Cowboy Up (Coming Home #3)

“Lukie Dukie, I’m just a big bag of mystery, you know.”

He laughs under his breath, the radio playing some current pop country song. I look through the darkness and let my thoughts wander to my plans. I should’ve known Luke saw right through me earlier, though, and the second I start thinking about how I’m going to tell him and Lucy about leaving, he opens his mouth and I groan inwardly.

“I know you talked to Sheila about stayin’ at the motel.”

“I wasn’t goin’ to keep it from y’all,” I tell him immediately.

“I know you weren’t.”

“I just didn’t know how to tell y’all.”

He clicks his tongue. “You could have just said it, sweetheart. Even though I meant what I said earlier, I understand your need to exercise your independence. You’ve come a long way this year and you deserve what you need to be happy.”

“I need to prove to myself that I can keep survivin’ on my own, Luke,” I tell him, honestly. After all, that’s the root of it.

“I know you do. If what you want is to stay in Sheila’s motel until you rebuild, at least you’ll be close to Hazel’s and I can still make sure you’re okay. I might not like it, and Luce is damn sure not gonna like it, but I understand where you’re comin’ from.”

I twist the straps of my purse and mull over my words. “Can I . . . do you . . . will you still want me to work at the bar?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him turn my way, but I keep twisting the leather strap in my hand, not wanting to see his face if there’s disappointment written on it. I almost jump out of my skin when his hand covers mine.

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Carrie,” he drawls in a gruff tone. “You’ve got a job at Hazel’s for as long as you want it. You know I hate that numbers shit, and you add a little brightness to that place. Family, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, a lump forming in my throat.

“Yeah,” he parrots, pulling into the parking lot of the bar and shutting his truck off.

I climb out of the cab, even though I know it drives him nuts when I don’t wait for him to open my door, and follow him around the back to enter through the employee doorway. He’d normally just walk in the front, but since this is the easiest way for him to dump me in the office, I know he only does it so he can fool himself into thinking I don’t see just how crazy things get here at night.

“Let me know if you need anything. Just shoot me a text and I’ll come sort you out.”

“Yes, Dad,” I say sarcastically with a roll of my eyes.

A few hours later, I feel like I’m about to find out what it’s like to have my eyes permanently crossed. Luke Hazel is a shit bookkeeper. Reading his handwriting was almost traumatic, but I finally sorted out his payroll and wrote the checks for all sixteen employees so he could come sign them later tonight. Having had enough of his office’s four walls, I open the door and step into the smoke-filled air. My eyes roam around the room while I stand there and enjoy the music. It was so muffled by his office’s heavy door that I could hardly hear it in there. I’m on my second glance around the room when I see him.

The shadowy stranger.

My dark cowboy.

I take a step forward before I realize what I’m doing, stopping instantly.

No way. As much as I want to, and boy do I want to, I know I’d be testing fate by giving in to another night with him, and I think fate has proven to be against me lately. I blindly reach for the knob behind me at the same time I see his back straighten and his head turn my way. I gasp when I feel his eyes on me. I could walk over there and offer him my body again, but instead I turn and rush back into Luke’s office.

There’s no place in my life for a man like my dark cowboy, as much as I wish otherwise. I’d love nothing more than to get lost in the feelings I know he can drown me in, but my life is crazy enough without adding more insanity to it.

Maybe another time—another place—but not now.

Not when everything feels so out of control.

This must be what it feels like to miss something so deeply you crave it . . . even if you never really had it to begin with.





7


CLAYTON


“Hometown Girl” by Josh Turner

- -

“A little higher on the left,” my sister says for the umpteenth time. I do what she wants and lift the banner up—again—to the left. “No, my left.”

I turn on the ladder and look down at Quinn. “Your left is the same as my left, Quinnie.”

“Oh, then the right.”

Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, I adjust my hold and move the banner again. From my perch, the thing is right as rain, but no damn way am I arguing with my hormonal sister. Tried that once and I swear to all things holy, the devil came out of her body and tried to pull me down to the pits below.

“Quinn, you’ve got that thing so high, no one’s gonna be able to see it!” Leigh calls from just outside the barn, coming into the large open area with one hand on her hip. “Why do you have Clay up there anyway, we decided the other night to put it above the door—outside.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I mumble under my breath. I close my eyes, count to ten, then do it all over again because I’m still seconds away from blowing the top of my head off.

“Need some help?”

I look down, hoping that Maverick can tell without words just how close I am to wringing our little sister’s neck, but keep my mouth shut out of fear that I’ll lose my temper if I open it.

Control.

I don’t just like it—I need it. Without it, I feel like I’ve lost the reins on everything around me.

Quinn and Leigh continue to bicker about the best place for the stupid-as-fuck banner while I continue to level Maverick with my seething gaze. His eyes dance, that lighthearted happiness that he developed in the past few years now pissing me off while I’m stuck up here.

“Come on down. I’ll take care of it and you can go do whatever the fuck Tate’s been doin’ for twenty minutes with the fuckin’ drinks.”

I look over at my brother in-law and laugh when he steps away from the cart we pulled in here early this morning and looks at the drink table in confusion. Why so much shit is needed for a joint baby shower, I’ll never know. Especially since this is something I never thought I’d experience personally, much less as an uncle.

“Why does he look so damn confused?” I ask Maverick, climbing down carefully and handing him both ends of the banner.

“Quinn said she wanted everything set out in the shape of fuckin’ rattles. Can you believe that shit? Since when does she give a damn about all this stuff?”