Page 80 of Roping Her In

“Really good,” Mason said. “I’d ask you how things are at Three Rivers, but my sister tells me everything.” He chuckled, and Jake joined him.

“Hey, everything got better after it stopped snowing, right?”

Mason laughed, and he indicated the two men at his side. “I was just telling that to these guys.”

Jake extended his hand. “Howdy,” he said. “I’m Jake Ahlstrom.”

“He’s the vet at Three Rivers,” Mason said. “That big operation north of town I was telling you about? My sister’s the stable manager there.”

“Sure,” one of the men said, his voice deep and gruff and rumbly. Jake pegged him to be close to his age, maybe three or four years older. “I’m Clancy Blackwell,” he said. “This is my brother, Thane.”

“It’s great to meet you,” Jake said as he finished shaking Clancy’s hand and started shaking Thane’s. “Where are you guys at?”

“They bought the Clyde land just north of me,” Mason said.

Jake’s eyebrows flew up. “The Clyde land finally sold?”

Clancy smiled, but it seemed a little forced. “We’ve been getting that a lot,” he said.

“Yeah,” Thane said with a chuckle. “We’re thinking there must be bodies buried there or something, based on the reactions we’ve been getting.”

Jake laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“No one would, would they?” Clancy laughed too.

Ty joined their group too, and Jake shook his hand, bumped his shoulder in a fake man-hug, and nodded to the two men. “This here’s Clancy and Thane Blackwell.”

Mason leaned in a little closer and spoke in a mock whisper. “They bought the Clyde land out by me.”

Ty’s reaction mirrored Jake’s exactly. His eyebrows went up, and a soft sound came out of his mouth. “Wow, the Clyde land.”

Clancy and Thane looked at one another, and then nodded over to the group next to them. “We’ve got a few more brothers with us. That there’s Hyrum, Keller, and Lowry.”

“So there’s five of you?” Jake asked.

“There’s ten of us,” Thane said in a deadpan.

“And three girls too,” Clancy said. “Why our parents wanted an unlucky number of children, we’ll never know.”

“Hey, I’m just happy they remember my name half the time.” Thane chuckled, and he definitely seemed to be more good-natured than Clancy.

“Did y’all move here?” Ty asked.

“Just the five of us for right now,” Clancy said. “A couple of my brothers are working on selling our ranch down south before they come up.”

“Yeah, you’ll probably need more than five people for that land,” Ty said. “And I didn’t mean to act surprised. It’s just been for sale for a long time, and last time I checked, it was really expensive.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “I just bought a smaller place out on the northwest highway that goes toward Amarillo, so I’ve been looking at property around town for a while.”

“Sure,” Clancy said. “We looked at some property up there too.”

“Are you guys relocating from another ranch then?” Jake asked.

The two brothers exchanged a look, and it was Clancy who said, “Something like that.”

To Jake, that meant nothing like that, but he didn’t know these men, and Smiles joined them in that moment.

“All right, we’re the pre-check team. Are you guys ready for this?” He clapped his hands a couple of times and looked over to Bev as she came to his side.

Jake relaxed, but when Smiles met his eyes, every muscle in his body tensed again.