Cowboy Brave

by Carolyn Brown

  “Good question,” she said aloud, over the roar of the mower. The tree didn’t answer. Not that it ever did.

  Then she bumped straight into said tree.

  “Damn it!” She yelled as the handle jammed into her ribs. She turned the mower off and growled at the ugly beast of a plant. “Enough,” she said, a small weight lifting with the word. “Enough,” she repeated, and her next breath came even easier. “I don’t need your approval,” she snapped at the tree, and for the first time she actually believed it.

  There was plenty of meaning in her life. Maybe not the dog catching a Frisbee, but there was so much inspiration to draw from. She’d pick a new subject to paint, complete her application, and turn it in by the end of the month. It’s time to stand on my own two feet, she thought. She’d given up her independence for her son, and she wouldn’t trade the experience for what she’d thought was her carefully constructed life plan. But she didn’t want to rely on her parents anymore for financial stability. She didn’t want a job at the family vineyard. She wanted a career. A passion. Something just for her. And nothing—not even a tree—was going to get in the way of that.

  Chapter Two

  Jack stood for several long seconds outside the modest two-story house, the living quarters of what was commercially known as Crossroads Ranch. The rich wood of the shingled siding had paled in some areas, so that now patches of weathered tan mottled against the dark brown looked like fading bruises. The wraparound porch was still intact, but he could tell on first glance it needed to be refinished and stained. He’d add that to his to-do list. He was sure that after they’d gone through Jack Senior’s things there’d be repairs here and there to make, but he also knew Luke and Walker had kept an eye on the ranch, so he wasn’t worried about having to stay too long. He’d need to check the stables and the herd, meet with the accountant to ensure they could continue paying the hired hands. All this, of course, following today’s visit from his father’s estate attorney.

  It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten the place and all the work it took to run it. That was why he sent money each month to help keep the place afloat—to make sure the mortgage got paid. Luke and Walker were plenty capable. They’d proved that well enough. But the money only did so much to ease the guilt of his absence—not from the ranch but from his brothers’ lives. Now that Jack Senior was gone, he could be the positive physical presence he hadn’t been all those years ago. At least until he up and left again.

  “You gonna take a damn picture?” Walker asked as he strode past him and up the porch steps.

  Luke approached next. “That’s asshole speak for ‘Come on in and grab a beer,’” he said with a grin.

  “When you’re ready,” Jenna added, standing next to him now. “And maybe when you need a break, you can drive me home. Walker picked me up but…”

  She trailed off, only confirming what he’d suspected when he’d smelled the liquor on his brother’s breath. Walker would be in no shape to drive anyone anywhere in the immediate future.

  “He’s been pissed at me for a lot of years, hasn’t he?” he asked. “I left. I own that.”

  But his brothers had understood. Hadn’t they? He’d had to go. After what he’d done to Derek Wilkes, he was lucky the guy’s family hadn’t pressed charges. He’d only meant to be gone through college. But plans had changed, thanks to the fiery redhead he’d never quite forgotten.

  Jenna lifted a hand to his shoulder, giving him a gentle squeeze. “Did you ever think that maybe it’s not you he’s pissed at?”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer but instead followed her other two nephews into the house.

  He squinted at what used to be his home, trying to see what it had been prior to fifteen years ago, but the well of his memory came up dry. He knew there had been happiness behind those doors. There had been a family. But he couldn’t picture it. The only thing he saw in his mind’s eye now was Walker getting backhanded across the face—or a dazed Jack Senior at the top of the stairs, staring down at his oldest son’s broken form. Losing their mother would have been enough to reshape their history. But instead it had been so much worse.

  “You must be Jack Junior.”

  The voice came from behind him, which meant the man couldn’t see him grit his teeth. He’d never truly escape the connection to his father, not when he was his namesake. And that one little thread that kept them bound also kept that tiny voice in his head questioning how alike they were other than a shared name. The loss of Jack’s mother had sent Jack Senior over the edge. What would it take for him to do the same?

  Jack spun to face the man.

  “Mr. Miranda, I assume,” Jack said, and held out his hand.

  The guy didn’t seem much older than he was, maybe early thirties. He wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and dark jeans, and it finally hit Jack that although this man was a stranger to him, it was he who was the odd man out on the front lawn of his own childhood home.

  “Please,” he said as he shook Jack’s hand. “Call me Thomas. And damn if you don’t look just like him—or like I bet he looked before the drinking.” Thomas ran a hand through his wavy, dark hair. “Damn it. That was out of line. I apologize.”

  Jack loosened his tie, feeling overdressed and misplaced. He shook his head. “No apology necessary, not when it’s the truth.”

  Thomas gave him a nervous smile. “I don’t normally do this on the weekends,” he said. “But your aunt told me this was the only day she could be certain you’d all be in the same place at the same time. Do you mind if I come in?”

  “Not at all,” Jack said as he moved toward the porch steps.

  Thomas followed closely behind, and the two of them—both strangers to this place now—entered a house Jack hadn’t stepped foot in for ten years. Now it was simply a reminder of a father who’d lost himself in his grief and taken it out on his boys—of a past he’d been trying to outrun for a decade. Before today, he thought he’d gotten past what this place could do to him.

  Now he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “Grapes?” Walker asked, tipping back his third bottle of beer since they’d all sat down at the wooden table in the kitchen. It hadn’t been there growing up, and Jack wondered what would have possessed Jack Senior to buy new furniture when all he’d ever seemed to spend his money on was whiskey. “He left us grapes?”

  “A small vineyard,” Thomas clarified. “He left you three equal shares in the ranch—which he mortgaged to buy the vineyard.”

  Walker scoffed, slamming his empty bottle down in front of him. “So—grapes.” His cheeks were flushed and his eyes a steely gray as he pushed back from the table and headed to the fridge, undoubtedly for another beer.

  Yeah, after six hours in the car this morning, Jack knew he’d be driving his aunt the hour ride back to Los Olivos.

  “We can sell it, though, right?” Luke asked. “I mean, Walker and I have enough on our hands working the ranch, and we don’t know shit about wine.”

  Walker nodded as he opened the fridge. “Bet our big brother knows plenty, though. All those fancy restaurants he goes to on the bay in San Diego.”

  Christ. Was that really what they thought of him? It wasn’t as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth in the past decade. He’d come back to Jenna’s for at least half the Christmases he’d been gone, but it hadn’t been easy, not when he knew Ava Ellis lived nearby and wanted nothing to do with him.

  A weight pressed firm on his chest.

  He hadn’t run from her.

  Shit. He had a goddamn useless piece of land to worry about. He couldn’t afford to let his mind wander down that destructive path.

  “Look, asshole,” Jack said to Walker. “It’s not like Oak Bluff is the ends of the earth. We may have our tiny pocket of cattle land here, but shit. You’ve experienced a restaurant once or twice before. We are smack-dab in the middle of wine country.”

  Walker opened his mouth to lob a comeback at him, but Jack ignored hi
s brother and turned to Thomas. “Can we?” he asked. “Can we just turn around and sell it?”

  Thomas blew out a breath. “That’s where things get tricky.”

  Walker was back at the table now with the rest of his six-pack—and he wasn’t offering to share.

  “The vineyard’s not thriving,” Thomas continued. “Your neighbor—the one your father bought it from—let it go once he decided to sell. And, well, Jack Senior wasn’t exactly in the best shape to get it going himself.”

  “How long’s he had this thing?” Walker asked, popping the top off another bottle.

  “Six months,” Thomas said. “I know it’s hard to believe, but he had his moments of lucidity. He knew he was sick and needed to get his affairs in order. I can assure you he couldn’t have bought the vineyard without being sober, and the same goes for his will. I helped him finalize everything and—he knew what he was doing, boys.”

  Luke shook his head like he was trying to wrap his brain around it all. “Six months?” he asked. “Six months and he never said shit about it to us?”

  Jack narrowed his eyes. “When would he have said something?” He knew his brothers had been keeping the ranch running, that Jack Senior was drunk and incoherent for most of his waking hours, but he hadn’t suspected much in the way of interaction between his father and his brothers.

  Luke blew out a breath. “We weren’t going to say anything because we knew it’d piss you off, but c’mon, Jack. Jenna got us through the years we needed looking after when we were still minors, but after a while an hour drive twice a day gets to be too much. The days got longer. Jack Senior got sicker. It seemed like the right thing to do, moving back and all.”

  The right thing to do?

  “Is this some sort of joke?” Jack pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “It didn’t cross your mind to tell me you’ve been living with the man who lost his right to even speak to you before you turned eighteen?” He gritted his teeth and looked from brother, to brother, to aunt. “How long?” he asked. His pulse raced, and he recognized the feeling—the anticipation of the back of his father’s hand or a fist to the ribs. The fight or flight as the wind was about to get knocked out of him. “How damned long have you been back?”

  Tears pooled in Jenna’s eyes as she waited for one of her nephews to answer. It was Walker who finally did.

  “Two years,” he said softly, for once with no hint of anger or resentment in his voice.

  Two years? Christ.

  “So you all flat-out lied to me about what’s been going on around here?”

  Luke shrugged. “You didn’t ask, and we figured it wasn’t something you’d want to know. Judging by your reaction, I’d say we were right.”

  Jack’s jaw tightened, and he could feel his pulse throbbing in his neck.

  “It’s their home,” Jenna added. “Their livelihood and their home. I never would have let them talk me into it if I thought they were in any danger, but look at them, Jack. Look at your brothers. They are strong, smart, grown men who knew what they were doing when they decided to come home.” She opened her mouth to continue but must have thought better of it and said nothing more.

  He knew what would have come next: that it was his home, too.

  But it wasn’t. Not anymore, no matter how much he missed the open land with nothing looking down on him but the sky above.

  There had been physical distance between him and his brothers when he left, but it hadn’t registered until now how far he’d really gone—how great the divide was between him and his only family.

  “I’m going out for a ride,” he said, pushing back from the table and standing, relieved that he’d changed into jeans and a thermal before beginning their little meeting. “Check out the herd—the grapes too. Leave whatever needs to be signed, Mr. Miranda. I’ll drop it by your office later this week.”

  Thomas stood to shake his hand, and in seconds Jack was out the door and headed toward the stables. Just because he no longer lived on the ranch didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to ride.

  The horse whinnied when he threw open the stall door, but when her eyes met his, she steadied as if she’d been reacquainted with a long-lost friend. She made no protest as he saddled and readied her to leave.

  “Hey, girl,” he said, running a hand along her silky, caramel-colored coat. “Hey there, Cleo.” And without another thought, he led her out of the stable, mounted the saddle, and took off for the hills.

  They rode past the herd, which did little more than glance in his direction as he sped by until nothing but green pasture rolled out ahead of him, stopping only where he could see the hint of grapevines—rows and rows of them.

  He steeled himself against the memory of a vintner’s daughter, his last good memory of home—and also one of his most painful.

  He breathed deep as he tapped his boots against the horse’s flanks, urging her faster and farther toward the oak trees in the distance, welcoming the burn of the leather reins against the flesh of his palms.

  This, he thought, is the only part of the ranch that feels like home.

  Chapter Three

  Jack woke to the sound of a buzz saw in the kitchen. At least, that’s what the noise felt like after however many shots he’d thrown back the night before. But when he managed to open one eye and peel his half-naked body from the leather couch, he realized—thank God—that what he’d heard was coffee beans grinding.

  “You look like shit,” Walker said as he leaned against the counter. Jack couldn’t tell if that was his brother’s norm or if he did it for balance. He guessed it was a little of both.

  “You seen a mirror lately?” Jack asked. “What the hell was in that bottle last night, by the way?”

  Shot glasses still lined the table. He vaguely remembered getting back from his ride and Jenna sitting him and his brothers down at the table with a takeout pizza and a direct order that they bond. Apparently bonding meant getting shitfaced and not remembering when or how he’d ended up on the couch.

  “Where’s Jenna?” he asked.

  Walker squinted as if he was searching for the answer, but after a few seconds he shrugged. “She took your truck. Said something about buying feed for her chickens, which she’d planned on doing when she thought she was going to be home yesterday. Said you could run her home once you were awake and could see straight.”

  His brother leaned his forearms on the counter and dropped his head to rest as well.

  “Because even the morning after you don’t. That right?” How long would he be able to chalk Walker’s drinking up to age and immaturity? He was twenty-five already. As much as he feared for his own hereditary instincts, it scared him more to see it in one of his brothers. But Walker wasn’t one to talk, nor to listen or give a shit about what his big brother feared. The only way to get through to him was to use his own language.

  Walker’s head rose lazily, but there was serious intent in his steely gaze. The coffee finished brewing, and he poured himself a cup. “There’s no sugar,” he said.

  “I’ll take it black.” Jack stumbled toward the kitchen wearing nothing but his jeans from last night. He scratched the back of his head, felt his hair standing out at strange angles as he opened the cabinet that still held the mugs. “Jesus,” he said, pulling out the one with a collage of the three brothers when they were kids. Before. He remembered his father, in a drunken outburst, backhanding the mug off the counter. “The handle had broken off,” he said, more to himself than to his brother. “Exploded into a bunch of pieces. I was there. I saw it.”

  But even as he inspected the mug, he knew he wasn’t looking at a replica. He ran his finger over the handle, felt the slight ridges where the separated ceramic had been glued back together. But to look at it—you’d never know. Unless you knew.

  “He fixed some of the things he broke,” Walker said. And Jack heard in his brother’s voice what neither of them would even think about saying. Because damn if the three of them weren’t still just as b
roken as they had been when they were removed from their father’s care and sent to live with Jenna.

  “Who’s hungry?”

  Their aunt’s question sing-songed through the front door as she burst into the house—all smiles and sunshine, a welcome interruption to wherever the conversation was veering between him and Walker. He never knew how she did it. Even when she’d been barely twenty-five, without parents of her own, and found herself the legal ward of three teenage boys, she’d rarely faltered.

  The two men turned toward her, and Jack was sure he smelled…bacon.

  Walker, suddenly steady on his feet after one sip of coffee, strode in her direction. “Bring on the grease,” he said, and she held out a bag that was soaked through with it.

  “There’s a farmer’s market midway between my place and yours. Turns out this guy—new to the area. He’s opening a little diner out that direction soon, and he just so happens to be looking for an egg supplier.”

  Walker tore open the bag and pulled out one of three wrapped sandwiches. He moaned as his teeth sank into the first bite. “Damn. I love a good buttermilk biscuit,” he said, his mouth full of food. “What the hell is a diner owner doing at a farmer’s market?” he asked. “Not that I’m complaining,” he added, pointing at her with what was left of his nearly demolished sandwich.

  She shrugged. “He likes to buy fresh ingredients from the locals.” She playfully batted her lashes. “Like me,” she continued. “And he’s trying to advertise his new place. So he rents a booth and sells samples of his upcoming menu.”

  Jack poured his coffee, only realizing after the fact that he wished he’d switched mugs. He slid into a chair at the kitchen table and unwrapped his own sandwich.