The Last Real Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  This time of year, it only took a few moments.

  She splashed some water on her face, shuddering at the chill of it, but she liked the way it felt afterward. Pinpricks of sensation climbing all over her body. A lot like an echo of the night before.

  Thinking of Brady as another part of the elements, like snowmelt on a sunny day, helped.

  Then she sat, on a different rock on the bank of a different offshoot of the same river, and she let herself feel all that nervous energy that had been clattering around in her all day. She didn’t try to tamp it down or pretend it wasn’t there.

  Surrounded by this land that her ancestors had fought and died to keep, she knew she would never spend too long in town. She flexed her bare toes against the cold rock and felt the sun and the hint of coming snow on her face. It was fun to try on a different life for a while, but she’d been born out here in the Colorado dirt. There was only so much asphalt and brick she could take.

  Something she had no intention of sharing with her brothers, because they’d pack her up and haul her out of her apartment before she got the sentence out.

  But even that struck her as funny, out here where any emotions she might have, or any problems that might feel consuming back home, seemed as insubstantial as the breeze. Scented with this or that, but still just a breeze. Not the immense, towering Rockies. Not the mighty river or all its many tributaries that kept the fields green. Out here, the elements were all that mattered, and because of that, the things that kicked around inside of her seemed to matter less. Or matter differently.

  It had always worked. Amanda figured it always would.

  Whatever magic it was, by the time she rode Cinnamon back home, she was calm again.

  Calm, but not dead.

  Because that same sort of cold water prickle took her over when she looked up from brushing Cinnamon down to find Brady watching her, his back up against the wall across from Cinnamon’s stall.

  “I always forget what a great rider you are,” he said, an odd note in his voice.

  “I’m surprised you’re aware that I know how to ride a horse at all.”

  “Everyone knows how to ride a horse around here. But you’re something else.”

  “That’s what happens when you have four older brothers who think it’s fun to teach you dangerous tricks when your parents aren’t around.” She slid him a glance. “Like a circus animal.”

  Brady’s voice was even enough, though his dark green gaze was intense. “Why aren’t you doing something with that instead of serving drinks night and day? Or dreaming about farm stands?”

  Amanda finished up what she was doing. She patted Cinnamon’s sturdy flank and got a nudge in return, then she made her way out of the stall. She looked around, expecting to find any or all of her brothers looming around, but there was only Brady.

  Only Brady. All alone out here.

  Maybe she wasn’t as calm as she’d imagined.

  “I love horses,” she told him. “I love Cinnamon in particular. But I don’t want to fill my head with breeding schedules. Gelding. Training. I want to enjoy her.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  “Maybe not, but they complicate each other. The other option would be performing in some way, and I don’t want to do that either.” She shrugged. “I’m not like your brother Ty. I like interacting with people, not entertaining them.”

  He looked almost startled, but then his gaze dropped, and she wondered if she’d imagined it.

  “Everybody assumed when you moved into town that it was some kind of crisis. That you were flailing, the way people sometimes do.” There was amusement, and a different sort of heat, in his gaze when it met hers again. “But you weren’t, were you?”

  “It was a sudden decision. But it was a serious one.” She smiled. “You’re just caught up on the sex part.”

  “You could say that, yes.”

  “People always think that other people’s decisions are rash and reckless. That doesn’t mean they are.”

  She was outside the stall then, with Brady still propped up against the wall. She was listening for any hints that her brothers might be headed this way. Any faint noise that might indicate someone could show up in the middle of this conversation and draw the wrong conclusions.

  Or the right conclusions.

  Meanwhile, she was much too aware of him.

  She was aware of him in a way she hadn’t realized a person could be aware of another. Everything about him had a different meaning to her now. His height, because she liked the way she had to tip her head back to meet his gaze. And she loved the way he’d sprawled over her on that rock last night, that deliciously long body of his pressing her down into the stone.

  She knew the touch of his hands now. Her breasts felt swollen simply because he was there and might at any moment touch her again. She hoped.

  It seemed wondrous and strange that there was distance between them now when Amanda knew it would be so easy to throw herself forward, directly into him, so she could feel the strength of his chest or taste his mouth once more.

  She’d been walking around half-asleep her whole life. And now she was wide awake. She could sense the tension of this, the bright, taut space between them. And she understood in a flash that the whole world must be filled with pockets of awareness, just like this. These invisible dances of surrender and denial playing out between people. Everywhere.

  It was like discovering a brand-new color.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Brady ordered her, his voice low and dark.

  “I told you,” she said, but she hardly sounded like herself. She was too calm. Too sure, maybe, because she could feel so much. His intent. His desire and hers. And that enduring heat between them. “I’m not a performer. I would find it hard, to pick a random example, to show up at your family dinner and ignore you completely.”

  “What was the alternative?”

  He shook his head, leaning there against the wall, except Amanda no longer believed he was unmoved. On the contrary. She had the distinct impression he kept his arms crossed like that to make sure he kept his hands to himself.

  That knowledge felt like a light switching on, blazing bright. It felt like joy. It bubbled up inside her like its own hot spring, and it didn’t matter, anymore, that she wasn’t touching him when she wanted to. Because this was almost better.

  Her body knew the truth. As awake as she felt, her body had rocketed straight on into alertness. She felt taut and hot everywhere, and between her legs, she melted.

  “We agreed to keep the secret,” Brady said.

  Amanda shrugged. “I hope that means you have a good explanation at the ready as to why you’re suddenly so interested in my horseback riding skills. Should anyone ask.”

  “Riley told me to keep an eye on you.”

  “Today?”

  “In general.”

  She smiled. “I sure do appreciate you adhering to the very letter of the law, Brady.”

  “I ran into your mother yesterday in town.” Brady, she noted, did not sound calm. That only made her more so. “I meant to tell you that last night, but I forgot.”

  “Oh? Why did you forget?”

  His dark look made her laugh. “She reminded me I hadn’t been to Sunday dinner here in a long time. So here I am. I guess the timing could have been better.”

  “The timing was perfect.”

  She moved toward him, then, because she could. Because she wanted to, and she couldn’t think of a single good reason not to. He looked like a cowboy should on a Sunday, in a crisp button-down shirt tucked into his jeans and his good boots nice and shiny. A Stetson on his head and a clean-shaven jaw.

  It made a girl want to break out in appreciative country songs or a celebratory two-step.

  “Careful,” he said in a low voice, but he did nothing to stop her when she came even closer, then melted against him. “Any member of your family could come in here at any time.”

  “Then we’
d better give them an eyeful,” Amanda murmured, her gaze trained on his mouth.

  This was also new. Reckless and thrilling. She surged up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his.

  He did nothing to help her, and that made it hotter. Better. She kissed him, and then she tilted her jaw, opened her mouth, and took the kiss deeper.

  She felt it when he made a dark, male noise in the back of his throat. Then he took control. His hand snaked around to her lower back, then pulled her tight against him.

  Everything was breathless. Everything was heat and need.

  Everything was perfect.

  When he set her away from him again some time later, she wasn’t the only one who was having trouble breathing.

  “If your brothers kill me today, Amanda,” he said, with the kind of exaggerated, intense patience that she could feel like a shiver all through her, “you’re going to have to find some other cowboy to experiment on. Is that what you want?”

  “I thought we agreed it was only us.”

  “You’d obviously be released from that in the event of my death. Though I guess that would be a moot point, because after they finished killing me, you can bet your brothers would lock you up tight in the nearest convent.”

  “They probably would have done that years ago if we were Catholic.” Amanda smiled sunnily. “Oh well.”

  Brady studied her for a long moment, that same current hot and bright between them. That particular light making his dark eyes even greener. Then he reached up and tipped his hat to her, in a manner that should have looked silly and old-fashioned.

  But it didn’t. It really, really didn’t.

  “I’ll be seeing you around,” he said.

  A threat and a promise, and she found them both equally delicious.

  “Or,” she said, as he turned to go, “you could take my number. You know, like a normal person. Then we could contact each other instead of waiting for my mother to issue Sunday dinner invitations. Just throwing that out there.”

  He looked back over his shoulder at her, and Amanda sighed.

  “Oh, right. My mistake. After all that speechifying last night, you still want to pretend this is some kind of accident.”

  Brady didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. That muscle in his jaw told her everything she needed to know.

  Amanda held out her hand. And kept holding it out while his eyes darkened and that muscle tightened. But finally, he fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “This will only hurt for a second.” She entered herself into his contacts, but made a considering sound while she did it. “I suppose I really shouldn’t put my name, should I? What if you’re sitting at a table and the phone rings, and one of my brothers—”

  “I’m glad you think this is funny, Amanda. Really. It’s all fun and games until your own execution, I guess.”

  “I know.” She typed something. “Perfect.”

  She called herself, and when her phone buzzed in her pocket, she entered his number into her contacts. Meanwhile, Brady was staring down at his screen.

  He lifted his gaze to hers. “‘Jailbait Jones’?”

  “It felt appropriate.”

  “You’re not jailbait. Not even close to jailbait.”

  She smirked at him. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

  He plucked her phone out of her hand, then, and she thought the little laugh he let out was reluctant. But real. It warmed her straight through.

  Just like that dark look he shot her. “‘Gramps’?”

  “I thought that was why this had to be such a big secret. Because once I was in diapers but you weren’t and blah blah blah.”

  “I’m ten years older than you.”

  “I know how old you are. Cradle robber.”

  Brady shook his head, that muscle in his jaw as hard as granite. “It turns out your brothers were right to be worried, because look at what’s happening. Every minute you spend near me, you lose a little more of your innocence.”

  “It’s mine,” she replied. “If I want to lose it or hold it close to me forever, that’s my choice. Not theirs. And frankly? Not yours either.”

  This time, when he walked away, she let him go.

  Because this time, she knew he’d be back.

  12

  “Are you finished sulking, Denver?” Ty asked a couple of days later, throwing the question out there like it wasn’t insulting. Complete with one of his big, wide, rodeo smiles that dared Brady to take offense.

  Guaranteeing that Brady would rather die than indicate he was in any way offended.

  “Am I sulking?” He treated his brother to a genial grin of his own, there in the late-morning light that was losing its battle with the cold wind rushing down from the mountains. “I thought we were out here repairing fences.”

  They’d been at it all morning. Gray had ridden out with the foreman and paid hands to handle an irrigation issue, leaving Ty and Brady to wrestle with the fencing that had gone down overnight. Worse than usual today, thanks to a little rainstorm that had spooked the herd into all kinds of shenanigans.

  Brady liked to complain about the fences. They were always going down for various reasons, which meant he was always putting them back up, but the truth was, he liked the work. It was hard enough that he could work up a sweat, repetitive enough that he both couldn’t think too much or too little, and left him pleasantly tired when done.

  Too bad about the company.

  “You’ve been wanting to get all that stuff the other day off your chest for a long while, I imagine,” Ty said, with less drawl than usual. It usually meant he was being serious. Brady straightened, wiped at his forehead, and eyed his older brother warily. “It was good you did. But all this storming around and giving everyone the silent treatment for days is kind of taking the legs out from under the argument, don’t you think?”

  “When Gray chooses not to talk about something, it inspires people to start comparing him to John Wayne. Has it been sulking all this time?”

  “And when I’m quiet, you all think I’m a raging alcoholic neck-deep in a bottle,” Ty countered. He shrugged. “Welcome to your family, little brother. Suck it up.”

  The fence they were working on was fully repaired, tragically. Brady had no choice but to swipe his bottle of water from the cab of the truck and then stand there. And take it.

  Always taking it. What would happen, he wondered then—out in the fields with nothing for miles but the cut of the wind and the two of them with the same old resentments between them like stones—if he just … stopped?

  “I’m not storming around, and I’m not sulking.” He sounded more patient than Ty deserved. “And I’m really tired of having to explain myself every three seconds. I have a better idea, since we’re having this heart-to-heart. Why don’t you tell me when you decided you didn’t want to sell? And why you’re waiting for me to come to that conclusion on my own rather than stepping up and telling me yourself?”

  Ty was lounging against the side of the truck in his usual imitation of something boneless. Brady had always considered that position Ty at his most dangerous, so he was surprised when Ty nodded. “That’s fair.”

  “Because I can’t help noticing that for all the carrying on about college boy this and Denver that, I’m still the only one who’s been completely open and transparent about my motivations.”

  For the ranch, he modified. To himself. Because the murkiness that was everything involving Amanda was … not something he planned to think about. Deliberately, anyway.

  “Gray’s still pissed off that I talked to some land developers and realtors to get a sense of what we were sitting on here,” he continued, “but the point is, he knows I did that. I didn’t sneak around.”

  “I said, fair enough.” Ty shook his head. “That wasn’t an invitation to start lecturing me.”

  “Do we need invitations to lecture each other? My bad. I thought that was a brotherl
y prerogative.”

  Ty’s grin was lazy, but real. “That’s an older brother’s prerogative, Brady. Come on. This stuff rolls downhill. Always downhill. You should be used to it by now.”

  Despite himself, Brady had to bite back a laugh.

  “It’s not that I didn’t talk to you about my decision,” Ty said after a moment. He wasn’t looking at Brady anymore. He was looking out over the upper pasture they were in at the moment, at all the rolling fields, the trees, the mountains. All the fencing they’d put in and would fix, again and again and again, as long as Everetts ran cattle on this land. And as long as cattle did what cattle do. “I didn’t actually make a decision. I didn’t talk about it with anyone.”

  “You’re building a house. Here. That seems like a decision.”

  Ty nodded, and as much as Brady wanted to marinate in his righteous indignation, he knew his brother really hadn’t spent much time considering what he was doing. Or viewing it as a decision. He’d been busy getting his wife, his son, and his memory back. It was hard to blame him for holding on tight to what he’d almost lost.

  “My whole life, the only home I ever had was my trailer.” Ty met Brady’s gaze. “This was no home for me. I’m not sure I would have ever used that word to describe it.”

  “I always tried not to.”

  “Believe me, I get that. I drove around from show to show, I took care of my horses, and that was all I needed. I never thought that would change. I never wanted that to change.”

  “Until Hannah.”

  “Until Hannah.” Ty laughed. “I would have sworn up and down I’d never fall in love with anybody. Instead, I’ve had the good fortune to fall in love with that woman twice. And when Hannah looks around at this land, she sees its history. Our legacy and Jack’s future. Most of all, a home. And if that’s what she wants, that’s what I’m going to give her.”

  There were so many things Brady could have said to that. He could have reminded his brother how quickly he’d left at eighteen. How many years he’d spent in the rodeo and the many times he’d vowed he would never, ever come back to this place. Much less stay here, like all their ancestors had done. Growing up, Gray had been the committed one. Ty and Brady had been the ones to roll their eyes, mutter through their chores, and vow they would never end up like this.