Cold Heart, Warm Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  Hannah supposed she ought to have been outraged that Ty didn’t want to spend every second having the same extraordinarily painful conversation about who they’d been, and what he couldn’t remember. But she had never gotten to spend quiet nights at home with the man she’d married. Their time together had always been running out. They’d had to make every moment count, and they had. They’d never turned on a television. They’d never spent evenings sharing the same space, making occasional comments about the life they were both living. They’d never shared a life. They’d only ever shared a secret.

  Maybe someday, if they got to have a someday this time, the thrill of that might wear off.

  But not yet.

  One afternoon, the three brothers came in from the fields for lunch, which Hannah was busy preparing while Abby put her feet up. Gray shouldered his way into the kitchen and grunted his approval at the sight of Abby taking it easy. Ty followed, giving Hannah one of his long, slow looks that made everything inside her flutter a bit. She took that as his form of approval too.

  Brady, as usual, said nothing when he came in. And offered her only the barest thank you when she handed him his plate with the meal Abby had directed her to make. She wouldn’t call him rude. But he wasn’t exactly polite either.

  But if Hannah couldn’t handle any reaction that came her way, positive or negative and everything in between, she never would have made it through her first competition at the county fair. She served Abby, then brought her own plate to the table.

  Conversation over lunch centered on the ranch and general livestock and equipment concerns, the way it always did. Gray and Abby were talking about another local family who were toying with the idea of setting up a kind of dude ranch operation.

  “They’re going ahead with a trial run before the fall weather starts,” Abby said. “Jensen Kittredge was in the coffee shop yesterday talking about it.”

  “I don’t begrudge a man who needs to feed his family and comes up with a creative way to do it,” Gray said, shaking his head. “But the idea of clueless tourists running around this land makes my blood run cold.”

  “It’s marketing,” Brady said. “And it’s smart. Everyone thinks they know what a dude ranch is, but if you asked a random person on the street of any city what happens every day on an actual, working ranch, they probably wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “I’m not sure I’d want my land to be where city folks learned the error of their ways.”

  “Maybe you should consider it. It’s not the worst idea in the world to use the ranch to do more than just—”

  “Ranch?” Gray supplied. In that even, implacable tone of his. “I don’t need the ranch to do more than what it already does, Brady.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with innovation,” Brady retorted.

  “I agree.” Gray pushed back from the table, but in the same calm, measured way he did everything else. It gave the impression he had always been planning to stand up then. And that nothing Brady said or did could goad him into doing a thing. “Why don’t you use your fancy education and all your great ideas to innovate what we already have? Instead of creating new enterprises because for some reason, you still believe that this life—my life—is beneath you.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “And yet, that’s what I heard. You talk a big game, Denver. You’re always looking for ways to overhaul everything you see here, but never because you’re trying to help me out. You want to help you out. And wanting to change the ranch to suit yourself isn’t giving it a chance.”

  He left the room, and Abby looked around the table. She smiled, but she didn’t apologize for Gray or try to smooth things over. Because she had her husband’s back, of course. That felt like a big, bright revelation.

  Abby awkwardly pushed herself up from the table and went after Gray. Leaving Hannah alone with the remaining two Everett brothers.

  “It wouldn’t actually kill him to listen for a change,” Brady said darkly. “I know he acts like it would, but he’d survive it. In one piece, even.”

  Across from her, Ty was lounging back in his chair as if he’d never been so entertained in all his days. Worse still, he was grinning. Hannah frowned. Then shook her head at her husband.

  Who ignored her completely.

  “You can always ask Hannah for help,” Ty said. With some of that studied geniality that had always gotten right up under Hannah’s skin. She imagined it had a similar effect on his brother. “She’s got herself a fancy degree. Just like you, college boy.”

  And then he laughed, because he found himself and the messes he stirred up so amusing.

  Brady lifted his eyes from his plate. He considered his brother for a moment, then leveled a long look at Hannah. She could really only describe it as unfriendly.

  Extremely unfriendly.

  “Oh yeah?” Brady could not have sounded less interested or enthused if he tried. “Imagine that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hannah replied, smile firmly in place and enough drawl to choke a man out. “I got me a piece of paper from the University of Georgia that says I can call myself a Bachelor of Science and Arts. Go Dawgs.”

  “Brady here went off to the University of Denver,” Ty supplied helpfully, still lounging there. “He liked it so much, he stayed down there in Denver until last fall. Brady has a lot of ideas to bring to the table. Gray resents this. And he would rather that Brady learned how to ranch from the ground up, the way he’s been doing his whole life.”

  “Thanks a lot for the narration, Ty,” Brady said, his voice tight. “And the zero support.”

  “I’m not taking a side. I’m explaining the situation to Hannah,” Ty replied, sounding so profoundly unbothered that Hannah had to assume he was doing it to irritate his brother. It appeared to be working.

  “I don’t see why there has to be a choice between the two,” Hannah said, trying to smooth things out.

  It earned her one of those rare, real smiles from her husband. But all she got from her brother-in-law was another dark, cold glare.

  After lunch, which Ty drew out because he was clearly performing his lazy amiability at Brady, Ty went out to mess around with some or other engine that needed fixing before they headed back out into the fields.

  Brady pulled out his laptop and typed away on it while Hannah got up and started on the dishes. Hannah hated doing dishes. She’d hated it when she was a kid. She’d hated it when she and Mama lived in that rattly old trailer they drove around from rodeo to rodeo. She plain hated washing dishes, but here she was, pitching in and doing her part and trying to be a good sport about it because that’s what she would have done if this were real. If she and Ty had come home after they’d gotten married and there hadn’t been all that time and Jack and the things they couldn’t talk about because he couldn’t remember.

  Maybe that was why she focused on Brady instead. When he slapped his laptop shut, then stood from the table with that same closed-off expression he always wore around her, she hit him with the full wattage of her best smile.

  “You don’t like me much, do you?” she said, drying her hands off on a dish towel and leaning her hip against the counter as if this were nothing but a casual conversation.

  Brady was the tallest of the three brothers. Like them, he had dark hair and those dark eyes that made a woman want to look closer, particularly when it turned out they were green. But where Gray was solid like a mountain and Ty was lazy like a cat about to pounce, Brady was … focused. There was power in him, but he usually kept it leashed. Buttoned down tight.

  Hannah doubted very much his older brothers noticed that focus, but she sure did when it was aimed at her. And she could see a lot more of it than usual when he focused all his considerable attention on her.

  “No,” he said, his voice unequivocal. “I don’t.”

  “I’m tickled we’ve finally gotten that out in the open,” Hannah drawled. She folded her arms. “Are you going to tell me why? Or will it stay a mystery?”


  Brady smiled, but it wasn’t a lazy sort of smile, like the one Ty threw around sometimes. It wasn’t polite, if disinterested, like Gray’s.

  Brady smiled like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was used to getting it.

  “I know who you are,” he told her in the same even tone. “Ty likes to roll around here like he’s invisible, but he’s not. He likes to act as if the rodeo takes place in an alternate dimension, but it doesn’t. What I’m trying to tell you is that I know what he’s planning to do in a couple of weeks. Only Ty would think he could keep that a secret.”

  “Does everybody know?”

  “As far as I can tell, only me. But you never can tell what Gray knows.”

  “So maybe Ty really can keep a secret.”

  Again, that sharp, impatient smile. It was a businessman’s smile. Hannah had seen enough versions of it in her time charming stock contractors, town councilmen, mayors, and corporate or retail sponsors alike.

  “He kept you a secret,” Brady pointed out. “And it’s hard not to notice that the timing of your touching return is suspicious.”

  “Oh, sugar, I know it is,” Hannah said, smiling wider. “But there’s not much I can do about that.”

  “I guess not.” Brady moved forward until he was standing on the other side of the counter that divided the kitchen area from the eating area. He didn’t seem unduly worried about the fact that he was facing off with her, right then and there. “But help me out here, Hannah. It doesn’t take much digging to figure out that you were Miss Rodeo Forever, except you left last year before your reign was finished. Under a dark cloud, rumor has it.”

  “That’s the trouble with a clear day,” Hannah said softly. She didn’t back down. “All it means is that the storm’s coming.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I don’t believe you asked me a question.”

  “I have to wonder about the character of an individual with that kind of history,” Brady said, still with that masters-of-the-universe smile on his face. “And what kind of influence a person like that might have on my brother, who we can all agree isn’t exactly handling this transitional time in his life too well.”

  Hannah smiled wider. She even batted her eyelashes. “I do wish you would hurry on up and accuse me of something.”

  “I want to know where you’ve been,” Brady said, his voice not particularly hard. He was still smiling. But Hannah didn’t mistake that for anything less than the threat it was. “My brother almost died. He was broken into pieces. He stayed in the hospital for a long time, and then he came home, without you. We didn’t know you existed until you showed up the other night. So, where have you been? Because to the casual observer, it almost looks like you left the man when he was down and came back because he’s on his way up again. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Hannah studied him. “How much time did you spend by your brother’s bedside, then?”

  Brady’s smile chilled by several degrees. Hannah’s warmed in direct response.

  “Both of my brothers have spent their lives dedicated to the thing they love,” Brady told her, his gaze steady on hers. “One of them stayed here and the other went everywhere. But at the end of the day, they’re both good, solid people. My family is filled with good, solid people these days. You already know this because you appeared out of nowhere and were welcomed in, no questions asked.”

  “This feels like a few questions. And less welcome to the family, more you’ll never be one of us. Maybe I’m reading you wrong.”

  “My brother has already been hurt enough,” Brady said, and this time, without that smile. “I don’t want to see him hurt again.”

  There was a part of Hannah—a huge part of her—that felt scraped raw by this conversation. She wasn’t the one who had wrecked their marriage, after all. She wasn’t the one who’d wanted to leave Ty in the first place. The injustice of it about choked her.

  But Brady wasn’t one of the enduring challenges from her hometown. He wasn’t being mean to her for fun. He was defending his brother. At the first hint of an opportunity, he had jumped right in to make sure that Hannah knew he had Ty’s back.

  This was the family that Ty found so dysfunctional.

  In another circumstance, Hannah might have found Brady intimidating. Not that she let such things affect her, but she would have felt it. Today, she could only find it cute. Sweet, really. In that aggressive male way.

  “Here’s the thing, sugar,” she told him, uncrossing her arms and tucking them in the pockets of her jeans. “I’m married to Ty. I’m afraid what that means is, I’m almost certainly going to hurt him again. Because people aren’t perfect. And relationships are messy. But what I can promise you is that to the best of my ability, I will try not to do it on purpose.”

  She didn’t know what Brady might have said to that because Gray came back in then. He lifted his chin a scant centimeter in the direction of the back door.

  “Ready?” he asked Brady, in that same uncompromising way he did everything.

  Hannah watched, fascinated all over again, as Brady … wrapped up all that power she’d seen in him. Then stuffed it down, out of sight.

  Because here, he was the baby brother, not a man in his own right. That was what Gray and Ty saw—and it was all they saw. So that was who Brady was.

  She was still puzzling over that when Abby came waddling back into the room, belly first.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Abby said. “I didn’t grow up with any siblings, but Gray assures me it’s normal for them to all storm around as if they hate each other all the time. Not the most pleasant thing to be around, I know.”

  “Ty swears up and down they have nothing in common, that they are a pageant of dysfunction, and yet all I see are three men who work all day, every day together.” Hannah shrugged. “For the good of them all and this ranch. Almost as if they’re actually more alike than not.”

  Abby’s smile, always kind, tipped over into delighted. “Almost as if,” she agreed.

  Maybe it was the smile that worked on Hannah, because unlike Brady, Abby looked perfectly friendly.

  “I’m an only child myself,” Hannah told her. “Family dynamics are pretty much lost on me because there was only ever me and my mom. And my aunt, who as far as I know has never argued with anyone. Which is saying something, since my mother could get into an argument in a sealed room. My aunt has been failing to take her bait all their lives.”

  “My grandparents raised me,” Abby said. “My mother would sweep in every now and again to stir things up, but mostly it was me and my grandparents. And then me and Grandma after my grandfather passed. We didn’t do much fighting.”

  “Who knew brothers were so … emotional?” Hannah lowered her voice like she was saying something deeply scandalous.

  “So emotional,” Abby agreed, laughing. “And then all the pretending that there’s no emotion involved at all. It’s exhausting.”

  “It’s certainly very male.”

  Abby looked as if she was considering something, and then she reached over and put her hand on the counter near Hannah’s. As if she’d considered touching her hand, but didn’t want to cross that boundary.

  “I have no idea if you’d even be interested in this,” she said. Carefully. “But my two best friends decided that we need to go out to dinner to celebrate my last little while as a person who can go out to dinner, without a small human to tote around with me. They wanted to do it once a week. It’s been more like every couple of weeks. But anyway, it’s this Friday while Gray and the others will be running the cows up to into the hills to graze. And I’d love it if you’d come.”

  Hannah was so disarmed that she forgot to trot out her smile. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  “You can’t intrude when I’ve invited you. And anyway, we’re sisters now. Aren’t we?” Abby’s face looked as suddenly red as Hannah’s felt. And about as nervous. “I would like to be. That’s what I’m trying to say. And I’
m sure that going out to dinner at one of our restaurants here can’t possibly hold a candle to the sorts of things you’re used to, but—”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said, simple and true.

  Because she hadn’t realized how desperately she’d wanted a sign of friendliness until this moment. One sign that she wasn’t evil incarnate, or a walking disgrace, or even the liar she knew herself to be. She couldn’t do anything about the knot in her belly and the near-overpowering ache that reminded her of the secret she was still keeping. The secret that she doubted very much Abby, this close to having her baby, would understand. Abby would hate her for keeping Jack a secret and keeping him from Ty. And for letting her try to fold Hannah into the family when Hannah was holding so much back. Hannah was fully aware of the damage she was doing.

  But she couldn’t help herself from accepting the first hint of friendship she’d been offered since she’d met Ty’s family. From the woman who would have been her first and only sister, if this had all gone the way she’d hoped it would so long ago.

  Hannah still didn’t know why the lives she’d only ever imagined, these roads not taken, hurt her the way they did. Only that they did. And the hurt never quite faded.

  It blended in with the expanding ache for her son, that punch of pain every time she breathed in, and became something else. Something almost debilitating.

  Almost.

  “I would love to, Abby,” she said quietly, sealing her own fate. “More than you know.”

  13

  Some of Ty’s fondest memories of growing up on the ranch involved moving the cows to range in higher elevations every summer. To be distinguished from the less exciting tasks, like combing the hayfields for rocks that had to be removed before they messed up the haying equipment, learning how to act invisible when a part broke and ruined the whole day’s plans, or hoping to do something cool out in the shop only to spend hours holding the treble light in exactly the right position that made arms tremble and backs ache. When his grandfather had been alive, Silas had led the cattle drives out into the hills and the land that was only accessible in the warmer weather.