6. 2
Morse raised his head and took a step, then froze when the sheriff glared at him, pulled out his phone, and dialed. “Garcia?” He didn’t bother to lower his voice. “I need you to do something. Go find Hal Morse. Ask if he saw his brother today. If he says no, see if you can shake him. If he says yes, ask him when and where. Report back to me.” He cut the call and eyed Morse. “What do you think your brother is going to say?”
“He might say no. He might think you don’t want me around Max’s.”
“He’d be right. But if he doesn’t back you up, I am going to arrest you on the word of these two gentlemen.”
“Gentlemen.” Morse hawked and spat in the dirt.
The sheriff glowered. “You’re not helping yourself, Deputy. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“You must be kidding.”
“Hands away from your pockets.”
I asked the sheriff, “Can you sobriety test him?”
“You think he’s drunk?”
“Maybe?” Not really, but it had occurred to me that was his easy out.
“I’m not drunk, sir!” Morse insisted, one step behind my idea.
“You sobriety tested me when you stopped me doing ninety-one, and threatened to write me up as going over a hundred.”
“You were speeding dangerously.”
The sheriff looked back and forth between us, then said, “Might as well cover the bases. Morse, stand on one foot.”
“Seriously?”
“As a heart attack. Do it.” The sobriety test took a few minutes, with Morse passing although he had to try the one-foot part twice, blaming Joe’s crotch-punch for his wobbly start.
At the end, Morse sneered at me. “See? Not drunk.”
I told the sheriff, “You can attest to that. His lawyer’s going to try to find ways to get him off, but he’s not drunk. He knows exactly what he did.”
“I see.” The sheriff nodded to me.
The firefighters came by to say they were done. “Not much damage to the interior although some of those boards are charred through and will need to be replaced. You need us for anything else, Sheriff? If not, I’ll send our arson gal by in the morning.”
They rolled off down the drive, turned onto the road, and were gone. And we waited. A couple of times, Morse began to say something, but the sheriff shushed him. Just when I was going to beg to take this inside before my feet turned to ice, the sheriff’s phone rang.
“Yeah, Garcia, what’s the word? Uh-huh… Right, and what did he say…? Okay… No, not yet. Thanks. Get back to work.” The sheriff tucked his phone away and drew his gun. “Frank Morse, you’re under arrest on suspicion of arson. You have the right—”
“Don’t do this,” Morse pleaded. “Come on, you’re not picking them over me.”
“Shut your face. You have the right to remain silent…” The sheriff went through the whole warning.
“What about him?” Morse pointed at Joe. “He hit me. Aren’t you going to arrest him?”
“Near as I can tell, he was protecting this property. So no, I’m not.” Breyer had Lancaster handcuff Morse, put him in the back of her cruiser, and drive him off, heading for the county jail.
The sheriff blew a slow breath as her car vanished into the darkness. “Well, fuck.” He turned to me. “I’ll send someone by to collect those surveillance videos soon. You do have videos, right? That wasn’t just some made-for-TV ploy to get him to confess?”
“I have them,” I told him. “WiFi to my computer app, and stored internally in the cameras as a backup. The company I hired does good work.”
He turned to Joe. “Did you get any look at the pickup driver?”
“Hal Morse,” Joe told him.
“Right.” Breyer squared his shoulders and met my eyes. “On behalf of Vickston County and the Sheriff’s Department, I want to apologize…”
I was tired and my back was killing me, and I wasn’t ready to hear apologies. “Sheriff, I’m heading to bed. With Joe,” I added, in case that wasn’t clear enough. “The arson gal and whoever you send can come by in the morning. I don’t need apologies from you. I need you to promise that this won’t get swept under the cops-will-be-cops rug.”
“Not a chance.”
“I was telling the truth about that traffic stop too, by the way. He threatened me with falsifying my crime and charging it as a felony. He did it to me because as far as I can tell he hates gay men.”
“He hates me,” Joe put in.
“Yeah. And Joe specifically. I could pay the fine, but if you start looking into him, you might talk to all the pretty women and queer men he’s stopped in the last year or two. Ask them if what went on the ticket was really what happened.”
Breyer inclined his head. “I’ll do that. And I’ll spread the word that my department will come down like a ton of bricks on anyone giving you or the ranch a hard time. The money you’re bringing into the community will make harassing you an unpopular move, anyway.”
I wanted to ask if he’d give the same promise to the broke gay men at Max’s, but I wasn't up to that conversation with the pain shooting down my spine. “Make it so.” I turned and hobbled off across the grass to the house.
Joe stuck to my side, but I managed to get through the kitchen door, out of my coat although I left it on the floor, and up the stairs to our room, without leaning on him. Just.
“Lie back down,” he told me, pulling the covers to one side. When I lowered myself onto the mattress, he eased my slippers off and covered me.
“You’re coming to bed too, right?” I reached for him. “My back's fine now I'm horizontal. Just a bit stiff.”
“I want to check on the horses,” he said, “and make sure everything is locked up but then yeah, I’ll be back.”
I lay there aching, useless, trying not to let my mind go running off on tangents, as he thumped off down the stairs. I heard the door close, then silence. I imagined Joe going to the horses, soothing them with those work-rough hands and his calm voice. Donner and Ro adored him. So do I. And I could’ve lost him!
My hands trembled and I clenched them into fists, wincing as tremors racked my spine, trying not to picture disasters, trying to find my composure before Joe got back. He’s fine. He’s safe. It’s over. Slowly, my shaking eased.
At least ten minutes later, I heard Joe come back in, then after a bit, his footsteps clattered up the stairs. I added “carpet the stairs” to my remodeling plans, pretty hardwood be damned. I tried not to think of anything else. Joe eased through the door like he thought I might be sleeping, but when he saw me watching him, he nodded. “All good. I moved them into the big pasture, farther from the barn and the smoke smells. They were grazing when I left them.”
“I’m glad. Donner didn’t hurt himself?”
“Not that I can tell in the dark. I’ll check again in the morning.” Joe stripped down his jeans, revealing the pale skin of his furry thighs and lean ass. He came over to me naked, turned out the lamp, and climbed into bed. At first he lay carefully over on his side, leaving me two-thirds of the mattress, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
“Come here,” I asked. “Please?”
“Of course.” He rolled toward me and draped an arm across my belly, his stubbled chin on my shoulder. “You doing okay, city slicker?”
“I’m… not sure.” I pulled in a breath, my voice back to shaking. “Th-that was a lot.”
“Yeah. When I saw the barn burning, I wanted to beat him to a pulp.”
“You got in a couple of good hits.”
“That I did.”
“I can’t believe a cop came out here to set fire to my ranch.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he did.” Joe chuckled.
“Huh?” I got angry, which was a relief from feeling scared. “You think that was a joke ?”
“What? No! Just, Morse may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but he’s not useless. If he planned to burn the place, he’d have brought cans of gasoline and a blow torch. Not a stick with cloth wrapped around it for a torch and a can of spray paint.”
“Oh.” My stomach rolled at the thought of gasoline and a bigger fire. “What was going on, then?”
“Well, it’s just a guess, but I think he came with his spray paint to mark up the barn again, but he found we didn’t repaint the place red, we painted it black.” He snorted. “I saw that spray can. It was black. So there are the Morse brothers, all ready to write gay slurs in five-foot-tall letters on the fresh paint, and it won’t show. At all. I think they got mad and improvised the fire part.”
“Makes sense.” I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. “You think they won’t get charged with arson then? If it wasn’t on purpose?”
“Nah. By the time you find a branch, wrap rags around it, soak it in paint, and light it on fire, I think you can’t call it an accident.”
I slid my leg over, tangling my calf between his. I wanted to crawl into his arms, but my stupid back kept me flat on the bed. Thinking of the fire made my stomach muscles quiver, but that wasn’t the worst part. “He had a gun.” A hard tremor racked me.
“Yep.” Joe kissed my neck, a barely-there brush of lips. “That scared you?”
“More now than then, actually,” I realized. “At the time I was just mad, but… he could’ve shot you and claimed it was self-defense. His word against mine.”
“And the cameras.”
“But he didn’t know that.” My breath caught in my throat. “One stupid, mean, bigot with a gun, and I could’ve lost you.”
“I don’t think he’d have gone that far.” Joe sighed, his breath warm on my skin. “I don’t know. It all worked out.”
“I suppose.” I caught his wrist, pulling his arm higher around me. “You think he’ll make more trouble? Will he get out on bail?”
“I think a whole lot of guys in Max’s will be thrilled he’s losing his job. I trust Breyer to make sure that happens. Beyond that?” Joe hummed softly. “How do you feel about getting those cattle dogs early?”
“What cattle dogs?” I teased, like I had no idea what he meant.
“The pair of Aussies I put into the budget?”
“Oh, those.”
“The ones you were all gung-ho to get and you’re not fooling me one bit.” Joe nipped my earlobe.
I chuckled, my chest feeling lighter. “I never had a dog. Grandfather didn’t like them, why I never knew. And a hotel was not the place for pets. I always wanted one.”
“Now, now,” Joe intoned. “These will be working dogs, not pets.” I nuzzled his hair, saying nothing, and after a moment he laughed. “Who am I kidding? Of course they’ll be pets, with some working on the side.”
“I can’t wait. And it won’t hurt that they might bark, if anything’s wrong.”
“Won’t hurt a bit. We’ll go by the breeder my next day off, make a trip out of it.”
“Seriously?”
“You’ll have to watch ’em closer with the remodeling going on, if we’re not gonna wait. Maybe have the pups in your study in the daytime.”
“Oh yeah, I’ll get so much work done.”
“Wait, you’re working in there? I thought you were watching porn.”
Warmth spread through me, a tide of joy that chased the chill of the November night, of the fire and the gun. I couldn’t be cold and scared with Joe in my bed. “You’re incredible.” I pushed away enough to see Joe’s face in the faint light under the door. His eyes caught a reflection, steady on mine. A hint of silver stubble marked his jawline.
I laid my palm against his cheek. “Luckiest day of my life was when I decided to stop in the local gay bar and check it out.” His lips moved under the caress of my thumb.
“Seriously? I’m not all that.”
“You’re the man I dreamed of, all those years ago when I first knew it would be a man for me, or nothing. You’re the man I dreamed of last night, when I woke hard and needy. And tonight, you were there for me, for all our dreams—”
“You spoke up to the sheriff, and got Morse all tangled in his lies.”
“You kicked his balls and punched him in the nose. We make a good team.”
“I hope I broke it. And yeah, we do.” I saw Joe’s lips curve upward.
I took a breath and said the words. “I love you.”
“For my leather boots and my farmer’s tan?” Joe no doubt meant that to sound light, but I heard a hint of worry.
I need to get this right. “For those, yeah, but not mostly.” I moved my hand from his cheek to his chest, resting over his heart. “For the man inside this gorgeous hunk of cowboy. For your steady soul and your kind heart and your sharp mind. For the way you spar with me and hold your own, and the way you give me control when we both want that. For how the horses come running when they see you.”
“Hah. Ro comes running. Donner holds out for a bribe.”
“For the way you love that horse, even when he makes you work for it.”
“Oh.”
“For how safe I feel, how good, like I’m able to do anything when I’m with you.”
“Ah, city slicker, you don’t need me to give you wings. You can do anything. Except cook.”
“Or herd cattle, or mend fences.” I kissed him, our smiles pressed together. “Good thing you know how.”
“I suppose.”
“We fit together, like…”
“Like peanut butter and jelly?”
I choked a laugh. “You’re definitely the nut.”
“And under that tough Sylvester scowl, you’re sweet.” This time he kissed me first. “I’ve fallen for you too. All the way down. I’m pathetic. Lovesick.”
“Me too. We’ll enjoy it together.” I arched my neck to deepen the kiss and flinched. “Platonically, dammit, until my fucking back heals. Sorry.”
“I can wait. We have time, right?”
“All the time in the world. That’s what I want with you.” I took a breath. “Will you stay with me? Move in, live here, share the work and the ranch?”
“Move in.” He paused. “That’s a big step.”
“It feels right, though, don’t you think?” I had a moment of panic that I’d read him wrong, pushed too fast.
Then he sighed, deep and slow, and pressed his face against the curve of my neck, his stubbled chin rasping my shoulder. “Yes.” His lips moved against my skin as he spoke. “Feels damned near perfect. I hate the nights without you now. Days as well. I do the work for Mr. Ford, but all I want is to be at your side.”
“Then stay.” I cupped his head against me, threading my fingers through his hair. “We’re months away from Valentine’s Day but… be mine.”
Joe laughed, a soft puff of breath. “When I was young, I used to dream of someone asking me that. A man. Someone strong and smart and kind. Time went on and the dream wore thin. But now, against the odds, here you are.” He reached up to his hair, not to pull my hand away but to press it closer, his fingers over mine, his face against my throat. “I’m yours,” he murmured. “Hey, whaddya know? A cowboy’s dreams sometimes do come true.”
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