Secret Nights with a Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

“I was heading over to check on Grandma and Grandpa,” Riley said, grinning genially and drawling more than necessary because he knew it irritated his brother. And as such was his calling. “What are you doing out here? Not enough to do in Mayberry?”

  Zack eyed him. “Just as funny as when I was a deputy.”

  “Glad you’re in your usual sparkling good mood,” Riley said. He thumbed his hat because acting like a cowpoke of the first order always got on Zack’s nerves. “Don’t let me keep you from sharing it with someone else. It looked like Mom and Dad were home if you’re looking for worthy recipients.”

  Because most of the Kittredge brothers liked to avoid their parents, but not Zack. He brought new meaning to the term confrontational.

  “Actually, I was looking for you,” Zack said.

  “Was I robbing banks again? I hate when that happens.”

  “Not robbing banks. But I’m betting that if I’d actually investigated what was going on in your truck outside the Flower Pot after I saw Rae Trujillo climb inside yesterday, I could probably arrest both of you for indecent exposure.”

  That was … unexpected.

  Riley tried to maintain his poker face. “You’d lose that bet.”

  That was the truth. There had been no actual, technical exposure. Not that he intended to argue the point. Or discuss where, precisely, his hands might have been.

  He watched a muscle tense in his brother’s lean jaw. “I don’t know where to start,” Zack said gruffly.

  “Then don’t. Problem solved.”

  “How about the fact that the two of you are grown, supposedly. Yet you’re running around like teenagers. Sooner or later, it’s not going to be me who sees you. And then what?”

  “Like you said, we’re all grown up. It doesn’t actually matter if people see us.”

  Zack glared. “That kind of depends on what you’re doing. Because I highly doubt it’s a Bible study, which as I recall is the excuse you tried to float when the two of you were in high school.”

  Riley stared back at him. “I had no idea you were paying such close attention to my teenage years. I’m touched.”

  Zack’s elbow was resting on his open window, pretending to be casual. Too bad Riley could see his face. “Not to mention all the carrying on in the Broken Wheel. With that Tate Bishop character, even. What’s that? Or did you suddenly decide to be kinkier that I thought you were and start sharing—”

  “Not big on sharing,” Riley clipped out. “Comes from having too many brothers, I’m guessing.”

  “Meanwhile, you’re telling everybody that you’re ‘friends.’” Zack shook his head. “Is this her influence?”

  Riley laughed at that. “Her influence? I don’t even know what that means.”

  “As far as I know, you’ve been straight with Rae since the day you started dating her,” Zack said. Intensely.

  So intensely that it made Riley blink and recall his own overinvestment in Amanda and Brady’s relationship initially. If this was what that felt like, no wonder Amanda had told off half the world and him in particular. He wanted to take a swing at Zack—or, alternatively, laugh in his face.

  He was retroactively embarrassed for himself. And definitely wanted to knock his brother’s head off.

  Especially because Zack was still pushing. “You built her a house. You married her. And she left you, Riley. She keeps leaving you. Now she’s living in town, making her way through the single population. And you’re still in that house. Still picking her up in your truck. Still acting like a whipped little puppy.”

  Ouch.

  He tried a grin but was pretty sure he missed the mark. “You’re pretty lucky you’re saying that to me with the frames of two trucks between us.”

  “Every day, I wake up thankful that you didn’t have any kids with her,” Zack told him, his usually calm voice hot enough to suggest he really meant it. “Because it’s bad enough when she does these things to you. Can you imagine if there were kids involved?”

  Riley was taken aback. Not sure how he was supposed to feel about his brother showing all this … fervor. It was true that Riley had no interest in kids. He and Rae had agreed on that, at least. But he couldn’t say he liked having Zack jump in with commentary on the subject.

  And most of all, he didn’t like Zack talking about Rae.

  “You’re being a little harsh on Rae, don’t you think?”

  Zack stared back at him. “No.”

  “Guess what? I do. And it’s my opinion that matters, not yours, because I’m the one in it.”

  But Zack stared back at him, unmoved.

  “No, I wasn’t stupid enough to have children,” Riley continued, aware his voice was harsh. It was better than trying to slug the sheriff. He had no doubt Zack would take pleasure in locking him up. “I notice you’re not exactly racing to expand the family tree yourself. I spent half my life watching Brady’s drunk father rip that family apart and the rest of my time watching Mom and Dad prove that no one needs to be drunk to have a terrible marriage.”

  And he couldn’t say he liked the way his own words settled in him. Because he and Rae hadn’t been drunk and disorderly, either. They’d never had that excuse.

  He shoved that aside. “Why would I ever put a kid through that? Why would anyone?”

  “Funny how when it comes to kids that don’t exist, you can see sense. But when it comes to you? You’re a glutton for punishment.”

  “I didn’t ask for your take on my life, but thanks.”

  “I don’t get it,” Zack retorted. “Sure, she’s pretty, Riley. But the two of you are poison. And I think you deserve better than whatever scraps she throws your way when she’s not cuddling up to other guys in public.”

  “You need to stop. Now.”

  But Zack shook his head in that cold, authoritative way of his. “Don’t defend her to me. I’m not Amanda. I’m not going to get in Rae’s face. It’s not her fault that my little brother can’t seem to see straight where she’s concerned. But it’s time to wake up, buddy. She’s never coming back.”

  Riley would have preferred it if Zack punched him. Right in the face. “You don’t understand the situation.”

  Zack’s gaze was entirely too direct. “I think you’ll find I do understand it. I know exactly how broken up you haven’t been. But her moving into Hope’s house is a sign, Riley. Make a clean break. Be done.”

  “Thank you for the advice,” Riley gritted out, so tense he was surprised he could form words. “It’s particularly meaningful coming from you, a control freak who’s had exactly zero meaningful relationships in his entire life.”

  “Yeah, I have issues. Big deal. My issues haven’t been playing cat-and-mouse games with me since I was a teenager. My issues don’t treat me like crap while I’m waiting out in a house I built for them like it’s a vigil.”

  “Enough,” Riley growled. “I heard you.”

  “I hope so,” Zack retorted. “Because if I see the two of you acting like teenagers again, I’ll treat you like teenagers. And you’re not going to like it.”

  “I don’t know which is worse,” Riley threw back at him. “The threats or the advice. Maybe pick a stream, Zack, because you suck at both.”

  Before his brother could get even more sheriff-y—or worse, big-brother-y—Riley threw his truck into drive. He made his way around Zack until he was back in the deep grooves of snow and, because maybe he really was a saint, did not reverse to give Zack a little bump in place of a fist or two.

  And then, because he refused to let his brother change his plans no matter how the things Zack had said sat on him, he continued on to his grandparents’ house.

  Inside, his grandmother fussed and insisted on feeding him. Riley sat in the front room that smelled the way it always did, tart and sweet, and let her. His grandfather had the game on, and neither one of them asked him about Rae. Only his horses, whether he wanted another serving of his grandma’s potato salad, and what his father was planning to do with the north p
asture.

  By the time he made it home, Riley couldn’t decide if he was relaxed or agitated. Some strange combination of both, but either way, when he finished tending to his own home and stable—his home and stable, no matter what Zack seem to think—he washed up and headed into town.

  Even though he knew that what he really ought to do was stay home, if only to prove he had no particular need to go out. Nothing drawing on him, making it impossible to sit still in his own house.

  He decided he was pissed at Rae and Zack equally.

  But he still went.

  By the time he made the drive into town, over the icy hill that could turn treacherous in a moment, the usual Saturday-night shenanigans were in full swing. Down by the river, the Coyote was doing its usual brisk business. More restaurants seemed to be full this time of year than in years past, which, as a local businessman and landowner, he liked to see. Even if he would personally rather beat his head against a wall than eat out at, say, the Sensitive Spoon, with such offerings as quinoa cutlets. Whatever those were.

  Inside the Broken Wheel, there was a band playing, and the place was more packed than usual. But that was a good thing. Because Riley didn’t like the fact that Zack had seen right through him—and apparently had been seeing right through him for some time. And since he was nursing that particular body blow, he was happy to do without the entire town staring at him the way they always did when it was only locals and gossip.

  He nodded at the folks he recognized as he made his way to the bar and got himself a drink. He chatted a little with Tessa behind the bar, exchanged a few words here and there with folks who happened by, and spent a lot of time assuring himself that just because Zack seemed to know things he shouldn’t, that didn’t mean anyone else was sitting around taking notes on Riley’s life.

  But it rang hollow.

  And he wasn’t even looking for Rae, but he found her. Out there in the middle of the dance floor with two of the three Mortimer sisters. She had her head tilted back and her arms up as she danced, and it was like another punch.

  This one to the gut.

  And a whole lot harder.

  He hadn’t wanted any clarity when it was Zack trying to deliver it, but here it was anyway. In an unavoidable rush.

  Riley was in love with her. He had never stopped being in love with her. And he might spend a lot of time telling himself that she was in love with him, too, no matter what she did or said. That might even be true. He thought it was.

  He knew it was.

  But the facts were pretty clear. She’d left him a long time ago, and she hadn’t come back.

  Not to stay.

  And like Zack had pointed out, little as Riley wanted to hear it, when she’d moved again, it had been farther away from him.

  All of this, all these years and all the games they’d played before and after she’d told him she wanted a divorce—another sign he’d chosen not to heed—was an extended exercise in futility. A desperate attempt to hold on to something that he probably should have let go of a long, long time ago.

  Riley kept thinking that if he hit on the right argument, or played the right game, Rae would remember that back in high school she’d loved him so much and so deeply that she’d cried sometimes when they’d gone to sleep in their different houses. She’d insisted that they go to sleep still on their phones, so they could hear each other breathe.

  He couldn’t accept that they’d lost that. That it was irretrievable. Maybe he never would.

  But he also couldn’t accept this.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe she was going to go out there and date around and realize she was making a terrible mistake. But he didn’t have to help her do that.

  They weren’t friends. They’d never been friends. She was the love of his life. She’d been, for a while, his wife. She was the only one he’d ever wanted to share his life with.

  But if she didn’t want that, he shouldn’t want her.

  Riley didn’t know how to stop wanting Rae. But he figured it probably had to start here. With him.

  Even if he had no idea how to go about changing himself from the inside out.

  The song ended, and Rae staggered off the dance floor, her arm around Hope as they laughed and shouted things into each other’s ears. She was wearing another dress that made his heart threaten his rib cage. She was glowing from the exertion out there, and her hair was messy enough to make him remember all the times it looked that way thanks to his hands.

  But it wasn’t that she was pretty, though she was. God knew she was. It was that she was his.

  You need to let go of this, he ordered himself.

  Rae didn’t make it any easier. She looked up and saw him, and Riley watched her whole face light up. The way it had years ago, before they’d spent all that time pretending not to see each other in public.

  She cut through the crowd, once again wearing ridiculously high shoes that made her taller, but still nothing approaching tall. She barely came up to his shoulder when she stopped in front of him, and she was always beautiful. She was Rae.

  But tonight, she seemed radiant to him. She was piling that silky, wavy hair of hers on top of her head as she smiled up at him.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” she said. “I guess our current benefit package doesn’t include texts.”

  “I think that qualifies as bells and whistles,” he said, and reasoned that he didn’t jump right into it because that would be rude. Too abrupt.

  Unlike when she left you the first time. Or all those other times. Or when she showed up on your front porch last month and announced that you needed to divorce.

  He shoved that voice away because it sounded far too much like Zack’s.

  “I’m surprised you’re out at all,” he said, and the fact he knew her life intimately seemed like another punch to the gut. How could they share everything, one way or another, and still not work? And how was he going to find a way to be okay with never knowing the answer to that? “The Harvest Gala’s next week. Shouldn’t you be hard at work on all those centerpieces?”

  Her smile faltered. “I am hard at work. So hard at work that I thought it might be time to come out and shake it off. You know me. I love the Harvest Gala. I haven’t missed one in years.”

  Neither had he, of course. They usually pretended not to glare at each other as usual there, only in nicer clothes.

  Everything his brother had said to him seemed to crowd in on him, as if Zack were standing right there before him, watching him sternly. Riley did not enjoy the sensation. But that didn’t make the things Zack had said any less true.

  It didn’t change the things he actually felt.

  No time like the present, he thought.

  “Who are you bringing as your date?” he asked.

  He watched her freeze, then blink in confusion. Her gaze moved over his face as if she hadn’t understood what he’d said.

  “My date?”

  “It’s one of the fanciest events of the year,” Riley pointed out, in case she might have missed that every other year she’d attended. “Most people go with a date.”

  “Yes,” she said, sounding flustered. “But I don’t. You don’t. We’ve both been going on our own for years.”

  “It’s not so surprising that the whole town thinks we’ve been together all this time. Or anyway, involved in some other complicated drama that kept us from taking a date like any normal person would have. It’s kind of funny that never occurred to us, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure I’d call it funny.”

  Riley could see something flicker on her face then … but he told himself it couldn’t be helped. Maybe Zack was right. That they really were poison.

  Because surely, if they loved each other as much as he’d always thought they did, no matter what, there wouldn’t be all this hurt.

  “Are you really…?” Rae began.

  But she faltered.

  Riley waited. He wanted her to ask the question. Because if it wer
e up to him, he wasn’t sure he’d do it. Or he’d default to that temper he’d been keeping locked up since that night she’d come to drop her divorce bomb on him.

  No good could come of him letting his temper loose. No good ever had, as far as he could see. But it was high time he reminded her that they were supposed to be friends. And they might have been indulging in some benefits lately, but they were never supposed to be acting like they were together.

  It was high time he reminded himself of the same thing.

  Rae only stared at him, almost as if she knew they were standing at the end of a huge cliff. Steep and unforgiving.

  Possibly final, Riley admitted privately. He had to be ready for that.

  “I hope you’re bringing a date this year, Rae,” he said at last.

  And he grinned at her, as friendly as he could, to underscore the point that this was supposed to be casual. Easy. Not one more version of the same old song he was so sick of, it hurt.

  Ready or not, he told himself. “Because I am.”

  15

  Riley was bringing a date to the Harvest Gala.

  Rae couldn’t seem to get that out of her head. It throbbed there at her temples like a migraine.

  She spent the next day brooding about it, and a trip out to her parents’ house for Sunday dinner didn’t make it any better. Especially not with her grandmother there, haranguing her about her failures to confirm the centerpieces until Rae’s mother—unable to engage Inez in one of their usual battles—joined in.

  “There must be some mistake,” Kathy said, frowning at Rae. “The Trujillo family has always contributed to the gala. Has something changed? I thought you were handling all the retail accounts and charity events.”

  “I am.” Rae tried to smile. But it was a stretch when she had not, in fact, handled it. Because handling it meant dealing with Amanda again, and to her great shame, she was avoiding it. She had been avoiding Amanda for years now. For good reason, as their last run-in at the coffee shop had proved. “I’m taking care of it.”

  But no matter how many times Rae tried to assure the two of them that she was on it, they kept circling back. Almost as if they knew she wasn’t telling them the complete truth. She was forced to acknowledge that maybe it was better when they focused their spite and ire on each other.