Slow Burn Cowboy

He had to admit, it was nice to have extra hands.

Morning milking went quick, and from there it was time to deal with the other animals. Then they had to move the cows from one pasture to another.

“Saddle up,” Finn said, smiling as he presented his brothers with the horses they would be riding today.

“I didn’t know you still went in for this cowboy bullshit,” Liam said.

“Without the cowboy bullshit I wouldn’t bother,” Finn said, swinging himself up easily onto his horse. “Besides, at the end of the day, it’s much easier to do it this way. At least by my way of thinking. Don’t need half as many access roads.”

“I don’t remember Grandpa moving the cows around. From pasture to pasture I mean,” Cain said. “We had to bring them in to eat.”

“Well, that’s something else that’s changing,” Finn said. “Mostly we’re not doing grain anymore. Or corn. We’ve been working to get them on a primarily grass diet. A lot of people think it improves the flavor of the milk. Of course, now everything needs to be hormone free. And the more asterisks you can put on the label the better. Hormone free, antibiotic free, grass fed, vegetarian fed... Whatever. It doesn’t necessarily make a huge difference with the bigger dairies, but we were transitioning in order to keep our options open.”

While he made his grand explanation, the others had finished with their tack and had gotten on their horses.

“Does that mean you’re considering that thing your friend was talking about?” Liam asked.

“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. Just hedging our bets is all. Because you never know when some health guru is going to get pulled off the internet and onto a morning show, telling people about the supposed dangers of something everyone has eaten forever. It’s nice to be ahead.” He was being stubborn. Maybe he was even lying a little bit. “What I do,” he continued, urging his horse to go a little bit faster, “I do because I want to do it. And I’ll do it in my own time.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, and without even turning to look, Finn could tell his younger brother had a smart-ass grin on his face, “you have definitely turned into Grandpa.”

There were worse things, Finn thought privately as he maneuvered the horse closer to the cows that were happily grazing in the field. Callum Donnelly might’ve been a cranky son of a gun, but he had been constant. Steady. Nothing like that worthless son of his that had fathered four sons with three different women and hadn’t stuck around to raise a blessed one of them.

Their father had died because of hard living. And he’d left them absolutely nothing.

Yeah, he would much rather turn into his grandfather than his father. No doubt about that.

“Follow my lead,” Finn said. “You may remember something about this from your time here. Cain, Liam, I want you on the sides. Alex, bring up the rear. I’ll be with you.”

They brought the horses into formation, and after that, Finn turned everything else off. All he did was focus on the mountains that surrounded them, covered with evergreen trees and reaching toward the sky. The clouds were burning away, the summer sun pouring out onto the field, spilling drops of gold on the grass, making it look like the ends of each and every blade were glowing.

Yellow flowers mixed in with the green, joining in with the sunlight to make it look like a bit of that warm magic had touched the earth right here.

Finn wasn’t a man given to poetry, but out here, it was easy to veer that way.

Easier still when his brothers were quiet.

This place was his sanity. His soul. And he let that sunshine burn away as much of the tension inside of him as it possibly could.

He could think more clearly out here, on the back of his horse. The world was reduced to the hoofbeats all around him, to the mountains, to the trees.

And he didn’t think about what might happen to the ranch if all four Donnellys ended up living here and fighting over their piece of it. Didn’t think about that dumbass stuff he’d pulled with Lane last night.

If there was a perfect moment in his life, he knew it was going to happen on horseback, riding on his own property.

So whenever he saddled up he took care to live in the moment. Took care not to miss it.

By the time they finished driving the cattle from one place to the next and rode back again it was nearly lunchtime. They were all sweaty and dirty, and he could tell that they were all regretting their choice of outerwear and their lack of a hat to keep the sun off their faces.

“I may have a farmer tan,” Finn said, unable to resist the urge to needle them, “but at least I’m comfortable.”

“Beer,” Alex grunted when they walked into the house.

Liam went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles, handing one to Alex before taking a seat at the table. A very slow seat. “Fuuuuuuuck.” The word extended through the entire motion, until he was settled in the chair. “That is not like riding a bike,” he said.

“No,” Finn said, leaning against the wall and surveying the group. “Not even a little bit. And if you think it hurts now...just wait until tomorrow. I went easy on you guys today.”

“I don’t think my daughter is even awake yet,” Cain grumbled, getting his own beer out of the fridge and popping the top violently on the counter.

“Yeah, I’m going to leave the designation of chores for the teenager to you,” Finn said. “I’m her uncle. Not her dad. And I don’t particularly want to play the part of bad guy.”

He was feeling cheerful for the first time in days.

“You got fat in the off-season, Liam,” Alex said.

Liam shot him a deadly look. “Tell you what. I invite you to start a fight with me and see just how out of shape I am. I just haven’t ridden a horse in... Well, since I was last here.”

Alex shrugged, crossing his arms and lifting his beer to his lips. “I don’t need to fight you to know that twelve years in the army gives me the advantage. I haven’t ridden a horse recently either, but I’m fine.”

Alex hadn’t looked all that fine only a few moments ago, but it seemed as though he was redirecting his stance now that he saw how miserable Cain and Liam were. It was impossible not to like Alex sometimes. Even though he was an obnoxious son of a bitch.

“Yeah,” Liam grumbled, “well, some of us haven’t lived at boot camp for the past twelve years.”

“True. But then, neither have I. Boot camp looks friendly next to Afghanistan,” Alex said. “Trust me.” He took another sip of beer. “Come to that, cows look friendly next to Afghanistan too.”

Alex was going to be the toughest one to scare off, Finn realized. He seemed like the easygoing one. Like the one who would cut and run when things got difficult. But there was an intensity that went beneath the surface, a strength that the rest of them hadn’t really been around to witness but that Finn knew was there just the same.

“We’re going to have to milk the cows again in a couple of hours. Take a break. Eat. There’s food in the fridge from last night, or you can drive down to town if you’re in the mood. Just be back by two.”

Alex and Liam looked at each other, then left the room. Either to go grab some rest or a burger, Finn didn’t know. But he didn’t really care. Unless they were going to hightail it back to where they came from.

But that left him alone in the room with Cain. And he had never really known what kind of things he was supposed to talk about with his older brother. They had a lot in common in some ways. They were the ones that stood alone, isolated. No full-blood brother, and very little in the way of attention from their father.

Though it was a strange thing to have the common ground between yourself and your brother marked by all the things you didn’t have in common. Where you were raised. Who you were raised by.

But in his family those strange connections were all you had anyway.

“You don’t have to enjoy this so much.” Cain leaned back in his seat, resting his head on the back of the chair. “I’m thirty-seven, not seventeen. And I feel every year of it right about now.”

“You own a ranch, Cain,” Finn said, looking at his older brother. “Why are you acting like you haven’t been on the back of a horse since the dawn of time?”

“It’s probably been a couple of years,” he said. “I paid other people to manage the actual day-to-day stuff. At least, that’s how it’s been since my wife left.”

“So you just turned everything over to other people?” That was unfathomable to Finn. He liked to have his hand in every aspect of the ranch. Sure, he had people who worked at the Laughing Irish other than himself and his grandpa, but he was in charge, unquestionably. And he went out and rode the perimeter of the place almost every day. It was in his heart, in his blood. And he didn’t possess the ability to let go of even a piece of it.

“I had too much to hold on to in my personal life.” Cain swore, setting his beer down on the table. “I love being a father, but I can’t say that I ever thought I was the best one. But now I’m all Violet has. And I felt like... How could I possibly be out working on the ranch when there was more than enough money coming in if I never touched it? Someone had to make sure everything was all right at school. That all of her homework was getting done. And I could let the work go, so I did. Anyway, there was still paperwork. And I basically buried myself in that, plus doing the legal work of making sure I got sole custody. So that Kathleen could never just walk back into our lives and decide she wanted to try and take Violet from me. Not after she left the way she did.”

“Why did she leave?” They had never talked about this. But then, they had never talked about much of anything. Finn hadn’t even fully realized that Cain’s ex-wife had removed herself so completely from the picture.

“Probably for a million stupid reasons. And a couple of really good ones.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “But the worst part about somebody leaving you like that is you can’t shout it out. I mean, I know enough to know she wasn’t kidnapped or anything. Because trust me, that was my first thought. Your wife disappears on you and the first thing you want to do is call the police. Because there’s no way she’d leave her thirteen-year-old daughter, right? I mean, sure, maybe she’d leave the husband she could hardly say a civil word to. But Violet? That’s the part I don’t get.”

He stood, pacing the length of the kitchen before he paused at the window over the kitchen sink, just as Finn had done a few days ago. He looked out at the view, taking it all in, and Finn felt a strange mixture of irritation and pride as his older brother surveyed everything Finn had worked to make this ranch over the past nearly two decades.

“It’s the part I can’t forgive,” Cain said heavily. Then he turned back to Finn. “If you think a full day of work, day in day out, scares me, you don’t know what I’ve been through. I’m raising a teenage girl, Finn. I’m not scared of jack shit except all the ways I might fuck that up.” He took a weighted breath. “But I need something new. She needs something new. Otherwise, we’re just going to sit there mired in old memories and drown. I need your money even less than Alex does. My ranch was big, and when I sold it I got more than I’ll ever spend. I can invest it back into the Laughing Irish. I can invest in Violet’s future. That’s what I want. But this isn’t about needing property, or needing to earn a living. Not for me.”

Cain didn’t have to get into a deeper explanation than that. Mostly because Finn recognized exactly what Cain needed this place to be. It was the same thing Finn had needed when he’d showed up, angry and lost at sixteen.

He didn’t need money. He needed salvation.

“I’m warning you,” Finn said. “This ranch will drag a whole lot out of you before it starts putting anything back. And then, it’ll always be that way. Give and take. You and the land.”

“That’s all right,” Cain said. “I kind of want it to hurt.”

Finn didn’t want to understand Cain. Because that was perilously close to being on his brother’s side. To wanting to help him out in some way. He bristled against his growling conscience.

He should want to help his brother, he supposed. It was much easier to oppose his presence when he imagined that Cain wanted to be here for the wrong reasons. That it didn’t matter. That a payout would make things square.

This made it a whole lot more difficult. It made Finn feel a whole lot more petty.

“Violet doesn’t seem very happy to be here,” he pointed out. Which was maybe the lowest blow he’d tried to land yet.

Cain laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She’s not happy anywhere. I don’t know what to... I mean... It’s like she’s a different person now. She used to be this adorable, little bitty thing. And I can remember her with two missing front teeth and a big smile so clearly that half the time that’s still what I expect to see when I look at her. Instead she’s this sullen creature that will barely make eye contact with me. She was mad at me in Texas. I figure she can be mad at me here. But at least maybe with a little less baggage hanging around.” He shook his head. “I could never shake the feeling that she was waiting for her mother to come back. And the longer we stayed at the ranch, the more I felt like that was why. That it was why we were both still there. It had to stop.”

All of this, the emotion, the understanding, scraped against Finn like a particularly splintered board on bare skin.

“I don’t know what to say,” Finn responded finally. “Mostly because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make me sound like an ass.”

Cain lifted a shoulder. “Maybe because you are one.”

“Maybe,” Finn agreed.

“I’m not the easiest person to get along with,” Cain said. “Every woman who has ever passed through my life will attest to that. Particularly, at the moment, my daughter. I’m not one to promise that we are not going to butt heads here. But I can tell you that I’m not here to ruin your life. I’m just trying my damnedest to fix mine.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

A DAY OFF was exactly what Lane needed to get her head on straight. She was tired, that was the thing. Overtired and emotionally taxed. It was why she had acted like such a weirdo last night when Finn had touched her.

And why she had been persistently weird about it all the way home, and while she was trying to go to sleep.

What he had said had continued to play over and over in her mind.

When a woman spends the night with me, I don’t do any of that.

She was a curious creature by nature, and his saying something like that forced her to try and imagine all the things he might do. Which had ended very quickly because the images she’d conjured had been awkward and strange and had left her stomach feeling tight and flipped inside out all at the same time.

Normally, she did her best to never imagine Finn doing anything remotely sensual. He was a constant in her life. And he was a man, yes, and she wasn’t blind. But when she’d met Finn she’d been in such a terrible, vulnerable place, and he’d been the friend she’d needed. She’d spent the ensuing years resolutely keeping him in that category.

It had taken Rebecca’s almost hooking up with Finn to jolt Lane into finally acknowledging that he was, indeed, a man.

And then there was what he’d said last night. About what he did and didn’t do when a woman spent the night. It left a lot to the imagination. And her imagination was a bright and inquisitive thing.

So today, she was doing her best to keep it dampened by puttering around in the garden. She had kept herself outside, and all forms of media shut off. No internet. No radio. No TV. No chance of upsetting images infiltrating her home.

Being on the ground, up to her elbows in dirt, was much more satisfying than catching a glimpse of the Ghost of Teenage Mistakes Past on the news.

Anyway, she had plenty to do. There was enough lettuce that she was going to have to bring it to the store if she had a hope of using it all. Picking and processing that, separating it out into individual plastic bags so it was ready for people to take home as premade salad mix, had eaten up a good portion of her time.

Then she had gone to wander around in the thicker part of the woods around her property. Her knee-length lace dress kept getting snagged on sticker bushes, but she didn’t mind. She minded more when the raspberries and blackberries twined around her legs and left little teeth marks in her skin.

But there were no prizes for timidity when it came to picking blackberries. The good ones were typically on the very top of the bushes, reaching up toward the sun. She hummed as she dropped the plump fruit into milk jugs she had cut the tops off.

They made for handy berry buckets, and they were cheap and disposable so if the juice stained the inside it didn’t much matter.

She didn’t mind the typically gray weather on the Oregon coast, but she very much prized the summertime. She closed her eyes, allowing the sun to bathe her in gentle warmth as she continued her work.

The mild weather through the winter and slightly earlier warmth of the summer had ensured that the berries ripened a little bit earlier than usual. And she held out hope that even more would ripen between July and August.

Little containers of the berries would fetch a decent price in the Mercantile, and anything extra would go to Alison, for pie and pastries and maybe for that jam she was thinking of asking Alison to supply her.

She wondered if Cassie would want any for The Grind, for a kind of special scone or biscotti. The thought had Lane humming to herself, imagining all of the baked goods she could talk her friends into making for her.

She liked her own baked goods too, of course. But sometimes things just tasted better when they were made for you.

She bent, grabbing her half-full container of blackberries by the handle, then scooping up the one she’d managed to fill most of the way up with raspberries, as well. With her free hand, she held on to her dress, trying to keep it away from the sticker bushes as she picked her way back through the thick foliage until she got to the well-worn path that would take her back to her house.

She paused for a moment in a clearing, allowing a shaft of sun to fall over her bare arms. She relaxed, holding the heavy buckets down low at her sides as she closed her eyes and tilted her face up. She listened then. To the birds, and the faint sound of the breeze ruffling through the treetops.

She breathed in, that heady mixture of soil, wood and pine that was only headier in the damp forest as the temperatures rose.

Then she heard the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway that led to her house. She paused, frowning. She wasn’t expecting anybody, and unless they had gone too far and needed to turn around, no one had any reason to be driving up to her place.

She mobilized, walking up to the back door of her cabin and letting herself inside, passing quickly through the small house and peeking through the front window so that she could get a glimpse at the driver, without him seeing her first.

She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it was Finn. And then for some reason on the heels of that relief came a surge of tension that rested like a ball in her chest.

She breathed in again, just like she had done outside, but this time, it was for fortification. This time, it was to try and do something to get rid of that tightness in her lungs.

Lane waited until he got out of his truck. Until he walked up the steps and stopped in front of the door. Then she waited until he knocked.

Only then did she open the door.

“Hi,” he said.

She just stood there, staring at him for a moment, her chest feeling tighter. He looked tired. His hat was pushed back on his head, dirt on his face making the lines around his eyes and mouth look more pronounced. His tight white T-shirt was streaked with even more dirt, and she could see on his battered jeans where he had wiped his hands on his thighs all day.

It was typical for Finn to look this filthy after a day on the ranch. But it was the exhaustion that struck her.

“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping back and allowing him entry into the house.

“It’s just a little too crowded at my place. So I thought I would come out here for a while.”

“Of course,” she said, backing into the kitchen, moving behind the counter and for some reason breathing a little easier once she did.

“What do you have there?” he asked, gesturing to the milk jugs.

“Raspberries and blackberries,” she said, picking them up and turning to put them in the fridge. “I’ll deal with them later.”

“I take it this is your version of a day off.”

“Some of us don’t work outside every day. I find a little bit of time in the garden relaxing. I took a walk through the woods, spent some time picking lettuce.”

“Basically, a rabbit’s perfect day.”

She made a face at him. “And a Lane’s perfect day.”

He chuckled. “I was actually wondering if you’d mind if I took a swim in the lake.”

“Of course not,” she said. Suddenly, she felt hot and sticky, and the idea of cooling off at her own piece of Lake Carmichael was more than a little enticing.

“Great. I have all my swim stuff in the truck. I’ll strip down out there so I don’t get any of my dirty clothes on your floor. Do you want to join me?”

For a full second Lane’s brain was hung up on the words strip down and join me. She knew that they were separate. She did. But there was something about him saying them in such close succession that snagged her brain and just sort of hung there. Like the stickers against her dress.

“In the lake,” she said finally.

“Yeah,” he returned slowly.

“Sure. Yeah. I’ll just... I’ll go get ready while you... Strip down.” She cleared her throat and scampered her ass out of the room.

She forced her brain into a blank space while she undressed and pulled her bikini on. The idea of walking out in her bathing suit seemed weird somehow. Even though they were only going to swim together, which they had done a million times. She growled and grabbed her dress, tugging it over the top of her swimsuit. There.

But was he done getting dressed? That was the question.

She hemmed and hawed for a minute before finally exiting her bedroom and making her way cautiously back to the front door. She peeked out the curtain again, and saw him standing there in nothing but a pair of shorts.

Well, he was dressed. Sort of.

He had a towel hung over his arm, and that reminded her she needed to grab one. She detoured back to the bathroom and took one off the shelf, then burst outside, not hesitating this time. “I’m ready,” she said.

He looked at her, a strange light in his eyes. “Okay,” he said.

The gravel was warm beneath her feet, and she kept her eyes down, making sure she didn’t step on anything sharp as they walked down the well-worn path to the lake.

There were houses all around the perimeter of the lake, but mostly on the other side, around a slight curve that kept everything from view. Those were larger houses, more desirable.

Lane’s friend Rebecca had owned one of the more modest houses on that end of the lake, near to Gage West’s extravagant lakeside cabin.

Lane’s house wasn’t exactly lakeside. Neither was it extravagant. But still she owned a little bit of the shoreline. The first year she’d been financially solvent she had had a dock put in, and then she had commissioned Jonathan Bear, Rebecca’s brother, to build her a bench swing that hung from a tree that stretched over the water.

It was her sanctuary.

Finn bent down and picked up a rock, running his fingers over the smooth-looking edges. And she tried not to think about why that made her stomach feel hollow.

He drew his arms back, then flung the rock toward the lake. It skipped three times across the surface before sinking to the bottom. “Want to make a wish?” he asked. “I’ve got three.”