Catching the Cowboy_A Royal Brothers Novel

by Liz Isaacson

  He lifted his hat and wiped his forehead as if he were really sweating to get this last die to become a two. The ghost of his hair along her fingertips made her twitch. She’d been slightly mortified by her actions in the mudroom, reaching out to touch him so intimately without being invited.

  He’d frozen, a look of awe on his face she didn’t quite understand. Embarrassment had coiled in her stomach, but she’d refused to be ashamed or awkward. She wanted to touch him, feel his hair. So she had. Maybe she’d given him the very clear hint that she was interested in him—as if the flirting hadn’t done that job.

  Still, sometimes cowboys could be a little dense, and while Dylan seemed as sharp as a tack, she hoped her interest was well-known by now.

  He rolled again—a three—and groaned. “You won.” He didn’t even bother to tally his score before he stood. “Want to go for a walk?”

  “Sure.” She left her pencil and paper with the dice and moved with him out the side door. “That was really fun. I haven’t played Yahtzee since I was a kid.”

  “Yeah, me either.”

  “What do you do when you come out here alone?”

  He cut her a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  “Oh, I can’t make that promise. I like to laugh.”

  “I’ve noticed.” He dipped his chin when he said it, his own smile carving across his face. “I work on the cabin a lot. And I sketch. People and dogs, mostly. The dog I want, I mean. A dog.”

  Hazel put her hand on Dylan’s forearm, causing him to stop. “Why would I laugh at that?”

  His blazing blue eyes seared right into her. He was so handsome, so vulnerable, in that moment. “My dad never liked it when I drew. Said nothing would come of it, and I should spend my time doing something that mattered.”

  Hazel blinked, surprised that his father would say such a thing. “Dylan, wow. I—I do all kinds of things just for enjoyment. I’m guessing sketching is like that for you?” She stared walking again, glad when he came with her. Not glad when he kept his gaze on the ground and tucked his hands away into his pockets.

  Yeah,” he said. “It’s a good release. I only sketch out here. My brothers don’t even know about it.”

  Hazel tucked her hand into the crook of Dylan’s arm, lacing her fingers together and matching her stride to his, step for slow step. “Why haven’t you told them?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno.”

  She thought he did, but she didn’t push him. They’d made a pact to share long stories by Friday, and it wasn’t even Monday evening yet.

  “What kind of dogs do you sketch?”

  “I want a German shepherd,” he said. “But the animal shelter never has any.” He exhaled. “I’ll probably have to buy one.”

  “I’ve got two English bulldogs,” she said. “Monty and Milo. One’s brown and white, the other black and white.” She turned her face fully toward the sun, enjoying the warmth on her skin. “They’re the best.”

  “Who’s takin’ care of them this week?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’ve got them over at my friend Jason’s. He’s always begging to take them, and he lets them sleep on the bed with him, so.” She gave a light laugh. “He owns the ice cream shop. Maybe you know him?”

  “I don’t get into town all that often,” Dylan said. “But I have been to the ice cream shop. Can’t say I’d be able to pick him out or anything.”

  “We go to the church on Elberta Street,” she said.

  “We?” Dylan repeated. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  Hazel tightened her arm against Dylan’s, practically bumping into him with her hip. “You think I’d be clinging to you like this if Jason was my boyfriend?”

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  Slightly stung, Hazel released his arm and put a foot of distance between them. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  He extracted his hand and caught hers on the next swing. “Great.” He squeezed her fingers and she turned to catch him smiling.

  “You’re a piece of work.”

  “Covering my bases,” he said.

  “Fact finding.”

  “That too.”

  “Jason has a girlfriend.”

  “Good for Jason.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Do you think I’d be holdin’ your hand if I did?”

  “I have no idea,” she said dryly.

  Dylan half-scoffed, half-snorted, and then he let himself laugh. Sure, he’d chuckled before, a little bit. But nothing like this wide open sound coming from his throat. Hazel gazed at him in wonder, and he sobered quickly.

  “You don’t laugh very often, do you?” she asked.

  He cleared his throat, a flush staining his neck in an adorable way. “I suppose not.”

  “It’s the best medicine.” Although, she had gone through several months after Peter’s departure from her life where Hazel feared she’d never laugh again.

  “Yeah?” he asked. “You speakin’ from experience?”

  “Of course,” she said. “It’s part of the beauty school story.”

  They took a few steps together, the wild breeze whispering among the tall grasses out here. “I was thinkin’ that was a happy story,” he said.

  She squeezed his hand and bumped him with her hip. “Getting happier every day.”

  “So I’m pretty useless in the kitchen,” he said as a plume of smoke came out of the frying pan. “Felicity said this would be easy.”

  Hazel giggled and got up from the counter where she’d been watching him struggle to cook hamburgers for the past few minutes.

  He glanced at her helplessly, and she liked this flustered version of Dylan Royal as much as she liked the calm, cool, collected version, and the vulnerable version. The cowboy version was pretty sexy too, and the game-playing version.

  “Let me.” She nudged him back and slid the spatula under the first burger and flipped it. “The heat’s too high.” Fiddling with the knob, she tried to get it to cool down. It seemed to have one temperature: hot.

  She lifted the pan off the burner to try to get it to cool a little, but she wasn’t sure it did anything. The burgers weren’t too seared, but she figured the pan was hot enough to finish cooking the meat, so she flipped off the hotplate and set the pan on the counter.

  “So we’ve got buns, burgers, and all the fixin’s.” She took stock of the tomatoes he’d cut and the cheese he’d laid out. She grabbed a few slices and laid them over the burgers in the pan.

  “And chips,” he said, reaching up into a high cabinet to pull down the bags they’d gotten out for lunch.

  She reached into the bag and grabbed a barbeque chip and popped into her mouth. She managed to chew and swallow before diving for a bottle of water. “Okay, yeah, no. I don’t see how you like those.”

  “They’re great.” He took a whole handful and started chowing down. “So are the burgers ready?”

  “Yes.” She spun away from the movement of his mouth. “Yes, they’re ready.”

  They sat side by side at the counter and ate, the small talk between them easy and casual. After dinner, he handed her a flashlight, shouldered a shotgun, and said, “Let’s go get your case study started.”

  “I really hope it’s not a wolf,” she said, eying the weapon. “And you’re not going to shoot it.”

  “I don’t go traipsing around in the dark without protection,” he said, his voice on the cusp of dangerous. “Why are you hoping it’s not a wolf?”

  “Yeah, remember how I said there were no wolves in Texas? If there are, it’ll be a major big deal.” She shrugged into her windbreaker and accepted the flashlight he still extended toward her.

  “So what do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled open the door and stepped into the twilight. The air had taken on a bite, and she took a few moments away from the cabin to breathe in the…freedom of
this place.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered as if speaking aloud would shatter the pinpricks of light as the stars started to become visible in the night sky.

  Dylan stepped next to her. “Now you see why I come out here every week.”

  She switched her attention from the beauty of the heavens to the beautiful man beside her. It would be so easy to kiss him, right here, right now. She wondered if she could.

  Better not to chance it, she told herself. If it was awkward or too forward, she still had to be out here with him for the rest of the week.

  “So which way?” she asked instead.

  “I found the most casualties this way.” He led her east from the cabin and the further they went, the less beautiful the landscape became. Being outside, under the huge sky, with little for protection left Hazel feeling more vulnerable than she’d like to admit.

  She was suddenly glad Dylan had some way to protect them should they need it, especially as a shiver ran down her spine. She switched on her flashlight so she wouldn’t accidentally step in a hole and break her ankle.

  She thought about telling Dylan about Peter right now, when it was too dim for him to see her face. She pushed the idea out of her mind. She’d known him for only a few days, and while she liked everything she’d seen and heard—besides the smoky hamburgers—she kept her mouth shut.

  “Whoa,” he whispered, throwing his arm out to stop her. “Lights off.” His snapped off in the next moment, and she hurried to do that same.

  “What?” she hissed, searching the area in front of her, then to her left, where the fence sat. Without the bright flashlight beams, her eyes took a few moments to adjust to only the moonlight.

  Dylan moved slowly, inch by inch, with so much control she couldn’t believe it. His arm came around her, causing a completely new kind of shiver. “Right there. Two pairs of eyes.” He spoke so low, it was more of a rumble from his chest to hers as he eased behind her slightly. The arm he’d slid around her came up under hers and pointed at about ten o’clock.

  She searched the horizon for any hint of what he was talking about. The light of the moon was just bright enough to catch on the reflective eyes, but she couldn’t see them. Just when she was about to ask, she caught the movement. “Coyotes,” she whispered. And there were more than two now. Four, five that Hazel could see. They prowled the perimeter of the fence, and they were bigger than any coyote she’d ever seen in her work outside of Austin.

  She pulled out the camera that had a wide open aperture and a long shutter speed, hoping the last of the light would be enough to capture the coyotes. The clicking of the camera became the only sound as the canis latrans glared at the homosapiens, a simple ten-foot fence between them.

  It was exciting and exhilarating and horrifying all at the same time. She lowered herself to the ground and watched. “Do they break through the fences?”

  “Yeah.” Dylan sank to the ground beside her.

  “You think they’re getting the cattle at night?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  Only one coyote prowled the fence line, and Hazel watched him. “This is odd,” she said, leaning closer to Dylan so she didn’t have to speak too loudly.

  “Which part?”

  “Coyotes don’t generally hunt in packs,” she said. “Pairs, maybe. And way out here, why don’t they come during the day? I mean, night hunting is what they usually do in more populated areas.”

  “They probably can’t take our steers down by themselves,” he said. “Or with a partner. They need a pack.”

  “Hey, bright side here,” she said, leaning into his body and wishing his arm was around her again.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “They’re not wolves.” She turned to smile at him before focusing on the coyotes again. She shifted, and somehow God granted wishes, because Dylan lifted his arm and placed it around her shoulder. She leaned further in.

  “This is okay?” he asked, that sexy rumble making all her cells come alive.

  “Absolutely A-okay,” she said, laying her head against his chest and keeping her eyes on that pacing coyote.

  Chapter Seven

  Dylan could’ve held Hazel in his arms forever. Number one, it meant the raging heat between them wasn’t just coiling through his bloodstream, but hers too. Number two, she smelled like everything he loved: grass and sunshine, sweat and horse and leather. Oh, and that peachy scent kept drifting from her hair too.

  “So this is what you do?” he asked. “Sit in the grass and watch coyotes pace?”

  “We’ll see where they show up every night and morning. See how brazen they are with us right here. Then we’ll tag ‘em by the end of the week.”

  “All of them?”

  “Just the big one, I think,” she said. “He’s clearly the leader.” He was a magnificent animal, with a big bushy head, and a black-tipped tail he kept tucked low. Of course, Dylan could just as easily shoot the animal if it weren’t for Hazel.

  Not that he’d enjoy it, but his loyalty was with the cattle on Grape Seed Ranch, not a pack of coyotes on the other side of the fence.

  “What do you do once they’re tagged?”

  “We monitor the GPS signal. Come out and see where they’re living, why they can’t find the food they need outside the ranch, and make determinations on relocation from there.” She lifted one shoulder, which slightly pressed into his chest. “It doesn’t take long to know. Another week, perhaps.”

  “Hm.” Dylan didn’t normally sit down when he went out at night, and a restlessness tortured him. “Should we go check the cattle?”

  “You think the coyotes have already been over the fence?”

  “They go under,” he said. “Or through.”

  “All right. Technicality.” She gave a light laugh as she stood and brushed off her pants. Dylan left his gun on the ground as he stood, only shouldering it once he was ready to start walking.

  “I just want to check them.” It was what he did. His responsibility was to make sure the fences stayed intact surrounding the ranch, report problems, and check the herd while it grazed in the wild. He couldn’t keep them away from this particular section of fence, but he’d noticed they’d moved further west since the slaughter a week or so ago.

  “It’s a long walk,” he said. “Maybe a mile in the dark. You up for it?”

  “Do you normally walk it?”

  “Not usually, no.” He didn’t care either way how they got there. He just wanted to make sure his cows were safe. “We can drive.”

  “You can be my chauffeur.” She tucked her arm into his again, and he smiled into the night.

  “Sure can.” He put the shotgun in the back of the side-by-side, and got behind the wheel. When they were both buckled, he eased the vehicle along the fence, heading west.

  He found the cows further south than they’d been last time he’d been out here, but the night air was clear—no scent of blood, no skin of worry, no sense of unease.

  “Looks good,” he said, swinging around to go back. His headlights caught on a reflective pair of eyes, and he slammed his foot on the brake. “Did you see that?”

  “I sure did.” Her voice hovered halfway between terrified and awed. Dylan’s heart thrashed in his chest, definitely leaning toward terrified.

  “That wasn’t a coyote.” He put the side-by-side in reverse and inched it slowly back the way he’d come. Sure enough, the lamps illuminated a very feline pair of eyes, which shone like green orbs in the night.

  “That’s a mountain lion.”

  And his gun was in the backseat, out of arm’s reach. He kicked himself for letting his guard down, for thinking this was a romantic tryst when it was a very serious ranch situation.

  The cougar remained very still, despite the lights shining right on it.

  “That’s what took down those cows,” Hazel said. “We have to tag it.”

  “You didn’t bring anything, did you?”

  “Of course I did. T
wo darts. One tag.”

  Where she was concealing that equipment, he didn’t know, but he heard clicking as she prepared her dart gun.

  “Can you get closer to it?”

  “We’re a hundred yards away,” he said. “If it wanted to go through that fence, it could. I don’t think closer is wise.”

  “I can’t dart it through the chicken wire anyway. I mean, maybe if I was a better shot.”

  Dylan looked at her and found her hands shaking. So she wouldn’t be able to hit the mountain lion through the one-inch holes in the chicken wire. And she probably wouldn’t be able to hit it unless it was right in front of her, teeth bared.

  “Should we switch?” he asked. “I can try to dart it. You can drive?”

  “Yeah, okay.” She nodded, handing him the dart gun and sliding over on the seat before he could even unbuckle.

  He kept his eye on the wild animal—a very large, very deadly wild animal—as he rounded the side-by-side. “Go slow,” he said, only settling himself half into the vehicle. “Real slow.”

  Hazel obliged, barely inching the vehicle forward. “The darts don’t go super far,” she whispered. “Maybe twenty yards.”

  Dylan nodded though they didn’t look at each other. He wasn’t giving anything or anyone his attention until that cat was asleep or gone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hazel hunched forward, both hands gripping the wheel like it was her lifeline.

  The cat hissed and crouched low in the grasses. “Easy,” Dylan said, trying to get a grip on the dart gun in his hand. It felt like a toy, like no way he could incapacitate the one-hundred-twenty pound animal with it.

  He held his arm out in front of him, steadying the gun and his right hand with his left, the way his father had taught him to shoot a revolver. Just like that, he coached himself. This gun had a sight too, but the animal really wasn’t showing much of himself. Just his face and a couple of bony shoulders.

  Dylan aimed in the shoulder area as Hazel moved them closer foot by foot. His muscles ached; he took in a deep breath and held it; whispered, “All right.”