“When I was nineteen, I met Uncle Chuck in the Denver airport after a week skiing with friends in Aspen. We both skipped our flights and spent two days in an airport hotel.”
She waggled her eyebrows and grinned unrepentantly.
“After that, I went back to New York, packed up my things and moved here to be with him.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” she added, smiling. “We’re very similar, you and I.”
“Me? I’m twenty-six and finally not listening to my parents any longer. I was a lawyer in New York until a couple of weeks ago. I have an apartment there. A wardrobe full of power suits, not jeans and sturdy ranch boots.”
She reached out, patted my arm. “It just took you a little longer than me, that’s all. And all of that? You walked away. You can stay away.”
“But–
“But what? Do you miss your job? Don’t think, just answer.”
“No.” My eyes widened as I admitted that. “No, I don’t.”
“Do you miss New York?”
I shook my head.
“Do you like it here? And I don’t mean serving at the Sip N’ Serv. I mean Devil’s Ditch.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be with Buck?”
“Yes.” I gasped and set my hand over my mouth at the surprise answer.
She didn’t reply, only winked because I answered with my heart. The one my parents or Jackson hadn’t been able to touch. Only Buck.
12
BUCK
“It’s quiet now,but wait a few more weeks when calving kicks in,” I said, peeling a potato in Ma and Pops’ kitchen. Cam was beside me, helping.
“I’ve got time blocked off next week for the pre-calving shots,” he added. He was a vet and spent a day or two with me and Pops out in the pasture getting all the cows covered. He’d be back later in the spring when the calves were born for other vaccines. “Isn’t Zeb coming in from school to help with calving this year?”
I nodded, passed the peeled potato to him so he could cut it into cubes on a cutting board in frontof him. “Yes, Cammie, too, but he’ll wait ‘til they’re delivered first.”
“You make me feel like a cow ready to calf,” Lainey muttered, rubbing her big belly. Beau came over, leaned down and kissed her cheek, then set a glass of lemonade in one of her hands and a meat stick snack in the other, the top already unwrapped, then left the kitchen for the couch and the others.
The combination, citrus and smoky beef, sounded awful, but I was used to the women’s weird food choices. None of us brothers wanted to think abouthowLainey ended up pregnant–meaning Beau had done unthinkable things with her–but he doted on her and made her the center of his world. As she should be, or he’d be very, very dead.
“Katie’s first, although I guess we can’t say that with certainty with the way Clarabel decided to come early,” I said, looking to the other room
Molly glanced my way from her spot on the couch, a burp cloth and baby Clarabel over her shoulder. She had two dark haired parents but her hair was fair. The fire was lit in the hearth and Colt was slouched down and napping beside her. Even though they–along with Ellie and Trig–just got out of the hospital, they were here for dinner.
Reaching out, I patted Lainey’s bowling ballstomach. “You got some time to cook yet. Keep that little rodeo clown in there for a bit longer.” She had over two months to go.
She bit into the meat stick and glared, but knew I was right. “Rodeo clown?Sheis going to be the first woman bronc rider.”
“Over my dead body,” Beau called from the other room.
“I thought you were having a boy,” Cam wondered.
