Page 9 of Taming the Wild Cowboy

“Did Maclyn give you details of this alleged cheating?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Not ready for the answer?” Dylan was good at zeroing in on things.

“Maybe not,” Trev allowed. If she’d cheated on him, it was a done deal. No good would come from learning the details.

Keep telling yourself that.

“I’m not saying I believe it’s true. I just wondered if I’d had my head so far up my ass that I missed something glaring.”

“You didn’t.”

“Nice of you to say so. Especially watching me become my new and improved self.” It was embarrassing to acknowledge that he’d changed so much of his life for the woman who’d walked out on him. The woman who might have been cheating on the side.

“You went straight. Big deal. I never made fun of your khakis.”

“Yes, you did.”

“That was wrong of me.” Dylan made a clicking noise with his tongue. “You went down a different road because of Brooke, but it paid off. Whatever geek thing it is you do is more stable than ranching.”

That was a fact, but one month on the ranch had been enough to convince him that wallowing in the muck while delivering calves was a shit ton more satisfying than solving a hacking problem for a major corporation. That said, muck-wallowing didn’t have much of a retirement and benefits option and he had two brothers who planned to return to the ranch and use it as a home base. Between Hayes, Jordan, and Wade, there were enough hands to manage the ranch and only so much income to be had. He was the last guy to call dibs, and he was also the guy with the most stable job. It only made sense to keep at it. Be responsible.

Not end up like Maclyn.

“By the way,” Dylan said. “I think I might unretire this summer.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll see how things go on the 88 Ranch. If they hire me on full-time, I think I’d like to hit the circuit again.”

“Don’t be teasing me, now.” Because Trev needed the outlet. He didn’t know how he was going to burn off excess frustration if he didn’t have roping to fall back on.

Dylan laughed. “I’ll keep you posted. Just do the same for me.”

“In other words, you want to know how Maclyn works out?”

“Fucking A. Keep me in the loop.”

*

“I thought you were going to get calf paste this afternoon.” Wade ambled into the kitchen as Trev came back into the house after ending his call.

“The new hand is going to stop at Lane’s Feed on her way out tomorrow.”

“Good.” Wade gave a considering nod. “I didn’t think you’d find someone so quickly, but I’m damned glad of it.”

He headed across the kitchen to refill his coffee cup, favoring the leg his new mare had landed on last fall. He was a talented horseman, but accidents happen, and this one had taken him out of commission for months.

“With extra help, we have a good chance of getting roofs on those sheds and corrals fixed before other stuff breaks.”

“Yeah.” Trev did not point out that if Wade had fessed up to what had been going on for the past couple of years, they wouldn’t be in their current position of doing two jobs at once—regular ranch chores and calving coupled with a long list of neglected ranch repairs and maintenance. With Trev and his brothers living off the ranch, Wade had been able to keep the slow decay on the down-low, until he broke his leg, and Hayes had returned home to take over.

Not that the disrepair had been totally Wade’s fault. His longtime foreman had developed back problems prior to retiring and had done less and less. Wade had managed as best he could, first single-handedly, then with the help of the occasional day hand, including Hayes’s now-fiancée. Eventually Hayes returned to the ranch to live and was stunned at the condition of the place. Since that time, all the brothers had pitched in as they were able, to reverse the process, but the list was long—painting and reroofing, spreading new gravel, repairing corrals and the long boundary fences.

“I assume your new hire has experience calving?” Wade asked out of the blue.

Trev made a noncommittal sound that Wade had no trouble interpreting. He rolled his eyes. “You hired someone with no experience?”