Slow Burn Cowboy

She clapped. “Good. I would rather have you overfed than underfed.”

“Judging by how good that smells, I don’t think you have to worry about us not eating,” Alex said, walking into the room. Liam and Cain weren’t far behind.

“Lane,” Finn said, noticing that his tone was more than a little bit surly, but not able to correct it, “this is my brother Alex, and my brother Liam. You met Cain yesterday. Kind of.”

Lane waved. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to eat with you. Because this really is enough to feed a small army.”

“You cook,” Cain said with a crooked smile, “you make the rules. And based on the meal I ate last night, let me just add that you can cook for us anytime.”

“I am fairly amazing,” she said, putting her hand on her chest, her expression turning overly sincere. “Just don’t fall in love with me.” She threw a stack of paper plates next to the food. “And dig in.”

“I’m going to go see if Violet wants dinner,” Cain said. “Though I’d probably have better luck if I texted her.” But he turned and walked out of the room anyway.

They began to fill their plates in silence, and a few minutes later Cain reappeared with Violet, who hung back against the wall. Finn studied her for a moment. She was petite. Short and narrow. But her face was pure Donnelly. From the brown hair that hung into her blue eyes, to the firm set of her jaw and mouth. It almost made Finn feel sorry for his brother. Because Donnellys were not easy people to deal with.

“You remember your uncle Alex,” Cain said, gesturing. “And your uncle Liam.” He said Liam’s name with a slight edge.

“Hey,” Violet said, barely nodding her head.

“That’s teenager for I love you and miss you and thought about you every day since I last saw you,” Cain supplied.

That earned a snort from Alex. Neither of them moved to hug Violet, and Finn had a feeling the teenager was only relieved by the lack of forced contact.

Suddenly, Finn was feeling a little bit embarrassed. That Lane was witnessing all of this. The strange, brittle family dynamic. He felt like he was walking across a lake that had frozen over. The ground cracking beneath his feet, and he was never sure which footstep would send him straight through and down to his freezing watery death.

The rest of them were at least all living the same hell. But Lane... Well, to her they must look like a bunch of dysfunctional idiots.

“So,” Lane said, her tone a little too bright, which confirmed Finn’s suspicions, “Violet, what grade are you going to be in?”

“A junior,” she said. “Unless I end up having to repeat a grade because I’m not prepared for advanced tractor mechanics and cow-tipping.”

“I doubt you’ll have to take those classes. They probably fill up early,” Lane said, keeping her tone chipper. “Then again, I can’t speak from experience. I didn’t actually go to school at Copper Ridge High.”

“How much has the town changed in the past ten years?” Alex asked. “I figure that’s relevant since we are going to be living here now.”

Finn knew that Alex was just poking him now. It didn’t make the sinking in his gut any less real.

“Oh,” Lane said, shooting Finn a look of surprise.

“He was our grandfather too,” Liam said. “And this matters. It means something. God knows we’ll never get anything from our father. But we got this, and not him. For that reason alone, I want to stay.”

That hit Finn somewhere vulnerable. Somewhere he didn’t want to examine too closely. It made Liam’s reasoning seem almost justified. And that wasn’t what Finn wanted at all.

“Well, things actually have changed quite a bit here,” Lane began. “Just in the past few years we’ve been really revitalizing Old Town. For my part, I bought the old Mercantile, and I sell specialty foods.”

“Oh, that boutique food stuff is doing well right now,” Liam said. “If I was still doing start-ups, that would be something I’d look to invest in.”

Lane sent Finn a triumphant look. “Interesting.” She turned her focus to his brothers, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next, “I’ve been trying to talk Finn into expanding the ranch’s dairy products so that I can sell them in my store.”

“Lane,” Finn said, his tone full of warning.

“Sorry,” she said, licking some sauce off of her thumb, which momentarily distracted him from his irritation. And that was even more irritating. “The business is just on my mind and it slipped out. Especially because I’m going to be starting those subscription boxes soon.”

“Smart,” Liam said. “I think it’s always a good idea to branch out beyond the local economy if you can.”

“See?” Finn asked. “Beyond the local economy. That’s why I have contracts with a larger dairy.”

“I didn’t mean it’s not good to be part of the local economy,” Liam said. “In fact, there’s such a big movement for local food, it’s a great area to invest in.”

“You don’t want to work on a ranch,” Finn said, pointing at his brother.

“Maybe I want to bring what I already do to the ranch. Did you ever think of that? I’m good at building businesses, Finn.”

No, he had not thought of that. Because that would mean giving Liam some credit, which he realized in that moment he never really did. Stupid, since he knew that Liam was successful in his own right, and that he wasn’t the sullen teenage boy that Finn had always known him best as.

“I think you should see how things actually run before you start trying to make changes,” Finn said, looking at his brother hard. Then he looked at the rest of them. There was no point arguing this out, he knew it. But, truth be told, he thought—no, he believed deep in his gut that a few weeks, maybe months, of the ranch life grind, and they’d be gone.

“All of you. My offer to buy you out is going to stand from here on out. This isn’t fun work. I know that you all spent some summers here, and I know you have a vague idea of how it all goes. But to do it year in year out, day in day out, spending your life up to your elbows in literal bullshit is not something any of you know about. So, if at any point it proves to be too much for you, I’ll buy you out. But, hell. Don’t let your pride stop you if after a couple of weeks your bones ache and you just want to sleep in and it proves to be too much for you. But don’t think you can stay then either.”

Violet made a face and glared at her father. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not doing any of that. Just because you’ve gone country and dragged me along with you doesn’t mean I’m getting involved in this.”

Cain looked at his daughter. “I’m sorry. I missed the memo that you were calling the shots now. If I give you chores, you’re going to damn well do them.”

“There are child labor laws, you know,” she said, taking a bite of pasta and shooting her dad an evil glare.

“Do you think anyone cares much about that out here in the country?”

“You’re the literal worst,” she said, putting her plate down on the counter and stalking out of the room.

Cain took another bite of his dinner. And he made no move to follow her.

“Should you talk to her?” Of course, it was Lane who questioned him, because the woman never could leave well enough alone.

Cain shrugged. “Maybe. But, trust me, my talking to her doesn’t ever smooth anything over.” Then Cain looked at Finn. “You think you’re going to scare me off with tales of early mornings? I’m already elbows deep in bullshit. At least here, it will be for a reason.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LANE KNEW THAT Finn was mad at her. The rest of dinner was tense—not that it had been extraordinarily calm in the beginning, but it certainly didn’t get better.

There was no easy conversation between the brothers either. Finn had told her that things were difficult between them, but until she had witnessed it, she hadn’t fully understood. She should have believed him. After all, she knew all about difficult families. She hadn’t spoken to her parents in years.

By the time she was finished eating and ready to head out the door, her sense of unease had only grown. She hated feeling like he was angry at her. It happened. They had known each other for a long time, and initially in the capacity of her being Mark’s irritating younger sister. Who lingered around in the shadows when they were trying to watch an action movie in peace, or who forced them to be guinea pigs for her latest cooking experiment.

But as they’d eased into adulthood, and into a real friendship in their own right, rarely had Finn ever looked at her like he wanted to drown her in the ocean. About now, he was looking vaguely murderous.

When she said her goodbyes to everyone and headed for the door, she wasn’t surprised when Finn followed her outside. He closed the door hard behind them, crossing his arms over his chest, then dropping them almost immediately. He let out a long, slow breath. “Are you going to apologize for that?”

“Me?” she all but squeaked. “You were being a jerk.”

“I’m sorry if you don’t understand my family dynamic, which consists mainly of us calling each other names while we try not to punch each other in the face. But that has nothing to do with you, and it’s definitely not for you to lecture me about. What was that stunt you pulled?”

She threw her arms wide, the cool night air washing over her bare limbs. “Oh, do you mean cooking you a delicious dinner? How dare I?”

“I mean bringing up the dairy stuff. I know it’s what you want me to do, but if you think you’re going to railroad me by going through my brothers—”

“Are you serious right now?” Anger spiked inside of her. “You honestly think that I was trying to manipulate you?”

“Can you honestly say on any level that you weren’t?”

She almost exploded with denial, then stopped herself, chewing on the words for a moment. Being honest with herself—really honest—she supposed there was part of her that maybe brought it up in front of other people to get a more positive consensus. Because she knew it was a good idea, and she figured that if someone besides stubborn Finn heard it, she would find an ally.

“I thought so,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

“You know me,” she said, instead of denying it outright. “I was just carried away by my own enthusiasm. That’s all it was—I promise.”

“The situation with them... I cannot believe that they think they’re going to stay here and take ownership of this ranch. It’s mine.”

She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she remembered what had happened when she’d done that the night before. It had been strange. It had left her fingertips feeling tingly. And she didn’t want to do it again.

Instead, she did her best to make her face sympathetic. “I don’t know what to tell you. Except that life changes and people suck.”

“Thank you,” he said, his tone deadpan.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules. If I did, unicorns would be real and we would definitely have figured out teleportation by now.”

“I’d vote for you.”

Something about that made her stomach curdle. Mostly because it made her think of Cord again. She had been thinking of him way too much over the past few days. She felt wrung out. And watching Finn go through this too... She wanted to curl into a ball and lick her own wounds, not deal with his.

Typically, he was the steady rock of the two of them. He was a cowboy, for heaven’s sake. Riding around his property on a horse with a big hat. Doing all the work, day in day out. Finn was like the tide. Dependable. And always where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there.

But right now, he seemed on the verge of cracking, and when she had looked at someone and seen a stalwart for so long it was a little bit jarring.

And completely unfair. She was having a thing. She needed him to not have a thing right now.

“Thanks,” she said, feeling like a jerk, because of course he was having a hard time. He’d lost his grandfather, and now he was expected to share the ranch he’d invested his entire life in. Finn didn’t share well. And he didn’t unclench easily.

She had a feeling his real resistance to considering her plan had to do with the fact that he didn’t like being told what to do, even if he was being told to do the right thing.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, because she probably did owe him an apology. Maybe she hadn’t meant to be manipulative, but she couldn’t argue that there was a little of that underneath the surface. Even if it was well-intentioned and deeply buried manipulation. “I meant to bring pasta, not an agenda. And you know that I would never ask you to do something I thought was a bad idea. I’m not going to tell you to do something that benefits me but not you.”

“I know that. But too many things are changing, and I can’t consider another one right now.” He took a deep breath and moved to the edge of the porch, grabbing hold of the railing and wrapping his fingers around the top. “I was twelve the first time I came here. My father was consumed with Liam and Alex, who were younger, so they needed him more. My mom was involved in her own stuff. When I came here... I felt like my days had a purpose. I could change the earth with my hands. That’s pretty intense for a kid whose entire life was made hell by selfish adults. Who didn’t have control over one damn thing up until that point.”

He turned to look at her, his expression deadly serious. There was something in his face just then, the intensity and the glint of his dark eyes, the set of his square jaw and the firm press of his lips that made something respond inside her. An answering tension that began in the pit of her stomach and worked its way down her limbs, leaving something restless and edgy in its wake.

He continued, “I know that the rest of them all spent some time here. But nobody connected with the place like I did. And when I was sixteen I left my mom’s house for good. I came here, and my grandfather treated me like a man. He gave me work to do. He gave me a purpose. This place is my purpose.”

Her throat was dry, and so was her mouth. She wanted to do something. To close the distance between them.

Put her arms around him, maybe.

She could only imagine how he would react if she tried to hug him after he shared his feelings. He would probably have a straight-up allergic reaction.

So she just stayed where she was, curling her fingers into fists, trying to do something to stem that flow of restless energy that was coursing through her. This was where their friendship was strange. Because if it were Rebecca, Alison or Cassie, she wouldn’t hesitate to offer them some kind of physical comfort.

Here she was. Made of hesitation.

“I understand that,” she said, her voice sounding scratchy. “I mean, I know what it’s like to find hope in a place.” She bit her lip. She really didn’t like talking about the circumstances that had brought her to Copper Ridge. She was good at dancing around them. But Finn had been there from the beginning. So while he didn’t know the details—her brother didn’t even know—he had a sense of what it had been like in her childhood home.

“When I came here,” she said, “I felt lost. And scared. And yes, I had Mark, but leaving my parents like I did was... Terrifying. You don’t even know. Louise and Philip Jensen do not allow for dissent in the ranks. And I...dissented. Leaving like I did made it very clear, and I could never go back. As soon as I got to town it was like finding a safe haven. A harbor that sheltered me from the storm. I know that’s total hyperbole, but it’s the truth. My heart is here. So when you say that this ranch gave you focus, when you say that it matters—bone deep—I get it. I do. I’m not your enemy. But I might just play devil’s advocate. Maybe your brothers need this place right now too.”

He let out a long, heavy sigh. “I mean, I guess it could be worse.”

“How? Sneaker waves? An anvil falling from the sky?”

“No,” he said, his tone sounding impatient.

“Oh! Plague of locusts.”

“Lane,” he said, his tone a warning. “No. It could be worse because I could be the one stuck with a teenager.”

Lane wrinkled her nose. “Poor Cain.”

Though, in some ways, her heart went out to that girl. At sixteen, Lane’s life had changed forever. She’d been forced to grow up too quickly. She had a feeling that Violet had been too, though in a different way.

It was clear her mother wasn’t around, and Lane knew that no matter how messy your relationship with your parents was, it hurt when you finally pulled the plug on it.

“They won’t stay,” Finn said, and she had a feeling he was saying it more for his benefit than for hers.

“Maybe they won’t.”

“You don’t believe that.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, let the sounds of the night sink into her skin, all the way down to her bones. There was a faint dampness to the air, a tinge of salt and pine on the breeze. It was a cold night, but it was getting to be summer and she could hear the chirp of a few crickets. The faint croak of tiny tree frogs, likely hiding in the dampness beneath the porch.

“No,” she said eventually. “I don’t. Mostly because I don’t see why anybody would ever want to leave this place.”

“The ranch, or town in general?”

“I meant Copper Ridge in general. But I have to admit that this house has a leg up on my rather rustic little cabin. You’d better be careful, or I’m going to want to move in too.”

“I’m much more likely to move in with you,” he said after a pause. “I mean, if my house gets any more crowded.”

She laughed, and for some reason it sounded a little more nervous than she felt. “There may be fewer people in my house, but it’s small. Tiny. We would have to share a bed.”

For some reason, that comment seemed to land in an odd spot. It just kind of hit heavy between them, like a sad, popped balloon that had fallen back down to earth.

And they both just stood there, staring at it. “I mean,” she said, making a last-ditch effort to redeem it. “You would sleep on the floor. In my room. Like a slumber party. But don’t laugh at my headgear.” He still wasn’t saying anything. “We could braid each other’s hair, talk about boys...” Why wasn’t he saying anything? She really needed him to stop her. She was making it weird, and there was nothing to make weird. And yet, frequently over the past few days things had felt exactly that.

Something hard was in his gaze now, and she didn’t like it.

“Eat cookie dough,” she said finally. And then she was done. She really was done. “Okay.” She took a deep breath and started to step away from him. “I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe. I mean, you don’t have to see me tomorrow. But, actually at least call me, because I want to know what’s going on with everybody. Your brothers. That’s what I mean. Okay.”

She took a step away and he surprised her by reaching out, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her from taking another step. She froze, her gaze meeting his. Her heart kicked into a higher gear, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what was going on. But breathing was suddenly very difficult.

It was related to the awkwardness. To this whole strange path she had started to walk down earlier in the day, and had continued on into that never-ending ramble. And now it had led to this. Except, her mouth had stopped so her heart was now moving at a near-impossible pace.

“When I spend the night with a woman I don’t do any of those things.” His voice was rough, and it skimmed over her frazzled nerves in a way that sent a strange electric current through her. “Just so you know.”

Then he released his hold on her and she stumbled back, her skin burning where his fingers had just been.

He was holding on to the porch rail again, looking out into the darkness. “See you tomorrow.”

Lane got in her car and started to drive, and it wasn’t until she saw the lights on Main Street that her heart rate returned to normal.

CHAPTER SIX

THERE WERE FEW things more satisfying than looking across the breakfast table at his brothers at five in the morning and seeing just how miserable they were.

Cain was leaning back in his chair, his arm slung over the back like it was a brace that was keeping him from sliding right to the floor. Liam was scowling, one hand curved around a travel mug full of coffee, the other pushed into his dark hair, his elbow resting on the table, like it was propping his head up.

Alex was the only one who was upright, his cup held tightly in both hands, and placed down in his lap. Finn imagined the military ran on ranching time.

But the other two—they thought they wanted to be ranchers? They thought they wanted to live this life, this punishing, rewarding life that made you both master of and slave to the land around you? Yeah, he had a feeling that about now they were questioning that decision.

Their misery was balm for his soul.

And a much-needed distraction from all the tension that had wrapped itself around his spine and tied him up in knots over the past few days.

His grandfather. His family.

Lane.

Damned if he knew why he’d said what he had to her last night. Why he’d given in to that snarling, hot beast that was ravaging his gut and demanding he make her as uncomfortable as he was.

She had looked at him like—well, like he’d grown another head. Which should be all the reminder he needed as to why he didn’t go there with her. Ever.

He blamed his grandfather for dying. Blamed his brothers for being here. His whole damn life for being out of whack.

He needed to find his control again.

The ranch.

Once he got his brothers out there working, they would see how in over their heads they were. And how on top of things he was.

He took a sip of his coffee. “I get up this early every morning,” he commented. “Rain or shine. Can’t skip a day. Animals are needy like that.”

“You sound like Grandpa,” Liam said, his tone gravelly and terse.

“You hated it when you were sixteen, Liam. I don’t know what made you think you might like it now. Five o’clock is still very early in the morning.”

“Things change,” Liam returned.

“Not getting up before sunrise,” Finn said.

He turned and headed back toward the coffeepot, frowning when he saw that it was empty. That was going to take some adjusting. He was going to need to get an industrial-sized coffeemaker. He might be an early rising convert, but he didn’t do it without caffeine.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning back to face his brothers.

He led the way through the house, grabbing his Stetson off the shelf on his way out and positioning it firmly on his head. He didn’t bother with the jacket, though mornings were cold, even at the end of June.

It would warm up soon enough and he didn’t need to be encumbered.

The rest of them—he noticed—were wearing coats and sweatshirts. Only Alex had a hat on.

“You think it’s cold?” he asked, smiling. An evil smile filled with more than a little enjoyment for their suffering.

“I’ve been living in Texas for almost twenty years,” Cain responded. “This coastal air is mean.”

“Are you admitting that Texas made you soft? Because I think I hear the sound of an entire state challenging you to a duel.”

Cain grumbled something about Texans preferring a bar brawl to a duel while zipping his jacket up all the way as they made their way down the stairs and headed toward the barn.

Finn made quick introductions to the facility, and set to getting the cows into their positions. He made quick work of explaining prep and milking—since none of them were completely unfamiliar with it—and then he put every single one of them to work.

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.