A Cowboy's Home Read Online Free Page A

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.
    Then, without talking to anyone, he
deliberately turned off the main road and passed the staff houses,
heading up past Ember Bluff into the wilderness beyond. Way past
where people would ride, way out to the very edges of Crooked Tree,
and with every second Sam was out there, the rush of air