Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Connor
FAMILY DINNERS
Sally-May places the plate of roast chicken in the middle of the table. I don’t remember a time before she was cooking for the Beaker Brothers, but apparently, there were more than a few microwave meals involved.
Sally-May used to run the diner in town and sold up to retire, only she didn’t like not doing anything with her time, and so she cooks meals for the guys on the ranch and the guests who stay here.
Both Sally-May and her husband, Perry, live in a trailer home designed by their grandson.
It sits at the back of the main house, beside the vegetable gardens, and is connected by a covered porch and stairs.
She serves Perry a helping of chicken, and that’s our cue that we can all dig in.
Skye is quick to grab a couple of drumsticks, but I make a start on the sides first. Grilled corn, garlic broccoli, and cheesy cauliflower are taking up half my plate.
The table is a buzz of energy, arms crisscrossing, plates and cutlery clattering, and it’s second only to when I am alone in the cuddle cove with the cows on my list of favorite places to be.
Dean, the oldest of the Beaker brothers, passes his brother Nial the bread rolls.
“So who do you think is the critic?” Dean asks, and Nial shrugs.
“No clue. Maybe your tip was wrong, and none of them are.”
“What about a critic?” I ask, finally grabbing a few pieces of chicken from the middle of the table to finish off my plate.
Dean loads extra helpings of the grilled vegetable mix onto his boyfriend Preston’s plate as Preston adds a few helpings of green beans to his.
It should be totally corny, but I think it’s sweet the way they just naturally do things for each other.
Preston is the only vegetarian on the ranch, except for the city slickers in cabin twelve.
But they’ll check out after Christmas. Preston is here to stay, at least I hope he is. I’ve never seen Dean happier.
“We got wind that there would be a critic staying with us over Christmas, to review the experience. If they review it well, we’ll hopefully see an uptick in bookings and can run more experiences next year,” Dean goes on to explain.
“They’d just be reviewing the ranch, though, right?
Like they don’t want to know all about us, do they?
” I ask, a nervous swirl in my gut. I ran for so long from the spotlight, from the mess I made of my life.
The people who called themselves my family only to turn their backs on me when they learned who I really was.
It’s been so long, I’m sure none of them would recognize me if we were standing face to face, so hopefully whoever this critic is, doesn’t see the old me either.
I wonder if it’s Hayden. No. Wendy said he was writing a book.
Nial brushes his hair back with his fingers, a cheeky grin on his face.
“They can write about me if they want. I’ve got nothing to hide,” he boasts, and I realize just then that what I said could sound really suspicious.
“Oh, I don’t either, I just think it would do heaps more for the ranch to focus on the guest experiences rather than the guys running it,” I say, trying to explain myself and not draw attention to the fact that I really don’t want some reporter digging into my past.
Atlas raises his hand like he’s in middle school.
“You know what would get rave reviews,” he starts, but Dean interjects.
“No nudist weekends on the ranch.”
“Seriously, it would be so much fun, though. Can you imagine how nice it would be to go swimming in the pool naked under the stars?”
“Gross, dude. We’d have to triple the salt levels to kill off all your naked germs,” Nial says, and I laugh.
“You know that people are naked under their bathing suits, don’t you? Like the same parts of their body are in the water even if they are covered from view?” I say.
He frowns as that realization sets in.
“I’m never swimming with you guys again.”
Atlas points his fork in my direction.
“Okay, Connor is on board—“
“I never said that.”
“Come on, it will be fun.”
“It would be cold, and I don’t think people should be cuddling cows or riding horses in the nude.”
“They won’t be doing those things naked,” he tries to explain, and I notice how he talks about his nudist retreat like it’s a when, not an if thing that will happen.
He’s been trying for years to get the Beakers to agree.
Atlas is a nudist himself, which is why his trailer is the furthest from everything else out here.
A guest would have to cross the horse paddock to even get close.
“No nudist anything,” Dean says dryly, then turns his attention to me.
“Any ideas of who it could be?”
“I’ve only seen a couple of the guests check in so far. There’s the young couple in twelve, the sisters in seven and eight has that family who insisted they booked two cabins when we know they only booked one and wanted to try to get another one for free for their older kids.”
“I gave the two older kids cabin ten,” Nial interjects, and I shake my head.
“Should have given them a fold-out cot instead. I doubt they’re the ones reviewing this place.”
Nial rips open his bread roll and dips the torn end into the gravy on his plate.
“We had the room. Besides, five kids in one small cabin, how is that a vacation? Maybe they couldn’t afford to book two.”
“You’re starting to sound more and more like Dean. Better watch out, baby Beaker, or you’ll start people thinking you actually care.” I laugh, and he scoffs.
“The eldest of their kids is twenty and fit as fu…” he stalls, everyone’s gaze moving to Sally-May. This house might belong to the Beaker Brothers, but the dining room and kitchen are Sally-Mays.
“Firemen,” Nial continues, and I shake my head.
“Well, if it isn’t them that just leaves the couple from today, and the single guy, Larry something, in cabin three,” Dean says.
“The guy in the couple is writing a book,” I say.
Atlas waves his fork in my direction, flinging a remnant of chicken onto Skye’s plate. Skye picks it up and drops it on the table.
“Gross, man,” he says, and Atlas chuckles.
“Sorry. But also, it has to be the single guy, right?”
I shrug, thinking back to my exchange with Hayden in the cuddle cove. He was curious about how the cove started, about me, maybe he is writing the story. Or maybe he was just being friendly. I try to calm the churning in my gut with a mouthful of chicken and gravy.
It has to be Larry from cabin three. If I want to stay under the radar with him, I’ll have to keep him focused on the ranch and not on me.
Shouldn’t be too hard, really. He’s here for the Christmas Experience.
Ice sculpting, snow horseback riding, and bonfires under a starlit sky.
He’ll be too busy with all the activities to dig into my past. I’ve got nothing to worry about.
It’s been ten years since any news outlet has even mentioned my name online.
Not that I go online much. The family name pops up whenever my dipshit cousin decides he’s going to talk up his plans for the company’s future once our grandfather dies.
That was to be my future once, a time that feels forever ago.
I don’t even recognize the man I used to be.
A polished, arrogant fuckboy who thought going on television to find a wife was a super great idea.
Coming out and bolting on the would-be woman to win my heart was not in my plans and definitely not in my grandfather’s plans for my life.
He cut me off, and I ran away until I found my place here.
But these guys don’t even know who I used to be.
I came here, Connor Walker, and they never questioned my past. Just accepted me for who I was. Fuck. I’m not ready to run again.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Dean says, and Perry clears his throat and turns in his chair a little toward Dean.
“With the extra horses we’ve taken in and the cattle numbers, we’re going to need more feed before we’re through winter.”
“More?” Nial asks. “The sheds were pretty full last I checked. Are you sure it won’t last?”
Perry shakes his head.
“I’ve been through more winters on this ranch than years you’ve been breathing. We were cutting it close before we added another herd.”
“We had to take them in,” Dean says, and Atlas nods with a soft smile.
He found the group of wild horses wandering through cold brush on the outer perimeter of the acreage.
No one is ever out that way, so it was pure luck, or stupidity, that he came upon them.
He took Loki for a walk around the main house and gardens, and those freaky hairless chickens freaked him out, and he bolted.
So I guess Loki found them. Nine mares, seven studs, and three foals, each of those near death, skinny, and half frozen.
I still don’t know how he managed to rope them all and lead them back.
Wild horses usually have to be broken in before you can even get them to walk with a rope, but they just followed him into the stables like he was the fucking pied piper of horses. A true horse whisperer, Atlas is.
“We’ll find a way to make it work,” Skye says, always the optimist and I look around the table, determined smiles on every one of them.
“We always do.”
Dean nods, and while we go back to eating and chatting about the plans for this Christmas Experience for the millionth time, there is a heaviness in my heart that I just can’t shake. How the hell am I ever going to leave this place?