Rodeo Passion: A M/M Western Romance

by Emilia Loft

  pained look. Big soft eyes, tight little frown. Evan hated when his brother looked at him like that, it was always when he had something terrible to say.

  We have to do something about pa.

  Adam’s dead.

  I don’t want you to be alone, but not like this Evan.

  Evan wanted that other look Sam got, the one where he focused like a cat on a spot in front of him before lighting up with an answer to their troubles. “I think, maybe this time…look, I don’t think you’re evil Evan, and you know how I feel about Lisa, but I don’t see how this can end well with him. I want you to have love no matter who it’s with, I really do Evan, but maybe you try friendship instead and let this one go.”

  And even though he’d spent weeks arguing with himself all the reasons why he couldn’t have Cas, his booze addled brain had sought out his brother hoping, pathetically hoping, that smart as sin Sammy could come up with some way out of this. Some set of options where he could be with Cas and no one would get hurt in the process.

  But if Sam couldn’t think of anything, there was nothing else to do.

  5

  Chapter 5

  The benediction drifted over the crowd, words so familiar Casper could speak them by rote and use the moment to prepare himself for the next part, the most difficult time of his week. He made his way down the aisle to wait at the door. The line of people waiting to greet the preacher was long, even a month on folks were still curious about their new addition. He greeted them each cordially, shaking hands firmly with the men and delicately with the women. Several feet away he could see Lisa waiting with her young son Ben and schooled his features so that she wouldn’t notice the shot of sickening anguish that bolted through him.

  She greeted him every Sunday and did her share to make him feel welcome. She’d visited with food like the other women, pulled him aside for a kind word if they happened to meet about town. Every single word Casper spoke to her felt like knives in his mouth. She was so lovely and sweet, he couldn’t find a fault in her whenever they’d spoken. And God forgive him he had tried to, wanted to discover some flaw that he could hold close and give him cold comfort while he moved through an empty house. Ben was polite and clever and even though he couldn’t see any of Evan in his features, there were gestures that channeled Evan so clearly at times that it made him ache. They were the perfect family, and the only good thing about it was that he never had to witness them all together.

  Evan never came to church. The Parker home was at the opposite end of town from his, the two men kept dParkerours, they found ways to fill their respective time.

  Casper saw Evan only twice since coming to Lawrence, once in the upper window of the jailhouse, where he understood Evan kept an office. Evan was standing at the window pointing aggressively and arguing with someone he couldn’t see. Casper had stopped dead in the street to stare until Missouri had passed by and asked if he needed help with something. He’d smiled at her and declined but spent the rest of the day shaken, lying on his bed and staring at the patterns in the wallpaper. The second time he’d been with the Miltons, Jody and Anna guiding him to the small café where they’d retained him for lunch. He couldn’t make out the sheriff’s features clearly from the other end of the street, but there was no mistaking that walk, and he had a moment of panic when he realized they would meet in the middle, pass by close enough for him to have to acknowledge the sheriff. Evan was walking with a tall, solidly built man that he’d come to find was his brother Sam.

  The group paused for pleasantries, Casper made some of his own but had no recollection of what he said. He stared at Evan, and Evan stared right back. It was a sickly, frozen moment. Before they’d come here, any time Casper had caught his eye Evan would smile, and Casper would try to return it but usually felt too caught in the man’s spell to offer much of one. This was the first time they got to stand close since their arrival. There were no smiles now. Evan’s gaze fell subtly to where Anna’s hand linked in Casper’s arm, but the preacher caught it. Caught the minute scowl on the sheriff’s face and matched it with one of his own. He could feel indignant rage boiling up under his skin and if they stood here much longer someone was going to notice the unwarranted sharpness in his voice when he spoke. But Sam was saying something now.

  “Well Jess has got a cart load of chores for me now that Evan’s back in town, so ‘fraid I can’t offer much help. But maybe Evan here could lend a hand, he’s mighty good at fixin’ things.” Casper looked at Sam, unsure of what they’d just been talking about.

  “What was that Sam?” Evan looked just as confused.

  “Your brother here has just volunteered your services in helping the preacher with his repairs. He’s got too much work for one man all by himself.” The motherly look Jody shot at Evan had got him to do what she wanted more than a few times in the past.

  Cas and Evan made similarly strangled sounds. “No!” Casper hadn’t meant to nearly shout. “No, that’s quit alright, I’m sure the sheriff has more than enough work to occupy his time, he needn’t bother with me.”

  “Why not Evan?” Sam was looking at his brother pointedly in a way that made Casper uneasy. “And you’d get the chance to work on him preacher.” That look was turned on him now and Casper felt himself go hot wondering just how much the younger Parker knew. He knew something, that was for certain. Evan had mentioned morParkere how smart Sam was and Casper had smiled at the family pride there. But clever, foxy eyes were shifting back and forth between the two men with a look that was a little too wise and great deal too calculating for Casper’s comfort. “He ain’t been to church since he was in short pants, but I think if anyone can get him to see reason it’d be you.”

  * * *

  Evan was good with his hands, if his father hadn’t pinned the silver star on him from the moment he’d stayed upright in a saddle, he thought he might have been a carpenter. Making useful things, homes that people could settle in, chests to hold the things they loved, rockers to soothe them in the evening quiet. He found it hushed his restlessness some, and he hadn’t realized how long he’d let this hobby lie fallow until he had the hammer in his hands and familiar burn in his shoulders.

  It let him be near Cas.

  He’d made his excuses for staying away, and Casper had echoed them. But come Thursday morning he found himself setting up a sawhorse around back and cutting new planks to replace the warped ones that made up the front steps. He felt it along the skin of his back when Cas discovered him there, knew the man was standing in the back door with arms crossed, deciding what to do. But Evan was here because he’d realized how much he needed to keep things simple. He wasn’t about to throw himself at the preacher’s feet and beg forgiveness, it smacked too much of desperation and he wasn’t willing to make himself so vulnerable. What he could fix was this house, make sure Casper had four sturdy walls and a solid roof over his head, maybe that would make up for some of it.

  The sharp scent of new cut wood mingled with the wet earth, the early morning damp promising to burn off by noon. He didn’t acknowledge Casper, just bowed his head and set to work.

  Casper watched him for a long while, and Evan wondered if the man would run him off, curse him, tell him he wasn’t wanted here. But Casper turned back into the house, and the only thing that answered the sounds of Evan’s labor after that was the echo of another hammer coming from inside. They worked that way all morning, Casper inside and Evan out, until mid-day when Casper carried a bundle to a nearby copse of trees, signaled for Evan to follow and set out a simple lunch of apples and hard cheese with a fragrant loaf of brown bread that he knew must have come from Jody.

  They were both tired, covered in sweat and dust. It was almost good like this, the shade and the aching muscles helped them both sink back into the grass and appreciate their food without feeling the need for idle banter. And when it was over, there was space for a thank you, or the beginning of a conversation Evan was full aware he needed to have. But Casper just gathered the
remains of their meal and stood.

  “The roof needs a great deal more work than I’d realized.” Evan looked up at the placid blue eyes, unsure if this was an olive branch or a test. Didn’t matter either way.

  “I can fix it.”

  * * *

  By the following Thursday there was nothing left to do for the outside, the front steps were neat and flat, the porch striped with several bright new planks. The plant beds were cleared and prepped for a late planting, the walkway leveled, the fence mended, the shutters sanded, painted and rehung. The roof had taken a full day to complete, but they’d worked on it together. Kneeling on rags and passing tar and planks and nails, their fingers black and necks sunburnt. As with every day before, nothing of consequence was said between them, Evan felt he should try, but Casper spoke only the words needed to continue their work. He barely looked at Evan and it felt wrong.

  Daybreak Friday morning, Evan knocked at the front door, tools in hand.

  “My table has a loose joint.” Was all the man offered before standing aside for Evan to enter.

  Evan fixed the table easily while Casper clattered about upstairs in the bedroom, taking apart the iron bed frame, scrubbing the grime from the bars and screw holes before trying to fit it all back together. When he was finished with the table, Evan climbed the stairs hesitantly. It felt strange to be up here, walking towards Casper’s bedroom, intimate when all other intimacies had been taken away. Evan peeked shyly into the room, watching Casper on his knees struggling with the bars. He threw a frustrated look at Evan.

  “This was much easier to take apart.” He grumbled, scowling at the frame.

  “Here, let me hold the other side for you.” Evan moved to the opposite end of the room, bare he noticed, but for that battered leather valise that had journeyed with them from Boston and a pile of books topped with the stub of a candle in a brass holder.

  “You don’t have to do that.” Casper argued.

  “You don’t have to be stubborn.” They glared at each other for a moment. “Cas, can I just-“

  “No, Evan. Not now.” He fixed his attention on his dirt blackened fingers, and Evan could see him struggle, very briefly, with something before finally lifting his head to meet Evan’s gaze. It had been so long since Casper full looked at him, like he used to, that Evan let himself ignore the distant coolness that had dropped over those features. “I’ll accept your assistance with this task, then I’ll make us coffee and we can sit. You may unburden yourself as you feel you must and I will listen. I will thank you for your help, but after that I think our dealings with each other are done.”

  Evan nodded and shut his mouth, and between the two of them the frame was quickly restored, mattress laid out and dressed in clean sheets. Casper moved silently to the kitchen putting the coffee on to boil. He brought two tin mugs from the cupboard, remnants of the original family now gone. They sat staring at one another across the newly fixed table. Evan could see dark circles under the preacher’s eyes, a line at his brow that was deeper than he remembered. He had gone over this conversation in his mind for so long, even before they’d made it to Kansas. Now he couldn’t remember any of it.

  “Cas, will you…can I tell you all of it? I feel that you should know everything and then you can decide.”

  “Decide what exactly?”

  “What kind of a man you think I am.”

  “Evan,” Casper sighed like the weight of Evan’s expectations was too much. “It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not an ignorant schoolboy, we both made choices that did harm to ourselves and others. If you feel you need to make some sort of confession to me I will hear it, and I will do my best to understand, but then I think it would be best if we keep to ourselves after that.”

  “It matters, Cas.” And Evan continued when he saw the look of confusion on Casper’s face. “It matters what you think of me, and I don’t think I can go on anymore with you thinking I would…..” Evan sighed.

  “I was four when a cattle rustler set the house on fire to keep my daddy off his trail while his men cleared out the Carson ranch. He was sheriff of Lawrence back then and it was a good bit wilder than the town you find now. My mamma was killed in that fire, I got Sammy out, he was just a baby. Pa spent years looking for that man, and when I got old enough, I spent a few more years looking with him. We found him when I was sixteen, hung him till he stopped dancing. I watched my Pa cut off his head and tie it in a sack to his saddle, and when we got back he buried it six feet deep under the floorboards of the jail cell. Head’s still there, far as I know.”

  “Pa weren’t around much, left us on our own a good deal. Few of the townsfolk took turns raising us, Bobby mostly, Ellen some, too. But it was always me an’ Sammy, I took care of him and we came out okay considering. Pa spent all his time chasing demons, as he called them, outlaws and thieves, he was a ruthless sonofabitch. Got shot more than any man I ever knew and barely batted an eye, caught himself Jimmy the Red with a broken leg, dragged him back here and passed out on the saddle minute he got to town. He was damn near a living legend round these parts. And then the bastard got himself killed falling in front of a wagon when he got kicked out of Ellen’s for being too drunk.”

  The coffee whistles and Evan stops, lets Casper get up to pour, watches the man’s fine, long fingered hands when they get near his mug. He hadn’t realized there would be so much needed explaining.

  “Thank you, this is good.” Evan takes another sip. “Well next thing you know I’m sheriff, got an office full of Pa’s crap we got to clear out and what should I find but letters to someone none of us had ever heard of going back years. There were boxes of them. I didn’t know what to make of it, so Sammy suggested I just write and let the guy know Pa was dead. Before the month’s out, this scrawny thing’s showed up at my door saying he’s John Parker’s son.”

  Casper watches him patiently, but Evan can feel him wondering hParkerthis applies to the two of them.

  “Turns out Pa was doing more than hunting demons out there on the plains. Had a woman he kept, though he didn’t marry her. Got a son by her, seemed to help them out and visit when he was close by. Anyway, boy’s all grown up, his Ma died of pneumonia a year before John did, so Adam, that’s his name, Adam didn’t have much keeping him in town, and we were always big on taking care of family. So he stayed with us in Lawrence, and not six months after he showed up but he fell ass backwards in love with the little Braeden girl who got herself grown up into a real pretty woman name of Lisa.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Didn’t get her first. They were married quick and had Ben quicker than that. Sam got hitched up with Jess not long after, so I was more a third wheel, gave them the house after Sam moved out and moved into the office, just like the old man. They were so happy Cas, and we were all together and it was the best it’s ever been. Then two years ago the Mason gang comes through town while Sam and I were out in Chesterville transferring a prisoner. They shot the place up good, and one of them took a shine to Lisa when he saw her in town. Adam tried to defend her and got a bullet to the head, right in front of her and Ben.”

  “That’s terrible!” Casper clutched his mug, and he looked so pained Evan wanted to run a soothing hand along the preacher’s arm. He wanted to very much but refrained.

  “They went to pieces Cas, little Ben especially. He had nightmares and she cried all the time. I moved back in to help. Lisa talked about moving out to Durango to live with her sister. But we’d lost so many people and I just couldn’t lose Ben too, he was family. They both were.”

  “So you married her.”

  “I did. After Adam died I’d promised her I would always take care of them, and I didn’t want her to feel that she had to hitch herself to some other man just to take care of Ben. And afterwards, it weren’t too bad, I have a….umm…a condition, same as you I guess.” Casper gives him a confused

  look. “I’m of an age when mothers start parading their daughters by my window. And I was always
afraid that if I married one of them, they might….know somehow.”

  “You mean that you prefer the company of men.” Evan takes a shuddering breath. He’s only ever talked about this to Sammy, and only after the kid had sussed it out himself and cornered Evan repeatedly until he’d been forced to admit it.

  “Yeah that. Lisa doesn’t know, but she makes no demands on me like a normal wife. We both look at each other more as brother an’ sister, we don’t sleep in the same bed ‘cept once in a while I’ll hold her at night if she gets low.” Evan doesn’t know why this admission makes him feel guilty, he hopes Casper can’t see him blushing. There’s a long silence between them, the coffee gets cold.

  “Cas, I’m real sorry. I know I was selfish to drag you into this and not give you the whole truth. I just never met anybody like you before, the way you make me feel, it was just…..I was afraid to say anything that might change it.”

  Casper looks at his warped reflection wavering on the surface of his drink. Could he really hold ill will in his heart, when he had been doing much the same thing? Nothing was ever easy when two people like them got together, and he had been just as afraid of destroying their happiness with too many questions. Their guilt was equal, and this realization melted a bit of his icy resolve.

  “Evan, I should apologize too. You were not the only one that was acting selfishly. I shouldn’t have thrown myself at you so thoughtlessly, I should have considered the consequences.”

  “No Cas, don’t do that,” Evan is up and out of his chair in a flash, dropping to his knees beside Casper and looking up at the preacher’s shocked face with hard glittering eyes. He doesn’t think he can touch the man without turning it into a caress so Evan grips the seat of the chair, trapping Casper in the frame of his arms. “You didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I seduced you, I tempted you away from your faith and I did things….Cas you’re a holy man and this is all on me, I-“