Chapter Eight
Nix
S aturday game night in the bunkhouse was well underway.
Empty pizza boxes were stacked precariously in a corner and the keg of beer from the Grand Master Brewery and Taphouse—generously donated by the taproom’s owner Hannah, the wife of one of the Endeavour Ranch owners—was flowing freely.
Some of the men were playing cards. Two had their laptops hooked up to monitors and were gaming online alongside a few boys from the group home who’d dropped in.
Nix had his nose in a book. He wasn’t reading but thinking.
The other two men with the night off had already left, but he couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse for going out because he rarely strayed far from the ranch.
Saying he was going to check on a cow or a broken fence might work, because he had no life outside of the ranch, but it wouldn’t give him much time.
And this time, he didn’t want to rush things with Shauna.
One of the guys began ribbing the younger boys about the cute little blonde from the bull riding clinic. “You should have signed up. I hear she’s hot.”
“Too snatched for me,” one kid said, his eyes glued to the screen. “Besides, Remi’s got clout.”
Nix had no idea what he’d just said.
The cowboy persisted. “Her sister’s hot, too. Isn’t she, Nix?”
Nix kept his eyes on his book. He wasn’t the only one in the room with no life outside of the ranch if this was the best topic of conversation they could come up with. “That’s the boss’s family y’all are talking about. Leave me out of it.”
He’d hoped to shut them down, but no such luck.
“The big sis is too stuck up for my taste,” another man said. “Sure, she’s good-looking. But you’d freeze your doo-hickey off if you dipped it in that.”
Nix’s doo-hickey couldn’t disagree more. He snapped the book shut. “Again. Boss’s family.” He set the book down. “Think I’ll take a drive.”
“Never mind him,” he heard Handy say. “He’s sour on women because his ex-wife keeps calling and asking for money.”
“My dumb-as-a-post brother married a woman who likes to spend money,” someone else said.
His name was Dez. “He can’t afford her, but he’s stuck because they have kids, and she wears the pants in the family.
Good for you for getting out, Nix. You keep giving her money though, and she’ll keep coming back like a stray dog you fed. Hang tough.”
“Does your wife wear your pants for you too, Nix?” Handy asked.
The room burst into laughter.
Nix made a rude comment about what they could all do to each other, which made them laugh even harder, and he slammed the door on his way out. Assholes. The whole lot of them.
Normally, Nix could take a joke. But Dez’s comments about his brother’s situation pinged a nerve.
He blamed it on Shauna and her talk of spousal abuse, and how money was part of it, because Peg had handled their finances.
Looking back on it, he could see he’d been a paycheck.
She and her mother were all about appearances, whereas his family were far from it, and he’d never cared about money, even when he’d had plenty.
He’d been thinking about his family a lot lately.
His mom used to come to his rides, but what with everyone wanting a piece of him after, he’d never gotten to say much more than hello to her, and she’d finally stopped coming.
During the divorce, and then the two years he’d wandered the west trying to get his head back together, he’d felt ashamed about calling, because he couldn’t blame Peg for it all.
There was the added possibility that they were happier without him, and he no longer belonged. The damage was done.
Enough of that.
He’d made his own choices.
He grabbed the keys to one of the trucks from the machine shed. It was well after seven and the sun hovered dangerously close to the horizon. Would Shauna be waiting for him in the churchyard?
He hit the gas pedal.
Keeping things between them came with its own set of problems. Just because they’d gotten reckless this morning didn’t mean the cab of an old truck in a churchyard was going to guarantee him too many repeat performances. Shauna was classier than that.
So, he’d come up with a plan. He had the keys to a remote cabin on the Endeavour Ranch.
It was down an old trail that led to a cattle range near the badlands, one meant more for horses or ATVs, but the pickup could make it.
The men sometimes bunked in there when they were working the cattle because sleeping in a tent in bear country was ill-advised.
Thirty minutes to get there, another thirty back. That gave them a few hours.
They’d put those few hours to good use.
*
Nix
She was waiting for him when he reached the churchyard, leaning on the trunk of her car.
Her ponytail brushed her shoulders when she turned her head to watch him drive in.
She didn’t wear any makeup. At least, not that he could tell.
She looked fresh-faced and young, and a whole lot less lawyerly.
He drank in the bare midriff and long, slender, bare legs.
The temperature was dropping as fast as the sun, but she didn’t appear to be bothered.
She smiled, and it was so tinged with relief that he wondered if maybe sex in the cab of the truck might work for her after all, because suddenly, waiting another half hour to get her naked seemed like a really, really long time.
He leaned over and opened the passenger door without turning the truck off.
“Get in,” he said. “Buckle up.”
She hopped in, smoothed her short skirt over her thighs, then clipped the tongue of the seat belt into its latch and adjusted the strap. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere that isn’t the local make-out spot for teenagers.” He glanced sideways at her as he backed the truck up and turned it around. “Sorry I was late. I had trouble getting away.”
“It’s okay. I was late too. Taryn was going to a movie with a girl from school, and I waited for her to leave so I wouldn’t have to make up any excuses about where I was going.
” She crinkled her nose, and a smile filled her eyes.
“I got here and thought you’d either changed your mind or given up on me. ”
How long would he have waited for her if he’d shown up as scheduled and she didn’t show?
Probably all night, because why not be an optimist. There was enough negativity in the world as it was. He couldn’t hold back a grin. “Yeah. Neither one of those things is likely to happen.”
She fiddled with her fingers, lacing them together. She looked at him, but he kept his eyes on the road. If there was one thing he’d learned, whatever she had on her mind, she’d come right out and say it.
She did not disappoint. “There’s no reason for us to be awkward about this,” she said. “We both know what we’re doing.”
He wasn’t so sure. Despite her active participation in a sexual encounter straight out of a men’s magazine, he was confident that hookups weren’t a frequent occurrence for her.
Other than that crazy period right after his divorce, they weren’t common for him either.
And he doubted if she’d ever had a sexual encounter where she hadn’t been wined and dined first.
But he didn’t want things to turn awkward any more than she did. What was wrong with two consenting adults enjoying each other, no strings attached?
“We surely do know what we’re doing,” he said. “We can do it all night long if you like. Well, at least until ten or eleven,” he amended. “After that, someone’s likely to notice I’m not in my bunk.”
“I should be home by eleven. Taryn’s curfew is one o’clock, but she might come home early, and I don’t want to chance it.”
There was a bigger possibility that Taryn wouldn’t show up until two or three, if at all, because a curfew didn’t seem quite her style. Getting Shauna home for eleven worked for him though. No need for questions that were nobody’s business.
“Besides,” Shauna said thoughtfully. “There’s your stamina to consider.”
“ My stamina?” He almost drove them into a fence on the side of the road. He hit a rut, and she swung from the grab handle as he righted the truck. “I’ll have you know my stamina’s fine. In fact, it’s well above average.”
“That’s not the impression I got.” She studied the pretty pink polish on her neatly trimmed nails. “I mean, sure. I understand the first time can be…quick. But it’s usually a good indicator of overall performance.”
There had to be something wrong with him because he enjoyed her constant jabbing at him. He got what she was doing, though. They were both suffering from nerves.
“I guess it’s lucky for me then, that you’re so quick off the draw too.
Because I’m a gentleman. Ladies first,” he said, because he enjoyed poking at her, too.
And maybe because he was starting to feel a little guilty that he hadn’t put more effort into this evening.
He could have at least picked her flowers or something.
“I was faking. I didn’t want you to feel bad about underperforming.”
He laughed outright at that. He knew when a woman was faking. He paid attention to detail. “I’ll have to try harder.”
He found the dirt road to the cabin. It was rougher than the last trip he’d made. A recent heavy rain had eaten away at a few spots. Long grass waved on either side of the truck. Dark, shadowy bumps indicated cows bunched together and bedding down for the night.
The conversation was dying, and while normally Nix liked peace and quiet, it rarely worked out well for him when a woman did too much thinking. “How did you end up practicing law in a little place like Grand, Montana?”
“Searching for my roots, I suppose. I wanted to get to know my mother’s side of the family better. Besides, I like the country. I spent summers with my birth father’s parents in Oklahoma.”
“Birth father?”