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“You brought me two and a half cookies?” A smile tickled his kiss-swollen lips. I sat down beside him, reached into the tin, took the half cookie, and tossed it into my mouth. “Two cookies?”
“I brought two and a half cookies and my delectable ass.”
“That’s true.” He took a bite of the cookie as his gaze roamed over my face. “Why are you here, Abbott? Thought we had decided that this was over once we left Lone Vale.”
I ran my hand over his thigh, enjoying the shit out of how the soft gold hair tickled my palm.
“I brought you cookies.”
“You also brought me your delectable ass. Is this how you welcome all new employees to the Blue Ice?” He ate the last cookie as he waited for my reply.
“Actually, yeah, it is. I offer every hand a treat and my tempting little pucker.” I grabbed the holiday tin and tossed it aside, the crumbs tumbling out onto the rumpled duvet. Shep gave me a dirty look that I took to mean kiss me, then fuck me. “You vers?”
His eyes grew hot. “I am yeah, but we only had that one condom and you didn’t answer the question of why you showed up here after we said we were parting ways.”
I threw a leg over his thighs, took his face between my hands, and licked all the little crumbs from his lips.
“We’ll part ways when you leave. Why not slake desires while we can?”
I nibbled at his lower lip. He gave me an assessing look, nodded, and snaked his hand up to the back of my neck to crush my mouth back to his. We slaked ourselves nicely all that night. And once in the morning. It was barely dawn when I snuck from his place, empty cookie tin in hand, and went home to change into work clothes. I also sorted through my clothes and found a few items that Shep could use. It would rankle his pride, I was sure, but when you’ve got nothing other than your horse, you couldn’t be proud. Hell, the poor bastard didn’t even have a good name, at least in the minds of most people around here.
Knowing the next few weeks would be busy, I grabbed a quick bite—toast with peanut butter—and a cup of coffee and drove to the main house to return the tin to Roxie. I rapped on the back door, the one that led into the cavernous kitchen, and waited. Cold seeped into my toes and I knocked once more and tried the knob. It opened, so I stepped in out of the winter weather and called softly for Roxie. There was no reply, although I knew she was always here by six sharp to get breakfast ready for Landon, Montrell, and Mona. Obviously, she had arrived or the back door would be locked, so I made my way further into the house as worry began to tickle the hair on the back of my neck. I turned a corner from the front foyer and there stood Roxie with a crystal candy dish in her hand. Her dark eyes rounded in fright and she shouted something in Shoshone as she bobbled the candy dish before hugging it to her chest. She was a skinny thing and so her frightened eyes really stood out in her lean face.
“Sorry,” I whispered as we both glanced toward the bedrooms, hoping we hadn’t awoken Landon and Montrell. “I came up before chores to return your tin.” I held up the little cookie container. She blew out a long breath before a smile appeared. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s fine. Thank you for bringing that back.” She balanced the candy dish and the tin. “I like to put jam in this for the Misters, but the cleaning crew always sticks it back in the trophy room.”
She showed me the pink-cut crystal dish. I bobbed my head. “Must be nice to eat jam out of crystal instead of a crusty jar.” That made her smile a little. “Well, I’ll just be heading to the barns. Lots of work to do. Thank you for the food and cookies. They were delicious.”
“You’re welcome.” She blew a strand of long, black hair from her face and walked me to the kitchen. The door was closed in my face without another word said. Oh-kay. Guess she was in a hurry to get cooking. Didn’t blame her there. I had chores to tend to as well. And six hundred pregnant Black Angus to check on. We always calved out in February as the calves born in this month would be older and heavier when weaned in the fall than calves born later in the spring.
There were several of us hands this time of year to run checks on the cattle as they neared birthing time. We tended to feed the cows at dusk before they calved as it seemed to help increase the chances of them giving birth during the day. Something Nate had read about intraruminal pressure in the last two weeks before birth. Feeding at night makes the rumen work harder and so the digestive contractions taking place at night increases the probability that the cow will give birth during daylight hours.
Walking through the massive, red pole-frame barn that held up to thirty cows in twelve by twelve pens, I took note of each cow. Some were closer to calving than others and so that was noted on the app that we all used to track and store information. No one was close to dropping a calf right now, but I’d make another pass in an hour. We worked in shifts during calving so the guys who’d been feeding and making checks during the night were now asleep. It was a tiring time but vastly rewarding when those new calves were born. I made my way to the stables to begin work there and ran into my brother studying Argus. Will gave me a long look as I meandered up to him and reached out to pet the stallion. The horse rubbed his nose on my hand. We’d become pretty good friends over the past month.
“So are you dicking McCrary?” Will asked point-blank. I ran my hand down Dundee’s sleek neck and patted the firm muscle under the bright yellow quilted stable blanket. I was all prepared to feed him some bullshit story when he threw a brick wall up. “You can be honest. Perry saw you sneaking away from his cabin at the ass crack of dawn when he was coming back from the calving barn.”
Well fuck.
“I’m not dicking him,” I replied and turned to look right at Will. “He might have dicked me, but hey the day is young so…” I shrugged.
Will glowered at me with contempt. “You make me sick. For as long as I’ve been here, all you’ve done is strut around talking shit about the McCrarys.” I blew out a breath. “Which was righteous because they’re everything that you say you hate. Then you go off and spend a month alone in a cabin with fucking Shep McCrary and make him your bitch.” I sniggered at the thought of telling Shep that he was my bitch. Oh how those elite and neatly manscaped eyebrows of his would fly up his brow.
“No one is anyone’s bitch,” I managed to wiggle into my younger brother’s meltdown.
“You’re a fucking hypocrite!” Will jabbed a finger into my chest. I gave him a sweltering, evil eye. “You strut around claiming to be so woke and cool, then you bend over for some hateful bigot. You’re sleeping with a man who ran down my boyfriend every time he could!”
Ouch. Yeah, there was no skipping blithely around that accusation. Shep had stood by and giggle-snorted at all the hateful rhetoric that had been slung at Perry and all the other hands who weren’t white as paste.
“Look, he knows he has some fences to mend but once you get to know him, you’ll see that—”
I never got the rest of that trite little line out because my brother’s fist connected with my jaw, which caused me to stumble back into Dundee’s stall door, seeing stars and rubbing at my face when Will charged me. I twisted into the rush, got an arm around his neck, and tossed us both down to the cold floor. And from there it turned into a good old-fashioned brother battle. I wasn’t hitting him, but he was sure pounding on me. And the kid was fucking strong. Working here had given him some real muscle. I just about had him pinned with an arm behind his back when someone jerked me off my brother and slammed me into Dundee’s stall. The stallion was agitated now and kicked out at his wall, the sound vibrating through the barn.
“What the hell is going on here?” Shep barked at me. Nate rushed past Shep to pin Will to the wall with a grunt. My brother was fired up. He kept trying to break free of Nate’s grip to get at me. I just stood there, Shep’s forearm on my chest, my sight drawn back to Shepherd over and over as my brother raged. I could see the pain in Shep’s dark blue gaze as Will peppered him and me with biting, acidic comments that, sadly, were mostly true. Shep had acted the bigot for years to placate his family and now…well, now he was going to have to face those he had run down on equal ground. He was no longer one of the high and mighty McCrarys. He was just a down-on-his-luck ranch hand. And I was the man fucking him, which probably made me guilty by dicking association.
“…because he’s gay doesn’t mean he’s not a racist jerk!” Will was shouting as Nate led—aka dragged—him outside into the snow to “cool off” as the foreman had put it.
Shep’s arm fell. I drew in a shaky breath, rolled my jaw a few times, and then let my eyes drift shut for a moment.
