by Rose, Amelia
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, I don’t know anything about you and it’s not my place to tell you these things. For all I know, you have a boyfriend back home and…”
Amy closed the distance between them and kissed Carey hungrily, not caring who was watching. Karen could stand there and give us pointers, for all I care, she thought as she lightly placed her hands on Carey’s arms, warming inside when he returned her kiss and put his hands at her waist, drawing her closer.
“Oh, wow,” she said, breaking the kiss and looking sheepish. “it’s my turn to apologize…”
“No, don’t apologize!” Carey insisted, his grin lighting up his face.
“I shouldn’t have done that, I’m so sorry!” She looked away, embarrassed at letting his words get to her like that.
Carey stepped closer to her again, looking into her eyes and saying, “I’m really glad you did. I’ve wanted to kiss you since you stepped off the bus!”
Amy laughed lightly, still shocked at herself for being so bold, so out of character. “Well, I can’t say the same. When I stepped off that bus, there were two of you! I wouldn’t have known who to attack! But seriously, I’m sorry for throwing myself at you like that.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Carey said quietly, taking one of her curls between his fingers and playing with its silkiness. “I’m not.” She looked up at him and saw her own want reflected in his expression but this wasn’t the time or the place, especially not now that she could hear voices approaching the vehicle. Amy decided it might be best to change the subject as they stepped out from behind the truck and headed back to rejoin the group.
“I don’t see how you guys do it. How do you do this much manual labor all-day and still have the energy to sit around talking and singing after dinner? It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open, but I’m afraid I’m going to miss something if I close them.”
“Well, it’s not exactly like you only endured a regular day’s work. Your poor little body was pretty beat up out there today. But to answer your question, we get used to it, I guess,” Carey conceded. “I can only imagine how out of place I’d feel if I tried to follow you around at work for a week. You do things that I don’t have to handle, you know.”
“Like what?” she asked, making herself comfortable near the campfire that was beginning to take hold.
“I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing you go to the grocery store, you go out to eat, you look like you go to the gym,” he said, pinching her small bicep between his fingers lightly, thrilling her as he did. “You probably go to the movies and stuff like that. Right? I don’t think our cowboy lifestyle…sorry, cow human lifestyle…is any harder than your life. It’s probably just different.”
Amy smiled at his mention of their joke from before, then nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t think anything of going to the movies at eleven o’clock at night, then getting up and going to work the next day. It’s just that I don’t burn anywhere near as many calories in my day-to-day life as people must do out here.”
“I see you’re not having your beer,” Carey mentioned, gesturing to her usual tin cup of water with his hand. “You only get the one, you might want to go snag it!”
“Oh, I’m kind of a light weight. I don’t drink much. And that’s even when I’m not letting my horseplay piñata with me!” she laughed, trying her best to find the humor in the incident from earlier. Everyone had been very careful and cautious with her, so she knew it had to have looked pretty bad. Thinking of how funny it must have looked helped Amy focus instead on the positive, namely that she didn’t crack her own head open or get stomped to death by a horse. “After the beating I took today and the headache afterward, I’ll just stick to water.”
“In that case, I bet there’s a line of guys who would saddle your horse for you for the rest of the trip if you let them. Dad’s really laid back with his staff when they’re off the clock, as long as they don’t get into trouble or do anything stupid. But on the drive, we’re on the clock the whole time, so he has a one-drink-limit.” Carey waved over one of the hands who was walking past, then turned to Amy with a questioning look. “You’re sure you don’t want it?”
Amy nodded. “I’m sure. I never really liked the taste anyway.” Carey negotiated the bargain between Amy and the cowboy who’d been eating nearby with his back against the tire of one of the trucks, laughing when the guy took off running back to the chuck wagon to help himself to an additional drink.
“Just make sure he follows through every day,” Carey warned her with another of his glorious smiles. “Because you’ll be in the truck tomorrow, he might forget by the next day!”
“Do all the guys listen to you like that?” Amy asked, trying not to come off as nosy.
“What do you mean?” he asked, cocking his head in confusion.
“You know, you just tell them what to do and they go running?” she asked timidly.
“Well…no. Not really. I mean, there’s some of that, where the guys kind of have to listen to me because my dad’s Bernard Carson and his name’s on their paychecks, but it’s not just that.” Carey suddenly looked uncomfortable, and it took him a minute to realize that Amy’s question made him feel like a fraud, like he had stepped into his twin brother’s shoes when no one was looking. People didn’t listen to him, he was the younger twin…always had been, always would be. He knew it was a dynamic of his own making, certainly no one else had pushed him into the role of forgotten younger twin. For the first time, though, he began to wonder why that was, or more accurately, why he’d made that true.
“What is it then?” Amy asked, genuinely interested in what made Carey so easy-going and likeable, but still so efficient and so in charge.
“I think if you can make people want to do what you ask, then they’re more inclined to. Look at us. Did I tell you to eat with me? If I remember it right, I didn’t even ask you. I just offered to find you because you looked like you could use a little lighter conversation and a little more pleasant company. And here you are.”
“Are you saying you were so charming, I wouldn’t have had any other choice but to sit with you?” Amy asked coyly, even while knowing deep down that it was entirely, unavoidably true. There was something inherently charming about Carey Carson, most of it coming from the fact that he didn’t seem to know how heart-stoppingly good looking he was.
“Nope. I’m saying I was hoping you’d want to eat with me, and so I just behaved that way,” he said, returning her gaze. “And considering who your mealtime companions have been so far, I think I might have been the best offer you’d had yet, so here you are!” Amy nodded, remembering the constant baiting and debating going on within her group of fellow travelers over everything from religion, to politics, to women’s issues. It was enough to ruin a nice, pleasant, quiet sunset on the prairie.
“But you said you have to make people want to do what you say. How? Do you just make people think it was their idea?” She hated that she sounded like she was prying, but this was knowledge she needed. It was exactly the kind of thing that made her sign up for this trip in the first place.
“Not at all. It comes from having the same goal in mind, from wanting the same things. We want these cattle to get to market safely, and in good health. We all want that, or these guys wouldn’t be here. They just know that I wouldn’t ask them to do something that wasn’t in their best interests and the interests of the ranch. I don’t have a power trip, I guess, and the guys know that about me.”
“Well, you are a rare person these days, if you don’t have any hidden agendas or power trips,” she said morosely. “Far too many people these days are out to see if they can be the top dog, and they make other people prove it for them.”
“That’s awful, that’s no way to live,” Carey said quietly. “I guess there is one way that the cowboy lifestyle is different than the rest of the world. Out here, we’re all just trying to make enough that we can keep doing this. Any one of thes
e guys could find a job in a city doing hard labor, and probably make triple what they earn on the ranch. They’re out here because they want to be, not because they have to be.”
They finished eating the rest of their dinner in thoughtful, comfortable silence. When they finished their meals, they silently put their plates away and walked past the truck, past the blazing campfire where everyone was gathering for the evening entertainment. Without a word between them, Carey and Amy kept walking, out into the dark, away from the group, listening to the sounds of insects calling to each other around them. Carey silently reached for her hand, interlacing his warm fingers among hers. He felt her tense up at his touch before relaxing little by little.
When they reached the ridge that overlooked their camp for the night, they climbed to its small peak and sat down, looking out over the group, watching the sparks from the fire dance upward and melt in the dark. Carey pulled Amy closer to him, wrapping his arm lightly around her injured shoulders and holding her closer to him. She turned to watch his face and smiled, biting her bottom lip and silently begging him to kiss her as her eyes watched his mouth hungrily. He placed one strong hand gently on her cheek, holding her carefully as he leaned down and placed his lips on hers, lightly at first but growing more eager when she parted her lips and invited him in. Their tongues met tentatively at first, their kiss growing deeper and more feverish as they gave in to the other.
Chapter Six
“I know you’re in there, Carson!” Crazy Mack shouted from the yard in front of the large, two-story main house on Carson Hill Ranch. “Get your ass out here and face me!”
Another shot rang out, taking another one of the large windows with it. Mack was up to four windows so far, blasting out each of them one at a time in his rage. Anders had called the sheriff after the first shot tore through a ground floor window but even by helicopter, the police were still a good twenty minutes away.
“What does he want?” the kitchen staff’s lead assistant asked from where they were crouched in the oversized, windowless kitchen where Anders had herded them all to safety. Even for someone so young, he’d been smart enough to order them all into the large room and down on the floor when the first window was taken out. They were all too happy to comply, especially with the shouting coming from outside the house.
“I can’t be sure, in his state of mind,” Anders began. “but I’m willing to bet that it has something to do with his two hookers going missing and showing up here a couple of weeks ago.”
“Please don’t call them that,” one of the housekeepers said sternly, looking at Anders reproachfully.
“That’s what they are,” he argued defensively. “They said so themselves.”
“It doesn’t matter, we still don’t call them that. First of all, there are more polite terms than ‘hooker’,” she reprimanded, making a screwed up face as she spit out that word. “but it’s just not necessary to refer to them that way. You can’t know what those poor girls have been through, practically being held prisoner by that man and being forced to...”
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” Anders muttered. “That wasn’t polite. His two girls, then. I mean, the girls, not his girls.” Everyone nodded thoughtfully, remembering how sickly and abused the two girls had looked when they showed up on the porch, refusing to come inside as they waited as though they knew they weren’t clean enough or good enough.
The girls in question, Emma and Dee, had snuck out of Mack’s bar and walked all the way from Hale, over an hour away by car, just to warn Casey and Miranda that her violent ex-boyfriend had tracked her down in Texas. When Mack discovered his two sources of additional income missing, word got back to him that the pair were holed up somewhere on the Carson’s property. At that moment, they were hidden safely in a cabin to the east, struggling against the addiction that had kept them chained to him, with the help of a retired counselor Bernard had sent to stay with them.
The sound of a loud bang followed by tinkling glass let them know that Crazy Mack was living up to his moniker by shooting out another of the first floor windows.
“Where is Sheriff Matthews?” One of the kitchen workers cried softly, putting her hands over her ears and closing her eyes. “Shouldn’t he be here by now?” The older housekeeper put her arm around the younger woman, shushing her soothingly and rocking slowly.
“Don’t worry, he’ll get here soon and handle this,” Anders promised her. He calculated the situation, then said, “Crazy Mack hasn’t come inside because he doesn’t know how many of us are still here. That’s why he’s standing in the yard, playing tough guy with that gun. He knows almost everyone is on the drive, including Dad. That’s why he hasn’t tried to come in. If he were to come inside, he knows that any of the six of us boys could still be here.”
“Then what’s he doing? What’s the point of this?” The housekeeper demanded pleadingly as another window took a hit. She threw her hands over her ears and closed her eyes tightly.
“He’s just showing his muscle, trying to frighten the…girls…because he thinks they’re here. Plus, he knows we’ll let Dad know about this, and maybe get him to head home. Everyone in town knows the drive was started, and everyone also knows Dad never misses it. Mack is just putting on a show and making himself feel better. He has to feel like he did something about this.”
Within minutes, Anders held a finger to his lips to caution the seven of them not to make a sound. He heard a sound in the distance, growing louder as it came closer. Finally, the sound of helicopter blades chopping through the air rhythmically caused him to smile.
“See? The sheriff is here so this’ll be cleared up soon. Nothing to worry about.” Anders strained to listen for any noise, but couldn’t hear anything from within the interior, other than the sound of frightened people struggling to breathe quietly.
When a knock finally sounded on the front door, no one moved. It wasn’t until the visitor announced his presence as part of the sheriff’s department that they felt safe enough to come out of hiding, walking slowly together in a huddle toward the door, stepping over broken glass as they walked.
When Anders reached a hand out towards the doorknob, the elderly head housekeeper moved to stop him. “You might be the only Carson and the only male around, but I’m still the oldest and I’m responsible for you. I could never forgive myself if I let your mother down by letting something happen to you. Now, step back, young man.” She pushed Anders lightly, nodding when Amanda threw an arm around his young shoulders. The housekeeper silently counted to three while she watched the scared faces of the others, then opened the door a crack. She threw it open wide when she saw the deputy, barely older than Anders, pulling him inside and grabbing him in a bear hug.
“Thank God you’re finally here! He’s a lunatic!” She cried, pointing to the living room floor and the windows. “Look at what he’s done!” The deputy nodded and began writing things in a small black notebook, shaking his head when all of the staff began talking at once.
“Where’s the sheriff?” Amanda asked, looking over the deputy’s shoulder like that would explain his absence. “Crazy Mack comes out here shooting at us, and Matthews sends a kid to save us?”
The deputy wasn’t even old enough to be offended by the remark. He began trying to explain that the sheriff was going to take the helicopter and try to locate the shooter, and that the deputy would spend the night out there with them.
“I’ll be outside, walking patrol around the place. Don’t worry, we’re going to take good care of you,” he assured them, but the expressions on their faces said they clearly didn’t feel all that protected. They looked at each other, the housekeeper grumbling about how they’d need to stay in the kitchen because they only had Deputy Diaper Pants to protect them. That remark finally hit home, causing the young officer to blush a beet red. They turned away and went back in the kitchen to spend a sleepless night on its cold floor.
Chapter Seven
Carey laid on his back in his sleeping b
ag, his hands behind his head as he looked up at the stars. These were the same stars he saw every night on the wide, unbroken expanse of sky back home, but there was always something magical about seeing them on the drive. It was times like this when he understood his dad’s love of the old style cattle drive, the way he felt connected to all the generations of Carsons who’d worked this ranch before him. It was easy to forget what it was like for those cowboys, the days of hauling water and cooking all of the meals over a fire in the yard having long since been replaced by modern conveniences.
He usually had no trouble sleeping on a drive, even on the hard surface beneath the grassy area, because the days of backbreaking work and spending hours in the saddle tended to make anyone pass out before hitting the ground. But something was different this time, and it wasn’t just missing his brother, Casey. He knew it had to be that girl, and he knew that was dangerous ground. She’d be returning to her real life in a couple days, so what was the point in getting closer to her?
But the way she’d felt when he kissed her, shy but wanting, wasn’t a feeling Carey could easily forget. He’d been too surprised and too respectful to move past anything other than that kiss but the scent of her, the feel of her smooth skin beneath his hands, weren’t sensations he was likely to forget any time soon.
You just have romance on the brain since Dad started his pet project, Carey told himself. You’re here to work, not to hook up with a girl who came out here to find herself for a week.
As if even fate was working against him, Carey was startled by a rustling noise nearby. He turned his head to find the source of the sound, but couldn’t make out anything in the dark of the moonless night. Finally, the rustling grew closer and a warm hand reached out to touch his bare shoulder.
“Shhh, it’s only me,” Amy whispered, leaning close enough to him that he caught the wonderful scent of her as her loose hair brushed his skin. He reached up and pulled her closer, cradling her to him as his mouth found hers.