by Drake, Laura
Even as he thought it, Max knew he wasn’t being fair. But fair wasn’t the way the world worked. “Can’t we just let those dogs lie, Wyatt?”
His brother speared him with a hard look. “Yeah, we could, Max, but you and I can’t go on like this forever, going about our business, acting like we’re still kids. Like you don’t know I’m gay.” He snatched his beer and took a long swig.
Max winced. “Believe me, Wyatt, that is a reality I’m not likely to forget.”
The cue clattered as Wyatt tossed it in the middle of the table, scattering balls. “Well, good for you, Maxie.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Wyatt paced in the edge of the pool of light. “I’m not that kid anymore. I have my own life. My own love.” He strode to the table, leaning on his hands at the edge. “You don’t get to be in charge of everything in this sheltered little world, Max. This is who I am.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Just try to put yourself in my shoes for a minute.”
“I wouldn’t have any idea of how to do that.”
“I know you don’t.” He put his palms on the edge of the table and leaned in. “Imagine that you and Bree are a couple. You go places together, but people can’t know you’re more than friends. Everyone would see your relationship as shameful.”
Wyatt started pacing again, his words speeding up. “No, it’s worse than that. Everyone thinks you’re twisted because you love Bree. Like you’re a freak of nature. You try to ignore them, to tell yourself they can’t dictate your life, but it’s so insidious—that judgment. Like water in a flooded basement, it seeps into everything and ruins it.”
Max squirmed. Half of him wanted to tell Wyatt to man up and deal with it. After all, he’d been gay his whole life. But the other half wanted to hunt down those people who hurt his little brother and pound them to dust.
Wyatt continued. “Eventually you end up dealing with it one of a couple of ways.” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “Either you act out, figuring if they don’t like it, you’ll shove it in their faces.” He raised another finger. “Some people can’t stand the pressure and kill themselves.” He raised a third finger. “Or you run away. To somewhere where you can be accepted for who you are, somewhere you don’t need to hide anymore.” His brother’s sad eyes were a rebuke. “You know which one I chose. And now you know why.”
Max forced himself to hold Wyatt’s stare. “I was proud of you when you left.”
Wyatt stopped pacing. “What?”
“You put up with so much crap, from the kids at school, from Dad, but it never broke you.” Wyatt shot him a shocked glance. “Instead of fighting a battle you couldn’t win, when you’d had enough, you took yourself out of it. That takes guts, and I’ve always admired you for it.” The cue stick flexed in his white-knuckled hands. Why is it so hard to say the truth? “I should have told you long before now.”
“I’ve always felt like I took the coward’s way out.”
In his small voice, Max felt the huge shame his brother lived with all these years. “Look at me, Wyatt.” He waited until his brother’s head came up. He willed his fingers open and the cue clattered onto the table. “I am trying, even if it doesn’t look like it. This is a gut-level reaction for me. I know it hurts you. I’m struggling to figure out how to get around it.
“Look, I realize we’re not kids anymore. I guess I keep going back to that because that’s when you and I were comfortable with each other. Like if we start there, maybe we can build a bridge to now and it will all work out.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I know it must look like I’m ignoring the fact that you’re… Shit, Wyatt, I don’t even have the vocabulary to talk about this.” He reached over to mess up his brother’s perfect hair.
“Can you give me some time to figure out how to handle all this? You know people around here, and we are trying to start a new business. I promise I’ll think about what you said. And about having Juan visit.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Maxie.” Wyatt raised his beer in an insolent salute.
Max whipped out a hand to cuff the side of his brother’s head. “And quit calling me Maxie, you little punk.”
A week later, in the kitchen of the main house, Bree shuffled through the pile of paper on the kitchen table.
“What are you looking for?” Wyatt asked from behind his laptop.
“I just had that darned schedule.” She looked up as Max stomped in.
He hung his sweat-stained hat on the rack beside the door and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Damn, but it’s hot out there.”
“I’d kick off those boots, bucko. If you track that”—she wrinkled her nose—“stuff all over Tia’s clean floor, she’s gonna tear strips off your hide.”
Max sighed and toed off his boots, then padded to the refrigerator to get a beer. Twisting it open, he gulped half of it in one swallow.
She’d barely seen him the past few days. He’d worked from before dawn until dark, shouldering Armando’s duties as well as his own. “This will all pay off when Armando’s home in a month. Thanks to your buddy JB, he’s going to be the best apprentice trainer in the business.”
“Yeah, keep telling me.” Max padded to the table to drop a quick kiss on her lips. “You’re fresh as a cool breeze.” He pulled his damp shirt away from his sweaty chest. “Thought about you all day.” He smiled down at her. “Well, you and that beer.”
“That’s my brother.” Wyatt chuckled. “He’d charm the socks off a snake.”
Max leaned over to peer at the computer screen. “Whatcha doin’?”
She closed the laptop. “Nothing we need to discuss right now.”
His look hardened. “What is it?”
She hated to put more weight on those broad shoulders. But he’d need to know eventually. “I’m signing Fire Ant up for the PBR Challenger Tour.” She picked up the schedule. “It’s expensive, though. Even if I only enter him in the events closest to the Heather, there’s travel expense, gas, and hotels. Add to that the expense of Armando’s training.” Her voice tapered off. “We’ll run through the proceeds from the calf sale by fall.”
Max dropped into the chair next to her.
She rushed on. “Now, there is an upside. Fire Ant will win.” She glanced at the spreadsheet on her laptop. Coward that she was, she couldn’t stand to see his face while she told him the rest. “But that won’t do much more than offset the costs. To really make money, we’ve got to be taking a full trailer of bulls to an event.” She peeked. Weary lines cut deep on his chiseled face. She lifted her hand to cover his, then let it fall back to the keyboard. He wouldn’t accept comfort now. Better to just get it all out.
“We’re going to need more working capital. I’ve run through all my savings, inseminating the cows. I have no doubt that we’re going to have a promising crop of calves next spring, but…”
“They’re not going to start working for three years. We’ve got to survive until then.”
“Yeah.”
Wyatt cleared his throat. “I can get us money.” He had their undivided attention.
“I’ve talked to Juan about our corporation, and he’s intrigued. He’d like to buy stock.”
“I don’t know about that, Wyatt.” Max’s face was as stony as any on Mount Rushmore.
Wyatt ignored him and addressed his comments to Bree. “I’m not talking about a partner. He wants to buy nonvoting stock as an investment.”
“We don’t need your boyfriend’s charity.” His voice sounded like a peach pit in a garbage disposal.
“Charity?” Wyatt ran a hand through his hair, mussing it. “Jesus, Max, will you pull your head out? He’s researched the industry. He knows what he’s getting himself into. Do you realize that bull riding is the fastest growing sport in America? There’s lots of money to be made here, and he knows it.”
Bree broke in. “I could run some numbers.”
“This is moving too fast.” Max shook his head. “The corporation has barel
y been formed, and already we’re looking for money.”
Bree broke in. “You saw the budgets. You knew that this was a possibility.”
“I know. But the reality of going deeper in debt to pull ourselves out—”
“It’s not debt, Max; it’s stock. That’s on the equity section of the balance sheet, not liability side. Corporations do this all the time.”
“Yeah, but Jamesons don’t.” Max ran his fingers through his hair.
Wyatt’s concerned gaze raked his brother. “Are you sure this isn’t about offering stock, but about who wants to buy it?”
Max lifted his beer and drained it. “Of course not. I told you I was working on that, Wyatt, and I am.” He looked at Bree. “I don’t care where you put it on your pretty balance sheets. It’s money someone’s banking on getting back, and I’m not comfortable with the risk.” He slammed the empty bottle on the table and stalked out.
Bree surveyed the milling cattle churning dust in the stockyard corral, pride swelling in her chest. Half of the herd for the parade through town sported the Heather’s double H brand on their flanks.
She’d looked forward to the Fourth of July celebration for weeks. They’d gotten up well before dawn, loading the cattle and trucking them to town. After the roping and steer wrestling events at the rodeo, they’d be trucked back to the sale barn and sold.
“Let’s head ’em up and move ’em out!” The hoarse shout of the elected trail boss overrode the bedlam of bawling calves. A frisson of excitement shivered through her as Bree tugged the reins from the hitching post, put her foot in the stirrup, and mounted.
She tugged the brim of her Stetson to block the horizontal rays of the rising sun. Not a cloud in the sky. It was going to be a perfect day; she could feel it.
Catching quick movement out of the corner of her eye, she jerked her head up. Trouble exploded across the yard, bucking and squealing, leaving Max grabbing for leather.
Cowboys shouted as riders scattered.
Wyatt trotted up on a buckskin cow pony. “Quite an entrance. I don’t know why Max brought that ill-mannered beast to town.”
Trouble calmed a bit, having made his point. The big paint pranced in place, head thrown up, fighting the rein.
“Oh, he’s full of himself; that’s all.” Bree thought the pair magnificent. She longed for a camera to capture the flashy horse and the lean cowboy in the morning light. As if sensing her gaze, Max glanced up, and smiling, tipped his hat to her.
“Looks to me like they’re both pretty full of themselves,” Wyatt said.
“Yeah, and neither you nor I would have it different.” She touched the Walker with her heel and took her place in the phalanx of riders skirting the corral. As the gate opened, they herded the cattle out of the yard, onto the asphalt of Lincoln Avenue, and turned right, toward town.
When the herd settled to a sedate walk, the riders relaxed, throwing jibes at one another.
Bree couldn’t wipe the silly grin from her face. As they neared downtown, crowds lined the road. Kids waved American flags, and the outriders had their hands full as a few cows spooked, their hooves clattering and slipping on the asphalt. Bree eyed the edge of the herd warily. Unfenced cattle and little kids made a combustible mix. All senses on alert, the cowboys tightened the herd as they broke into a trot. She urged Smooth next to a white-eyed steer, nudging him into the fold. Four blocks farther, Bree was glad to see the turnoff to the rodeo grounds and an open holding pen.
She drew a heavy sigh when the last steer cleared the fence, and the gate swung closed. Taking off her hat, she swiped her sweaty forehead.
“Every year I forget how hairy that can be.” Max ambled up on Trouble. “We’ve never had any accidents, but there have been a couple of close calls.”
“Are you guys ready for breakfast?” Wyatt reined up next to them. “I’ve been thinking about those pancakes since before sunup.”
CHAPTER
19
Max nudged Bree’s elbow and rattled a sack of popcorn. She took a handful and turned to the arena. They sat shoulder to shoulder in the packed metal bleachers, waiting for Miguel and Jesus’s turn in the team roping competition. The midday sun blazed, and the still air was full of smells of cotton candy, cologne, manure, and human sweat. Bree lifted her ponytail and turned her face to a puff of breeze. Max blew lightly on the back of her neck.
“Hmm, that feels good.” He’d been solicitous all day. A touch at her waist here, a warm look there, each subtle reminders of the tectonic shift in their relationship. How could a woman’s heart not melt at soft displays of affection from a hard man? Distracted, she forced herself to check the program in her lap. “I think they’re up next.” She watched the end of the arena, where a steer waited in a squeeze chute, restrained only by a rope strung across the front. Miguel and Jesus sat mounted in open stalls on either side, horses dancing in anticipation.
Suddenly, the rope was gone and the steer shot into the arena as if released from a bow. The horses galloped in hot pursuit, ears laid back, the cowboys’ lassos spinning. Miguel let his fly first, and it settled over the steer’s horns. He took a quick twist of the rope around the horn of the saddle and his horse sank on his haunches. As the steer hit the end of the rope, his head came around and his hindquarters swung out. Jesus released his lasso underhanded, and when the animal stepped neatly into the noose, he jerked it taut.
Bree jumped up cheering as the announcer called over the PA system, “Torres and Moreno, best at nine point five seconds.” The grinning pair tipped their hats to the crowd as they trotted by the grandstand.
Max stood and reached for her hand. “Let’s go check on your midget bull. I’m about cooked.” They squeezed their way to the end of the row, where Max jumped to the ground, then grabbed her waist and swung her down beside him.
Bree preened inside, knowing that by their clasped hands, Max was staking his claim.
The rodeo grounds were packed for the Rancher’s Rodeo, and they were stopped every few feet by the greetings of friends and neighbors. More than one puzzled glance fell on Bree when Max introduced her as his “partner.”
They finally reached the show barn. Fire Ant stood in a stall, chewing cud, oblivious to the bustle around him as hands arrived with stock for the Pro Rodeo this afternoon. His cockeyed horns lent him a dumb-as-dirt look that his relaxed attitude reinforced.
Max leaned on the top rail of the stall. “You couldn’t have picked a bull that looked a bit more intimidating?”
Bree smiled fondly as the bull turned away to give them a view of his backside. “Oh, I think he’s adorable.” She turned to Max. “And you’ll agree when he brings home the purse tonight.”
“Your mouth to God’s ears, honey.” He reclaimed her hand and they walked into the blazing sun. “Let’s grab some lunch. Watching people work makes me hungry.”
“How can you think about eating? I’m still stuffed with pancakes.”
Max headed for the impromptu food court cordoned off on a grassy hill next to the parking lot. Blue plastic awnings shaded the vendors, mostly students and members of local civic organizations, selling everything from churros to watermelon. The Rotary Club’s half-barrel barbecues were going full blast, throwing off delicious smells and billowing smoke in equal amounts. The Chamber of Commerce beer truck did a booming business under a tree. Max made a beeline for it.
In line, Max went still beside her and his hand tightened on hers. She followed his gaze, but saw nothing untoward in the passing crowd.
“Grab me a beer, will you, Bree? I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for an answer, he stalked off.
Max kept his eye on the group as he dodged running children and picnic tables. Several large, ham-fisted men stood in a semicircle around his much smaller brother.
Déjà vu. Max recognized Wyatt’s tormentors from high school. Their leader, Stan Pruitt, still ran his father’s hardware store in town. Max forced his fists to relax. Maybe he could talk Wyatt out of trouble t
his time. But knowing these men, he doubted it. He sidled up to the group, taking a stance behind his brother.
“What’s going on, Wyatt?” He surveyed the men’s intent expressions.
Wyatt turned and smiled. “Hey, Max. You know everyone, right?”
Stan Pruitt leaned in, and Max tensed. “Yeah, I go to the ‘Tools’ menu. Then what?”
What the hell?
“Scroll down to ‘Customize.’ It’ll allow you to make almost any changes you want.” Wyatt reached to his back pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a business card and handed it to Stan. “Call me if you have any questions.”
Stan studied the card, then glanced up at Max. “Did you know your brother wrote the POS program I use at the store?”
Bubba Wright asked Wyatt, “Do you have anything for inventory control? I’ve got about five thousand SKUs and my software sucks.”
Well, he obviously wasn’t needed here. Max backed away, shaking his head as his brother launched into a detailed explanation. Wyatt was right. Max was still trying to solve his brother’s problems the way he had when they were kids. Given what just happened, things had changed. That bore thinking about.
Maybe times had changed. Maybe the town was ready to accept Wyatt for who he was. After all, if he’d have made a list of those least likely to change, the guys in that circle around Wyatt would have been on it.
And if those guys could change, maybe there was hope for him. He should tell Wyatt to schedule a trip out for Juan.
He wandered back to the beer truck, where Bree still stood in line.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Things are good. Weird, but good.”
Full dark descended as Max and Wyatt skirted the huge crowd that sprawled on the grass for the fireworks show. Max neatly sidestepped two boys who chased each other with sparklers. Wyatt followed, carrying a bag of hot dogs.
Max kept his eye on the too-full plastic cups of beer as he walked the uneven ground. “Okay, so consider me a member of the Fire Ant Fan Club.”