Chapter 32 – Cody
Chapter Thirty-Two
Cody
The Ranch
Ican tell Shay doesn’t like the ranch from the second we walk in through the front door.
I hired somebody to clean up before we got here, but it’s a dude ranch out in Oklahoma, which means that their notions of clean are very different from Shay’s.
She doesn’t want Caleb sleeping alone in his bedroom, claiming she’s afraid that there might be rattlesnakes roaming around.
Christ. It’s not that bad out here, is it? I thought she might have to get used to the fact that we’re twenty-five miles out from the nearest gas station and fifty miles out from the nearest supply store but… you get used to it after a while and I never knew Shay to be anything but a homebody.
Before bed – she refuses my efforts to make love to her – she tells me that she needs her beauty sleep so she can spend all of the next day cleaning up my “filthy bachelor pad” to her standards.
“I wanted to show you the horses,” I whisper as I hold her soft belly and cuddle her to sleep.
Shay shows no appreciation for my affections at this point. I run my hands over her stomach and she gives me a little uncomfortable kick.
“I feel like the horses are here with us,” she murmurs. “It smells like a farm everywhere.”
“You’re not an outdoorsy girl?”
A loud hooting from an owl causes Shay to flinch in a way that she totally tries to play off. I hold her closer. There’s nothing that can get to her out here – not even that ex-husband of hers.
“No,” Shay says. “But… It looks like I don’t have much of a choice. There’s nothing but desert over here.”
She falls asleep first and when I hear her snoring, I let my guard down enough for me to join her in the land of dreams.
Shay doesn’t want to eat in the morning.
Caleb has a lot more enthusiasm for our surroundings.
Shay says that she’s going to take a shower, but I can hear the sound of her scrubbing brush going crazy in there while I prep a meal for Caleb.
I feel like I fucked up bringing her here, but it’s the only thing I can think of to keep her safe.
We’re in for a fucking mess out here. I’m halfway through cooking breakfast for Caleb when Beau Hollingsworth comes striding through my front door without knocking.
Nobody locks their doors around here and I don’t have any boundaries with my ranch hands because we don’t have any need for them.
We’re all dudes, we all love horses and being out under the open sky – horses are the only thing I love more than bikes.
Beau stands almost at my height. He has his beard cut short, and it’s a copper color, a lot more red than the hair on his head. But he has a hell of a lot of red hair – more than Tanner, even. He also has a big red sunburn all across his face and neck.
“CODY!” Beau yells. “WHAT THE HELL!”
Caleb stares at Beau like he just saw a Bigfoot. The kid’s face contorts as Beau’s ugly mug and loud voice sends the kid bursting into tears. Oh fucking hell.
“Since when did you adopt a Mexican?” Beau asks loudly – and stupidly.
I rush over to comfort Caleb in his high chair.
He reaches out for me, shrieking at the top of his lungs as Beau takes his Stetson off and sets it on the counter.
I look at the trail of bootprints entering the house and I know Shay is going to lose her head when she comes out here.
Fuck.
“This is my son, Caleb.”
I hold him, letting the kid sit warm against my chest and feel my steady breathing so he can just calm down a little bit. I would be scared of Beau Hollingsworth too if I were his size. Beau looks at him curiously and waves.
“Hi, Caleb,” Beau says, flashing him a smile. “Hola… Bienvenido a Oklahoma.”
“You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?”
Caleb laughs when I say the f-word, which worries me a bit, because I am already a bad enough influence.
“What? I’m speaking his language,” Beau says, tilting his head and making a couple faces until Caleb stops crying and cracks a slight chuckle at Beau’s idiocy.
“He’s mixed race, you stupid asshole.” I’m doing a bad job at keeping my language clean – and it hasn’t been that long since I’ve been back at the ranch.
“Oh. He speaks Spanglish?”
“He’s almost three years old. He speaks baby talk and a little bit of English.”
“Shit. Well, Mountain Climber’s pregnant.”
“What?” I bounce Caleb up and down a couple times before setting him back down in his high chair. I have a big old mare named Mountain Climber who can’t get pregnant anymore. We were pretty sure of that.
“Yup. I told the boys I would tell you in the morning, but the vet came out yesterday and examined her.”
“Fuck.”
Shay enters the kitchen. She looks visibly startled at Beau’s presence.
“HOT DAMN!” Beau yells. That man doesn’t have an inside voice. Shay shoots me a sharp, menacing look. She looks clean and yummy right now, but her face is screwed up with anger and I’m pretty worried about her throwing a punch in my direction.
Shay looks at Beau with confusion at first and then annoyance as her gaze follows his muddy bootprints through the front door.
“Excuse me?” Shay asks, folding her arms and keeping her gaze fixed on all the mud. Beau is far too rough around the edges to notice that all the mud tracking has her pissed off.
“My name is Beau,” he says, sticking his hand out to shake hers. “Beau Hollingsworth. And if Cody brought you on as a housekeeper or something… I would love to take you out.”
“I’ll take you out if you don’t let go of my wife’s hand.”
Beau drops her hand and looks at me with confusion.
“Your wife?”
Now he has Shay smirking. Of course she feels flattered by the compliment. A womanizer like Beau Hollingsworth deserves a broom smacking him over the head.
“Take another step back, or I’ll get the shot gun out.”
“Relax, Cody. Beau, my name is Shay. I would really appreciate it if you took your boots off.”
I don’t like that she smiles at him at all. Or that Beau smiles back. I throw my half-brother a nasty glare and he steps back, putting his hands on his hips so that I can see they are clear away from Shay.
Beau tips his black Stetson, “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t aware about the mud, ma’am.”
“The house would be a lot less filthy if you didn’t track mud through the front door,” Shay says, giving me a glare as if I’m the one who did the mud tracking.
“Could I grab you a mug, baby?” I ask, trying to get her on my good side. Even if she doesn’t look like she’s going to make it easy.
“You could get some of these ranch hands to pick up a broom.”
Beau laughs from his belly and I swear, I might have to get myself to a point of shooting him if he laughs at my wife’s jokes that loudly again. The front door slams open again as the other ranch hands come stomping into the house.
Finch Shaw is only around 6’1” tall, but at eighteen-years-old, he’s worked four years with the horses and never did well in school.
He has the thick head of black hair typical of most Shaw boys and eyes green like a mountain lion’s.
The only problem he has is his tendency to win at poker, pissing everybody around him off.
The other boys working the season follow him in.
On Gideon’s request, I took in his second cousin, Emeth Blackwood and then Coleton Sinclair, Brinley’s brother, who has been working for us for two seasons.
He’s in his early twenties, even if he has a head of hair half-grey and skin that looks like leather.
They already smell like marijuana, which I let them grow out back, horse shit, and tobacco. Finch ends the filthy joke he’s telling as they stomp into the house and I think Shay is going to explode when she watches them clomping through with their boots.
“HEY! BOYS!” I yell loudly, causing all of the newcomers, and Beau, to stop dead in their tracks. They look at me like I’m fucking crazy, because I normally let them come and go as they please, especially when I’ve just come back from a trip and they have the ranch operating all in good order.
“Hullo,” Finch mutters, looking from me to Shay to Caleb and then back to me. “Is there something going on we need to know about?”
“Boots off,” I grumble. “We can talk once you take your boots off.”
The ranch hands look at me like I have two heads when I explain to them the new way of life we have around here.
Boots off before coming into the house. Practicing manners.
Listening to all of Shay’s rules. She’s the woman of the house now and in charge of everything.
Once we get the basics out of the way, I give the boys over to Shay so she can put them to work cleaning our place up.
If that will make her happy, that’s what I want her to have – cleanliness.
I keep Caleb by my side and show him the property and the animals while they work on cleaning the house.
It’s not that I think I’m too good to scrub on my hands and knees.
Someone needs to look after Caleb and Shay feels better if I’m the one who has him considering everything we’ve been through.
He’s a good kid – and I can’t wait for him to have a baby sister or baby brother.
I’m not particular, as long as the kid loves horses.
By the time we get back from our tour of the property, visiting the animals and I give Caleb some extra time to mess at the edge of the pond, the house looks spotless to me.
Shay gives me a dirty look when I suggest that she’s done a good job, especially with the boys helping her.
“We are far from finished cleaning this place up,” she says. “Coleton and Beau said they would start a bonfire tonight for some of the trash.”
“What trash?”
Shay gives me a withering look. I bite my tongue. Caleb reaches for her and I don’t have an option aside from handing him over. She takes Caleb, who instantly plants his hand into his mother’s sweat. She takes his hand and kisses it.
“This place is filled with trash, Cody. Please, don’t test me.”
“Would you take a break and come see what I got you?”