Rope Me, Cowboys

by Alexa B. James

  And I knew she would. There was a reason we’d never been apart more than a few weeks. I could trust Haley with anything, could trust her to the ends of the earth. She’d never judge me for anything, from being arrested to getting caught on a barbed wire fence to thinking my own stepbrothers were total hotties.

  14

  Holden

  After lunch, I realized I hadn’t seen Amber since that morning, when I’d peeked in her door and saw her slumbering on the pillows in the bed that used to be Waylon’s.

  I shook my head, not wanting to think of Maria. It was hard not to, though, with a woman in the house again. It was hard not to let the ghosts come back and remind us of what happened last time. It was hard not to watch Amber for comparisons.

  “Anyone seen our sister?” I asked, standing from the table and picking up the plate I’d made for her.

  Waylon flinched. “She’s not our sister.”

  “Stepsister,” I said. It was true, she wasn’t one of us. She hadn’t grown up with us, didn’t know our secrets and our pasts the way we knew each other’s.

  “She went out back,” Sawyer said.

  “To the cabins?” I asked, my belly taking a dive. A selfish instinct to protect the cabins, to keep everyone away from them, made my fists clench around the edges of the plate I was holding.

  “They’re on the property,” Sawyer said, as if it didn’t matter. But I knew it mattered to all of us. Letting her see the cabins was really letting her into our lives, into ourselves. It was like if we’d read her diaries.

  “Mine’s locked,” Waylon said, stuffing his mouth with the last bite of his sandwich.

  “Really?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I pressed. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody uses it. No reason for anyone to wander in, thinking it’s a garden shed.”

  The thought almost made me laugh, but I frowned instead. I didn’t push it, though there was no way in hell anyone could mistake the cabins for garden sheds. They looked like exactly what they were—small log cabins. But if Waylon wanted to keep his locked up, it was none of my business.

  I headed out back with the plate for Amber.

  Amber.

  I whispered her name to myself as I headed for the first cabin, the door of which stood open. Her name was so right, like a gem on my tongue. When I said it, warmth filled my belly like I’d just drunk a mug of warm apple cider spiked with whiskey on a long, bitter winter’s night.

  As I climbed the steps, I was aware of how heavy my footsteps were, how the stairs creaked under my weight and the cabin shivered as I crossed the porch.

  “What are these?” Amber called from inside.

  “They’re…cabins,” I said, stepping inside. The room was dim without lights on, but I could see Amber standing in the center of the open floor, looking up at the beams above.

  “I can see that,” she said. “Who lives here?”

  I shrugged. “No one. Want a sandwich?”

  She looked at me as if just realizing I was there. It took a second for her blue eyes to clear. I studied her face, trying to figure what she might be thinking. Her sexy, full lips were bare of lipstick today, which made her look younger than she had the night before. I reminded myself she was my little sister before I could linger on her long, lean figure too long.

  “You made me lunch?” she asked, then bounded over, her long hair bouncing behind her. “Thank you. That’s so sweet.”

  I cleared my throat and looked around the place. It hadn’t been touched in years, not since we’d moved into the big house and decided nothing would ever come between us again.

  “So what’s up with them?” Amber asked through a mouthful of sandwich, wiping the corner of her lips on her wrist.

  It took me a second to tear my eyes away from her lips. They seemed to have a hypnotic effect on me. “They’re our houses,” I said. “Our grandfather built them, hoping to keep all his sons in the business. He’s the one who started Coyote Ranch.”

  “Wow,” she said, nodding. “So you have these five houses, plus the big lodge. You should rent them out.”

  I choked on that thought. “I don’t think Waylon would go for that.”

  “I can see that,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she studied the stairs to the loft. “He seems kind of private.”

  “He’s a good man,” I said. “You’ll see once you get to know him.”

  “I know,” Amber said, which surprised me. Had Waylon already warmed up to her? That was unheard of. Waylon was always the one who found something missing in the women we brought home. Since Maria, he’d had nothing but criticism for any woman we showed interest in.

  I was going about this all wrong, though. Amber wasn’t a woman we’d brought home. She wasn’t a potential partner for any of us, or even a potential fuck. She was our stepsister. The daughter of the woman Dad had married before anyone in his family had even met her. Just because she slept down the hall from us didn’t make her available.

  Amber went to the stairs and sat down, patting the step beside her. After a second, I approached, but I tried to keep my distance as I sat down beside her. I was an oaf taking up most of the width of the stairs next to her trim shoulders, though, and our shoulders brushed against each other.

  “Tell me something,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” I said, wary of her questions.

  “Sawyer told me none of you are married. How is that possible? Just look at you.” She made a choking sound and rushed ahead, her words coming so fast it made my head spin. “I mean, not saying anything, but seriously. You’re all good-looking guys. In the old days, people would have thought you were gay. But now that it’s legal, even that wouldn’t stop you from getting married. So what’s the deal?”

  She stopped talking and nibbled at her sandwich, looking at me expectantly. I started turning over answers in my mind, but before a minute was up, she must have decided I wasn’t going to answer. New York must move at warp speed. Even her talking was fast.

  “And look at this place. You could have five little families living in these cabins, have your kids all growing up together. Plus, you have that huge lodge. You’re a catch. All of you are. Are there just not enough women up here in the wilderness or what? Because otherwise, I don’t get it.”

  I shrugged, not sure how to answer that question without making her think I was all kinds of sick in the head. “We’re a team,” I said at last. “Like any good team, we all have our individual roles, but as a whole, we have one goal. What’s best for one of us is best for all of us.”

  “And…women aren’t good for you?”

  “Not so far,” I said. “Women who see us as a catch are just after what we have. And right now we’re barely holding onto the ranch.”

  Amber nodded, chewing slowly. “I get it. You don’t need the distraction. And you don’t want someone who’s only after your money.”

  “Exactly,” I said, relieved to let her do the talking.

  “It’s hard to find someone who’s interested in you for who you really are,” she said. “I thought out here, people might be more…transparent, I guess. All the people at my school were so driven, which is good, but it’s also like, they only wanted you for what you could do for them. It’s almost like in the old days, when people only married for political gain. Except at school, people were dating for those reasons.”

  “Sounds like a lot of drama.”

  “It was,” she said with a sigh. “I’m so glad to be done with it. My parents literally chose who I could date in high school.”

  I pulled back to look at her. “Why’d you let them?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, her blonde hair cascading over her shoulder. “I never really liked anyone I couldn’t date, so it didn’t matter that much to me. If I’d been in love with someone else, it would have been different. But I wasn’t, and I guess I wanted to make my parents happy. They may be jerks sometimes, but they’re still my parents.”

  I had a strang
e urge to pull her into my arms, to brush that hair back from her face and tell her we’d never do something like that to her, that she was safe now.

  “A lot of people’s parents did that at my school,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to leave the country with my best friend. Just to get away from it for a while, get to really be ourselves, away from gossip blogs and news hounds.”

  “That sounds like a good thing,” I said. “Doesn’t your mom want that, too? That’s why she sent you out here.”

  “She sent me out here as punishment,” Amber said. “And to get me out of the spotlight. I think she’s afraid I’d make some kind of international scandal if I went overseas. But she’s already probably plotting who I need to be friends with at college. As soon as I start school again, my parents are going to want to know who’s going to the same university as me, and how I can arrange my schedule to get in classes with the important ones. It’s so orchestrated.”

  “I can’t imagine living that way,” I said, shaking my head. “Out here, we do as we want. We have an understanding with other ranchers and folks around here. Our rules are sometimes a little different from the law. But we make it work.”

  She grinned sideways at me. “It’s like you’re still living in the wild west.”

  “It can get a little wild,” I admitted.

  Amber sighed and set her plate between her feet. “I wish I had that much freedom. My two boyfriends in high school were both chosen by my parents. They each got to pick one. It was a source of conflict, of course, like everything else. My mom didn’t like the guy my dad picked, and when we broke up, she blamed it all on him. And then the guy she picked…well, let’s just say I’d rather not talk about him. Just once, I’d like to pick my own relationship with someone my parents don’t choose for me. Someone with a less than stellar approval rating, or someone completely politically incorrect. You know what I mean?”

  Did I ever.

  15

  Amber

  That evening, as I was hanging out in my room, the unmistakable scent of frying onions wafted up from the kitchen. Curiosity got the better of me, and I headed downstairs. When I stepped into the kitchen, I found Sawyer standing at the stove, stirring the onions in a black cast iron skillet.

  “You cook?” I asked.

  He turned, the wooden spoon still held in one hand, and gave me that knee-melting smile. “Sure do,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  “So hungry,” I said, unable to keep my eyes from roaming over his arms. God, it was impossible to resist all these gorgeous guys in one place.

  “Good,” Sawyer said, turning back to the counter. “We’ve got plenty.”

  “There must be something on the wind up here,” I said, joining Sawyer at the counter, where he was chopping peppers on a wooden cutting board. “I’ve never been so hungry in my life.”

  Or so horny.

  “Is that right?” Sawyer asked, cocking an eyebrow as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Want some help?” I scooted a little closer, until the heat of his skin zipped up my arm. I closed my eyes and tried not to melt.

  “You cook?” Sawyer asked, pulling back to look at me.

  “I actually love cooking,” I admitted.

  “Really?” Sawyer asked, sounding impressed.

  “But don’t even think about asking me to be your cook for the next three months. Or wash your underwear, or any of those other old-fashioned notions you men probably have about where women belong.”

  “Us men?” he asked, shaking his head. “Maybe you’re the one with the old-fashioned notions.”

  “You’re burning the onions.” I plucked the wooden spoon from the counter and stirred the onions while Sawyer dumped in a handful of diced peppers.

  “I thought you didn’t want to be our cook,” Sawyer teased, nudging me with his elbow.

  “That doesn’t mean I won’t help out,” I said. “I’m living here, too, now. I don’t expect you to wait on me.”

  “Okay, Princess.”

  “Quit that,” I said, elbowing him back.

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  I laughed as I stirred the frying vegetables. “So do the others cook? Or just you?”

  “We share cooking duties,” he said. “But I do most of it. I like to cook. It’s relaxing.”

  “I just like making things,” I said. “Trying new recipes, seeing how flavors work together. Sometimes the most unexpected combination of ingredients turns out to be the perfect one.”

  I reached for the garlic he’d minced on the board at the same moment he did. Our fingers touched, and we both paused. Neither of us pulled away. Slowly, Sawyer’s hand slid over mine, his calloused fingers tightening over my soft ones. I caught him watching my lips, and heat spread up my neck. That was not a brotherly look on his face.

  My heart hammered so hard in my chest I thought I’d explode. I wet my lips and leaned in a fraction of an inch, just enough for him to see it. An invitation.

  Just then, Sawyer’s phone rang. He cleared his throat and pulled his hand away, turning from me and scooping up the garlic with the edge of the knife. He dumped it into the pan and stirred it, moving so his back was to me.

  What the hell had just happened? He shouldn’t have been looking at me that way. And I shouldn’t have liked it. But he was, and I did.

  “Our mom taught us to cook,” Sawyer said, pulling his phone out just long enough to silence the ringer before dropping it back into his pocket. “She can make damn near anything. What about you?”

  I shook my head to clear it. I must have imagined that lustful look in his hooded eyes.

  “Um, no, not so much,” I said. Sawyer handed me the spoon and skirted around me, like he was afraid of accidentally touching me. He went to the fridge, got out some meat, and started slicing it. Meanwhile, I went straight into verbal-vomit mode.

  “Well, actually, I don’t really know if my mom can cook, but I’ve never seen her try,” I said. “She’s so busy, she’d probably forget she put on toast until the house burnt down. When I was growing up, we had a nanny who cooked. She’s the one who taught me. I’d come home from school every day and do my homework at the kitchen table while she cooked. It always smelled so good, and eventually, I wanted to know how to make food like that. So it became something we did together. I loved spending time with her, since my parents were always gone. There’s something really satisfying about feeding people, about being able to satisfy them.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Sawyer said. There was an underlying current of tension still sizzling in the air around us. And though his words were slightly teasing, laced with some added meaning, the reminder of that moment that shouldn’t have happened remained.

  “It’s nice to take something you made and share it with another person,” I said. “It’s like sharing a part of yourself.”

  “Especially if you make it together,” Sawyer said.

  “Of course,” I said. “Everything’s better together.”

  16

  Amber

  A week later, I’d explored everything there was to see, except four of the cabins out back. While the boys were out working, I stood on the back porch, holding a mug of tea between my hands to warm them, and studied them. They stood in a row, set at a forty-five-degree angle from the house. The first one was just across an expanse of lawn, but the furthest one, where the Grimeses lived, was quite a way off.

  Though I went into one the first day, I hadn’t been inside the others. It felt weird to go in somewhere that Mrs. Grimes said was private to them, even if they didn’t tell me not to. Still, I could see the potential. I’d been turning it over in my head since Holden told me they were barely holding onto the ranch. Now it was time to put it out there.

  I turned and headed back inside to make dinner. True to his word, Sawyer didn’t try to saddle me with the domestic tasks, but I’d asked to be put on the cooking rotation. I wasn’t there for a free ride.

&
nbsp; Once the table was set with dishes and a vase of dried wildflowers in the center, I went out back and ring the big dinner bell. Every time I rang it, I felt like Lady Liberty ringing the Liberty Bell. I kept that little tidbit to myself as I stood tall and regal and let the gong ring out across the yard. And yes, I was aware that Lady Liberty didn’t actually ring the bell.

  A few minutes later, when everyone was seated at the table and eating, I took a deep breath. “Guess what I did today?”

  “Got caught on a barbed wire fence?” Waylon asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.

  I gave him a murderous glare. “No,” I said slowly. “I got to thinking about the cabins.”

  “You want one, right?” Waylon said, setting down his fork and bracing the heels of his hands on the table edge. “The fourth one. We each have one, and the Grimeses are living in the fifth. And since our father married your mother, you think you get a piece of the ranch.”

  “What? No.” I couldn’t help but feel the sting of his words. I couldn’t believe he thought that about me, that I was after their money.

  “What about the cabins, Amber?” Holden asked, giving me an encouraging smile.

  “Well, you had mentioned maybe you were in a little financial trouble,” I said. “And I thought that since you have four houses out there…I mean, they’re small, but they’re cute cabins. Maybe you could set up some kind of bed-and-breakfast type thing. Or at least rent them out on Air B&B. You don’t have to do anything for that. It rents out as-is, and you can do it during the tourist season, when people come up to ski, and also in the off season, when they come up to go to the Tetons.”

  “No,” Waylon said, not looking up from his chicken parmesan.

  “Why not?” I asked. “I get that you don’t want strangers hanging around, but come on. You already have Mrs. Grimes, and she’s nosy as hell. And if you need money…”

  “No,” he said again, raising his eyes this time. To my surprise, they were flashing with anger.

  “Hear her out, Waylon,” Sawyer said.