Untamed Cowboy

CHAPTER TWO

BENNETT COULDN’T BEGIN to untangle the whole mess of feelings rioting around inside him like coiled-up snakes. He wasn’t in love with Olivia. He never had been. But she had been his girlfriend for a year, and he had been planning on marrying her. They’d had an arrangement that had suited them both.

It hadn’t been a love match in a conventional sense. Her father had asked for him to take care of her after a health scare, and Bennett had thought...

He’d thought she was damned near perfect. He didn’t want a passionate love affair, he wanted stability. Wanted the kind of life he could plan. Put in careful order. And Olivia had seemed to want that too.

But right toward the end, he’d been putting off proposing. He’d known what she wanted and he just...

There was part of him that worried she wanted more than he was giving. At first he’d thought she wasn’t any more in love with him than he was with her. Hell, they’d never gone past second base, at her insistence. And she’d never seemed tempted to go further. He’d respected it, respected her. Hadn’t touched anyone else the whole time they were together, because he was a man of his word.

Then, she had broken up with him over the fact he was dragging his feet, and she had gone and slept with Luke Hollister. Who Bennett would have said was about the worst bet in the entire world. If asked, Luke would probably have agreed he was a bad bet too.

But apparently, not when it came to Olivia. Because that bastard had proposed to her in record time. And apparently had gotten right on starting a family with her too.

It was what Olivia wanted. He knew. Well, not to be pregnant out of wedlock. That would bother her. He had a feeling the wedding was about to get moved way the hell up.

But a family. That was what Olivia wanted. Domestic bliss and all that.

“Are you all right?”

Kaylee was looking at him with wide amber-colored eyes.

At the moment she made a pretty comical sight. Wearing a dress a hell of a lot fancier than he was used to seeing on her, the delicate floral material swirling around her long, pale legs.

And her arms were streaked with afterbirth.

Her red hair was disheveled, a smudge of something across her cheek. But she was also wearing makeup.

Frankly, the dress and the makeup were a lot more out of place than the afterbirth.

Kaylee wasn’t a girly girl. She never had been. Kaylee had run with the boys from junior high on. She had been one of his best friends ever since then. The kind of friend that he called if he needed someone to help at two in the morning. The kind of friend who would leave a date—apparently—to come and help him birth a calf.

The kind of friend who knew everything about him.

Almost everything.

“I’m fine,” he said, lying.

But he couldn’t exactly articulate all the things this was bringing up. Because it wasn’t just Olivia. There was something else churning deep beneath the surface and he didn’t want to get into that. He knew what it was. Whenever pain pushed up against that locked door down in his soul, he knew what that pain was. Loss.

All that loss in his life.

And mistakes. Regrets. A time in his life when he hadn’t planned a damn thing, when he had lacked for control and decency, and had paid the consequences of that behavior. Consequences no one, not his family or Kaylee, knew about.

He was different now.

But that didn’t erase the past.

“Do you still want that beer?”

“Maybe let’s take a rain check,” he said. “You’re covered in...”

Kaylee looked down her arms and grimaced. “I can shower at your place.” The suggestion was casual, and there was no reason it wouldn’t be. He and Kaylee had known each other forever. Had showered in each other’s homes more than once.

For some strange reason, probably because it was late, he was tired, and feeling like his world had been thrown slightly off its axis, he had a momentary blip in his brain, just one bright pop of an image. Pale skin and water sluicing over slight curves.

He blinked heavily in the darkness. He did not think about Kaylee like that. Ever.

She wasn’t a woman. She was his friend. His business partner.

And he had more control than that.

“Yeah, I think... I think I might go over to Wyatt’s.”

Kaylee was clearly somewhat irritated by the fact he was rescinding his invite, but she would deal. They had spent so much time in each other’s company over the years that it was inevitable they sometimes irritated each other.

Anyway, Kaylee was great if you wanted to talk. That was one of the perks of having a woman for a friend, even one who wasn’t especially...stereotypical. She got into deeper topics and longer conversations than his brothers did. Than any of his guy friends.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk now. He wanted to drink. And Kaylee would want to know what he was feeling about Olivia. She liked to pick that particular scab. He wasn’t sure why. But it was something that she hadn’t been able to let go since he and Olivia had broken up.

He shouldn’t care at all about this news. Olivia deserved a man who loved her. She deserved to be in love. That kind of thing wasn’t in the cards for Bennett. It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted a well-ordered life. He wanted one without complications, without big highs and lows. Because God knew he’d had enough.

The whole situation was tangled up, but his heart wasn’t broken. And Luke Hollister was like a brother to him. Even given the circumstances. The man was always going to be part of the Dodge family. So having to deal with Olivia was unavoidable.

“Okay,” Kaylee said, taking a step away from him. “We’ll talk tomorrow I guess.”

“Thank you,” he said, meaning now and for the birth. “If you hadn’t been here... The baby probably wouldn’t have made it. I would’ve lost one of them.”

“Hey,” Kaylee said. “What’s a date compared to the life of a baby cow? And that’s not sarcasm. I can go out with Michael again anytime. He was very understanding.”

“Michael, huh?”

He didn’t know Michael, and he hadn’t been able to place him when Kaylee had started talking about Clarence the dog either. He didn’t know why he couldn’t picture the guy. Gold Valley was small enough that he felt like he should know men about their age that Kaylee might date, particularly ones that owned pets and sometimes came into the clinic.

But no, he was drawing a blank.

“You want to go drink,” Kaylee said, waving a hand. “Interrogate me some other time.”

“Good night,” he said, getting into the truck that served as a mobile veterinary unit. He might go ahead and crash at Get Out of Dodge tonight, he mused as he pulled onto the highway, putting Kaylee and her date out of his mind.

He could get hammered and sleep in one of the cabins that were currently unoccupied on the dude ranch. They were gearing up for their grand reopening, but it hadn’t happened yet.

Wyatt was working tirelessly—and working the rest of them to the bone when they were doing their real jobs—getting it ready.

Although, his brother Grant officially didn’t have a real job anymore. His real job was the ranch. Jamie, the only girl, and youngest in the family was in the same boat as Grant and Wyatt. Bennett was the only one that hadn’t thrown himself wallet and soul into the place.

But it wasn’t as simple as that for him. Veterinary medicine was his passion. He hadn’t gone to school for all those years so that he could quit when his brother decided on a whim to stop flinging himself around on the back of angry bulls and focus on the homestead for the first time in fifteen years.

For as long as Bennett could remember, he’d liked to fix things. That need had only grown stronger after the death of his mother.

And stronger still later on.

He could have been a doctor, but he truly hadn’t been able to face the idea of working on people and losing them. He lost enough people in his life. But having such a comprehensive veterinary practice in Logan County kept himself and Kaylee fully occupied. Being able to go into business with his best friend was a privilege.

The two of them had talked about doing that from the time they were kids. Usually when you made a pact with dirt and spit and a handshake underneath an oak tree when you were thirteen years old you didn’t keep it.

But he and Kaylee Capshaw had.

She was the truest and most constant person in his world. His friend, his partner. Always. From the moment he’d met her when they’d been in seventh grade. She was new to school, and looked lost, but defiant right along with it. And he couldn’t help but be intrigued by the redhead with a thousand freckles who didn’t talk to anyone for the first half of the day.

Something in her reminded him of his own losses. The way it felt to feel like you were walking through a room of people all alone.

So at lunch he’d sat down and introduced himself.

She hadn’t been friendly at all. Not until he’d asked if she liked horses, and if she’d like to come over to his ranch sometime and see them.

That had made her smile. And something about her smile had felt so damned good. He’d wanted to keep on making her smile.

She hadn’t been smiling when she’d left the ranch just now.

He pushed away the guilt at not having her come over as he turned into the driveway that led up to his brother’s ranch. Well, the family ranch, really. Bennett was part owner in the place, even if he wasn’t working on it full-time. He had thrown a good lot of his money into it, but then, that was another thing about him staying in veterinary medicine. He made enough money to help Wyatt with this crazy scheme. Bennett was mostly a financial backer when it came right down to it.

Although, Wyatt had made a decent amount of money on the rodeo circuit. Bennett had no idea how much, because Wyatt preferred to be a mystery.

He shook his head and parked his truck, getting out and slamming the door.

He walked up the familiar steps, steps he had walked on thousands of times, and up to the door. He just opened it up and walked in, because he wasn’t going to knock on the door of his childhood home. He might not live there anymore, but it still felt like home in many ways.

“Hey,” he called out.

“Drinking in the kitchen,” shouted Wyatt.

Bennett moved through the entryway and into the kitchen, where his brother Wyatt, his other brother Grant, and their sister, Jamie, were all sitting around the high counter on barstools, clutching various alcohols of choice.

“That’s nice,” Bennett said, “are you all having a drink for me?”

“Wash your hands,” Jamie said, wrinkling her nose, her brown hair pulled back in a loose braid that had likely started the day tight, but had ended askew, a testament to the activities of the day. Knowing his sister those activities had been riding horses like hellhounds were biting at her heels.

Jamie didn’t know caution, not on the back of a horse.

“All right,” he said, looking down and seeing that while he had been wearing gloves for a good portion of the procedure he had not escaped unscathed.

He started to scrub up in the sink, very aware of the fact that all of his siblings were watching him. “Did any of you have a comment to make?” He gestured broadly.

“Olivia is pregnant.” Jamie leaned forward, resting her chin on the lip of her beer bottle. “How do you feel about that?”

“I didn’t know Jamie was going to be here,” he said to Wyatt.

“Where else would she be? Anyway, you didn’t ask.”

“I just came over for a drink,” he said pointedly, “not a talk. If I had wanted to talk, I would have had Kaylee come over.”

“You should have had Kaylee come over here,” Jamie said.

Jamie wasn’t a whole lot more of a girl’s girl than Kaylee was, and the two of them got along pretty well now that Jamie wasn’t a kid. Though, at twenty-three she still seemed a lot like a kid to Bennett.

“She was tired. She had to leave a date to come help me deliver a calf. It was breech.”

“Did you save it?” Grant asked.

“Yeah,” he responded. “Hopefully it makes it through the night. But at this point I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Everything was good when we left.”

“She left a date to come and help you deliver a calf,” Wyatt said, his eyebrows raised.

“It was a life-and-death situation,” Bennett said. “It’s more important than dinner.”

“Sure,” Wyatt said, “but couldn’t you have called someone else?”

“No,” Bennett said. “She’s the only person I can count on in a situation like that. And anyway, I didn’t know she was on a date.” Though, he probably still would have called her. Kaylee was always there when he needed her.

It wasn’t like he’d needed help choosing a tie. He was trying to save a life.

“Careful,” Wyatt said, “or she likely won’t be at some point. Not if you keep taking advantage of her.”

“I don’t take advantage of her. First of all, we run our business together. So, she benefits from the extra time I put in and in the middle of the night. Second of all, she’s my friend. And I would do the same for her, and she knows it.”

“Still,” Jamie said, her tone sly, “you have a history of losing women now, Bennett.”

For one blinding second Bennett wished that he were still fifteen. Because if he were, he would have yanked on Jamie’s braid until she apologized for that.

“I do not have a history of that,” he said. “One girlfriend broke up with me.”

“And now she’s having Luke’s baby,” Grant pointed out. “Which I feel like is why you’re here, even though you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bennett returned.

“That’s fine,” Wyatt said. “We do have more important things to discuss than your lack of a love life.”

Of course, Bennett hadn’t had a love life when he was with Olivia, not that his family knew that. Olivia had said she wanted to wait until they were engaged to have sex, and he had honored that. It just wasn’t the kind of thing that you discussed with your older brothers. Well, it wasn’t the kind of thing you discussed with anyone, first of all, because he wouldn’t go talking about Olivia’s business like that. But second of all, because he had no desire to get harassed. Not that Grant was in any position to harass anyone on that subject.

Since the death of Grant’s wife eight years ago, Grant’s love life had been in the deep freeze. Grant hadn’t even gotten close to having another woman in his bed, let alone in his life. At least, that was the impression that Grant gave to his family.

They tried to get him to go out when they could, hoping to do something to heal that hollowed-out look in his eyes. But nothing ever did.

Though, that likely explained why his siblings enjoyed giving Bennett such a hard time about the situation with Olivia. It wasn’t fatal. Not even close. It was just one of those things.

“Much more interesting,” Wyatt supplied, “is the fact that we got our first few bookings online today.”

“That is great,” Jamie said, almost shimmering with glee.

His younger sister wanted this business to take off almost more than anyone. Because the opportunity to ride horses for a living didn’t present itself often, and this was her chance to do exactly what she loved to do. He respected that. Understood it. Because this might not be his dream, but he certainly wanted his family to work it all out. And anyway, he had his work dream. So he wanted them to have theirs too.

“We’re set to open with a big barbecue by June. Kind of a grand opening with tours and all of that, and then afterward, it looks like we’re already halfway full.”

“Fantastic,” Jamie said.

Grant nodded. Grant didn’t do much in the way of enthusiasm.

“You seem thrilled,” Wyatt said, directing that comment at Bennett.

“I am,” Bennett said. “But my primary focus is still my veterinary practice. You know I support this, but I have other things on my plate.”

“I never said you didn’t,” Wyatt said. “But you do have a stake in Get Out of Dodge. I figure you don’t want to lose all your money.”