Playing Cowboy (Pistol Creek #2)

Chapter One

Grady

“Wait, next week? As in, this coming week?”

I watch my stepmother fluster around her cluttered desk, papers flying here and there, and her favorite “Boss Bitch” coffee mug overturning all over another pile of papers. Coffee from, if we’re being totally honest here, probably a day or two ago, splatters across some junk mail.

Another mess I’ll have to clean up while she’s gone.

“Obviously, please do try and keep up, Son.”

I grate at the way she calls me “son” since, obviously? Not related. Not anymore. Not ever. “Rachel, I am, but ... honestly?”

She flinches when I use her first name. Mission accomplished! “Grady, you’ve known about my trip for weeks now.”

“Weeks?” I huff, watching her flustered frenzy of last-minute preparations from the corner office doorway. “I’ve only been here for one. And barely that, what with the move down from Kentucky Eastern and whatnot.”

“Weeks, week. Apples, oranges. Does it really matter now? It’s too late to reschedule, and my driver’s almost here, so...”

She pauses from shoving papers willy-nilly inside her work valise and fixes me with a grating smile across her sprawling corner office.

As ever, Rachel Pennyworth Palmer is dressed to the nines for another jet-setting adventure: cream-colored blazer, shimmering plum camisole underneath, pinstriped slacks to pull it all together, and staggering heels that will no doubt impede her progress as she rushes across the concourse at Kentucky Regional Airport to make her mid-morning flight to California’s sprawling wine country.

She thinks I don’t know about her plans to meet some new Romeo in the Napa Valley, off for a weeks-long winery tour.

All on Dad’s dime, no less. She thinks I don’t know about her efforts to set up a new regional branch of Palmer Properties halfway across the country, all in an effort to divest herself from my controlling stake in the company.

But I know all about that. The fact that I’m supposed to coordinate some Grand Opening with a half-rate TV cowboy while she’s gone? Now that is actually news to me!

“Grady, you’ll be fine,” she insists with that casual ease that implies she hopes I’m absolutely not.

“Parker knows all about the particulars. He’ll be mostly running the show, and all you have to do is dress nice for a change, show up, and help some TV cowboy cut a red ribbon with giant cardboard scissors.

Is that too much to ask to keep your father’s legacy, God rest his soul, intact while I’m away for the rest of the month? ”

“Hardly,” I huff, glancing down at my pleated khaki work slacks and checkered dress shirt. “And what do you mean, dress nice for a change?”

Rachel snorts and zips her crammed valise tight. “I meant on the big day, Grady. Local television, the Pistol Creek Gazette, the Kentucky Times—they’ll all be in attendance, so ... do Palmer Properties proud and maybe your dad, too, for a change?”

“For a change?”

Rachel pauses, mid-stride, barely a decade older than me but already acting the grand dame of some billionaire dynasty or something in her tacky heels and too-bright lipstick.

I mean, sure, Dad did okay for himself and Palmer Properties is legit, but .

.. overreach much? “Grady, I don’t have time for this today, hon. ”

“Lucky for you, Rachel? Neither do I.”

She offers a meaningless sneer, nearly knocks me over on her way out the office door, and true to form? Doesn’t look back. I lean in her doorway, admiring the chaos left behind: spilled coffee, a mess of a desk, and the blinds along her floor-to-ceiling windows left wide the fuck open.

“Mommy issues?”

I sigh and turn to face Parker Addison, the real-life blood, sweat, and tears beneath Palmer Properties’ shimmering, street corner facade. “She ain’t my mommy.” I sigh, admiring Parker’s rugged good looks and thick, manly beard.

“Not anymore, she ain’t,” Parker drawls, sitting behind his desk in the office right across from Rachel’s.

His door is open, his gaze penetrating, his manner easy, and with nothing much else to do today, now that our self-proclaimed Boss Bitch is gone, I slide across the hall, through his door, and sink into the battered leather chair across from his desk.

“But she was, once upon a time,” he reminds me.

“Yeah, Parker, I know, okay?”

“Just sayin’, is all.” He smiles above his bushy black beard, tinged with enough gray to give him vaguely DILF vibes. You know, if he hadn’t bedded every hot-blooded country gal within a 40-mile radius, that is.

“Yeah, Parker, you’re always ‘just sayin’, is all.”

Parker leans back in his creaky old desk chair, sliding first one cowboy boot and then the other atop his surprisingly uncluttered desk.

The yang to Rachel’s yin, or is it the yin to her yang, Parker is everything Rachel is not: cool, calm, collected, fair, uncomplicated, and despite his rugged cowpoke exterior and shit eating grin?

A big old softie.

“How long we been knowin’ each other, Grady?”

I bury my face in my hands at his old cowboy shtick. “Not this again, Parker.”

“Yes, this again,” he teases, ever the fun-loving uncle to Dad’s sterile, businessman exterior. “How long?”

“Since you started working here, okay.”

“Which was?”

“Eight? Nine years ago?” I offer.

“Ten years ago,” he reminds me in a scolding tone that implies I should know this already. “Since you were, what...?”

“Please don’t say ‘knee high to a grasshopper,’” I beg him. “Please, please don’t say it—”

“Knee high to a grasshopper.” He chuckles, slapping one knee as he straightens his weathered cowboy hat with his free hand. “That’s right. And in all that time? With your Dad’s philandering ways, and you always getting into one scrape or another? Have I ever let you or your family down before?”

Our eyes meet across his sterile desk. I offer a soft, genuine, almost grateful smile. “No, Parker, you haven’t.”

“That’s right. I haven’t. And I don’t aim to this time, neither.”

His eyes drift away first. Macho to the core, Parker’s the only one in the office who knows my dirty little secret, and ever since he caught me jerking off Caleb Channing in one of Dad’s rental units back in high school, he’s been uncomfortably loyal about keeping it.

Doesn’t make him any happier about it, of course, but I’ve always appreciated his trustworthiness.

“Fine, Parker, I mean, obviously I’m here to help, but ... what’s the gig again?”

Parker snorts knowingly. “Dossiers’ on your desk, Kid. All the pertinent info is in there.”

“Dossier?” I tease. “What are we, the FBI?”

“Just read the damn thing,” Parker huffs, sliding his boots off his desk to signal the meeting—and our moment together—is over.

“I will, obviously, just—”

“Mr. Palmer, sir?”

Parker and I turn toward the door where Gilly Hopkins, the office receptionist, smiles at us from beneath the towering ginger bun atop her head. When I don’t speak right away, Parker rolls his eyes and snorts from across the desk. “She means you, Kid.”

“Oh shit,” I blurt, making the poor girl blush. “Sorry, Gilly, I mean, ‘Oh snap.’ Uh ... yes?”

I stand, as if being summoned, Parker chortling merrily the whole time at my obvious discomfort. My back is to him, but I can picture the big lug covering his belly as his deep, manly chuckles fill the room with his usual big dick energy.

Gilly smiles softly before announcing, “Your 10:30 appointment is here.”

“Appointment? What appointment?”

Gilly looks confused. “I thought Rachel would have told you before she left for the airport, but ... maybe not?”

“Told me what?”

“That fella.” Gilly leans in the office, lowering her voice as if he’s right outside. “From Hollywood. He’s here, waiting for you in your office.”

“Hollywood?”

“Told you to read the dossier, Kid,” Parker calls out as I follow Gilly down the hall. “It’s all in there.”