When the Dust Settles

by Mary Calmes

  There was applause as he stood and bowed, promising he wouldn’t let me down. This was his home. After prison, a lot of people wouldn’t take a chance on him. The fact that I had gambled meant the world to him and his family.

  It was the same for many of the people who worked for me. My head chef, Javier Garza, was—they said—let go from his last position for stealing and—he said—for being Mexican. The reality was that his changes—brisket in pecan and mesquite marinade and turkey legs for the kids added to the steak plates and hamburgers we started with made us crazy successful in a very short amount of time.

  Two years ago, because Mitch Powell, the builder and owner of the Kings Crossing Resort and Spa, owed Rand Holloway a few favors, he paid off one of them by giving me a throwaway location for my new restaurant, The Bronc, next to the golf clubhouse. We weren’t in the main area where all the other restaurants were, and because of that, people had despaired of our chances for success. The thing was, though, it was my dream, and I had been thinking and planning it for years. So when it came time to execute, I did.

  We covered the parking lot in the same rubber they used for play areas for kids at school, put poles up so no one could drive in, filled the entire space in picnic tables, and built a counter ledge all the way around it. Only families got to sit at the tables. It was funny how many times single parents, or two men or two women, made the choice to think we didn’t count them in our definition of “family.” How many times was I stopped and thanked, told that a member of my staff had brought them to a table, sat them down, and explained that, yeah, if you had kids, you got to sit and take a load off. If you had grandparents with you, you got to sit. But two on a date, or a group of guys, that’s what the ledge was for, just wide enough to put a plate on. You had to shovel your food in while standing up. But for people with strollers, people with teenagers, there was a table with an umbrella over it just waiting for you.

  The comments on Yelp, Zomato, and TripAdvisor, on our Facebook page, on our Twitter feed, as well as in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, were all wonderful. The service was fantastic, everyone said across the board. Whoever owned The Bronc really knew how to take care of people. All the comments were really nice to hear. When Guy Fieri showed up to tape an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, I nearly passed out. And even though I wasn’t the one in the kitchen cooking for him, I could not have been more proud when I shook his hand and he thanked me for having him there. It was my place, after all. The Bronc Burger, made with ponzu sauce and buffalo meat, was apparently one of the best things Guy had ever had. I was thrilled, so was my staff, and the influx of new patrons staggered us all. As a result of all the good feedback, press, word of mouth, and independent foodie blogs, the business took off and the money came rolling in.

  It was, in my opinion, the coupling of amazing food and great service. When we first opened, all we served was a steak plate—cubed pieces of meat marinated in garlic and red wine sauce—and hamburgers. That was the extent of our selection, except for the sides. There were tater tots, sweet potato fries, coleslaw, mac ’n’ cheese, and chili. We didn’t have a kids’ menu. You could order a half, though, and what kid didn’t like mac ’n’ cheese? Soon after we added this amazing tofu burger. It sounded gross when we added it to the menu, but holy crap, did we sell a ton of them. I had my own chef for that, Han Jun. His mom was East Indian, his dad was from Okinawa, and he was the one who added the ponzu sauce to the steak too, which made the garlic taste even better. Because the tofu burgers were so popular, instead of opening up a second grill in the back, I made it the vegetarian area. The grill was new; it had never had any meat cooked on it, ever. We even had a sign over it that read: If you’re packing meat, get the hell outta here.

  Really, the tofu burgers, made with all the same stuff as the steak except for the cow, were a bigger hit than I thought they would be. What started out as a “maybe” changed into a great addition, another dimension to the restaurant, and the vegetarian window three of my girls painted and decorated so it looked like an entrance to a secret garden was what a lot of people made a beeline for.

  Inside we had a full bar, and seating was basically a huge island for drinking along with eating. There was no place to park yourself inside unless you were drinking. The food part was all outside.

  In the winter we tented the parking lot and got space heaters and blowers. In the summer we had misters and fans. What was nice was that Stefan Joss, Rand’s partner, negotiated everything for me when I first moved in. He was scary, and that had surprised me. He looked sort of sweet, but then all of a sudden, you found yourself faced with a predator, all teeth and claws.

  Stefan negotiated the one thing I had no idea I would need—a flat utility rate. For seven years. I almost passed out.

  “How?”

  “Gifted.” He smiled at me and his pretty emerald-green eyes glinted.

  I was so thankful at that moment, I sold my soul to the devil and told Stef that whatever he needed, I was his guy. I owed him and no task was too much, no favor was too great to pay. And now, after two years, Rand was collecting on what I owed his partner.

  It was why I went away for a few days of solitude.

  I needed to be in a calm place before I had to submit to taking orders from Rand and listen to his foreman, Mac Gentry, tell me how stupid I was. I needed to be cool and grounded before I left with them for a long weekend of driving a small herd of cattle—only two hundred head plus calves—from grazing land up in the Panhandle down to the feeding ground on the Red Diamond.

  At least, that’s where I thought we were going. I wasn’t positive. They weren’t Rand’s cattle, meaning they weren’t born and raised on the Red; instead, he’d purchased them at auction when the ranch they were living on was seized by the federal government in a USDA raid. Apparently tainted beef was tracked to the Bannon Cattle Company in Montana, and when undercover FDA agents went in to investigate, they found gross violations everywhere from the stockyards to the slaughterhouse. The cattle were being treated inhumanely, and more importantly, killed painfully and sloppily. At auction, no one wanted to put the time and money into grazing the cattle or seeing if the two hundred head left could be salvaged. Except Rand.

  Rand bought them all, had them trucked from Montana to Texas, and they’d been grazing for the past six months separate from his own herd. It was easy to pick out Rand’s cattle from any others. He didn’t castrate, dehorn, tail dock, or perform tongue resection on calves. At the Red Diamond Ranch and Cattle Company—he added to the ranch’s name when he started shipping beef internationally—he had also done away with branding the year before. No one stole cattle from Rand Holloway. He had too many men—normally, just not this weekend—and he had become his own law. All Red Diamond cows were healthy, strong, and treated like a gift. No one mistreated anything on Rand’s ranch, and though there were people who found killing animals to eat them an abomination, even they could tour the Red and find no instance where any livestock suffered.

  People were another matter. I, for one, would be suffering this weekend.

  Between weddings, childbirth, and vacations, Rand was short-handed, so he called in my marker with Stef. I had to go sit in a saddle from sunup to sundown for three days, beginning early Friday morning and concluding late Sunday night, and look happy about the whole experience.

  So, I had needed to relax and fish before I rode into hell.

  The drive was starting out early the next morning, so after the meeting broke up, I offered to drive Josie to her friend’s house, where she would be staying for a week. I also had to stop at my place and grab my gear since I had to report to the Red in only a few hours.

  “Aren’t you going to be tired?” Josie asked.

  “Maybe I’ll sleep through the bullshit.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head because I didn’t want to start talking about my family.

  She got in the truck with me and I drove us to my house. As she stood in my livin
g room glancing around the bungalow, I got the feeling I was being judged.

  “What?”

  She coughed. “Oh no, nothing.”

  I realized I needed to throw away the five empty food containers on the coffee table in the living room. “Just spit it out.”

  “You, uhm, live here alone, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  She shook her head and gave me a big smile. “I was just wondering.”

  I rolled my eyes and left the room. She followed me into my bedroom after a minute, hovering in the doorway, afraid, it seemed, to trail me any farther.

  “What?” I snapped.

  Her eyes were wide and round as she caught her breath. “Do you smell that?”

  “What?”

  She peered around the corner. “Did you kill something in here?”

  “You’re hysterical,” I said as I checked my clothes.

  She put her hand over her nose and gagged.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Are you kidding? You just sniffed that shirt before you stuffed it into that duffel bag.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said absently, picking other clothes up off the floor. “I don’t know if it’s clean or not.”

  She pointed at the chest of drawers in the corner. “Clean clothes go in there, boss.”

  I grunted.

  “Ohmygod!” she shrieked, which startled me, and I swung around to face her.

  “What’s wrong now?”

  “You’re a grown man, for crissakes!” She was horrified, going by seeing her nose scrunched up and her brows furrowed and the look of disgust all over her face. “We walked by a perfectly good-looking washer and dryer. Do they not work?”

  “They work.”

  “Well, then?”

  “I—”

  “Your kitchen reeks,” she said flatly. “This is your home, boss, not a dump.”

  “I was fixin’ to—”

  “Seriously, this house is so cute from the outside, but”—she grimaced so I couldn’t miss it—“the inside looks like ass.”

  “I ain’t never here,” I defended myself.

  She crossed her arms and tipped her head, staring up at me. “So how about this,” she began. “Instead of playing musical houses for Josie, maybe I should stay here and get this place shipshape. You have that apartment over the garage that could be mine.”

  “It’s full of tools and black widow spiders.”

  “Yes, well, the tools can go in the garage and the spiders can die.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “There’s a shower and toilet up there, right?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I mean, we all saw it when you moved in.”

  “I—”

  “It’s a studio apartment, so enough room for one.”

  “You don’t wanna live with your boss.”

  “I do, actually,” she said pointedly. “I feel safe, and oh dear God do you need me.”

  “You—”

  “Then it’s settled,” she announced cheerfully. “You go off and ride horses, I will make this place a home, and by the time you get back, it’ll be livable.”

  “No, I—”

  “And for rent I might even cook, but for certain I will work on the house and the backyard that could be great if you, you know, mowed.”

  “I can’t have a girl living with me. What would everyone say?”

  “They would say, boy, that Glenn Holloway is a soft touch, but everyone needs a little sister to take care of them.”

  I threw up my hands, got out the spare key for her, and told her not to drink my beer or eat all my leftovers.

  The wince of apparent pain over the suggestion made me laugh.

  “As if any of those leftovers will still be here when you get home.” She retched. “I’m getting a hazmat suit on and then I’m bleaching everything.”

  I could only groan.

  “And as far as me drinking your beer—I hate that stuff, so really, you don’t have to worry.”

  “No boys over here ’cept the ones from work, you hear?”

  The look I got, as though I had lost my mind, no one could have missed. Clearly boys were not on her agenda at the moment.

  I finished packing and told her she could sleep in the spare bedroom until the studio was cleaned out. “Get the guys to help you.”

  “Like I’m doing all that by myself.”

  “And seriously, kill the spiders first.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  She trailed after me to the kitchen, and when I opened the refrigerator to get a bottle of water, she gasped.

  “It ain’t that bad.”

  She pointed. “Is that green? Ohmygod, what is that?”

  “You—”

  Hesitantly she took a step closer before pointing at what I was pretty sure used to be potato salad a very long time ago. “I think that has fur on it.”

  I locked the door on the way out.

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS three forty-five in the morning by the time I made it out to the Red Diamond, towing a horse trailer that was in better shape than my truck. I’d driven over to the Blue Rock Stables where the owner, Addison Finch, let me keep my horse. There was no way in the world I would ask Rand for room in his stable. What was great was that Addison was the one who took care of the horses for the resort, so the walk over there at night from my restaurant so I could ride Juju was short. I had a routine down. Jog over, work out my horse, and then run the long way home to my bungalow. What wasn’t so great was I’d made my horse as nocturnal as I was, so when I got there in the early morning and loaded her into the trailer, she only had one eye open, just like me.

  The house was lit up when I pulled in, so I knew people were awake. That made sense. Rand normally started his day at four, and we had at least a five-hour drive to get to the cattle.

  Sitting there, I debated just calling and telling him that I’d come down with pneumonia, or the plague, or just anything to get out of the drive. It wasn’t even his fault, really; it was mostly that Rand was larger than life and everything he did turned to gold, making it damned difficult to ever measure up to him.

  Rand owned the largest legacy property between Dallas and Lubbock and had made said ranch self-sufficient out of necessity. Basically, he’d been booted from not only his seat on the community board of directors of Winston—where the Red Diamond was technically located—but from the town itself when the county had been rezoned. So even though his home sat in Winston, the house was, by boundary, part of Hillman, as was the resort where my restaurant had been built. I had never understood how they figured the boundaries, because Rand’s three hundred thousand acres stretched over close to four hundred and seventy miles, well beyond one county and into the next and the next, but apparently it was where the main house sat that determined “home”—and Rand Holloway was no longer welcome in his.

  The reason for the ousting had been Rand coming out and bringing the man he loved—Stefan Joss—to live with him on the Red. The town of Winston could not handle one of the pillars of the community being gay and so had taken steps to ensure they were separated from Rand and the land he called home. It had been a colossal mistake: the ranch was more profitable than anyone could have imagined, giving Rand the power and the funds to make changes in Hillman as well as to turn his property into a small self-sufficient town in and of itself. The ranch boasted hundreds of Quarter Horses, thousands of cattle, and I had no idea how many acres of land now devoted to farming. There was still only one main compound, but the ranch also now hosted more than fifty private homes and an unknown number of cowboy camps that I had neither the time nor the inclination to ask about.

  He was a force to be reckoned with and everyone else, including me, paled in comparison. Since it was exhausting to try to measure up, to keep my sanity, I steered clear of him, his husband, their son, and the idyllic life they lived on the Red Diamond.

  But now I was stuck because
my marker had been called in, and even though I was sure they could get along without me, paying my debt so it wouldn’t be hanging over my head anymore was too much of a temptation to pass up. After this, Stef and I would be square and I’d never have to return to the Red and feel crappy about myself. We’d be even and I wouldn’t have to see Rand ever again, I’d never have to find myself desiring things I couldn’t have, coveting the idea of his life, his lover, and the peace he seemingly felt down to his bones.

  I could be more pathetic, I knew that, but at the moment, sitting in my truck in the dark, not moving, staring at the house, I couldn’t imagine how. It was time to make a choice. Taking a deep breath, I made it and got out, heading for the porch.

  I got no answer when I knocked on the screen door, so I opened it and stepped into the living room. Instantly an enormous Rhodesian ridgeback tromped around the corner toward me, the welcoming bark, just one, making me smile before the whimpering began. I knelt, which, with an eighty-pound dog, wouldn’t have seemed smart, but she knew me, as was evident from the whine of happiness, tail wagging, and the cold wet nose that got shoved into my face. The tongue on my chin sealed the deal.

  “Hey, Bella,” I greeted, rubbing under her chin and scratching behind her ears. “Where are all your people?”

  “Glenn? Is that you?”

  Thankfully it wasn’t Rand calling out to me, but his partner, Stefan. And he was late determining if there was a stranger in his home, but because he’d heard no screaming, which meant his dog was not tearing me limb from limb in the living room, he had to be confident it was either me or my Uncle Tyler. No one else walked into the huge Folk Victorian home without permission. As much of a family as everyone was on the Red Diamond, this was still the boss man’s house, and since the baby was born, since Wyatt James Holloway arrived two years ago, no one walked in unannounced to Rand Holloway’s home. No one.

  “It’s me,” I called back to Stef as he came out of the kitchen, dish towel over his shoulder, carrying a platter of cooked bacon.