’s that Riley had continued to have reservations about, but he’d been wrong about that too. The place was packed today, when it was an off-season weekday and he’d expected it to be empty. Amanda had filled the barn with various nooks and crannies, wide tables and little cupboards that made the goods she featured feel a lot like treasures. She’d gotten so busy over the summer that she’d had to hire help, and he saw that she’d kept that up even though this was the dawn of the lean season.

  Riley had to admit that while it would never have occurred to him to create a specific place where people from around the Longhorn Valley could display their various passion projects and small business goods—from local honey to hand-dyed yarns, hand carved wooden tables to delicate wrought iron pieces of art, handmade candles and even clothes—Amanda’s barn had already become a go-to destination. The tourists certainly couldn’t get enough. But the locals came here too, because it was easier to stop by in town than drive all over the valley or wait for the seasonal farmers’ markets to find the same items.

  He wandered into the thick of things, where he found his sister rearranging a display of handcrafted microbrews from a variety of local beer enthusiasts. There was a new gallery for artists that hadn’t been here the last time he’d come in, a lot of funky-looking pottery along one wall, and it took Amanda a minute or two to look up from what she was doing and register that he was there.

  When she did, she grinned. “You came.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Riley drawled. “Ready and reporting for duty.”

  Amanda straightened, looking around the shop with a practiced eye. Riley didn’t know if she actually looked older these days or if he’d finally adjusted his thinking away from how he’d always pictured her—as the infant in the family, forever, that he’d helped raise with the rest of his brothers. Or maybe he was retroactively making it work, because it was the only way he could make sense of the fact that she was married to his best friend when she was a decade younger.

  If his parents had wanted to teach their sons a lesson about consequences and proper precautions, they’d succeeded in spades. Riley loved his sister, but he had no interest in raising more babies. Changing diapers at ten had cured him of any urges in that direction, thank you.

  “You don’t have to ‘report for duty,’” Amanda said, wrinkling her nose at him. “You’re so dramatic. I just need someone to sign off on the events the Bar K is offering this year.”

  “I was under the impression we were offering whatever events you wanted us to offer,” Riley said dryly. “You said so at Sunday dinner just yesterday, when you announced you were taking over the Harvest Gala. See? I pay attention.”

  Amanda grinned as she led him back toward the register. She waved at her employee as she passed and smiled at the folks in line. Then she led him into her office, a stark contrast to the artful jumble of things outside. Here, everything was remarkably neat and organized, from the desk to the shelf near the back door Riley knew led to her cute little house. She took him over to the wall that faced her desk and looked to be nothing more than a huge whiteboard. Filled with names and businesses and whatnot, all written out in Amanda’s careful handwriting that reminded him of his mother’s.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Amanda was looking at him with entirely too much knowledge in her eyes, in case he needed a reminder that the baby of the family wasn’t a baby at all these days. “You used to say that if you never had to teach another riding lesson again, you would die happy.”

  At some point Riley was going to have to accept that just because he had dismissed his little sister as being too young to understand their family’s dynamics, that didn’t make it true. She’d clearly been paying close attention for years.

  “I didn’t want to only teach riding lessons,” he said, remembering the years before he’d built up his clinics and clients, when Donovan had thought his ideas were crap and he needed to be realistic and do what he was told. Not his favorite set of memories. “For a while there, that was all Dad thought I had to offer.”

  Amanda shot him a look, so Riley bit his tongue. Because he might not have much use for his father, but Amanda had different parents from the rest of them. She was the miraculous accident that had kept the family together, and maybe that was why they were all so protective of her.

  Not that he planned to say that out loud.

  He cleared his throat. “What I don’t understand is why, when you have a new husband and a new business and a whole new life, you would take on an event like this on top of it.”

  The annual Harvest Gala took place at the Grand Hotel, Cold River’s fanciest Old West landmark, a throwback to the days of robber barons and copper kings. The gala took advantage of its setting, using the hotel’s historic prominence and current glossy luster to lure as many donations from its attendees as possible. All in the name of preserving Cold River’s historical character and buildings, many of which were designated landmarks and all of which fell under the purview of the Cold River Heritage Society.

  Riley couldn’t think of anything he’d enjoy less than having to deal wi
th that particular cross section of officious busybodies.

  But Amanda only laughed. “Someone has to be in charge of it. And it’s not that bad. Most people have been offering the same auction items for so many years in a row, it’s really about collecting all the items and figuring out how to present them.”

  “Just because someone has to do it doesn’t mean it has to be you.”

  “I choose to take it as a vote of confidence that the Heritage Society thought that I should run things. I’m the youngest chairperson in the gala’s history.”

  Riley snorted. “Or all the people who’ve been around forever were smart and flatly refused.”

  Amanda took her time turning back from the whiteboard where she’d written ANNUAL GALA in big letters across the top. And had different columns for raffles and silent auction items, not to mention a long list of various goods and services. Then she studied him for so long that Riley began to feel faintly uneasy.

  “What?”

  “You’re clearly in a mood.” Amanda crossed her arms. “Is it Rae?”

  Riley ran his hand over his jaw. “Why would my ex-wife have anything to do with my mood?”

  “You tell me. But I should tell you that you were seen entering the Flower Pot the other day.”

  “I was seen? Is someone spying on me? I hope they have better things to do than watch me go about my business. And I really hope the spy isn’t you, Amanda.”

  “You never go into the Flower Pot. Who would you be buying flowers for? Mom? She would drain all the fun out of that by lecturing you on how unnecessary it is to give anyone a present, ever, for any reason. Don’t you remember Mother’s Day?”

  “We have a grandmother.”

  “Oh, please. Grandma would be insulted. Store-bought flowers for Janet Lowe Kittredge when she can grow her own?”

  Riley had no argument for any of that. It was all too true. His grandparents lived in the house they’d built when they’d decided to turn the ranch over to Donovan and Ellie to run, across a pasture from the main house and surrounded by Kittredge land. Grandma would hate a bouquet—and not be shy about explaining why.