Page 72 of The Cowboy and the Stray

I checked my shirt. “No promises.”

Calder passed by again, toolbox still in hand. Sloane called out, “Calder! Tell the hands to shower. We’re going to town.”

He raised a brow but didn’t argue. He just nodded. I tried to figure out if he was happy, worried, or both.

We were just about to raid Sloane’s closet for “going out” shirts when Midge showed up. She didn’t knock, just opened the door, a whiskey in one hand and a bag of pretzels in the other and made herself at home.

She looked at us, three women in various stages of undress, and shook her head. “Do I have to ask?"

Ash grinned. “We’re goin’ to the rodeo bar.”

“Lord help them,” Midge said, but she dropped into the armchair like a queen and took a long pull from her glass.

"Didn't you do rodeo?" I asked.

Midge sipped her whiskey, then leaned back. The lamp made her silver braid glow. “I spent most of my twenties chasing trophies and outrunning my past. Didn’t matter how many buckles I won, the emptiness still came home with me.” She glanced at Sloane, then Ash, then me. “Wasn’t ‘til I came back here, got married, gave birth to then buried my kids, and raised my grandkids that I figured out what kind of woman I really was.”

I stared at the floor, not sure what to say. Sloane got up and poured herself a shot, then set it next to Midge’s glass.

"Kids?" I asked. I thought she was just Calder's dad's mom.

Midge snorted. “I married Boone, and he gave me Calder, Eli, and Sloane’s father, Noah. But I count their mother as my own, too. Delilah was more family than most blood ever is.”

Ash broke the melancholy. “Midge, tell the truth, who was the hottest cowboy you ever chased?”

Midge’s eyes lit up. She swirled her glass, then grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Sloane stood next to Midge and put her hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “Ready to go?” she asked us.

Midge drained her glass. “You take care of my girls tonight,” she told Ash.

Ash saluted. “Always.”

We lined up by the door. Sloane in a black shirt, Ash in a vintage tee and boots, me in a little sundress. I caught sight of us in the hall mirror. Three women, none of us the same, but all of us hot as fire.

35. TESS

By the time we got to the truck, I had two things stuck in my head. One, that Ash was the loudest person alive, and two, that maybe this was the first time in my life I actually wanted to go out for a drink.

The bench seat in the front of Calder's truck was wide enough for two, but Ash insisted on riding shotgun so she could “DJ,” and I got stuck in the back, hip-to-hip with Sloane.

Calder’s truck was old, the kind where every click and whine had a story. It smelled like cigars and saddle soap and the faint, sharp tang of something electrical going bad. He started the engine, and the dash made a noise like it was about to catch fire, but that was apparently normal. Sloane rolled down the window and let her arm dangle. Ash started in on a playlist that was all outlaw country and 2000s rap. I tried to keep my knees to myself, but there wasn’t enough room.

As we bumped down the gravel, I looked behind and saw the ranch hands following in a bigger, red truck. Reid was driving, Buck was waving a cowboy hat out the window, and Gray, Eli, and Jace were crammed in the back. They were already pre-gaming with a cooler of beer or possibly whiskey.

“You ever been to a real bar?” Ash turned and grinned at me. “Not like a city bar, I mean a real one.”

“No,” I said. “The last place I went, when I lived in Vegas, had a carpet and a guy sleeping under the pool table.”

“That’s nothing,” Sloane said. “Wait ‘til you see the Showdown.” She leveled me with a stare. “You don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. Nobody will make you.”

Ash snorted. “Nobody except me.” She reached over and poked Calder in the shoulder. “You dancing tonight, boss?”

He shook his head. “Never.”

We hit the main road, and the trucks fell in line. I stared out the window and watched the trees blur by, then the little square of dead grass where the service station stood.

“That’s where your car ended up,” Calder said, like he’d been waiting for the right time to tell me. He pointed at the old Mobil, all busted glass and sun-bleached signage.