Part Time Cowboy (Copper Ridge Book 1)

by Maisey Yates

  “Well, he did it in a very serious way,” she said.

  “Yeah, he did. But this place is our family legacy. Connor’s the keeper of it, sure, but when...when there’s another generation, I guess they’ll all have a part of it. Though I’m sort of skeptical about any of us managing another generation.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You, sure, because...I can see that you’re not the open-your-home-up-to-chaos-and-crazy kind of guy. But Connor could find someone else.”

  “He doesn’t want to. He seems to think cracking a smile’s some kind of hanging offense.”

  “And Kate?”

  “She’s a kid.”

  “She has to be in her twenties.”

  “Twenty-one,” he said. “She’s way too damn young to be thinking about that stuff.”

  “Well, I agree on one level. A husband and kids? No way. Not at her age. But I assume she’s dating and otherwise showing a normal interest in that sort of thing.”

  “Uh...not so much.”

  “Oh.” Sadie’s face heated, embarrassment washing through her. “Sorry, I was making assumptions. I should have said partner.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Oh, just the way you said that I thought maybe I’d made a very broad assumption about her sexuality, is all.”

  He winced. “Can we please not talk about sexuality and my sister in the same sentence?”

  “I just meant, if she’s a lesbian I have no problem with that and I would hate for it to seem like I was passing judgm—”

  “She’s not,” he said. “Considering the number of times I found torn-out magazine pages of...what’s his name? Zac Efron?”

  Sadie laughed. “Okay, but you realize that’s an indication that she does have a sexuality.”

  “I refuse to have this discussion.”

  “All I’m saying is, don’t give up on the next generation yet. You’re such a cliché,” she said, shaking her head and laughing.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I sort of raised her from the time she was two years old, so I reserve the right to be a little insane.”

  The admission hit her somewhere around the heart. Which made her very uncomfortable. “Oh. Right. I wasn’t...thinking.”

  “Our mom left before Kate turned two. Dad might as well have left. Someone had to work, someone had to take care of the baby. Connor and I were an old married couple before we could drive.”

  “Eli...”

  “Hey, look, I’m over it.” Except he so obviously wasn’t. He wore it as sure as he wore his uniform. His need for order. His need for control. “But the thing is...I think that’s why this place means so much. And why I’m an overprotective crazy person. Because it was all down to Connor and me. And when you have that much responsibility that early, it becomes a part of you in a way it never would otherwise.”

  She turned and looked at the barn, at the care that had so clearly gone into it. Evidence of money that could have taken them away from here. That could have taken the Garrett family on to other things. College, maybe. Had any of them gone? Kate was twenty-one and working, so she clearly wasn’t in school.

  They had given their all for this place. To hold it together. Because it was what they’d done all of their lives and it was what they continued to do.

  For a woman who hadn’t lived in one place for more than a couple of years, it was a level of commitment that was...hideously daunting. It was sticking something out through thick and thin, rain and shine. Old barns and new.

  It was choosing to keep on staying even when there was an out. And suddenly all that history, all that intensity, made it feel as though the walls were closing in.

  And you’re here for five years.

  “Wow,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Anyway, this is great. I mean, if we could do tables, lots of tables in and around here, that would be...excellent. Just so very excellent.” She started to walk back out, quickly, trying to escape the weird, oppressive weight that had settled onto her stomach.

  “I’ll have to clear it with Connor. Farmwork getting done is going to be the top priority. But I think we can arrange to have the field just over here cleared for parking, which should make things easy. It’ll all have to be roped off and...well, it’s going to be a big deal.”

  “I know,” she said. “But the city is willing to kick in for some funds. And I think I might be able to entice some vendors. Local beers, wines, cheese. And you know, if you wanted to kick in some beef, I think it could end up being really great for the business side of the ranch.”

  “Again, I’ll talk to Connor about it. I may need to get him drunk first.”

  “He doesn’t have to hang out if people...bother him.”

  “Everything bothers him. To be honest, I’m not sure if he’d be any more miserable in a crowded bar than he is alone.”

  “I’m sad for him. Your brother seems like a nice guy.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  Really, he didn’t. But she’d been searching for something to say and the blanket, insincere words had rolled off her tongue easily. “Fine. He doesn’t seem that nice. But I’m still sorry for him.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t sound like the worst idea, does it? We’ll get pies donated from the diner. We’ll get...fried pickles from Ace’s. We’ll make it a whole thing!”

  “You’re really embracing this local spirit. Surprising, all things considered.”

  “Yeah, no one is more surprised than me. But I was ready for a change, and at this point, putting down roots is kind of the only way to feel like something’s changed.”

  “And change is...”

  “Good,” she said, getting back into the truck. “Healthy. I mean, people should change things around them every so often. Especially when life isn’t gelling the way it should.” Practiced lines she’d told herself over and over. “So, why don’t you take me to see that other field?”

  “You want to see the potential parking lot?”

  “Sure. And anyway, I thought you were supposed to tell me why all my harebrained schemes wouldn’t work.”

  “Well, I haven’t come up with a single damn reason why what you’re asking for won’t work,” he said, slamming the truck door. “Do you have any idea how annoying that is?”

  “I have a fair idea of how annoying that must be for you. It must really suck.”

  “It does.”

  But somehow, even he didn’t seem unreasonable right now. He seemed...understandable. Here in this vast, wild place, so carefully tamed by the hands of his family, by him and Connor, she could see what a huge job it had been. Two boys who had been essentially alone in the world, with a sister to care for. She could easily see how much grit and strength it would have taken to hold things together. She wondered if that impossible task was what had built the solid man she saw in front of her. The man who was still doing the same thing. Still trying so hard to hold the pieces together.

  Dammit. It made her heart all achy, and that was much more disconcerting than being horny.

  They didn’t get very far up the road before Eli stopped the truck again. “Right there,” he said, “we’ll move the cows to another pasture and open up the gates.”

  She looked over to where he was pointing and shaded her eyes as she studied the bright green fields, dotted with glossy black animals, their heads down, the sun casting a ripple of light and shadow over muscle and sleek hair.

  Yellow flowers popped like little sunbursts across the grass, standing in sharp contrast to the dark green and fading blue of the mountains beyond.

  It took her breath away. It reminded her why this place was home.

  Which was so strange, because she couldn’t remember ever really feeling like it was before, but sitting in the truck, looking out at all this, she felt it. Not like something new, but even better and more rare for someone like her, it felt familiar.

  “Parking lot doesn’t really do this justice. Will it be okay to...drive on it?”r />
  “Yeah, it’s fine. We cycle the cows through the fields anyway and they’re about done here for now.”

  “I can suddenly see why none of you ever left.”

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Some days I kind of forget to look at it. But the expression on your face just reminded me.”

  Something warm shot through her, across her face and down into the pit of her stomach. She swallowed hard, fought against it. It was a good feeling, but weird. Deeper than the kinds of feelings she was used to.

  And she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  “Anyway, I have to get out and help Connor for a while, so I’ll drive you back.”

  “I’m fine walking,” she said, suddenly feeling the need to escape again. To feel a little sunshine on her face and some wind in her hair. “I mean, really, I want to walk.”

  He shrugged. “All right. Suit yourself. See you around.”

  She climbed out of the truck and tried to ignore the somewhat fuzzy feeling his casual, and not at all hostile, goodbye carved out in the pit of her stomach. Right in the middle of all the warmth.

  “Yeah,” she said, “see you.”

  She hopped out of the truck and breathed in deep, the air sweet from the flowers and salty from the nearby sea. She looked up and closed her eyes, letting the sunshine wash over her. And even though she wanted to, she didn’t look back at Eli. Not even once.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NEVER HAD ELI been so glad for Jack to draw the short straw. That made him the designated driver for the evening, and it meant that Eli could drink some beers. Because he really, really wanted to drink some beer tonight.

  Not that he would drink to the point of public drunkenness, since he had a reputation to uphold. And the legacy of being a worthless drunk’s kid. But something to take the edge off the Sadie Miller knife that was digging into his gut would be nice.

  Just a little haze. That was all he required.

  Jack was still sulking because he had to stay sober, Connor had already gone to the bar to order beer and Eli was leaning back in his chair, enjoying being in town in plainclothes. Enjoying sitting back and watching people do things without feeling like he was on duty at a day care.

  The bar was packed, but it was Saturday night and there were a limited amount of activities in town. There were average-quality restaurants, very expensive seafood restaurants, a movie theater with five screens and a local dinner theater. The bar was one of the more popular choices for obvious reasons.

  Alcohol, darts and pool being some of the most obvious.

  “Don’t sulk, Jack,” Eli said. “It’s not a good look on you.”

  “Drunk isn’t a good look on you,” Jack returned, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “I haven’t been drunk since I was twenty-one. On my birthday. And never again.”

  “You’re such a cliché.”

  Since this was the second time he’d been accused of this recently, he was starting to wonder if it was true.

  “Aren’t we all?” he asked. “We’re in a bar on Saturday with nothing better to do.”

  “Looking to get laid,” Jack said, turning and taking a Coke out of Connor’s hand as he returned to the table with drinks.

  “Speak for yourself,” Eli said.

  “Oh, right, you don’t shit in your own yard.”

  Eli grimaced and took the pale ale Connor was offering him. “Not my favorite way of putting it, but the principle is sound.”

  “Liss isn’t coming?” Jack asked Connor.

  “Not tonight. She said something about painting her toenails and watching old movies. And that is where having me as her best friend tends to not pay off.”

  “You don’t want to put the little toe separators in for her and blow on her feet until the polish dries?” Jack took a drink of soda to disguise his smile.

  “I thought I’d come here and see if you wanted to throw darts at my balls instead,” Connor said, tipping his beer bottle back and taking a long drink.

  “If I were drinking, I would absolutely take you up on that,” Jack said.

  “Remember the time we were hanging out at the house,” Connor asked, “and we thought we’d play darts? But there was nothing to hang the board we found...and you, you put the board in your lap? And told me to hit the bull’s-eye?”

  “I still have a scar on my thigh,” Jack said. “So yeah, I remember.”

  “We did really dumb stuff.”

  “You two did dumb stuff,” Eli corrected. “I mainly watched.”

  And told no one because there was no one who would have cared. Jack’s mom was too exhausted from work to look his direction more than once a week, and the Garrett patriarch was usually passed out in his own vomit by 6:00 p.m.

  They used to joke that if their parents got married they could be the world’s most fucked-up version of the Brady Bunch.

  That hadn’t happened, because their individual parents had been too busy wallowing in their problems, but Jack basically lived at their house anyway, simply by virtue of the fact that it was bigger and there were more places to find trouble.

  Jack liked trouble, and trouble liked him. Typically, female trouble.

  He had no issue shitting where he lived, so to speak.

  “We were badass,” Connor said, a wistful look on his face. He took another sip of beer. “And you,” he said, pointing at Eli, “were not blameless. You’re the one who thought to build a ramp that went off the hayloft. And ride your bike down it.”

  “Ah...how did we not die?” Eli asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Connor said, tapping the side of his beer bottle. “But then, I’m sort of mystified by how those decisions are made.” And just like that, the brief light on his face dimmed again.

  Dammit. It was way too easy to say the wrong thing when someone had a ghost following them around.

  “We all are,” Jack said, slapping Connor twice on the back. “And when we’re too mystified, we drink and talk crap at the bar.”

  “Damn straight,” Eli agreed, knocking back another drink.

  “With friends like you guys...I’ll have a hangover in the morning,” Connor said, making a weak attempt at a smile.

  “You could have been painting Liss’s toenails. You’re paying for your own awesome choices,” Jack told him.

  “And you could have had beer,” Connor said. “But you drew the short straw.”

  “It’s a stupid tradition. We should just take turns.”

  “And you’d bail every time it was your turn,” Eli said.

  Jack smiled and shrugged in the boyish manner that got him out of situations that would have seen lesser men castrated. “Probably.”

  “And that’s why we draw straws. Because one out of three men at this table is a piss-poor friend,” Connor said.

  “Guilty.” Jack looked over Connor’s shoulder and frowned. “Isn’t that your hot new tenant?”

  “What?” Connor asked, turning around completely unsubtly. The motion would have made a bull look graceful.

  Eli looked up and saw that it was definitely Sadie, blonde, petite and, yeah, very hot, walking into the room and over to the bar. She leaned in, and he couldn’t help but look, really look, at the way her jeans fit her rather fantastic ass.

  “She really is hot,” Jack said, his eyes getting that keen, focused look that he got when he was on the hunt.

  “Not in this lifetime, Monaghan,” Eli said, the words coming out a whole lot more threatening than he’d intended them to.

  Jack sat back, dark brows shooting up. “Oh, really?”

  “Damn straight,” Eli said, hooking his hand around his beer and tugging it back, holding it against his chest.

  “You’re not for real,” Jack said. “Sleeping with a woman who lives on your property is almost the same as marriage.”

  Marriage. That was the last thing he wanted. A little sex on the other hand...

  Heat streaked through Eli’s gut. He hated that his desire was that transparent,
especially when he was still trying to pretend that he wasn’t attracted to her at all.

  He looked over at Sadie again. “I wasn’t even thinking of it.”

  “Liar.”

  Connor was noticeably silent during the exchange. Eli managed to tear his eyes away from the view to look at his brother.

  Connor looked up, his expression hostile. “What?”

  Jack looked at him, too. “You’re not commenting.”

  “Didn’t notice she was hot,” Connor said. “I was thinking about it, trying to decide if she was or not. Then I realized my dick is fucking broken.”

  Hell, maybe Eli’s was, too. Because this was a total departure from his usual rules. He hadn’t fully realized it until Sadie had pointed out the sheer volume of sexual innuendo he missed on a daily basis when he was with her, but his normal course of action was to just shut his libido down until he was ready to do something about it.

  He had great luck with women—when he was pursuing one. Otherwise...otherwise he lived his life with blinders on. And it wasn’t by accident.

  He kept his life classified in very careful segments. And maybe the problem now was he’d left one segment neglected for too long. And now things were...intertwining that definitely shouldn’t be intertwining.

  And beyond the intersection of his personal life and his love life, the fact that it was Sadie whom he wanted when she was the most infuriating, irritating woman...well, that just proved that his dry spell had reached Saharan proportions.

  “She is hot,” Jack said. “But I have a feeling Eli is marking his territory.”

  “I am not,” he said.

  “You don’t like her,” Connor pointed out. “She’s a criminal. You arrested her.”

  “She’s not a criminal,” Eli said, gritting his teeth. “And it was ten years ago.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Marking his territory.”

  “Don’t say it like that. She’s a woman, not territory. And she’s definitely not mine. You sound like a jerk.”

  “I am a jerk,” Jack said. “It’s like you haven’t known me since I was twelve.”

  “As you so eloquently put it, or...as you should have put it, I keep my sex life away from here. Far, far away. I’m not going to pursue a woman who has a five-year contract to live on my property. That’s a degree too close to marriage for my taste.”