A Cowboy's Home (3 page)

Maybe Jamie Crane would be the one who got
away. The one man who’d actually won after what he’d done to Justin
and Adam;
the one who lived
.

His vision dimmed a little and he blinked
away the blurriness. He was going to die there on the side of the
road.

No.

Finding somewhere on Montana dirt to die
wasn’t enough. If Justin was going to let the poison inside him eat
away at his flesh, it had to be real and forever, back where it all
started.

He wanted to find a small corner of Crooked
Tree, and he wanted to die there.

Rob’s voice echoed in his thoughts.
“Cowboy, don’t make me kill you.”

Justin wanted to go home.

Sam Walter stopped at the entrance to Crooked
Tree. He’d only been away a week, but he already had the feeling
that everything had changed. Over the past few years the Todd and
Allens families, had worked hard to make the ranch more as it had
been in its prime. Not to mention Adam Strachan, still rocking the
memory loss but working with the horses.

He worked hard here, belonged here, deserved
to be here. So, why did he feel like he wanted to stop and not go
in at all?

He climbed down off the Ducati and wheeled
its great weight over to the side, set it on its stand, and sat on
the low wall by the ranch sign, attempting to get his thoughts in
order. He’d sold his Harley two weeks back, and he kind of missed
it.

“
We never expected to see you.”
Those
were the words that summed up his last week. From his brother’s
formal phone call advising their grandmother had died, to the
moment Sam left after the funeral, he went against every single
thing he’d promised. First off he’d gone home, which in itself was
a miracle. Facing off to his parents—all smart suits, Chanel for
his mom, Hugo Boss for his dad, and accents that reeked of money,
and not to mention the Bentleys in the drive, was just the start of
a miserable seven days.

“Why would you even think she’d want you
here?” his mom had added the question to the stunned aura of
disapproval from his dad.

Sam’s relationship with his grandmother had
been as twisted and toxic as the one he had with his parents. Her
last weeks had been ice-cold; the letter arriving two weeks ago
said she expected him at her funeral but didn’t want to see him
before that. He was, she said, abhorrent to God but he had to be
there to present a united face to the rest of the world. Who even
used words like abhorrent anymore, and what did Sam care about a
God who’d made a family like that?

Samantha Eleanora Walter-Bridges, the woman
he’d been named for, had been just as instrumental as his father in
blocking him from their lives. She’d overridden Samuel’s mother
small glimpse of compassion toward the son she’d always adored.
That poor woman had never been strong, marrying into a family that
considered public face more important than love.

His grandmother had been responsible for Dad
cutting him out of his inheritance, even the money Sam had tucked
away each birthday and Christmas.

No Walter-Bridges son is gay
, she told
him with icy calm in her quietest,
tightest
voice.
A Walter-Bridges marries well, becomes
part of the family firm of investment bankers, and fathers two
perfect children. A Walter-Bridges son does not fuck the hired
help
.

Or, indeed, get his photo with said hired
help in the society blogs that loved to kick a guy when he was
down.

But Sam had gone to the funeral because she
dangled money in front of his face and told him he was going to be
well paid for attending and keeping up appearances. Well, not in so
many words, but a quarter-million dollars wasn’t something to be
sniffed at.

The letter ended with the suggestion that his
family would forgive him for what he’d done if only he changed, and
that maybe money could buy him a new life. She even suggested that
if he attended, she could forgive him in whatever heaven she
resided in for his gross ways.

Sam didn’t go to the funeral for money or
forgiveness, he just wanted to make sure she was six feet under,
and he hoped to God her ghost wasn’t around to haunt him.

“I don’t hate my family” was all he said at
her graveside. “I want a family, just not this one.”

He didn’t care about inheritance. Sam needed
his mom to love him; he needed his dad
not to stare
at him like he was dirt on his shoes, and he
needed his spineless brother to back him up.

They never had. They’d listened to the one
person who held the purse strings, the matriarch of the family.

His grandmother likely never imagined he
would go back. No, she was probably convinced he wouldn’t. But he
needed to be there for that moment when they dropped her into the
ground.

The day had been sunny and bright, not
storming as though the heavens were raging at her loss. People
weren’t sobbing at her graveside. Some stood in quiet respect, but
others seemed uncomfortable to be there.

Certainly Sam wasn’t sobbing, and he met
every pointed stare with equal force.

He’d needed his family when he was sixteen.
They’d turned on him. They didn’t deserve his respect.

But then it was done, and in his pocket was
the payoff. The money she’d promised him as a reward for staying
away and making a life that wasn’t a stain on the Walter-Bridges
family, for making the move to become what she wanted him to
be.

Yeah right, that isn’t happening.

It wasn’t much. Two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars out of an estate worth a hundred times that. Blood
money.

Half of him had wanted to take the envelope
from his brother’s hands and rip it in two. But he hadn’t. What
would that prove to anyone? Nothing except that he could act
hysterically, and he was fucked if he was giving his family any
kind of emotion that day.

Benjamin watched him take the envelope. “You
can always give it to charity,” he said, unable to look Sam in the
eyes—probably because Ben’s eyes were dull, his face worn, making
him look older than forty-three. The drugs and stress were close to
killing him.

“Fuck you,” Sam said.

Then he took the linen envelope and pocketed
it in his trademark leather jacket that he’d worn to the funeral.
Fuck Ben, fuck his ice-hearted parents, and fuck the grandmother
who’d told his sixteen-year-old self that he was a sinner who would
go to hell.

Fuck all of them.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said. He even held out a
hand to shake, but he still wouldn’t look at Sam, even though he
attempted a smile.

Sam ignored Ben’s hand, and left.

With his grandmother safely in the ground,
Sam drove away from the mausoleum of a house, and the family that
had rejected him.

And then he was home.

Because that was what Crooked Tree was to
him. Home.

Up there, just past the bend, at the end of
the long drive and over the bridge was his restaurant, Branches.
Sam was master there, in charge of his own destiny, making
something for himself. He had friends there, people who actually
cared about him and had never once judged him for who he was.

A car left the road and turned into the
drive, and he recognized the low hum of a Jeep Wrangler and knew
who it was. Nate.

Part of Sam wished he hadn’t stopped there,
hadn’t decided to have a meltdown in a position where someone could
see him. The other half of him was damn pleased it was Nate who’d
found him.

Nate pulled over onto the verge, killed the
engine, and clambered out of the cab. “Hey,” Nate said a little
uncertainly, hovering by the car.

“Hey, big guy,” Sam said in his usual flirty
tone.

Nate ambled over; his thumbs in his belt
hooks and his face a picture of unease. Nate wasn’t big on
emotional scenes, which was one of the reasons Sam was relieved it
was Nate getting first talk at “poor, bereaved Sam.”

“May I sit?” Nate asked and inclined his head
to the wall.

Sam nodded. “It’s your ranch.” Although he
wasn’t trying for cold, he probably sounded offhand, and regretted
the way he’d spoken when Nate winced. “Sorry. Of course,” he
amended.

Nate smiled awkwardly and then sat. A while
back—a long while, before Jay landed in their laps—Sam would have
loved a chance to climb Nate like a tree and make love until
morning made them leave the bed. But Nate wasn’t into bratty chefs
with a line in sarcasm, a fact borne out by the way Jay and Nate
had clicked so quickly.

Sam loved the both of them, so he wasn’t
complaining. He’d tried flirting with Jay, too, even though Jay was
Nate’s, for no other reason than he loved to see Nate all riled
up.

Nate asked, “How did it go?”

Well, that was a leading question, wasn’t it?
Nate didn’t know Sam’s real name, or his family background, or
anything of any importance. Because, hell, the name Walter-Bridges
didn’t mean much outside of Tacoma. All Nate knew was that Sam’s
grandmother had died and he’d gone home for the funeral.

Sam shrugged. “It was a funeral,” he said, as
if that explained everything.

Nate sighed.
“I’m
so sorry, Sam.
I didn’t get to see you before you went, but
I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Sam murmured. A nice simple
answer that didn’t leave any room for questions or comments.

Unfortunately, Nate was following the
tried-and-trusted formula when it came to talking to the recently
bereaved:
Sorry for your loss, time heals all hurts,
blah-blah
.

“Were you close?” Nate asked.

Because that was what people did, they asked
the same list of questions to frame the bereavement so they could
understand the impact of the loss on the person they were talking
to.

Emotions boiled inside Sam.
Close?
They had been, as much as a family mired in society could be, until
just after his sixteenth birthday.

They’d been all cheek kisses and politeness
on family occasions. But Sam hadn’t thought much of his
grandmother’s place in his life until the embarrassingly clichéd
photos of him with the gardener surfaced. And then Sam found out
exactly how much control she exerted over her idiot son and his
equally vapid wife. And, inevitably, her grandchildren.

“No.” Sam kept the response simple. No sense
in adding anything to the mix; what was done was done. Another
cliché, and wasn’t that what people said?

“Okay, then,” Nate said, breaking the awkward
silence.

They sat for a few moments, Sam in his own
headspace and Nate wriggling a little on the wall. The envelope was
heavy in Sam’s pocket, and his backpack,
with everything he’d taken to Tacoma
, was weighing him
down just as much. He hefted its weight and held it out to Nate.
“Will you take that up for me?”

Nate nodded and took the bag. “I’ll put it in
Jay’s office. He’ll keep an eye on it.”

A car pulled off the road and onto the ranch;
a family in Western-style shirts stared at them as they passed.

“The Bennet family,” Nate muttered. “If I
have to tell the dad once more that he isn’t John Wayne…. You back
tomorrow?”

Unspoken was the question
can we reopen
Branches tomorrow?

“Yeah. Back to normal.”

Nate bumped shoulders with him. “You need
time… or to talk….”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“What you doing now? You want to come up and
get a beer?”

“Don’t you have the Bennet family to deal
with?”

“Adam has them to begin with. I have a
while.”

Sam looked into eyes filled with a sincere
need to help. Nate was the kind of guy who always wanted to be
there for people.

“Nah,” Sam said and gestured at his bike.
“I’m switching rides and taking the dirt bike up into the
hills.”

Nate nodded, gave him a small smile. “Don’t
scare the horses.”

That was a moot point. Sam wouldn’t even be
on the same side of the ranch as the horses or the clients who
played cowboy there. He had his own places, and rushing up and down
steep inclines and the freedom to race through empty trails was as
near to nirvana as possible.

“I’ll try not to.” He watched Nate climb into
his Jeep.

Seeing Nate was a steadying influence on Sam,
even though he hadn’t wanted to go through that. Nate would report
back, warn everyone up there that Sam was feeling introspective,
and likely grieving, and probably should be left alone.

That way no one would think to talk to him or
want him to explain his feelings.

The alternative—that he snapped and told them
everything—was a horror he wasn’t prepared to consider, so he
climbed on his bike.

Sam paused as yet another car entered, this
one with a group of men, probably here for one of the ranch
experiences on some kind of team-building day. Jay had it all
covered in his brochures, selling Crooked Tree Ranch for all the
good things a person could do there.

Including eating. Branches was getting more
popular, not just as a place to grab coffee and lunch at an event,
but catering for the team-building days.

Those guys must have been the Evans party,
lawyers out of Missoula. They hadn’t wanted food, just a finger
buffet of sorts, and Ashley had promised him she could handle
it.

Sam didn’t doubt that for one minute.

He contemplated going back to work to give
her a hand, but the nervous twitch in his right eye told him that
would be a completely bullshit move. Nope, he was getting his other
bike, and then he could shake the shit growing out of all
proportion inside his head.

Back at Branches, in the space he used to
park his bikes, Sam locked down the Ducati, switching to the
off-road bike built for the forests. He should change into his old
clothes, but he couldn’t be bothered. He had his leather jacket, he
had his helmet, and he’d worn boots to the funeral, and he’d be
fine.