Slow Burn Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “Nothing I want to talk about right now. Right now, we’re talking about the ranch. I don’t want money. I don’t need money. I’ve got pay from the army for my service as a veteran of a foreign war. But I need something to do. And this ranch is something to do.”

  Something to do? His life’s work was something for Alex to do.

  He had honestly never considered his brothers would want to stay in Oregon and work on a dairy farm when there was money on offer. This wasn’t a glamorous life. And as far as Finn was concerned, teamwork wasn’t the road to happiness. Space was. Control.

  How the hell they could think any different was beyond him.

  “I don’t see the point of dragging me into your career crisis,” Finn said, not particularly caring if he sounded insensitive. “If you want to try your hand at something new, by all means, take what I give you and invest in something new.”

  “Maybe I want to get back to my roots, Finn,” Alex said. “Did you think of that?”

  “No,” Finn returned. “I didn’t. I honestly thought that between a stack of cash and a life spent getting up at the ass crack of dawn, you’d choose cash.”

  “I’m ex-military, Finn. This doesn’t feel like a hardship to me. And anyway...we’re family.”

  “Bull. That’s not why you’re here.”

  “My reasons don’t matter,” Alex said. “Not even a little bit. What matters is the will and Grandpa’s express wishes. We all have equal share of the ranch if we want it. And I, for one, want it.”

  Finn looked around the room, daring the others to turn down his offer. “And the rest of you?”

  “I already told you,” Cain responded. “I’m staying. We’re staying. I’ve been working my ass off trying to give Violet a normal life in Texas. But everybody there knows that her mom walked out. As if it wasn’t enough for her to have to deal with Kathleen abandoning her.”

  “You mean she doesn’t see her own daughter?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Cain said. “She walked out the door one day and neither of us have seen her since.”

  An uneasy silence fell over the room. Probably because none of them knew whether they were supposed to express sympathy or not. Another thing they had in common, aside from physical mannerisms. They were deeply uncomfortable with emotions.

  “I’m staying too,” Liam said.

  Finn looked at Liam. “Because you love this place so damn much?” He could remember Liam coming to work on the ranch when he’d been a teenager. A surly, jackass teenager who had never seemed particularly interested in the goings-on at the Laughing Irish. No, he was much more interested in the goings-on of Jennifer Hassellbeck’s panties.

  “Maybe I’ve grown an interest in animal husbandry.” Liam shrugged.

  His brother, who Finn knew was actually something of an entrepreneurial genius, most definitely did not have a sudden interest in animal husbandry.

  “Right. And I just started a vegan diet,” Finn said. “What does this place mean to you? Why do you want it? I know why I want it. I’ve bled for it, and that’s not a metaphor. So you tell me what reasoning you have for thinking you all having equal ownership with me is fair.”

  “Our reasons are irrelevant, as Alex already pointed out. Grandpa left a quarter of the ranch to each of us. Sorry if that puts a burr under your saddle, Finn,” Liam said, “but that’s kind of the least of my concerns.”

  “I just want to know what you bastards think you’re getting out of this.”

  This time, it was Cain who spoke. “Come on now, little brother. Liam and Alex are legitimate. Only you and I are bastards.”

  “Legitimate or not, once they were adults they never came back here. And neither did you,” Finn said. “You can see why I don’t much feel like I owe any of you anything. I’m not sure why Grandpa did.”

  “Maybe the old codger was sentimental,” Alex said.

  “No,” Finn said, “that is definitely not it.”

  He had been hard, but loyal. Protective. Of the land. Of his grandson. Finn had never felt much like anyone loved him. Until the day he’d gotten into a mishap with a barbed wire fence and sliced through his thigh. He’d come back home pale and bleeding, and the old man had nearly lost his mind. Worried, he’d said, that it was serious. That he’d need his damned leg cut off.

  That was the only love Finn knew. And it had been everything to him.

  “This is all speculation,” Liam said, “and speculation doesn’t mean a damn thing. The fact is we are each entitled to our share of the ranch, no matter how much that pisses you off. But here’s the deal for you. If you can’t handle it why don’t you let me buy you out. You don’t have to stay here. Go start something that belongs to you.”

  “This place does belong to me, asshole.”

  “Not legally. It belongs to all of us. I guess you could say it’s a Donnelly operation now.”

  Finn was pretty sure his head was going to blow clean off, right there in his grandpa’s living room. Then these three jackasses would get the place all to themselves.

  “If I walked,” Finn said through gritted teeth, “you couldn’t run this place. I am the only one of us here who could do it. You’re all dependent on me. I do not need any of you. Remember that.”

  There was a knock on the door and Alex raised a brow, then his finger, pretending to count all of the people in the room.

  “It’s dinner,” Finn growled.

  “Hello.” Lane’s voice floated in from the entry.

  “In the living room,” Finn called.

  “Great,” came the response. “I’m bringing the food into the kitchen because there is a metric ton of this nonsense.”

  All of his brothers were looking at him now. “My friend said she would bring dinner,” he said. “Though why I’m feeding you is beyond me.” He wished he hadn’t thought to feed them now, although, rage aside, there was nothing he could do about any of this.

  It wasn’t like he could withhold food and walk around the house ignoring them. Well, he supposed he could. But if he knew anything about Donnellys, that would only make them dig their heels in deeper.

  Alex arched a brow. “Your friend?”

  “Yes,” he said, nearly snarling. “My friend. Because women have brains and personalities, not just breasts, you jackass.”

  “I usually just consider the brains and personalities obstacles to navigate on my way to the breasts,” Liam said.

  Cain nearly growled. “Watch your mouth. Boys talk like that, not men. As I’ve often told my teenage daughter. Who lives in this house now. And I won’t have you saying shit like that around her.”

  “It’s just talk,” Liam said.

  “It’s never just talk, little brother. Man up.”

  “Dinner,” Finn barked, turning out of the living area and making his way into the kitchen. Lane was already setting up, a giant bowl of green salad with tongs sticking out the top sitting on the counter. Next to it was a silver pan covered in foil.

  Lane was nowhere to be seen.

  She appeared a minute later with two more tin pans. One that was filled with meatballs and sauce, another that had pasta.

  “Did I go overboard?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, trying to correct his tone.

  Lane didn’t deserve his mood.

  She clapped. “Good. I would rather have you overfed than underfed.”

  “Judging by how good that smells, I don’t think you have to worry about us not eating,” Alex said, walking into the room. Liam and Cain weren’t far behind.

  “Lane,” Finn said, noticing that his tone was more than a little bit surly, but not able to correct it, “this is my brother Alex, and my brother Liam. You met Cain yesterday. Kind of.”

  Lane waved. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m goin
g to eat with you. Because this really is enough to feed a small army.”

  “You cook,” Cain said with a crooked smile, “you make the rules. And based on the meal I ate last night, let me just add that you can cook for us anytime.”

  “I am fairly amazing,” she said, putting her hand on her chest, her expression turning overly sincere. “Just don’t fall in love with me.” She threw a stack of paper plates next to the food. “And dig in.”

  “I’m going to go see if Violet wants dinner,” Cain said. “Though I’d probably have better luck if I texted her.” But he turned and walked out of the room anyway.

  They began to fill their plates in silence, and a few minutes later Cain reappeared with Violet, who hung back against the wall. Finn studied her for a moment. She was petite. Short and narrow. But her face was pure Donnelly. From the brown hair that hung into her blue eyes, to the firm set of her jaw and mouth. It almost made Finn feel sorry for his brother. Because Donnellys were not easy people to deal with.

  “You remember your uncle Alex,” Cain said, gesturing. “And your uncle Liam.” He said Liam’s name with a slight edge.

  “Hey,” Violet said, barely nodding her head.

  “That’s teenager for I love you and miss you and thought about you every day since I last saw you,” Cain supplied.

  That earned a snort from Alex. Neither of them moved to hug Violet, and Finn had a feeling the teenager was only relieved by the lack of forced contact.

  Suddenly, Finn was feeling a little bit embarrassed. That Lane was witnessing all of this. The strange, brittle family dynamic. He felt like he was walking across a lake that had frozen over. The ground cracking beneath his feet, and he was never sure which footstep would send him straight through and down to his freezing watery death.

  The rest of them were at least all living the same hell. But Lane... Well, to her they must look like a bunch of dysfunctional idiots.

  “So,” Lane said, her tone a little too bright, which confirmed Finn’s suspicions, “Violet, what grade are you going to be in?”

  “A junior,” she said. “Unless I end up having to repeat a grade because I’m not prepared for advanced tractor mechanics and cow-tipping.”

  “I doubt you’ll have to take those classes. They probably fill up early,” Lane said, keeping her tone chipper. “Then again, I can’t speak from experience. I didn’t actually go to school at Copper Ridge High.”

  “How much has the town changed in the past ten years?” Alex asked. “I figure that’s relevant since we are going to be living here now.”

  Finn knew that Alex was just poking him now. It didn’t make the sinking in his gut any less real.

  “Oh,” Lane said, shooting Finn a look of surprise.

  “He was our grandfather too,” Liam said. “And this matters. It means something. God knows we’ll never get anything from our father. But we got this, and not him. For that reason alone, I want to stay.”

  That hit Finn somewhere vulnerable. Somewhere he didn’t want to examine too closely. It made Liam’s reasoning seem almost justified. And that wasn’t what Finn wanted at all.

  “Well, things actually have changed quite a bit here,” Lane began. “Just in the past few years we’ve been really revitalizing Old Town. For my part, I bought the old Mercantile, and I sell specialty foods.”

  “Oh, that boutique food stuff is doing well right now,” Liam said. “If I was still doing start-ups, that would be something I’d look to invest in.”

  Lane sent Finn a triumphant look. “Interesting.” She turned her focus to his brothers, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next, “I’ve been trying to talk Finn into expanding the ranch’s dairy products so that I can sell them in my store.”

  “Lane,” Finn said, his tone full of warning.

  “Sorry,” she said, licking some sauce off of her thumb, which momentarily distracted him from his irritation. And that was even more irritating. “The business is just on my mind and it slipped out. Especially because I’m going to be starting those subscription boxes soon.”

  “Smart,” Liam said. “I think it’s always a good idea to branch out beyond the local economy if you can.”

  “See?” Finn asked. “Beyond the local economy. That’s why I have contracts with a larger dairy.”

  “I didn’t mean it’s not good to be part of the local economy,” Liam said. “In fact, there’s such a big movement for local food, it’s a great area to invest in.”

  “You don’t want to work on a ranch,” Finn said, pointing at his brother.

  “Maybe I want to bring what I already do to the ranch. Did you ever think of that? I’m good at building businesses, Finn.”

  No, he had not thought of that. Because that would mean giving Liam some credit, which he realized in that moment he never really did. Stupid, since he knew that Liam was successful in his own right, and that he wasn’t the sullen teenage boy that Finn had always known him best as.

  “I think you should see how things actually run before you start trying to make changes,” Finn said, looking at his brother hard. Then he looked at the rest of them. There was no point arguing this out, he knew it. But, truth be told, he thought—no, he believed deep in his gut that a few weeks, maybe months, of the ranch life grind, and they’d be gone.

  “All of you. My offer to buy you out is going to stand from here on out. This isn’t fun work. I know that you all spent some summers here, and I know you have a vague idea of how it all goes. But to do it year in year out, day in day out, spending your life up to your elbows in literal bullshit is not something any of you know about. So, if at any point it proves to be too much for you, I’ll buy you out. But, hell. Don’t let your pride stop you if after a couple of weeks your bones ache and you just want to sleep in and it proves to be too much for you. But don’t think you can stay then either.”

  Violet made a face and glared at her father. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not doing any of that. Just because you’ve gone country and dragged me along with you doesn’t mean I’m getting involved in this.”

  Cain looked at his daughter. “I’m sorry. I missed the memo that you were calling the shots now. If I give you chores, you’re going to damn well do them.”

  “There are child labor laws, you know,” she said, taking a bite of pasta and shooting her dad an evil glare.

  “Do you think anyone cares much about that out here in the country?”

  “You’re the literal worst,” she said, putting her plate down on the counter and stalking out of the room.

  Cain took another bite of his dinner. And he made no move to follow her.

  “Should you talk to her?” Of course, it was Lane who questioned him, because the woman never could leave well enough alone.

  Cain shrugged. “Maybe. But, trust me, my talking to her doesn’t ever smooth anything over.” Then Cain looked at Finn. “You think you’re going to scare me off with tales of early mornings? I’m already elbows deep in bullshit. At least here, it will be for a reason.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LANE KNEW THAT Finn was mad at her. The rest of dinner was tense—not that it had been extraordinarily calm in the beginning, but it certainly didn’t get better.

  There was no easy conversation between the brothers either. Finn had told her that things were difficult between them, but until she had witnessed it, she hadn’t fully understood. She should have believed him. After all, she knew all about difficult families. She hadn’t spoken to her parents in years.

  By the time she was finished eating and ready to head out the door, her sense of unease had only grown. She hated feeling like he was angry at her. It happened. They had known each other for a long time, and initially in the capacity of her being Mark’s irritating younger sister. Who lingered around in the shadows when they were tr
ying to watch an action movie in peace, or who forced them to be guinea pigs for her latest cooking experiment.

  But as they’d eased into adulthood, and into a real friendship in their own right, rarely had Finn ever looked at her like he wanted to drown her in the ocean. About now, he was looking vaguely murderous.

  When she said her goodbyes to everyone and headed for the door, she wasn’t surprised when Finn followed her outside. He closed the door hard behind them, crossing his arms over his chest, then dropping them almost immediately. He let out a long, slow breath. “Are you going to apologize for that?”

  “Me?” she all but squeaked. “You were being a jerk.”

  “I’m sorry if you don’t understand my family dynamic, which consists mainly of us calling each other names while we try not to punch each other in the face. But that has nothing to do with you, and it’s definitely not for you to lecture me about. What was that stunt you pulled?”

  She threw her arms wide, the cool night air washing over her bare limbs. “Oh, do you mean cooking you a delicious dinner? How dare I?”

  “I mean bringing up the dairy stuff. I know it’s what you want me to do, but if you think you’re going to railroad me by going through my brothers—”

  “Are you serious right now?” Anger spiked inside of her. “You honestly think that I was trying to manipulate you?”

  “Can you honestly say on any level that you weren’t?”

  She almost exploded with denial, then stopped herself, chewing on the words for a moment. Being honest with herself—really honest—she supposed there was part of her that maybe brought it up in front of other people to get a more positive consensus. Because she knew it was a good idea, and she figured that if someone besides stubborn Finn heard it, she would find an ally.

  “I thought so,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

  “You know me,” she said, instead of denying it outright. “I was just carried away by my own enthusiasm. That’s all it was—I promise.”