Tempted by a Cowboy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Interested.

  She was interested. Here, in the safety of her trailer, with all their cards on the table, she wasn’t going to hide it. “It has to be this way,” she went on, sounding as hopeless as he’d ever heard her. “I gave up men when I gave up drinking.”

  He nodded even though he couldn’t remember spending the night with a woman that didn’t involve sex. “You’d let me stay? Why?”

  The smile she gave him was sadder than anything he’d ever seen on her face. “Because,” she said, leaning forward and placing her hand on top of his. “No one’s past saving. Not even you.”

  But as quick as she’d touched him, she pulled away and was standing up. “I’ll be right back.”

  He blinked up at her. “Where are you going?”

  Jo stood. He didn’t miss that she grabbed the gun off the counter and shoved it into her waistband. “I need to check on Sun and get Betty. She’s good for nights like this.”

  He managed a small smile. “I’ll be here.”

  No one was past saving. Not even him.

  He didn’t know if he should laugh or cry at that.

  Jo stopped halfway down the steps and shot him that side-eye look. “Good,” was all she said.

  Then she was out the door.

  Nine

  Jo did not sleep.

  She lay in her bed, listening to the sounds of Phillip also not sleeping. She could tell he wasn’t sleeping by the way the trailer creaked with every toss and turn and also by the way that Betty would occasionally shake her head and exhale heavily.

  Even without Betty’s added exasperation, Jo would have been aware of every single one of Phillip’s movements. She hadn’t been this close to a man in, well...since before the accident.

  She felt as if she’d walked into a bar and bellied up to the counter, only to nurse a Sprite. How was she supposed to make it through the night without falling back into her old ways?

  Around two in the morning, Phillip shifted again. That noise was followed by the distinctive sound of the floors squeaking as he walked. Jo tensed. It wasn’t a huge trailer. Where was he going?

  Not here. Not to her. If he opened the sliding door and told her he couldn’t get through the night and he needed her, she didn’t think she’d be strong enough to direct him back to the dinette table that had converted into a too-small bed.

  The footsteps stopped in the middle of the trailer, then she heard the fridge open up. Then the fridge door shut and his steps went back to the front of the trailer. She heard the cushions sag as he sat, then heard Betty shake her head.

  She could see him sitting there, rubbing Betty’s ears as he struggled. How many nights had she done the same thing?

  She remembered when she’d finally been cleared to drive by herself. She’d made up some excuse to run to the grocery store, only to have her dad say, “Don’t forget, Joey.” Her mom had met her at the front door, car keys in hand. But instead of stopping her or announcing she was coming along, Mom had just wrapped Jo in a hug and said, “Don’t forget, sweetie.”

  They hadn’t stopped her. If they had, who knows—she might have tried harder to go around them. But they didn’t. They made it clear it was her choice and hers alone.

  So she’d stood there in the booze aisle at the convenience store and stared at the bottles of amber liquid. It would have been so easy to buy one can, slam it in the car and throw the can away. No one would have known.

  Except...she would have known.

  Jo had gone home empty-handed to find her granny, Lina, sitting on the front porch with a twenty-pound donkey on her lap. Lina had pulled Jo into a strong hug, taken a deep breath—to check for the smell of booze, no doubt—and asked, “Did you remember what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah.” She’d expected a greater sense of accomplishment. She’d stopped. She’d walked away. She was a stronger, better person now.

  But all she’d felt was drained. How was she going to make the same choice every day for the rest of her life? She didn’t think she could do it.

  “This here is Itty Bitty Betty,” Lina had said, plopping the donkey into Jo’s lap. “She needs someone to look after her.”

  Jo sighed, doing some tossing and turning of her own. Betty was mellower now, less prone to taking corners too fast and crashing into walls. But she still had the same soft ears, the same understanding eyes. She kept Jo grounded.

  Except that Betty was out there with Phillip—and Phillip was still not sleeping. Jo couldn’t sleep if he didn’t sleep.

  She could open up the sliding screen that separated her bedroom from the rest of the camper and sit with him. She could wrap her hand around his and then he’d be still.

  But she didn’t. She didn’t fix people and she couldn’t save them and she sure as hell wasn’t going to put herself in a position where she might kiss him because if she kissed him, she wasn’t sure she could stop at just one kiss. She’d never been able to stop at just one.

  And if she didn’t stop at one kiss, what was to say she’d be able to stop at a couple of kisses? Or that she’d not run her hands over his body? That she wouldn’t lean into his groan and tilt her head back, encouraging him to kiss her on that spot where her neck met her shoulders?

  She kept the door firmly shut. And did not sleep.

  At six, she heard him get up again. Groggy from lack of sleep, she wondered if she should make coffee for him. But before she could get her feet on the floor, the door opened and shut and the trailer was still.

  Phillip was gone.

  Somehow, she knew she’d be cleaning tack alone today.

  * * *

  Phillip was waiting at the door when Matthew drove up.

  “Took you long enough.”

  Matthew gave him a tired smile. “Something came up at work. I need a drink.”

  “Uh...”

  Matthew turned. “Problem?”

  “I don’t have any alcohol in the house.”

  Matthew studied him, taking in everything from the boots to the jeans before finally staring him in the eye. “Either you drank everything you already had or...”

  It wasn’t the observation that hurt so much as the fact that it could have been true. “I had Richard come get all my booze and give it to the hands.”

  “You did?”

  Phillip nodded. “I, uh, I’m trying to drink less. Or not at all.”

  “Is that so.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah....” Although a drink would be nice right now. When had it gotten so hard to talk to his brother? “A friend helped me realize if I wanted to keep the farm, I had to be sober to do it.”

  Matthew rubbed his eyes. “And when did this start?”

  “Yesterday.” Phillip swallowed.

  “Good start.” He almost sounded sincere. “I can’t wait to meet this ‘friend’ of yours.”

  “She’s down at the barn. With Sun.”

  Matthew rubbed his temples. “The seven-million dollar horse?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long pause. Phillip’s stomach caved in. This was too much—he couldn’t deal. What the hell had he been thinking? He couldn’t even handle Matthew. He had to have been out of his mind to think he could confront Chadwick.

  “She?”

  Phillip nodded.

  “You’re going to screw up Chadwick’s deal because you’re trying to get laid?”

  “I’m trying to save my farm,” Phillip shot back. “Besides, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you about to lose your job if his deal goes through? I can’t imagine that new owners would want a Beaumont vice president of whatever it is you do.”

  “Public relations,” Matthew snapped, glaring at Phillip. “Which means I get to manage you whenever you go off the rail
s. Lucky freaking me.”

  “I didn’t go off the rails,” Phillip promised. “Chadwick showed up here and said he was going to sell all my horses, the whole farm—what was I supposed to do? Go drink myself into oblivion? This is my life, Matthew. This is...” His voice caught. “This is the only part of me that’s real. And you know it. I can’t let it go.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I’m serious. I need your help. Chadwick won’t listen to me. I doubt he’ll even listen to a poll with the tens of thousands of votes to keep the Percherons. You’re the only one of us he trusts.”

  That was the right thing to say. Sure, Matthew raised an eyebrow as if he was certain Phillip were feeding him a line of bull, but the pissed-off look softened. “You really don’t have anything to drink in the house?”

  “I had my cleaning service go through my apartment, too.”

  Matthew nodded. “Okay. Tell me your plan. You do have one, right?”

  Phillip took a deep breath. “I want to buy the farm from the company.”

  The hours he’d had to wait for Matthew had been filled with frantic planning. Because if the farm stayed with the company, he’d still lose it. That was unacceptable.

  But if he bought the farm, well, he could lease the Percherons back to the Brewery. The company would have all the marketing benefits of the Percheron team without having to carry the expense of the farm on the balance sheet.

  It could work. Except for two little details. Matthew was staring at him, mouth open. Finally, he got himself under control. “Do you know how much that will cost? The land alone is probably worth five, ten million dollars.”

  “Eight. Eight million for three hundred acres, seven barns, twelve outbuildings and one house.”

  Matthew eyed him suspiciously. “And the horses?”

  “About fifteen to twenty thousand a piece, just for the Percherons. I’ve got a hundred, so that’s another one to two million. The total value of all the horses on the farm, including Kandar’s Golden Sun and the Thoroughbreds, is between fifteen and twenty million. The hitches, tractors and other things are maybe another million, plus the ongoing cost of hired help, grain, and other overhead.”

  Phillip cleared his throat. So it wasn’t such a little detail. “To buy the whole thing outright would be thirty million. To buy it piecemeal at auction might push it as high as fifty million. People would want a part of the Beaumont name.”

  For once in his life, Matthew did not have a snarky comeback to that. He shook his head before finally speaking. “You’ve done your homework. That worries me.”

  A sense of pride warmed the cockles of Phillip’s heart. He’d managed to impress his younger brother. “The farm is mostly self-sustaining,” he went on. “I sell a lot of horses. If I leased the Percherons back to the company, maybe started charging a nominal fee for parade appearances, that’d cover a lot of the cost. And Sun...well, the stud fees alone are going to earn back his purchase price.”

  That was all true. With some judicious management and perhaps selling off some additional horses, the farm could break even.

  Which still left one little problem.

  “Do you have thirty million?” Matthew asked.

  “Not exactly. I hoped Chadwick might cut me a deal, seeing as we’re family.”

  Matthew gave him a look that didn’t put much stock in brotherly love. “How much do you have?”

  That little sticking point was stuck all right—in Phillip’s throat. “I’d sell the apartment in the city and live here full time. Downsize my wardrobe, cars—everything. That’d bring in a million, maybe two.”

  “How much,” Matthew said, carefully enunciating each word, “do you have?”

  “Plus, I’d get my share of the company sale, right? I have executive benefits. How much is that worth?”

  Matthew gave him a look better suited to their father. “You might get fifteen million. That’s sixteen, seventeen million tops. I don’t know if ‘brotherly love’ would cover the other twelve.”

  Phillip forced himself to breathe as Matthew scowled. “It’s the best I can do.”

  “That’s it?” Matthew said it in the kind of dismissive tone that made it sound as if they were talking about hundreds, not millions. “That’s all you’ve got? You don’t have any other assets? Stocks?”

  Phillip shook his head.

  “Property?” When Phillip shook his head again, Matthew groaned. “Nothing?”

  “I drank it all.”

  His brother rubbed his temples again, as if that would provide the solution. “You realize Chadwick’s still bitter about the seven-million-dollar horse?”

  “Yeah, I realize.”

  “He’s going to make you pay him back for that horse. You’re aware of that.”

  “Yeah.” This is what defeat tasted like. Bitter.

  But, really, did he deserve any less? He’d spent most of a lifetime being a pain in Chadwick’s ass.

  When it came to horses, Phillip could finally beat his older brother. For a few hours a month, he was Hardwick’s golden son. He’d done everything in his power to make sure that Chadwick never forgot it.

  Even bought a horse named Kandar’s Golden Sun. Just because he could. Because that’s what Hardwick would have done.

  But their father was dead and gone. Had been for years. Why had it only been in the last six days that Phillip had tried to figure out who he was if he wasn’t Hardwick Beaumont’s second son?

  It’d been because of Jo, because she hadn’t seen Hardwick’s forgotten second child. She’d seen a man who had a good head for horses—a man who could be weak and stupid, yes, a man who drank too much and remembered too little. She hadn’t seen a man she could fix.

  She’d seen a man worth saving.

  “Matthew,” Phillip said, suddenly unsure of what he was going to say. “I’m sorry.”

  Matthew glared at him. “You should be. This is one hell of a mess.”

  “No,” Phillip went on, trying to find some steel for his resolve. “I’m not sorry about trying to save the farm. I’ll do anything to save this place. I’m...I’m sorry about everything else. I’m sorry your job is managing me when I go off the rails. I’m sorry I go off the rails sometimes—” Matthew shot him a mean look. “All the time. I’m sorry I don’t remember half the stuff I’ve done because I blacked out.”

  “Phillip,” Matthew said, sounding uncharacteristically nervous.

  “No, let me finish.” Finishing was suddenly important. Phillip had been so mad at Chadwick, he’d never taken the time to understand why the man was so mad at him. But he could see it now, cleared of the haze of drinking. “I’m sorry you were always in between me and Chadwick. Are always in between us. I’m—I’m sorry I hated you when you were a kid.”

  Matthew stared at him. “What?”

  “I’m a terrible brother. I blamed you for my mother going away but you were just a kid. It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair of me to blame you.”

  They stood there, staring at each other as Phillip’s words settled around them. He felt as if he should say something else but he didn’t know what. Of course, he hadn’t known he was going to say that, either.

  “Why are you saying all of this?”

  Phillip shrugged. Truthfully, he didn’t know. Only...he needed to. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t.

  “I don’t want to be the kind of guy who has to have someone else clean up his messes anymore. I want to manage myself, my own life from here on out.” He swallowed again. “I’m sorry it took me this long to figure that out.”

  “You...” Matthew cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “You were just a kid, too. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Phillip shook his head. “Maybe when we were six, but we�
�re not anymore. We’re grown men and I’ve been—well, I’ve been an asshole and I’m sorry.”

  Matthew walked away from him. He didn’t go far, maybe five paces before he stopped and dropped his head, but in that moment, Phillip felt hopelessness clawing at him. It’d seemed like a good idea. A necessary one. But...

  “You can’t hide out here forever. You’re still contractually obligated to represent Beaumont Breweries at events. If you have any hope of convincing Chadwick to go along with your plan, you’ve got to hold up your end of the bargain. You’re still the—what was it? The ‘handsome face of the Beaumont Brewery’.”

  “I know.” That was the other little detail that wasn’t little. He knew that if he stayed out here on the farm where he could work with Sun, talk to Jo and pet Betty’s ears, he could stay sober. It wasn’t that hard.

  Hell. He’d already asked Matthew to make the long drive down because he didn’t trust himself to go into Denver and not hit a liquor store or a club. If he had to go to a club and spend several hours surrounded by alcohol and party people—how was he going to Just Say No? He’d wanted to crack open a fifth about three times in the last twenty minutes. And that was just talking to Matthew.

  “That’s why I need your help, Matthew. I don’t know how to do this myself and you’re the only one of us who Chadwick listens to.”

  “You’re not just doing this for a woman?”

  “She’s not like that.”

  He needed Matthew’s organization, his contacts, his ability to pacify Chadwick. Especially that.

  Matthew sighed deeply. “I shouldn’t.”

  “But you will?”

  Matthew shot him a snarky look over his shoulder. “I must be nuts.”

  “Nope,” Phillip said, unable to stop himself from grinning. He’d convinced Matthew. No matter what, that was a victory. One he knew he’d remember in the morning. “You’re just a Beaumont.”

  Ten

  Jo cleaned saddles, then Sun trashed them. The process repeated itself several times over the next three days. The only change of pace was when she paused to saddle up Betty. She’d clean a saddle again, wait for Sun to grind it into the dirt and then unsaddle Betty.