He breathes an audible sigh of relief. “What did you do?”
I stretch my right leg out and lean back, wincing slightly at the strain. I’m only thirty-seven, but this body has been put through hell. “Went to Cowboy House and woke him up. Told him he’s about as useful as a flaccid dick in a whorehouse.”
Gramps howls with laughter as his coffee sloshes over the rim, little brown specks seeping into the porch’s wood floor. “The military sure taught you a few things,” he says, grinning, “not the least of which was a foul mouth.”
I shrug as Warner walks closer, coming to a stop at the porch railing. “Some habits are hard to break,” I explain.
“Like waking up and riding around before the sun comes up?” Warner asks, his gaze fixed on me.
“How would you know unless you’re up too?” I counter.
“You’re not the only early riser in this place. Most of your family gets up just after you. We’ve all seen you riding out, a lone cowboy on his horse. The exception is Wyatt, obviously.”
Of course. Wyatt, the youngest of us three boys, is always sleeping off the night before, if he’s come home at all. I’m not sure how much longer our dad’s planning to put up with it. I’m surprised he hasn’t kicked his ass out yet. On a ranch, everyone contributes.
The front door opens loudly and Jessie leans out, one hand planted on her hip and a sharp look on her face. She’s the youngest of the four Hayden siblings by nearly twenty years (from me, the oldest), and she’s always up to something. We started calling her ‘Calamity Jessie’ before she was coordinated enough to run, for two reasons. One, she was walking chaos, always into something. And two, she swore like a sailor and had a wildness about her, just like Calamity Jane. She’s seventeen now, and she’s tucked away a lot of her personality, but I bet it’ll return when she’s older and more comfortable in her own skin. In a few months she’ll pack up her car and move two hours south to Phoenix to attend Arizona State University. I don’t even want to begin to think about the mischief she’ll cause there.
Jessie directs her glare at Warner. “I told you to come tell these two breakfast is ready.”
Warner lifts his palms in front of his chest. “I got distracted. Wes was using military phrases again.”
I shake my head and stand. “Shut up, Warner.” I reach out a hand to help Gramps, but he bats it away.
“The day I can’t stand up on my own is the day you can lay me in the ground next to Janice.” He gives us all a hard look and uses the chair’s armrests to help him rise. He looks at us three, defiant and proud. “I miss your grandmother, but I’m not ready to go yet, as you can see.”
Warner and Gramps file into the house. I toss the remaining coffee from the two mugs over the railing and grab the thermos. Jessie stands in the door, keeping it open for me, and as I pass through she says, “Dad told me he wants to see you in his office after you’re done eating. He’s in a mood, so good luck.” She flips her head and the ponytail on the top of her head flies around.
I acknowledge the message with a nod and walk through the house to the kitchen.
If I was a wolf in Cowboy House this morning, then my dad is a grizzly bear.
“Dad?” My knuckles rap twice on the door, and although the door is ajar it doesn’t budge. This entire house was built with solid wood and stone. It does wonders for soundproofing but isn’t so kind on fingers getting slammed in doors, and that’s something we’ve all learned the hard way once or twice.
“Come in,” my dad calls. His voice is craggy, like a rake scraping through loose gravel. When I was a kid I thought he was making it sound that way on purpose, in a bid to emulate the cowboys we watched in western movies. Now I know it’s from years of yelling, of early mornings and late nights around a campfire, and cigarettes he snuck when he thought we weren’t looking.
Pushing open the heavy door, I step into my dad’s office. It’s large, more rectangle than square. Bookshelves line one wall, and there is nothing on those shelves but books. No framed family pictures, no plants, not even a set of deer antlers. Opposite that wall is a stuffed mountain lion perched on a set of large rocks. This is the mountain lion that terrorized our land for a good bit of time eight years ago when I was still overseas. Warner and my dad went out one day and set up camp with two cowboys, Josh and someone who doesn’t work for us anymore. They hunted all weekend and on Sunday afternoon, just when they were getting ready to head back to camp and call it a failure, Dad spotted the lion in a tree. He took aim, but the lion was on the move by then and Dad only grazed him. It was enough to injure the big cat, and when Dad and the others found him, the lion was mad as hell and before my dad could shoot him again the lion raked his claws over my dad’s chest. It was Warner who fired the kill shot.
At the time, on the other end of a phone in a desert in the Middle East, I’d told them they were lying. Warner insisted they weren’t, and the next time I came home, Dad showed me the scars to prove it.
I’ve fought insurgents, disabled explosive devices, and had my fair share of drunken and testosterone-fueled bar fights, and there’s only one thing in the world that makes me shrink, and he happens to be sitting in front of me. Beau Hayden is an intimidating man, both physically and mentally, and his reputation bursts at the seams with more fact than fiction. He’s the owner of Hayden Cattle Company, and hand to God I swear the term tougher than nails was invented just to describe him. I’ve seen the man slam his thumb with a sledgehammer and, aside from uttering the work fuck, not let on it ever happened. His skin resembles a light-tan leather, and the wrinkles around his eyes deepen by the day, but his full head of hair evens out the years ranching has added to his exterior.
Instead of taking a seat, I pause behind one of the two chairs in front of his desk and grip the fabric at the top. “Jessie said you wanted to see me.”
His eyes soften at the mention of Jessie. Miracle child that she is, we all soften when we think of Jessie. Four miscarriages after Wyatt, they had given up and stopped trying. Years later the pregnancy came as a shock, and I think finding out it was a girl was one of the happiest moments of my mom’s life. They named her Jessamyn, after my grandma Janice’s mother, but I don’t know that there’s been a day in her life that we called her anything but Jessie. Well, aside from calling her Calamity.
My dad folds his hands in his lap and leans back, looking out the large window on his right. I wonder what he thinks when he sees the land that has delivered him his greatest joys and staunchest hardships.
His eyes sweep back to me. “I’m selling off some land—”
My mouth opens to argue, but his stiff upraised palm stops me.
“Don’t say it,” he instructs. “Whatever it is, I’ve already thought it.”
My lips stay pursed in a tight line. He watches me, his eyes growing smaller the longer his gaze stays on mine. “When the place is yours, you can make your own choices. But right now, this place belongs to me, and I’m making the decisions I need to make to keep this place on top. Property taxes have been going nowhere but up, and that’s land we don’t use. We’ll make money on the sale and decrease our tax burden.”