Chapter 3
CLAY
‘You had a late one last night.’
Clay grunted a non-reply at the enquiry directed at him by his father as he sipped on coffee so hot and strong, it should have come with a radioactive warning label. None of that frothy city shit for him.
Every morning his mother prepared a breakfast buffet for any staff who wanted to join them but this morning, so far at least, it was just family.
‘Not too hungover to work, today?’
‘I’m good,’ he said noncommittally.
He’d gone into Redemption to get away from the ranch and the cookout. Because he knew she’d be there and as much as he felt a tug towards her, everything about her screamed stay the fuck away.
On the circuit, weekend cowgirl would have been his catnip.
A little bit of sumthin’ sumthin’ with a woman who wanted the full cowboy experience for a night but not in her life?
Perfect. But out here? Back home? Where wanting things from his old life was redundant and messing with guests who didn’t look the casual type was liable to get the ranch one-star bombed online?
Nah. Instant attraction or not, he didn’t need that drama in his life.
So he’d caught up with some friends from the circuit passing through town. They’d had a few beers at The Corral, shoved some money in the old jukebox Beau the owner insisted on keeping because his mama had loved it so much and shot some pool. And yeah, he’d had a late one, but he hadn’t been drunk.
He’d indulged only to a Goldilocks level – just right. Legal enough to still drive, buzzed enough to give him an easy ride to sleepy town.
But it was a good reminder that, out here in the middle of nowhere, his pickup driving past the main house to get to his place around the bend in the track could be easily heard by people who were, by their very nature, light sleepers.
‘Good. Need you to do a one-on-one riding lesson with a guest in an hour.’
Clay’s gaze cut to his father. At fifty, John Calhoun was still as big and vital as Clay remembered. Sure, his hair was greyer and his hands more calloused, but he had the rangy physicality and the energy of a much younger man.
‘No. Way.’
About as un-shiftable as the mountains, John Calhoun just shrugged. ‘They’ve paid for the best and that, according to you for the entirety of your life, means you.’
Yeah… he should have known that was going to bite him on the ass one day. ‘What about Mags? She can do it.’
He glanced across the table at his sister scoffing down bacon and eggs like it was her last meal.
She ate like the zombie apocalypse was about to break out – always had.
The rivalry between him and his sister, younger by two years, was legendary so he wasn’t about to admit she was almost – but not quite – as good as him.
She’d spent a couple of years on the pro-circuit herself conquering the barrel-racing world until she realised she didn’t like the nomadic lifestyle and she really missed home.
Dude ranch or not.
‘And she’s better at ass kissing.’
Completely unperturbed by his insult, Mags grinned around her crammed mouthful. She could cuss like a sailor and hold her own with any cowboy on the ranch but she could also be sweet as pie if required.
His father shook his head. ‘She’s got the trail ride. Unless you want to switch and do that?’
His sister grinned bigger. A trail ride meant plodding along with multiple weekend cowboys for a couple of hours and that made his brain itch.
‘Can’t Dev or Walt or Kirby do the trail ride and Mags take the one-on-one?’ Hell, any one of the hands on the ranch could – and did – lead a damn trail ride.
‘They’ve already started moving the stock to the south pasture.’
‘I know. I’m supposed to be helping them.’
‘And you can.’ His father smiled at him. ‘After the one-on-one.’
What Clay hated most of all about coming back to the ranch, apart from his feelings of failure, was how out of touch he’d become. This place that he’d called home for seventeen years had gone on without him.
Which of course it had. He hadn’t expected he’d walk back in a decade after leaving and everything would be the same, but he hated that he didn’t know his place in it any more.
That he felt like an outsider.
‘We agreed I didn’t have to have anything to do with the tourist side of the business.’
Implacably, his father nodded. ‘We did.’
Which meant, as his father was a man of his word, they really needed him to do this. Was the ranch in trouble again? He glanced at his mom.
As if she could read his mind, she smiled at him reassuringly. ‘She’s a special client paying top dollar. And here at the RVR’ – she winked at him – ‘we aim to please.’
‘She’s super cute, too,’ Mags chimed in.
And that was when Clay knew who their top-dollar guest was. He just knew. Because of course it would be the woman he’d been trying not to think about since yesterday morning.
‘And famous.’
Clay frowned. ‘Famous?’
‘It’s Stephanie Everhart. You know, “Forever Without You”. Won a Grammy earlier in the year.’
Stephanie Everhart?
That’s why she’d seemed a little familiar yesterday. The song had been all over the country stations this past year. It was rare to turn on the radio and not hear the tremulous notes of Stephanie Everhart’s breaking heart. She’d written it about her sister, he remembered. Who’d died in a car crash.
‘And she’s here for a month,’ his mother added.
‘A month?’ What. The. Fuck? It was going to be real hard to avoid her for a month!
‘Uh huh,’ she confirmed. ‘So you better get your Howdy Ma’ams all polished up because you’re going to be seeing her around a lot.’
Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of.
‘Why a month?’ Nobody stayed that long. Three days pulled most people up. ‘Are they thinking of… buying the place?’
Wait… was the ranch going under again? A knot of anxiety tightened in his gut. He thought the hospitality side had really pulled them out of a hole. There’d certainly been a lot of money invested back into the actual ranch side whilst he’d been away. But maybe his parents had overcapitalised?
Theresa Calhoun laughed. ‘No, silly. She’s a country music singer from Boston. Her record label wants her to have a crash course in ranch living so they sent her and her mom here.’
Her mom. So, that was the older woman who had interrupted their little eyes-across-a-dusty-ring moment yesterday.
‘They want her to be able to ride a horse – authentically. And look comfortable in dusty jeans and muddy boots. That kind of thing. They’re shooting a film clip to her next song in a few months and they want her to look like she knows what she’s doing.’
Clay almost rolled his eyes. Some record label executives thought a month of trail rides, line-dancing sessions and cookouts would make Stephanie Everhart into a cowgirl? And because of that harebrained notion, he had to handhold the city girl.
The city girl he sure as fuck wanted to do some riding with – just not in any way her record label or her helicopter mama, he suspected, envisaged.
‘If we play our cards right, they might even use the ranch as the location for the video, which would be an amazing opportunity.’
‘What kind of opportunity?’
‘Being able to showcase the ranch as a location potential for film and TV,’ Mags supplied with enthusiasm. ‘Could be another solid stream of income.’
Solid income stream? What the hell?
He blinked at his mother and Mags, who were looking at him like it was he who wasn’t getting it, not them.
Firstly, he hated that his sister seemed to know more about the internal workings and financial status of the ranch than he did.
That was his own fault but it still rankled.
Mostly, though, he really hated the idea of the ranch as a potential movie set.
Clay’s gaze cut to his father, who was also heartily enjoying his breakfast. Surely John Calhoun wouldn’t be on board with turning the ranch into a fucking circus?
He’d been resistant to the dude ranch initially all those years ago; surely he could see this development would be even more disruptive.
Because it would be.
His folks had no idea how invasive a camera crew could be, but Clay did.
He’d seen enough TV action on the circuit – from post-ride interviews for ESPN to appearing on sports shows to being involved in a couple of rodeo documentaries – to know how the myopic production of it all sucked up every atom of oxygen.
‘Okay.’ Clay placed his mug on the table. ‘You guys have got to level with me… is the ranch in some kind of financial trouble again?’
This was his fault. He’d been home for over a year now, cranky and surly because the pain had been the pits and his career was over so why would his parents confide in him? Put an extra burden on his plate when he’d been coping with a lot already?
But Mags was clearly in the know around here, treated like a partner in the family business, and it was about time he was too.
He just needed to pull his head out of his ass.
Yes, he’d been through a lot but he’d worked hard at both his physical therapy and on the ranch and he was fighting fit again, so he didn’t want to be kept in the dark any longer.
‘Honey, no.’ His mom reached across the table and squeezed his forearm. ‘The ranch is in really good shape.’
‘Then…’ Clay’s brow crinkled. ‘Why the need for extra income?’
‘Come on, son.’ His father’s voice was gentle despite the impatience on his face.
‘You think almost going bankrupt a decade ago hasn’t re-shaped our thinking?
We need the ranch to be sustainable and to do that it’s only smart to diversify our income streams. That way if the beef market tanks, we have something else to rely on.
If another pandemic hits, we have another avenue that doesn’t rely solely on visitors being able to travel. ’
His father didn’t say and you’d know that if you’d been here at the coal face with us while we brought the ranch back from the brink but Clay plucked out the subtext as if it had been hewn from his own guilt.
‘So, could you just do the damn one-on-one already?’
His parents had been tippy-toeing around him for a while now, being as understanding and supportive as they’d always been.
They’d never made him feel guilty about going his own way – in fact they’d encouraged it.
And they’d travelled to as many of his events as possible, hollering the loudest. Always.
And when he’d been laid up in hospital and at the rehab facility, his mom had been by his side every step of the way.
Convalescing on the ranch was never a request he’d had to voice.
But clearly his father was done with the softly, softly. John Calhoun wasn’t asking much and Clay owed them. He knew his parents didn’t see it that way, that parental love wasn’t transactional for them, but it didn’t make it any less true.
It was about time he returned some of their support even if he didn’t like what was being asked of him.
Clay nodded curtly as Mags grinned and waggled her eyebrows at him. She hadn’t cut him any slack. In fact she’d been badgering him for months now about going into business together to breed stock horses for the circuit.
Throwing back the last of his coffee, he stood, grabbing his hat from the chair beside him before bidding everyone a brusque goodbye.
As he reached the door his mother’s quiet ‘Clay?’ pulled him to a stop.
Without turning to acknowledge her, he huffed out a breath. ‘I know,’ he muttered. ‘Be nice,’ before cramming on his hat and striding out the door.
That was the problem though. The ways he could be nice to Stephanie Everhart were lining up like ducks in a row and he was pretty sure that was not the nice his mama meant.