Front Range Cowboys (5 Book Box Set)

by Evie Nichole

  Melody bit her tongue. It hurt to have her best friend say something mean like that. But Melody had to remind herself that it wasn’t actually Allie speaking. She was repeating things that Ryan told her. Ryan didn’t like Melody. Melody told Allie to get rid of him. That didn’t work for him. So, it wasn’t Allie saying these mean things. It was Ryan.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at noon, Allie.” Melody sighed. “Maybe by then you’ll be yourself.”

  But as Melody left Allie’s apartment, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Whenever Allie was with Ryan, she was a train wreck. It took months to get over Ryan’s epic dumpings. Then it sometimes took another few months for Allie to even begin to recover financially. This had been going on for nearly four years, ever since Allie and Melody had met in high school.

  Melody walked back outside to the street and headed across the wide road to her own building. It was quieter here. Allie’s building was larger. It was more subsidized housing than not. That was why Allie’s apartment had more than one room. Melody had one room and had to share the bathroom with the rest of the people on her floor. It wasn’t the best situation, but Melody kept telling herself that at least she lived on her own without a roommate to try and take advantage of her.

  Trudging up the steps to the third floor, Melody felt about as low as she could get. It was impossible not to think about what it might be like to live in her own house. She would have her own bathroom and her own kitchen, a real kitchen with a stove instead of a microwave and a hot plate. How amazing would it be to see the stars at night? What would it be like to hear nothing but crickets and maybe the lone howl of a coyote instead of the constant barrage of blaring horns and roaring engines from the street below?

  Melody put her key into the door of her apartment and went through the usual process of wiggling, turning, wiggling, and finally feeling the lock give as the door fell open. Going inside, Melody closed the door behind it and slid the bolt home. Then she went through the nightly ritual of sliding the chain lock closed and clicking the four other locks into place. She didn’t trust anyone. Not her neighbors, not the neighborhood itself, not anyone who might have a reason to move around her building. They were all suspect in her opinion. All of them were out to get something for nothing from anyone they could steal it from.

  Setting her keys on the tiny kitchenette counter, Melody pulled out her flip phone and the cream-colored business card with Cisco’s phone number on it. She turned the card over and over between her fingers. Her thumb had left a dirty smudge on the pristine card. Running her fingers over the embossed letters on the card, Melody wondered how a man like Cisco would ever wind up helping a woman like her. Was he just nice? Was he feeling sorry for her? Did it matter?

  She typed his number into the box on the phone display and then typed off a very quick text. Her plan charged by the character. So, her texts tended to be terse and to the point. Within just a few minutes, she had a response back. He would meet her at the coffee shop at noon in his car.

  Was that awkward? Melody could not decide. She could not make up her mind whether or not this whole thing was some kind of scam that was totally new to her. What if Cisco was out to get her just as much as someone like Ryan was out to get Allie? What if he was going to take her money just like Watson had?

  Flopping down on her sofa bed, Melody kicked off her shoes and stretched her feet. She was so tired. She was too tired to think about this right now. Plus, she had to open at the coffee shop now. She groped on the nightstand for the alarm and set it to go off at three thirty. That gave her enough time to get dressed and walk to work. The shop had to open by four. At least Sunday morning would go fast. People were always trying to get in and get their coffee before church started.

  Church. Even the thought made her want to laugh. She closed her eyes and let the soothing feeling of a full belly lull her to sleep. She was still in her clothes. That didn’t matter. Maybe she just wouldn’t change in the morning. It would mean an extra few minutes of sleep. She could spend that thinking about church and Sunday school and how there had been one or two foster families who had attended church. They’d been so obsessed with the idea of “fixing” the little foster girl that they’d pressured her a lot about religion.

  Melody always wondered why it was so difficult for them to understand that when you were existing moment to moment just hoping you had enough to eat and a safe place to sleep, your brain just could not spare a single moment to focus on spiritual matters.

  Rich people.

  It was the last thought Melody had before falling asleep. Of course, that was when her brain started conjuring images of Cisco. He was so good-looking and just so nice. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have someone like that in her life. Was there satisfaction in rolling over in the bed and putting her cheek against his bare chest? What would it be like to feel his hand slide over her ribs and rest on her hip? Maybe she would never know such a thing. And maybe that was what kept Allie from truly throwing Ryan out of her life for good. It was hard to say. Melody didn’t have all the answers. She was too busy trying to survive from day to day.

  Chapter Ten

  Cisco managed to find a parking spot outside the coffee shop at precisely eleven forty-five the next day. Melody had sent him a text saying she’d be done working at noon. He was a little bit surprised to see how busy things were, but perhaps that was more due to the fact that Cisco almost never left his apartment before two or three in the afternoon on a Sunday. He didn’t roll out of bed until noon. And if he left the apartment at all, it was only to grab a bite to eat at the corner deli.

  Right now, he could sit in the driver’s seat of his truck and watch all of the well-dressed people drift in and out of the coffee shop on their way to church or family dinner or some other Sunday afternoon activity. It brought to mind all of the afternoons when he’d been growing up at the main ranch house of the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company.

  Sundays had been dedicated to his mother. The boys had been up at dawn to feed the stock and take care of the necessary chores of ranch life that could not be put off until afternoon. Then they all showered, dressed, and piled into his mother’s van in order to drive to church in town.

  Perhaps that was the mainstay of growing up in small-town America. That feeling of being connected to your community and your life by the comfort of repetition and sheer monotonous habit had tethered Cisco to life in general and the ranch as a whole.

  Cisco shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that. He had wasted nearly fifteen minutes already. He wondered if she got off work right at noon or if she would make an appearance just afterwards. Perhaps he should go inside and order one of those tasty frozen drinks to go, just so she knew that he was here waiting. It was possible that she didn’t know he was here waiting. After all, the big Hernandez Land & Cattle Company truck wasn’t exactly what a typical lawyer would drive.

  With that in mind, Cisco exited the vehicle and headed inside the coffee shop. He was very glad that he had. The first thing that he saw was Melody facing off with a very skinny dark-haired woman with a pinched angry expression on her face.

  “Janice, I told you that I switched shifts with Allie,” Melody insisted in a very calm and firm voice. “She was supposed to be here at noon. I spoke with her last night.”

  “You can’t just switch shifts without letting me know!” The woman named Janice was almost shouting.

  There was one other employee behind the counter who was casting sidelong glances over his shoulder as he mixed coffees for customers. A line had formed behind the cash register, and Janice seemed to be too intent on yelling at Melody to care.

  “You’re going to have to stay,” Janice told Melody. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “I can’t.” Melody was talking through clenched teeth, and Cisco could not help but have a healthy appreciation for her patience. “If I stay, I will have worked more than sixty-five hours. Do you really want to pay me overtime all afternoon?�
�

  Janice made a frustrated noise and wagged her finger in Melody’s face. “Where is Allie?”

  “I don’t know!”

  But there was something in Melody’s voice that made Cisco’s lawyer radar go off like a fire alarm. She absolutely knew where Allie was, but she didn’t want to say anything. Why? Wouldn’t it have helped her situation?

  Melody sucked in a deep breath. Her shoulders rose and fell with an almost overdramatic movement. “You’ll have to call someone else. Maybe Kira can come in. I don’t know. I just know that I can’t stay. I have to be somewhere. I have plans. That’s why I switched with Allie. Obviously, she had no intention of coming in this morning because I took her shift and she didn’t accidentally show up. Maybe she had an emergency.” Melody turned her back on Janice and walked out from behind the counter. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. But my shift is over and I’m leaving.”

  “You’ll regret this,” Janice told her fervently.

  Cisco felt his fists clench at his sides, and he realized that his heart was now racing. What was this woman’s problem? Sixty-five hours? This store didn’t pay overtime until an employee worked over sixty-five hours in a week? Did the manager not realize that not only was she in violation of some serious labor laws but she was now trying to penalize Melody for the faults of another employee? It wasn’t fair!

  “I’m sorry, Janice. I’ll see you tomorrow when I come back in to work yet another open and close shift.” Melody turned on her heel and left the counter.

  Cisco knew the moment she spotted him standing in the doorway. She pressed her lips together and marched right past him. He realized that she did not want Janice to see him and put two and two together. That was telling in a very bad way.

  Keeping that in mind, Cisco let the door close behind Melody without a single word. Then he approached the counter and ordered two strawberry smoothies. Janice took his order and looked annoyed that she had to do it. There was no smile, no pleasant word, and no attempt to cover up the fact that she had just yelled at an employee in front of a whole store full of customers who probably interacted more with that employee than they did with the sour-faced manager.

  “What’s your problem?” Cisco finally asked Janice as she handed him his change.

  Her angry dark gaze came up, and she looked momentarily taken aback by his question. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re rude.” He was pretty blunt. Why not be? “I come in here all the time. I work right around the corner. I see Melody and Allie and half a dozen other employees on a regular basis. It’s not great as a customer to see those very friendly people who take care of me every single day get treated like trash.”

  “They are trash,” Janice said quickly. “The one is covering for the other one because she’s probably suffering from a bender. The one girl is constantly falling off the wagon and using. They’re trouble. Both of them.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Cisco said quietly. Or perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that he didn’t believe Melody was a drug addict. He didn’t know the other girl very well. But nobody could possibly convince him that Melody was a bad person or deserved any of that treatment.

  Janice stumbled over her response. It was like she hadn’t ever considered what he was saying and did not know how to react. “I’m—I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Just think about it.” He shook his head at her as the young man behind the counter handed over two strawberry smoothies. Cisco took the smoothies and exited the coffee shop without another word to Janice.

  Melody was waiting across the street where he had left his truck. She did not smile when he approached. Instead, she pointed to the big white vehicle. “It says Hernandez.”

  “That’s because it’s pretty much a company vehicle,” Cisco explained. “Our family is a little bit complicated. I don’t normally drive the truck. I just leave it in parking at my building.” He unlocked the truck and helped her up into the passenger seat. Their hands touched just briefly, but it was enough to singe him from the inside out. He cleared his throat and handed her a smoothie. “I got this for you. I wasn’t sure if you’d had a chance to eat anything.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for the scene.”

  Cisco shook his head and closed the passenger door. He wondered if he needed to find something else to say to her on his way around the hood. For some reason, this whole thing felt awkward when dinner had not. Why? It wasn’t as if anything had changed.

  He turned the key, and the truck’s diesel engine roared to life. “You didn’t do anything that requires an apology, Melody. Stop apologizing when you haven’t done anything. It’s a bad habit to be in.”

  “I guess I never thought about it before.” She took a long drink from the straw in her smoothie. At least she wasn’t arguing about drinking it. Perhaps Cisco should just be appreciative of that right now and forget the rest of the drama and confusion.

  He pulled the truck away from the curb and pushed his way into the downtown traffic. It was pretty light for a Sunday morning, but there were still cars on the road. Of course, that lessened the further away they got from the city proper. Once they made it to the most familiar two-lane highway in Cisco’s life, there were almost no other cars on the road with them.

  “This is how we get out there?”

  There was simple curiosity in her voice. It was obvious that she had never been out this way. The way she was gawking at every little thing alongside the road was proof enough of that.

  “Have you never been out to the country?” Cisco asked casually. He reached for his own smoothie and took a drink. It was good. He’d never really spent much time trying out coffee shop specialties. Maybe he needed to expand his palate.

  “No.” Melody glanced over at him, and he was glad to see that the lines around her eyes and mouth had relaxed just a bit. “I’m a city girl. I was born in Denver, and I’ve only been to Colorado Springs once for some school trip.”

  “Well, this is the general way to get to the front range,” Cisco informed her with a smile. “That’s just a southern stretch of the Rockies down here west of Denver. It’s not really that big of a deal, but when it comes to real estate, it is a bit of a thing.”

  “Meaning what?” Two lines appeared between her eyebrows.

  “It’s old ranching land.” He was struggling to fully explain something he only understood from listening to his brothers and his father talk about it. “Most of this land is privately owned in very large sections, like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres. These ranches have owned it for generations. All the way back to when Denver was first settled. Usually this will include several government grazing leases. Meaning that the family has been using government-owned land to graze their cattle for a hundred years or so.”

  “Wow,” she whispered. “You learn about Colorado history in school. Right? But I never really thought about it like that. You’re basically talking millions and millions of dollars.”

  “Yes.” He gave a terse nod. “You’re exactly right, which is why your land is worth a lot more money than you realize.”

  “Because the land has been owned for so long and doesn’t necessarily come up for sale, but other outside people want to buy it.” She was starting to talk quickly as she got more and more obviously excited.

  The clarity of her mind and the quickness of her thoughts was a delight to someone like Cisco. He had always been rather disappointed with most of the women he dated. They could rattle off ten different designers in one breath. They could identify a pair of shoes or a dress or a purse. But they could not make logical conclusions from point to point without someone holding their mental hand. They just didn’t care enough.

  It was pleasant to ride out here with her too. She didn’t talk a lot. She was more inclined to watch the scenery spool by. It was quiet. It was comfortable. And there was something very natural about being with her that appealed to Cisco on a basic level he had never experienced
before.

  Dating had always been one of those things that Cisco did to further an agenda. He was looking for the sort of woman who would advance his career. He needed a woman from a good Denver family who could support him when he eventually decided that he wanted to be a prosecutor or a judge. It had never entered Cisco’s mind to think that those women in general were not really all that appealing to him for a variety of the same reasons that made them candidates in the first place. It was quite a contrasting bunch of nonsense.

  “What are you thinking?” Melody asked him. “Your face is going through a very strange series of expressions.”

  “It is?” That wasn’t a good thing.

  “Yes.” She actually chuckled. “Most of the time I can’t read you at all. But right now, you look frustrated, annoyed, then maybe happy, but then the next second you look depressed. It’s sort of odd.”

  “I was thinking about dating in general.” Why was he telling her this? Had he totally lost his mind?

  “Dating?” She gave a dramatic groan and then sucked down what appeared to be half of her remaining smoothie. “Dating sucks ass. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Don’t you think?”

  “That’s certainly to the point,” Cisco murmured thoughtfully.

  He wondered if she was speaking from experience. Funny, but he didn’t actually like the thought of her dating. In fact, the notion of any other man getting anywhere near her was not good. Why? They weren’t a couple. He had no claim on her. He was just helping her, and it would have made him the worst sort of player to expect anything in return for the help he was offering her.

  “If your usual dates are like the woman you were with the other night, then I imagine you have quite the dramatic love life.” The casual tone in her voice was covering up something else entirely. He could tell. But he didn’t know what to do with it.

  Cisco cleared his throat. Their turn was coming up. It was odd to think that they had been in the truck together for just under three hours. It had gone quickly. And maybe that was for the best. Where was this going to go? Really. Maybe it was time to give himself a reality check and remember that he was just helping her.