The Last Real Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  It really, truly happened.

  She had to keep telling herself that in the spaces between bouts of giddiness. She had to keep reminding herself that no, she actually hadn’t dreamed the whole thing.

  Instead of throwing herself her own parade, she drove out to the Bar K sedately. She parked her car in its usual place beneath the big bur oak by the barn, and took her time climbing out. Then she stood by her sturdy little hatchback, listening to the engine mutter as it settled down. And once it was done, she tipped her head back and listened to the quiet.

  The ranch was always sleepy on Sundays. Her family took their day of rest seriously, though when it came to ranching, that never meant an actual day off. There were cows to milk and eggs to collect. And all the horses that always needed attention. It was strange not to be a part of those things any longer. Not to be a part of the cycles that had dictated the rhythm of her days for as long as she could remember.

  She shook that off. Or tried. Meanwhile, that giddy bubble was still lodged in her chest, making her feel silly and obvious in a way she was afraid would be all too visible.

  “You need to get it together,” she told herself sternly.

  Across the meadow, she could see her grandparents’ house at the far edge with dogwood trees in the back and the big maple in front. There was smoke coming from their chimney, a sign they weren’t planning to join the rest of the family for Sunday dinner this week. If they had been, there’d have been no smoke, and if she’d waited another few minutes, she would have seen them start across the meadow.

  Amanda was a little early, so she set off toward her grandparents’ house instead of her parents’, loving the kick of the breeze as it rushed down from the mountains. It had that fall edginess to it, stirring things up as it danced over the land and wound through the trees. She hunched down a little into the wool sweater she wore, and could feel the chilly undertone of the breeze making her cheeks glow as she walked.

  Her grandparents’ house was neat outside and tidy within. They kept goats in the back, maintained a lush vegetable garden the goats were forever breaking into, and spent fine evenings sitting out on their porch with its view of the mountains, the valley, and the line of aspen trees that marked the north arm of the river. When Amanda had been small, her grandparents had kept working dogs, but the lazy old mutt who greeted her in their front yard had never worked a day in his life. He lifted one silky ear in greeting, but didn’t get to his feet. That would take energy.

  Amanda let herself in the porch door that was always too well-oiled to squeak, followed the sound of the radio in the back, and found her grandparents where they always were on Sunday afternoons when they planned to stay in. Grandma was bustling around the kitchen, still in her church clothes. Grandpa was sitting in his chair, listening to the radio with the TV on, but muted, so he could also watch the game.

  For a moment, before either one of them looked up, Amanda got to bask in them. In the sameness of this quiet, comfortable scene that when she was very small, she’d seen play out in the kitchen over at the ranch house too. The house smelled the way it was supposed to, like the lemon soap Grandma liked to use to clean her floors, the yeasty smell of newly baked bread, and flowers. Always flowers.

  “Happy Sunday,” Amanda singsonged, and then it was a rush of hugs and smiles, and exclamations from her grandmother about how her old heart wasn’t what it had been and sneaking up on her was a risky proposition.

  “Your heart is fine, Janet,” Grandpa said from his chair.

  Grandma rolled her eyes. She returned to the potato salad she was making and eyed Amanda over the bowl as she stirred. In that way she had that made Amanda stand up straighter and wish she’d worn something a little nicer than her best jeans and a sweater.

  “I didn’t see you in church this morning,” Grandma noted. “I hope that fancy town life hasn’t gone to your head, Amanda. You need to remember who you are.”

  Grandpa made a harrumphing sort of sound. “She’s here, isn’t she? Seems she remembers just fine.”

  Amanda laughed. It was funny how criticism from her grandparents never struck her the same way it would have if it had come from her brothers. “I had an early shift at the coffeehouse, Grandma. I haven’t forgotten anything.”

  “I know your generation loves its scandals,” Grandma continued while the wooden spoon she used made its own percussion against the side of her metal bowl. “In my day, I’d have been afraid that working in that bar would send a terrible message.”

  “Maybe I want to send a terrible message.”

  Grandma made a tsking sound. “I can understand the urge, I suppose.” Another long look that made Amanda want to squirm, and told her that Janet Kittredge in no way wanted to send a terrible message of any kind and never had. “But the trouble with sending out such messages is that you never can take them back. They’re out there, for good or bad, forever.”

  “Janet. Amanda doesn’t need a lecture.” Grandpa’s voice was gruff. “Besides, when has a lecture ever worked on you? Why would you think one might work on anyone else?”

  “I love a lecture,” Amanda assured them both. “Who doesn’t?”

  Grandma was still muttering under her breath when Amanda left a little while later to walk with her grandfather back toward the ranch house. She tried to imagine what it was like for him, having passed on the bulk of the responsibility to his son, presumably so he could simply enjoy his time. Travel a bit in the fifth wheel they kept in its own barn. Visit friends and family in a way they’d never been able to do when they’d had to make sure the ranch was running and the livestock were fed.

  Today, she found herself thinking about Brady as she walked. This land either beat men down, like Amos Everett, or it made them tougher. Stronger. She could picture Brady like her grandfather, weathered and worn in all the right ways, but without that bitterness that crept into some men over time. And with that gleam in his eyes that always made him seem like a much younger man.

  Her heart tripped over itself.

  “I always loved living with my family,” Grandpa said, after a while. After Amanda had assumed this would be one of the times he simply walked and didn’t say much. “But the time comes when a person has to claim their own space.”

  “Is that what you and Grandma did?”

  “When you’re used to taking care of people, it’s hard to stop. Even if they want you to. It’s in the blood, you see. And there’s no getting it out. That’s a kinder way of saying we found it hard to mind our business, you understand.”

  Amanda grinned. “It’s better to move, then?”

  His mouth crooked in the corner. Every inch of him looked like a pure Colorado cowboy, down to the hat he’d stuck on his head as he’d exited the house and those old cowboy boots on his feet. But Amanda knew that Daniel Kittredge was a true cowboy in the best sense of the term, straight down into his bones. He was honest to a fault. His word was his bond. He loved his family, his land, and his horses. He took pride in his country. And he thought life wasn’t worth living without good neighbors.

  Her brothers all wanted to be him. Amanda simply adored him.

  “Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, Amanda,” Daniel said now. “And it also helps remind people who needs looking after and who is capable of doing it all on their own. Sometimes folks need an object lesson.”

  “What about you, Grandpa?” she asked. She held her breath as she studied his face. “Are you worried about me working in a bar?”

  “That’s your grandmother’s department,” he replied. His eyes gleamed. “Me, personally, I figure I taught you how to shoot a gun. I expect you can take care of yourself.”

  Amanda took that as his blessing.

  She was feeling pretty buoyant when she kissed him on his cheek, then made her way toward the big house again. She didn’t look closely at the collection of trucks in the yard that told her that her brothers were in from the fields and their own houses, because she was too busy making h
erself breathe deep to get the giddy out. She went in the side door, ducking past the pegs bristling with coats and the boots lined up against the wall to slip into the downstairs bathroom. She washed her hands, studied her face to make sure there was no lingering evidence of how she’d spent last night, and only then did she walk farther into the house. With a big smile on her face that froze in place when she saw Brady sitting in the living room, watching the game with her brothers and father.

  On the one hand, it could have been any Sunday from back when he’d been in high school and really had spent too much of his time here. On the other, it wasn’t years ago. It was today. The day after the night he’d had his hands on her breasts, his mouth all over hers, and she’d rocked and rocked until she’d—

  Brady hadn’t reacted to the sight of her in the doorway, but when she stood there, frozen, that arrogant brow of his rose.

  She got the warning loud and clear.

  “You’re almost late, monkey,” Connor said lazily from the couch, oblivious. “And we have company today. Mom might actually let you help in the kitchen.”

  “Why don’t you help in the kitchen?” she shot back.

  To her surprise, Connor actually got up. He made a face at her, then herded her back into the ranch house kitchen as if everything were normal.

  As if anything could be normal ever again.

  My God, she thought. Did I really want a walk of shame? What would this be like if we’d actually had sex?

  But she didn’t exactly want that in her head either.

  So she was thrilled when her mother put her to work setting the big dining room table while Connor handled drinks and platters, because it was far, far better than the riot inside her.

  It was the most excruciating family dinner of Amanda’s life.

  Previously, she would have sworn up and down that nothing could be more gruesome than, say, Riley’s announcement that his marriage was over. Or the time her brothers had felt she truly needed to know that she had been her parents’ marital olive branch, and had started telling awful stories from the dark years before she was born. Amanda would have welcomed either of those painful conversations today.

  Amanda had to fight to keep from squirming in her seat. She kept surreptitiously checking her temperature because she felt too hot, then too cold. Too prickly. Too uncomfortable. Too close to bursting, too something. She sat in her usual place, which meant Brady was directly across from her, and she couldn’t look at him. What if everything that happened was all over her face? What if she turned bright red again and everyone could see what he’d done with his hands—

  For a whiteout sort of moment, Amanda thought she might faint.

  Maybe breathe, she ordered herself.

  She picked at her food, not sure how she could force herself to eat. And yet all too aware that if she didn’t eat, that would inspire commentary from all sides.

  Amanda felt like she was coming out of her own skin.

  None of this was helped by the fact that Brady was fine.

  Aggressively, obnoxiously fine. So fine, and so normal, and so evidently unfazed by last night that if Amanda hadn’t remembered it so vividly, she might have doubted it had happened at all. He laughed with Jensen. He traded mild, brotherly insults with Riley. He cleared his plate and had seconds.

  Then she passed him the potatoes while he was too busy telling a tall tale about his fishing prowess to even glance at her, and she started to dream about possibly killing him. With her own barely used fork.

  But by the time dinner wrapped up and she’d finished pitching in with the dishes, she felt oddly … flat.

  “You aren’t rushing back into town for a change,” her mother observed when Amanda finally returned to the living room with everyone else. And, instead of making her excuses and racing for her car, she sat on the arm of her mother’s chair.

  Where she absolutely was not keeping an eye on Brady and all the fun he was having hanging out with her brothers like she didn’t exist.

  “I have a late shift tonight.” Amanda wrenched her gaze away from Brady and focused on her mother. “At the bar.”

  “I didn’t think the coffeehouse had started staying open nights all of a sudden,” Ellie said in that sedately chiding way of hers that always felt like a sharp slap.

  Maybe it was her mother’s superpower. No matter what happened around her, Ellie Kittredge remained unruffled. She was always the eye of every storm—a dampening, cooling influence on everything around her. And given all the rumors and stories about the state of the Kittredge marriage before Amanda had been born, not to mention the current state of all her brothers’ lives and loves, it was often only Ellie’s unflappability that kept a lid on things.

  A lesson Amanda would do well to take to heart. Especially on a day like today, when it took every scrap of self-control and fear and paranoia and hope inside her not to start screaming right here in the middle of living room.

  “I think I’m going to go for a ride,” she told her mother. “It’s been too long.”

  Ellie didn’t look up from the button she was sewing on to one of Donovan’s shirts. “There are riding clothes for you in the closet. And make it a nice, long one, if you can. Cinnamon gets lonely.”

  That felt like a slap too, but Amanda kind of liked it. Because her mother getting on her to take better care of the horse that had always been unofficially Amanda’s felt good. Right. It snapped the world back into place, so it spun the way it should on the same old axis. What had happened with Brady was the oddity. He was the thing that didn’t make any sense.

  Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to take a moment, while he was acting as if he didn’t know she was in the same room, to remind herself who she was.

  Amanda changed into a battered pair of jeans and better boots. And when she went back outside again, breathing deep in the crisp afternoon air felt like a revelation.

  She wasn’t sure she’d taken a full breath since she’d walked into the living room and seen Brady sitting there.

  It was a perfect late Sunday afternoon. The air was cool, but the sky was blue and the sun was that deep gold of nearly October. There was snow in the mountains, and the scent of it, every now and again, cut through the richer scents of horses and hay, dirt and pine trees. Amanda liked the dirt beneath her feet. She liked the way her boots felt against the rich earth, solid and strong, as she made her way into the barn.

  As a girl, she’d always found September sad, as it was when the ranch conducted its second big sale of the year. Folks came from all over the country—and some came from outside the country—to bid on the Bar K’s horses. Some came to watch the horses in action, then order what they needed to breed their mares with Bar K’s stud, or get on the waiting list for the various other services the Bar K offered. Over time, Amanda had grown more practical.

  A soft heart is only going to hurt you, Ellie had told ten-year-old Amanda when she’d found her sobbing over the sale of a gelding. You have to love hard, Amanda. You have to expect it will hurt and let yourself love anyway. Or you’ll never survive.

  “She meant as a rancher,” Amanda muttered to herself as she ducked into the barn. But she stopped inside the door, letting her eyes adjust.

  She’d always thought Ellie meant as a rancher. But if one scandalous and secret night with Brady had taught her anything, maybe it was that Ellie’s advice was something Amanda should view with a wider lens.

  Inside the barn, it was okay to have a softer heart. The horses who stayed here weren’t part of the Bar K breeding program—or not any longer. They were old family friends.

  Cinnamon was Amanda’s best friend. The chestnut mare tossed her head when she saw Amanda approach, then wasted no time complaining that it had been too long.

  “I know, I know,” Amanda murmured as she went into the stall and said her hellos, kissing the horse on the white blaze that marked her smooth face. “I’ve been a terrible friend.”

  Cinnamon agreed. Loudly.


  Amanda had grown up with horses everywhere. Horse talk, horse breeders, and good, old-fashioned horse people inside her family and out. She’d learned how to ride almost before she could walk, or so her brothers liked to claim. And they’d accordingly taught their baby sister tricks better suited to the circus, mostly to horrify their mother.

  It hadn’t been until Amanda found herself talking to the tourists and townsfolk who sometimes came out for lessons or trail rides that she realized how lucky she was to have grown up like this. She’d fallen off horses so many times when she was little that it didn’t scare her anymore. She didn’t worry about being stepped on. Or kicked. Or nipped, even, or any of the other things people who didn’t know horses worried about.

  But there was a difference between being comfortable with horses in general and being in love with a particular horse. And Cinnamon had been a steady, dependable friend for most of Amanda’s life. She couldn’t explain it, not even to Kat.

  There was something about riding out with nothing between her and her horse but trust. On days like today, when Amanda wanted to connect with herself and her mount, she didn’t bother with a saddle. She and Cinnamon had been communicating for some fifteen years. The minute she slid into place on Cinnamon’s back outside the barn, everything made sense.

  It had always been that way. Amanda had always been so conscious of the fact that she was different from her brothers. Younger, a girl, more coddled and more ignored at once. But she and Cinnamon would ride out toward the mountains, and she’d find a way to open up her heart again no matter how battered it felt. No matter what mood she was in when she left, a good, long ride set her right again

  Today, they galloped. They went flat out, moving like liquid, like they were both wild.

  Until they were.

  When they were far enough out there, so deep into the land it almost felt like getting lost, they slowed down again. They found one of the many offshoots of the river that laced this part of the property. Cinnamon drank while Amanda rolled up her borrowed jeans and stuck her feet in, then waited for them to go numb.