“Uh, it’s ten in the morning.” I said.
She turned back. “And?”
“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?” Chase asked.
She braced her hands on her hips. “Oh, you kids. So health conscious. But when you get to be eighty, can’t drive, your husband thinks he could be Larry King if he could find the right pair of suspenders, and you have hemorrhoids the size of small planets, call me and tell me how worried you are about drinking before noon. Trust me, you’ll be knocking back shots with the best of them.” She clapped her hands and bolted for the kitchen. “I’ll make waffles and chocolate milk. Then we’ll break out the blender…never could drink on an empty stomach.”
“She’s a cutie.” Chase mimicked.
“Sorry, I should’ve warned you.”
“No,” he laughed. “I love it. I’ve never been more entertained.”
We went into the kitchen and found Grandma wielding a waffle iron, now wearing her Easter apron. “Grandma, would it be possible to tell my dad a little fib?”
“You want me to lie to my beloved son?” her drawn on eyebrows went way up.
“Well, yes.”
“What are we talking about? Will I have to Hail Mary my way out of it?”
“I’m not sure.” I went for it. “If dad asks, could you tell him I slept here last night?”
“Only if you tell me where you really were.”
“I was with Chase, at his house. We had parental supervision.”
She snorted, “I don’t care about supervision. This is me we’re talking about here. I used to sneak cigarettes outside on the fire escape when the nuns weren’t looking. Just don’t end up in jail or get pregnant before you get hitched, and I’ll be happy.”
“So you won’t mind telling dad that I stayed here last night?”
“Briar, baby, your father is a stuffed shirt with a tight ass. Sometimes I wonder if my real son was switched at birth, and I got stuck with him. I have no problem telling him a million little fibs.”
I gasped. “Thank you!”
“I’m your grandmother, I’m supposed to spoil you rotten. It’s all in a days work.”
She handed me a stack of plates, and I found Grandpa at the dining room table. He had one of his snazzy sweater vests on, and what was left of his hair was slicked back with an oily gel that smelled like cheap cologne. “Hey Gramps, how are you?”
“What?” he asked.
I repeated my question louder.
“Briar honey,” he patted my hand and smiled. “When did you get here?”
“Couple minutes ago,” I set out the plates. “How are you?”
“Eh, can’t complain.” He chuckled, nodding at Grandma. “She’s bored.”
“I know.”
Grandpa wagged his eyebrows. “So it’s my job to spice it up, right?”
Crap, what was he going to do? Grandpa was sometimes in and out of reality. Other times he pretended to be out just to keep my grandmother on her toes.
“Damn Germans keep taking my pills.” He sent me a wink and grabbed the newspaper he’d been reading and left the table, hobbling down the hall.
I looked back at Grandma, trying not to laugh. “What happened with him?”
She flipped a waffle on to a plate and loaded the iron with more batter. “He was watching the History Channel again, and then he flushed his pills down the toilet.”
“Why?”
Grandma told Chase to man the waffles and took my hands in hers, “Oh, baby. Grandpa is a little crazy…I thought you knew.”
Chase snorted with laughter.
“I did know.” I said, wondering if she knew what he was doing and just played along for the fun of it. “He’s never flushed his pills before.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“But why did he do it?”
She shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”
Chapter 4
Chase
“Tuesday nights I fix a mean pot roast.” Grandma said, her frail, boney arms clutching me in a tight hug. I was surprised by her strength, for such a small older woman. “Look at you, not an once of fat.”
“Uh, thanks.” My face went red, and Briar pulled her off of me.
But Grandma wasn’t finished. “My hubby was that fit once. A prized fighter. What a doll. A really awesome boxer. He could knock em’ out. One two! Down on the mat they go, stars in their eyes, teeth missing outta their heads.”
“Wow, really?” I asked, trying to hold in my laughter as she held her fists up and punched the air.
“Yup,” Grandma clicked her tongue. “Unfortunately, he took one to many hits to the noggin, if you catch my drift. Never was the same after the bar brawl of eighty-two.”
“Your grandfather was in a bar fight?” I glanced at Briar.
She smiled. “I hear he was pretty wild.”
Grandma purred. “An animal. Next time I see you, I can tell you some stories about our trip to Africa. I almost got married off to a tribal chief when Grandpa lost a poker game to a witch doctor and a monkey who played the harmonica.”
Briar laughed. “Grandma, I’m going to say goodbye to Chase, why don’t you go check on your sangria?”
“Oh, I see how it is. You kids want to smooch while the old bird isn’t looking.” Grandma turned for the house, socks jingling as she opened the front door. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I got these gray hairs and wrinkles from a hotheaded husband and a son who couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants. Don’t know how he’s managed to stay married to your mother for so long. She must have a magical vagina.”
The door shut. I looked at Briar. She went pink with embarrassment, and I was about to tell her I loved her grandmother, but the front door reopened. Grandma poked her head back out. She narrowed her wrinkly eyes and pursed her lips together, studying me closely, then Briar. “I know times are different now, and you kids do things that would turn my hair white. Do yourselves a favor and use protection. No glove, no love.”
The door snapped shut behind her, and I couldn’t make eye contact with Briar as we walked back for the truck. Her grandmother didn’t mince words.
“Well,” Briar let out a breath and stopped next to the driver’s side door. “It was nice meeting you Chase. Thanks for helping me last night. I owe you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, not quite ready to leave yet. Since I moved here to be with my mother, Briar was the first person I formed any kind of connection with. Come Monday, I knew, more than likely, things would go back to normal. She’d go back to hanging with the popular crowd. The same crowd that made it less than easy for me to make friends. Being the new guy wasn’t exactly fun, but being ostracized by the general school population because I didn’t drive a fifty thousand dollar car or dress like a model, was verging on ridiculous. I would have been happier at a public school around the average middle class. My mother was trying to make up for all the years she’d been absent by sending me to a pricy private school. A school where one of the girls in my English class got a nose job for her birthday.
I wasn’t poor by any means. In fact, I owned a 50,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana and had enough money. I wasn’t gong to use it to support a gluttonous lifestyle bent on impressing others.
My views were probably another reason why I didn’t mesh so well with the other students. As I told Briar, I was raised by my Grandparents. That makes an impression. It’s vastly different from being born to parents who have friends with other kids around your age. Especially when you are home schooled on a ranch, and recess is learning how to run the family business with a bunch of middle-aged cowboys for babysitters.
The difference between Briar and me was that I already knew our peer’s opinions meant shit. Worrying about what the popular crowd thought only wasted valuable time and brain cells. The people Briar called friends were too self-absorbed to notice anything beyond them. And if they did notice, as was the case with me, they only made
fun of me to sooth their insecurities.
Ha, try walking up to any other seventeen-year-old in the area, and I’m sure they wouldn’t know half the shit I did.
“Well, I’d better get going.” I couldn’t stand in the driveway all day, even though Briar was mighty pretty to look at. She really did look like some sort of princess. Those springy curls and freckles were damn appealing, too. I’d met girls back home, but none of them interested me like her.
She nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
I climbed into the truck, but Briar grabbed the door before I could shut it.
“Uh,” she licked her lips. “Do you, maybe…that is, if you want, I could give you my phone number. We could hang out sometime, when I’m not drunk.”
“Sure.” I grinned, saving her number in my phone as she rattled it off. As far as stalling went, I dragged out this goodbye session as long as possible. And I got the feeling she didn’t want me to leave yet either. “How is it that we’ve never met, Briar?”
“What do you mean, at school?”
“Yeah. I recognize you, but I know we’ve never talked.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re in any of my classes. Where do you sit at lunch?”
“Wherever I can find a spot. Sometimes it’s outside under the tree by the band room.”
“Oh, I sit in the cafeteria.” She backed up from the truck, eyes flitting away from mine. Her face pinched with a fretful worry. “At least, I think I sit there… It’s possible that I won’t have any friends when I go to school Monday. Alex and Rachel could ruin me.”
“Aw, Briar.” I laid my hand on her shoulder, not knowing what made me want to hug her and tell her everything would be all right. We didn’t know each other very well. I’d never been the territorial or confrontational kind of guy, but Briar was bringing out a side of me I wasn’t familiar with. Someone had to protect her from those assholes if they gave her trouble, and I was the only one good for the job. “I’ll be your friend.”
She blinked up at me. “Really? Just like that?”
“Why not?”
“Uh,” she opened her mouth and closed it. “No ones ever told me they’d be my friend before. People just don’t say that.”
“First time for everything.”
“I’ve never been friends with a cowboy, either.”
“Well, I’ve never been friends with a princess before.”
“I’m not a princess, Chase, far from it.” She crossed her arms, avoiding my gaze. That nickname really riled her, but there was a small smile tugging at her lips.
“You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever met. In my book, that makes you a princess.”
“That wasn’t a smooth come on,” she teased, glancing back up at me. “You’re going to have to do better.”
“I wasn’t trying to be smooth. I was just being honest, and paying you a compliment.” I waited for her to react, but she stared at me with a vacant expression. What kind of world had she grown up in? Hadn’t anyone given her a compliment without any expectations or innuendo behind it? “Let me guess, no one’s done that either.”
“Er, no.”
I started the engine, shaking my head. “Well city girl, this is going to be one interesting friendship.”
“What makes you say that?”
“We come from vastly different worlds…might as well be another planet.” I winked, unable to help myself. “See you at school.”
When I pulled up in the driveway my mother and her husband Todd were doing their cool down stretches, while my younger half sister Amy snoozed in her stroller. I parked the truck and started for the house, thinking I’d grab a few carrots for Ash and groom him.
“Hey, honey.” My mom said, hefting Amy out of the stroller. She was tall for a three year old, or so I’ve been told. “Where were you out so early in the morning?”
“I went to have breakfast with a friend.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
She beamed. “Oh, sweetie, that’s great! See, I told you you’d start to like it here. Didn’t we tell him Todd?”
“Many times.” Todd folded the stroller, not quite managing it while trying to have a conversation.
Mom sighed, propping Amy on her hip. “I’m thinking we should all go out to dinner tonight. How does the steakhouse sound?”
“Good.” I didn’t have anything better to do.
Todd nodded, smoothing back his white-blond hair. “Why don’t you take Amy in the house? Chase will help me finish up out here.”
I watched my mother disappear inside. Todd wanted to have a man to man. It was obvious.
We waited until the door was closed, and he turned to me. He was a nice guy. My mom landed a great husband. But we didn’t have much in common. He described himself as a metro sexual, ex-model, lawyer. I’d never seen a pretty guy before, until I met Todd. He had grooming habits that rivaled my mothers. I’m thinking he wasn’t sure what to do with me. Hell, I wasn’t sure what to do with me. I was a fish out of water in this town.
“So, you really have a friend?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.
“Yeah, her name is Briar. She goes to my school.”
“Huh,” he scratched his chin. “As long as you’re trying.”
I kicked a rock, sending it flying down the drive. “I’ll level with you. I don’t like it here, but I am trying for my mom. Problem is, I’m pretending. And I can only keep it up for so long.”
“It can’t be that different from Montana.”
“Depends on what angle you look at it from. In Montana I was up at five every morning, pulling weight with the rest of the hands. Feeding and vaccinating cattle, shoveling snow, and or, manure. I was home schooled during the afternoon once chores were done, and headed back out. Checking fences, ordering supplies. And we have more than thirty five hundred head of cattle.
“There are crops to harvest, other various animals to care for, including thirty horses, ten dogs, and approximately 78 miles of land to keep secure. None of which would be possible without the ten men we employ. I went to bed early, got up the next day and started all over. I don’t have a weekend or a day off. Animals can’t take care of themselves.
“They can’t protect themselves a lot of the time either. And I’m not just talking about grizzlies and coyotes. I’m talking about men. Businessmen have been trying to buy me outta my ranch since the day my father died. I’m getting ready to inherit in a month. They are itching to take me over. So I’m fighting them, I’m fighting guilt, trying to make my mother happy. I can only do so much.
“No offence, you want to talk about different, Todd? I get home from school here at three, and am pretty much stir-crazy by sundown. I can’t sit and play video games, or get a part time job folding overly priced clothes at the mall. That’s crazy. I’m bored out of my mind. Do you know that I can’t have a shotgun? Apparently it’s too dangerous. I shoot predators threatening my cattle. I shot my first coyote when I was ten. I’m the last person you need to worry about having a rifle.”
“Did it feel good to get that out?” Todd asked, shading his eyes against the sun.
“Yeah.” Boy did it. I took a deep breath and laughed. “I’ve been holding that in for a month.”
He looked me up and down, and then he smiled. I wasn’t expecting that. Normally he got on me for not trying harder to like it here. “You know, when I was your age, my idea of getting dirty was giving the family dog a bath.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. It was a Dachshund.”
“That’s not a dog. That’s a rat.” I laughed with him. “Look, I’m trying my best. I’ve lived the past seventeen years one way, and then a mother I saw a few times rips me out of the only world I know because she feels guilty. It’s not easy. I’m not into pity parties. But damn if I don’t wanna go home.”
“You’re going back to the ranch for summer vacation?”
I nodded. “Yeah, and I’m counting down the days. Why?”
Todd braced his hands on his hips and
hung his head before looking back at me. “If you get there, and decide you don’t want to come back, then don’t.”
“You mean it?” that was two weeks from now. I could last that long.
“Sure, I’m not going to force you to live here just to please your mother. When you moved in, I thought we’d have an angry, moody, male teenager on our hands. We thought you’d be happy to live in the city and leave ranch life behind. But you’re not a kid. You’re a man, as much as it surprises the hell out of me, and you’ve got to follow your own path.”
“Thanks, Todd.” I said, shaking his hand, knowing that I’d be home in Montana in a matter of weeks.
Nothing would keep me in Florida.
Nothing.
Chapter 5
Briar
“Do you want to tell me where you’ve been?” my father shouted the second I opened the front door.
“I spent the night at Grandma’s house.” I took my shoes off in the foyer so I didn’t track dirt on the marble floors.
My father came down the hall out of his office, dressed, as usual, in a suit and tie. He glared at me over the rims of his Armani glasses. “What have you done to yourself?”
“Uh,” I glanced down at my wrinkled uniform and bandaged knees. I kept my hands behind my back so he couldn’t see my palms “Cheerleading accident. I’m fine, just a little scraped up.”
“You didn’t call your mother,” he said, not looking at me now, but at his Blackberry.
“I left my phone in the locker room.”
“You could have used your grandmother’s.”
“I’m sorry. I was tired and I forgot.” This was pretty much how it went every time I spoke to my father. He asked a loaded question, and I gave an answer that would hopefully satisfy him until he got busy again and left me alone.
He let out a breath. “I don’t like this display of irresponsibility. I’m taking away your credit card until Monday. If you see your mother, tell her I’m going to the hospital early to finish up some paperwork.”
Chasing McCree Page 3