A Cowboy's Home (5 page)

Marcus waved away the explanation. “Good.
Come up to ours for something to eat. Seven? Sophie’s making stew.”
He finished his coffee and placed the empty cup down.

“I’ll be there.” Sam wasn’t enough of a
culinary snob to turn down home cooking, especially not Sophie’s
stew, all thick gravy and chunks of meat and vegetables.

Marcus left.

Sam was distracted by the couple at table
six, who’d sat chatting there for at least two hours by then, heads
bent close, with an iPad between them. They were all smiles.

They looked like they’d been together
forever; she with gray hair and a ready smile, he with darker hair
threaded with silver and a propensity for touching the back of her
hand.

I’ll have that, one day.

Thing was, Sam already had the odd gray hair,
but still no permanent guy in his life, and at thirty-three, he was
feeling his age.

Stupid, really.

Sam scraped his plate clean. He’d eaten in a
myriad of fine dining places, but nothing beat a family recipe made
with love, and he told Sophie that.

She blushed and made a show of clearing the
table.

Everyone helped to clear away, and Ashley
pulled out a tray of exquisite mini cheesecakes, serving them with
hot black coffee.

I miss this when I’m not here.
Not the
food or the desserts, but the families he’d become involved
with.

The table was packed.
It seemed
like everyone on the ranch was there, even
Adam, although he sat at the other end from Sam, between Gabe and
Ethan, who fielded questions as Adam looked more and more tired.
Those three also had their heads down, doing a lot of talking;
about what, Sam wasn’t sure. Maybe the poor guy was getting some of
his memories back, and hell, how hard must it have been to lose
everything?

Ashley hurried the kids out the door with a
quick kiss for Gabe, and Jay went with them, carrying a dozing
Josh, an awkward mess of long, coltish limbs and fluffy brown
hair.

God, that kid was cute.

Sophie excused herself with coffee and her
Kindle, but not before she pressed a soft kiss to the top of
Marcus’ head.

And then it was him, Marcus, Ethan with his
arms around a tired-looking Adam, Nate, Gabe, and Luke all sitting
around the large, scarred table.

Marcus cleared his throat and looked
pointedly at Nate, who rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Is this gonna take long?” Luke asked. “I
have a project I need to finish.”

Luke was at the University of Montana, on the
Bozeman campus, studying art, talented and dedicated to what he
did. He was home this week, something about a semester break. Sam
didn’t fully get the college system, never having experienced a
single day of it. All he knew was that Luke was home, and Kirsten
too, who was in her first year at a college in Seattle, or
somewhere like that.

Sam always thought the two of them would end
up with each other, but since college, it seemed that they were
happier as friends.

“Five minutes,” Gabe said and elbowed
him.

Luke elbowed back, and then they did that
stupid brother-grin thing they shared.

Part of Sam bemoaned that even though he had
a brother; Ben was more likely to stab him than tussle with
him.

“Seeing as no one else will do it,” Nate
began with a put-upon sigh. “We have a proposal for you.”

Sam realized Nate was talking to him, and he
sat back in his chair. “Okay?”

Maybe they wanted him to cater something or
organize a wedding or an event, something in his remit. He wondered
if it was Gabe’s wedding to the gorgeous Ashley, but Gabe wasn’t
jumping in after his brother started, so it couldn’t be that. And
Sam was already working with the couple on the catering,
anyway.

“We know that without Branches, or more
specifically, the work you do at Branches, we wouldn’t be pulling
in the passing trade, so to speak. The ones who see the leaflets
Jay produces for the family days.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. Nate sounded an
awfully serious and not one iota teasing or laughing. “Thank you.”
He hesitated as he said that.

Where is this going?

“All the families are here.” Nate gestured
around the guys at the table, at himself and the other two Todd
brothers, at Adam, the only Strachan at the table, and at Marcus
and Ethan, the Allens’ representatives. “And we’ve been
talking.”

Nate cleared his throat again. “Gabe said
you’d been talking about moving to Miami, heading for the sun,
setting up a restaurant down there?”

Sam glanced at Gabe, who dipped his head.
“That was just us shooting the shit, talking about—Look, why is
that…?” He didn’t even know what he was asking.

“We don’t want you to go, any of us. So we
voted. We’d like you to have a permanent stake in the ranch, to
become part of the place, so when you work, you see payback, you
get a sense of permanence.” Nate looked at Sam steadily as he said
that.

“Oh.” Sam was just this side of freaked out
with the way everyone was staring at him.

“So instead of a salary, you’d profit-share,
like on some kind of bonus scheme or something. I don’t know how,
we didn’t get that far, but hearing you talk about leaving was a
kick up our collective asses.”

Sam shook his head; it was all way too much
to take in. They were looking for him to agree to a long-term
commitment? He’d already decided, just that day, that he was
staying at Crooked Tree. All his wanderlust thoughts had been wiped
out by going back to see his family. He didn’t need to move to
another state to escape the crap at home; he’d already done that by
coming to Montana, and he loved it here.

Here at Crooked Tree they liked him, they
even forgave him for his quick and fiery temper, put it down to him
being a chef. But it all sounded wrong. Like he was being rewarded
for something he’d already decided to do, and he wasn’t that much
of a bastard. “I’m not leaving,” he admitted. “I’m happy here. But
I do have something I want to say.” He considered his words
carefully. “I want to buy into Crooked Tree.”

“The arrangement we all agreed to would be….”
Nate looked down at the papers in front of him and frowned.

“Not an investment as such,” Gabe finished
for him.

Sam shook his head. “No, I want to own a part
of it, maybe just Branches, or a percentage of the whole thing,
something like that, but I’d like it to be my stake in the rest of
my life.” Then he stopped, because that was kind of forward, and
God, could he sound any needier? But his grandmother’s insistence
that the family reject was never going to succeed was fire in his
blood.

Silence.

Nate’s only comment was physical—he raised
his eyebrow in question, a typical Nate reaction.

Sam went on. “I have…”
an inheritance?
It wasn’t exactly that, more like blood money. He cleared his
throat and saw everyone waiting expectantly, and abruptly he wanted
more, but how could he ask for that when he wasn’t family? “I have
some money that came to me this week.”

He saw the men at the table share looks that
spoke of compassion and regret at Sam’s supposed loss.

“Two fifty, a quarter million, and you can
have it all if I can have a permanent place here. Part of the
ranch.”

Somewhere to stop and take stock of
everything I want.
There. Saying that felt right and was the
most perfect end to this otherwise shitty week.

“Fuck me,” Luke murmured, “that’s a lot of
money.”

Gabe elbowed his brother. “Wash your mouth
out.”

Luke pushed him back. “You do that.”

Marcus interrupted the good-natured
bickering. “We were thinking more of a partnership, not an
investment.”

Sam nodded. He hadn’t expected the idea to
fly. He might feel like this was home and these people were
friends, but they would never truly be family. As always, he was on
the outside looking in. “I understand,” he offered. “It was just a
thought, to give the ranch a cash injection and at the same time I
would…
y’know
.”

And that sentence had started so
strong
.

More silence, and Sam waited for them to
laugh him out of the room.

“Why not?” Nate said to Marcus. “That would
make sense, give Sam a stake in the place. It would be a fair way
of doing things. We could get the ranch valued, assess an
investment.”

Adam cleared his throat to get everyone’s
attention. “I can’t speak for Cole”—Adam pressed his fingers to his
temples, evidently in the middle of one of his headaches—“but Sam
can certainly buy into my cut, and I’ll invest the money in
extending the stables.” He looked up and met Nate’s eyes. “We need
that,” he said simply, then ruined the serious effect by
yawning.

“I agree, and I’ll match that from my share,”
Gabe said. “It makes no sense for Sam to be such a big part of
Crooked Tree without some kind of say in what we do.”

Luke nodded. “What Gabe said.”

Nate looked at his brothers and nodded.
“Okay, then the Todd family is in.”

“We can’t give you what Justin would have,”
Ethan murmured, casting a look at his dad, who closed his eyes
briefly and then nodded. “But I’ll sign over part of a future
inheritance from Dad; have our lawyers draw up something official.
We could get everything valued properly; make sure we’re not
ripping you off somehow.”

“Seriously? A real investment? I would
actually own a small part of Crooked Tree?” Sam was waiting for the
catch, and when Nate tapped his pen, over and over, on the pad in
front of him, he knew Nate would add the provisos. Here came the
extra bits: he would have 0.002 percent, and only for a year or
something. Sam had never owned anything before, apart from his
bikes, but he wanted to be part of the ranch so badly.

“I think that is decided, then,” Nate
concluded.

Sam slumped back in his chair, the prickle of
tears warring with the absolute sheer joy of expectation clutching
at his chest. He could make a stand here, make something real. “I
don’t know what to say,” he whispered.

Nate held out a hand; Sam shook it. “Branches
wouldn’t be what it is without you,” Nate pointed out. “It’s good
business sense.”

Sam left the meeting feeling lighter than
he’d done all week, and he made his way up to his apartment over
the restaurant. He stopped just inside the door, pressed his hands
to the wood, and grinned.

His grandmother would be turning in her grave
if she could see that he wasn’t throwing the money away, that her
gay grandson would actually amount to something.

“That shows you,
witch
,” Sam said to no one.

That shows all of you.

A noise woke Sam from a deep sleep with
dreams that may or may not have revolved around a naked Ryan
Reynolds. He lay for a minute, blinking up at the ceiling in that
perfect moment between dreams and reality, thinking it might be
just the right time to get off to the fantasy in his head; his hand
closed around his erection.

Crash.

It sounded
like someone had dropped crockery from a great height.
What the
hell?

Sam pulled on his jeans, his erection a
dwindling memory, and tugged on a worn tee. As he slid his feet
into sneakers, he was alert for more noise. He glanced around,
looking for a weapon of sorts. Why didn’t he own a baseball bat, or
a hockey stick, or something he could use? His cell was charging in
the kitchen, he shouldn’t have needed it at on hand at Crooked
Tree, for God’s sake.

Branches was always painfully quiet after
everyone went home.

A quick glance at his alarm clock: 03:07. He
tilted his head, concentrating on sound and hearing nothing.
Carefully, he descended the stairs to the back way into the
restaurant. The door was closed; he pressed an ear to it to try to
make out who was there. No one came into the restaurant after it
closed.

Sam imagined the path he’d take when he went
inside. He’d cross immediately to the knife block and grab the
first blade he could reach. He didn’t have moves, but he could fake
it. Then he would grab his cell and call Nate, or Ethan, who was
home this weekend… Ethan was good; he was a cop and had a gun in a
lockbox in his car.

Cautiously he pushed the door open. His eyes
worked to focus through the dark; the moon was filtering in a small
amount of light. Sam couldn’t see anything out of place from this
angle. The tables were set for breakfast for the people booked into
cabins. Nothing looked wrong.

He crept out into the eating area and made
his way to the kitchen in his stealthiest mode, reaching for the
knives in the knife block and pulling the first one he could find,
the one with the sharpest carving blade. They weren’t his best
knives, they were the ones out for show; Sam’s working knives were
wrapped up and put away safely, but this would do.

His cell was maybe six feet away, and holding
the knife like the characters he’d seen in horror movies, he
reached for the phone.

But he hadn’t turned the fucking charger on
at the wall, and the thing was as useless as a fucking dead
thing.

He pocketed it anyway and moved toward the
large walk-in pantry. Something crunched beneath his feet and he
glanced down—the white of pottery shards on the floor.
It looked
like a bowl had fallen from the
pile stacked ready for cereal in the morning, and it had smashed
into tiny pieces on the floor.

The shadows in the kitchen were giving him
hives and Sam swallowed as he reached for the light switch.
Illumination was what he needed.

Light flooded the space, and he whirled
around, knife extended, waiting for someone to jump him. He might
only be five nine and not that built, but he was fast on his feet
and he’d watched enough action movies to know where to stab
someone.