Front Range Cowboys (5 Book Box Set)

by Evie Nichole

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Are you crazy? That’s disgusting. You can’t even taste it when you do that.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to taste it.” He poured himself another glassful. Then he threw that back as well. “Getting drunk doesn’t usually involve taste. You know? It’s more of a whole body experience.”

  “Why do you want to be fall down drunk?” For some reason, this bothered Daphne. “You’re good-looking. You’re going to get yourself so smashed that you’ll do something stupid.”

  “Like what?” He was slurring his words now.

  Daphne’s brain was spinning. “Like accidentally sleeping with those bags of bones!”

  “Yeah.” He gave a sage nod of his head. “That would be bad. Right? Totally bad. I’d have to bleach my whole body tomorrow morning.”

  “Bleach…” She couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “I think there’s a bigger problem than that, dumbass.”

  “You know, when you call me a dumbass, it almost sounds like an endearment.” He sighed and actually appeared to bat his eyes at her. What. The. Hell?

  “It’s not meant to be an endearment. I promise.”

  “You’re really beautiful. You know that?” He sat back in his seat and poured himself one more glass from the dregs of the bottle. His hand was shaking now.

  Daphne was trying to contemplate the notion that a guy could consume an entire bottle of bourbon in one sitting and still be speaking and sitting upright. Focusing on that was helping to keep her from feeling flattered that he’d just called her beautiful. That didn’t happen very often.

  “Seriously.” He was being serious. But it was probably drunk serious, which was just bullshit anyway. “You’re really beautiful. I love your hair color. The light in here really brings out the red. But brunettes are the best anyway. I like brown hair. And yours looks really soft.” He paused for a moment and took another drink of bourbon. “I wonder how it would look spread on a pillow.”

  “Okay. Stop.” She waved her hands in front of her and glared at him. “You’re being completely inappropriate.”

  “I like brown eyes too.” He grinned at her. “Because I like chocolate. Besides, they remind me of this mare I had once. She was the greatest horse. Smartest animal I’ve ever ridden, you know? She had these big dark eyes, and she would look at me and it made me feel like I needed to earn her trust.”

  “I remind you of a horse?” Daphne couldn’t help it. She started laughing. “Tell me. Does this line often work for you? Because I just don’t know of any women who would be flattered into having sex with a guy who says they remind him of his favorite mare. Maybe you should go date the horse!”

  “She died a long time ago.” He sounded strangely subdued.

  Daphne recognized this behavior. This was what happened when someone drank way too much alcohol. They went from excitable and chatty to moody and morose. He’d probably start crying in a few minutes.

  “Hey, Daph, you all right?” Zach appeared beside the high top table. He had a bar towel in his hands, and he was staring at the cowboy with a look of suspicion on his face. “Is this loser bothering you?”

  “No.” Daphne got up from the table. She handed her empty bottle to Zach. Then she gave her friend’s arm a friendly squeeze. “I was just leaving. I’ll stop by next week, and we can catch up when it’s slower. Huh?”

  “Sounds good.” Zach was glaring at the cowboy, but the guy was pretty well deep in his own world.

  Zach left them, and Daphne started to turn around to go. The light touch of someone’s fingers on her arm stopped her. She glanced back at the table. The cowboy was very gently touching her arm as though he were trying to make double certain that she did not feel threatened. It was odd. She had a strangely warm sort of sensation in her belly. What was this guy like when he was stone cold sober? Was he ever sober? Why did he drink? And why did she care?

  “I did not mean to offend you,” the cowboy said quietly. “I just want to make sure that you know that.”

  “I know.” Daphne struggled to find something to say. “But I don’t like drunks, and I don’t like cowboys, and honestly, I don’t like men either.”

  There. That was pretty damn blunt. There was no way this man could possibly believe she was interested in him now. Right? So, she patted his hand and walked away because that was what needed to happen. He wasn’t her problem. And she had enough on her plate anyway.

  Chapter Two

  Demetrio Hernandez was better known as Met to his friends and family. Lately though he was probably better known as “the drunk brother” because that seemed to have become his thing somewhere along the way.

  He rolled out of bed and hit the floor on his hands and knees. That was when he realized that he wasn’t actually rolling out of a bed. It was actually a couch. The couch in his brother Laredo’s living room, to be specific.

  Laredo had offered Met the use of his Denver home while Met was trying to decide what he wanted to do next. It was a really nice gesture. Met didn’t particularly care. It didn’t make him feel better that the reason Laredo could offer the house was only because he and his daughter had moved in with his fiancée, Aria Callahan, at her horse farm outside the city limits. Laredo used to be pretty good as a drinking partner for an older brother. Now he was a full-time family man with some creepy perma-smile on his face.

  Met struggled to get up off his knees and stand on his feet. It didn’t work. In fact, Met wound up flat on his belly on the plush carpet floor. It felt pretty good down there. It was nice and cool. It even smelled good because Laredo’s house was a like a damn magazine layout. There were no dogs in here. Nobody walked inside with dirty boots. It was almost sterile.

  Met groaned. He needed to get up. He could not remember why. But in some part of his brain, he recalled that it was Sunday morning and he had something he had to do. There was some reason he was supposed to be up and around. If he could just figure out what it was, he could—nah, he was never going to remember.

  With a groan, Met pushed his face into the rug and decided that whenever the something was supposed to happen, someone would show up and let him know about it. That was his life.

  “Met!”

  Yep. Apparently the time had approached for whatever it was he could not remember, because the front door had just opened and someone was now inside the house. That might bother anyone else. They might worry about an intruder or someone here to rob the place blind. Met didn’t care. They could steal whatever they wanted since it all belonged to Laredo anyway and his brother was rich as Midas. And if they wanted to attack Met, they wouldn’t find much in the way of resistance.

  “My God!” A male voice exclaimed first and then started cursing.

  “Is he still alive?”

  This second voice belonged to a female. Probably one of his brothers’ wives or girlfriends or whatever it was they all seemed to have these days. Every damn one of them was having shocking success in the romantic arena. That kind of pissed him off.

  “He’s alive.”

  Oh. Now he recognized Laredo’s voice. That was probably not a good thing. That meant the other voice belonged to Aria. Met had known Aria almost all his life. She wasn’t one of his biggest fans. But then, he wouldn’t have said she was a fan of Laredo either. Go figure.

  “Met.” Laredo nudged Met in the ribs with the toe of his boot. “Met, get up.”

  It took a monumental effort to find enough saliva in his mouth to speak. “I decline.”

  “You don’t get to decline.” The voice was moving in a dizzying pattern. Laredo must now be squatting beside Met or something of that sort. His voice was closer, deeper, and more nausea inducing.

  “If I don’t decline,” Met groaned, “I’m going to puke all over your rug. So, how about you just go away?”

  “How much did you drink last night?” Laredo asked sharply. “And did you drive? Are you really that stupid?”

  Aria made a clucking noise, and Laredo suddenly stopped talking. Suddenly
, she was kneeling beside Met too. She put her cool hand on his forehead. “Your brother doesn’t have any room to talk, Met. A month or more back, he took out the monument at the front of this subdivision and managed to park his truck half against the wall and yet still sticking out under the garage door.”

  “You don’t need to tell him that,” Laredo muttered irritably. “That isn’t going to help.”

  Actually, it did. Although, Met would have been hard pressed to explain exactly why that made him feel better. Sainted Laredo wasn’t so saintly after all. Met was sick and tired of their father—big Joe Hernandez—telling him tales of all of his brothers’ successful lives. To hear Joe tell it, every Hernandez brother but Met was having smashing success with their lives. They were all popular, enjoying successful relationships, and contributing to the family business, the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company.

  Met had been running from the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company since he was seventeen years old. That was when he ran away from home, dropped out of school, and started following the rodeo circuits all over the country as a bull and bronc rider, a rodeo clown, and anything else he could possibly do to earn some extra cash.

  “Can we get you anything?” Aria asked gently. “There’s a family dinner at your folks’ place in an hour and a half, Met. You really need to be there.”

  “No. I don’t.” That answer popped out quick enough. At least his brain was still functioning.

  “Yes. You do.” Laredo spit that at him pretty quickly too.

  Aria sighed. For about the millionth time, Met wondered how Laredo had managed to convince such a nice girl that he was worth dealing with. “Met, you need to go. If you don’t, you’re going to put yourself back on your father’s radar in a bad way. Trust me. You don’t want that man’s attention on you. And honestly, there are enough people and enough drama to keep Joe and Avery Hernandez busy. If you just sit there, eat some food, and keep your mouth shut, they won’t even notice you.”

  “You promise?” Met rolled onto his back and stared up at her. “You’re pretty. Why are you with that asshole?”

  “Classy, Met. Real classy,” Laredo grumbled.

  Aria only laughed. Then she linked her arm with Laredo’s. “After speaking with the other women unfortunate enough to fall for Hernandez men, we’ve all decided that it’s sort of like a really horrible addiction that you can’t kick. Fortunately, it isn’t a bad addition. It’s a good one. And I love your brother because he’s not the guy everyone thinks he is, Met.” Aria nudged Met’s ribs with her toe. “Just like you aren’t the man that everyone thinks you are either. You’re more. You’re just not there yet.”

  “Great.” Met groaned as he tried to get up off his back. It didn’t work. Laredo had to grab his hand and pull him into a sitting position. Met took deep breaths to keep everything from coming back up. “So, basically, you’re telling me that I just need to keep beating my head against the wall and eventually I’ll turn into a decent human being?”

  “Something like that.” Aria laughed. “For now, can we get you into a shower so you smell like a human being?”

  Met made a big deal out of sniffing his armpits. “I don’t smell like the bulls.”

  “No. You smell like a bar.” Aria wrinkled her nose. “What happened last night anyway?”

  He had to think about that for a minute. What had happened? “I got punched.”

  “Someone punched you?” Laredo put his hands on his hips.

  It was sort of odd to see his brother in jeans and a T-shirt. Laredo had been wearing expensive Western suits for nearly his entire adult life just because that was the uniform he wore to his job at the corporate offices of the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company. Now, he was apparently dressing down on weekends. Weird.

  “Yeah. Let’s see.” Met remembered the young women. “There was a girl fight going on. These twenty-one-year-olds”—he looked at Aria and rolled his eyes—“I’m sure you can picture the type of chick I’m talking about. Too-high heels. Too-short skirts. Drinking because they can and not because they should…”

  “I know the type.” Aria was smirking. “Did they fall on their butts?”

  “Yep.” He frowned. There was something else. “They got mad at this other woman. She was older. Really gorgeous woman too. One of the stupid chicks tried to punch the pretty one.” Met started laughing. Even now through the haze of alcohol and grogginess, he remembered the way that woman—what was her name—had just stepped out of the way.

  “So?” Aria prompted. “You can’t just end the story there.”

  “Right.” Met’s brain was a bit scrambled. “The pretty one just stepped out of the way. I happened to be behind her. So, I got the punch right in my nose.”

  Laredo snorted. He was moving toward the kitchen. Met heard the water running and then the beep of a coffee maker. He didn’t like coffee. It tasted like a hangover to him.

  But Met’s brain wasn’t done prompting him about the night before. He recalled the young woman sprawled on the ground shrieking indignantly and trying to get herself off the floor. He looked at Aria and smiled. “The scrawny chick in the heels tried to blame the punch on the pretty one.” It felt silly to be describing these women in such basic and broad terms, but he didn’t know any other way. “So, the older, wiser one just hooked her boot under the other one’s heels and sent her crashing to the floor.”

  “That’s not very nice!” Aria frowned. “Are you sure there wasn’t something else?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Met pursed his lips. “The scrawny woman called the other one short and ugly.”

  Aria grunted and gave a hard nod of her head. “Then, I’m glad the shorter one took the other one down. I hate that. It’s so rude, and yet way too many women think they can just insult someone without any consequences because society tells them they’re pretty. It’s gross.”

  “Gross, huh?” Met smiled up at Aria. He really needed to try and get on his feet. This was starting to become ridiculous. “Why are you with my brother, Aria? You should leave him so we can get together.”

  “You must be joking.” Aria made a face as she reached down, grabbed Met’s arm, and began hauling him to his feet. “You’re too young for me. You’re kind of an ass. And I don’t like guys who drink.”

  “My brother drinks.”

  “Not anymore,” came the instant reply from the kitchen. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Seriously?” Met struggled to stay on his feet. The room was spinning. He hated that. It felt like getting kicked in the head by a bull after hitting the ground at approximately two hundred miles per hour. “You don’t drink at all? And you still have to deal with Dad? How do you do it? The man is a complete jackass!”

  “He’s our father.” Laredo came out of the kitchen carrying three cups of coffee. He handed one to Aria, kept one for himself, and thrust one into Met’s hands. “Drink. Now. All of it. You need to be sober, showered, and coherent in an hour.”

  “You suck.”

  “And this is why you’re too young for me,” Aria laughed. She looked really pretty in her jeans and a fitted blouse that flattered her figure. “There’s no way in hell I could tolerate your bullshit on a regular basis. You’re the bratty little brother that insists on making a fool out of himself at family gatherings and turning everything into a joke.”

  “We need you sober,” Laredo said again. “I know you don’t give a shit about our family, but we’ve got problems. We need to band together.”

  “Is Cal coming to family dinner?” Met asked bitterly as he forced himself to sip the coffee. He didn’t actually need an answer to that in order to know.

  Laredo shook his head. “Cal’s at the ranch. He’s been handling most of the shit hitting the fan. Livestock is going missing. It comes back a few weeks later wearing the Flying W brand. We’ve been accused of theft. The accusations are loud enough that the Stockmen’s Association has decided to put off announcing which ranch won the new rodeo stock contract for this region. It’s a
mess. We need to stick together if we’re going to come out of this without losing our shirts.”

  Met couldn’t help it. He shrugged. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. The company can fall on its ass for all I care.”

  “So, that big fat paycheck that keeps you from starving every single month could just stop and you’d be fine,” Laredo said in a deceptively casual tone of voice.

  “Right. That.” Met felt like a petulant child. He hated the fact that his life was dependent upon money from his family’s business. He wasn’t winning any purses anymore. His body was so damn broken that he wasn’t winning anything. He wasn’t even competing.

  “We need your help, Met,” Aria said quietly. “The Flying W has been leveling accusations at all of us, even Jesse and me. Her ranch and my farm both do business with your family’s company. We currently have injunctions levied against us that keep us from selling any stock because the Flying W claims it all belongs to them. Do you see what a mess this is?”

  Met wasn’t stupid. He was tired of people thinking that he was. Of course he understood how this was bad. What he had difficulty with was trying to understand why they thought he could do anything to help. He was just one of five brothers. And he wasn’t the brightest or the most competent by a long shot.

  “Dinner will be fun, Met.” Aria was already taking his coffee cup and shoving him toward the stairs. “Go up, get showered, dress, and be back down here in twenty minutes. Do it or I’ll send Laredo in there to do it for you.”

  That was certainly motivation. Met made a face at Aria. “I think I got abused by my older brother plenty when I was a kid. There’s no need to give me any more PTSD.”

  “If you have PTSD, it’s because a bull stepped on your face.” Aria smiled sweetly. Then she hit him hard on the butt. “Go. Now.”

  Met went upstairs because he had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. Right now he was an unemployed cowboy who had little hope of doing something else with his life. He didn’t even have a high school diploma to help him find another job. At this point, he was at the mercy of his family.