Tempting the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 1)

1

October in Texas was damned near perfection. Gone was the scorching heat that anchors a pair of jeans to the thighs like a wet straightjacket, hell-bent on dropping anyone not in air conditioning straight to the devil’s back kitchen. Sporadic, deep reds on the sweet gum trees teased the landscape with impending change. Even the cow pies took on the scent of money.

Selling season in the cattle business had a fragrance all its own, and Nathaniel Meier wasn’t above pulling in a potent lungful of the end.

The end. God in heaven, he fucking hoped not.

Nat’s least favorite part of the ranch was the south acreage. Eighteen wheelers barreled down the adjacent two-lane county road to avoid construction fifty miles and another world away, scattering everything from mockingbirds to piss-filled sports drink bottles. The south acreage’s only saving grace was the perfect alignment of the squeeze chutes and ramps so as not to cast morning shadows or blinding sun—two factors that could make loading hundreds of cows onto trailers feel like a fire-ant enema.

His general apathy toward anything beyond Close Call, Texas, was a side effect of being hyper-attuned to the ranch, cradle to loan, as his grandfather had always said. Four generations saw fit to ensure the Meier legacy continued. For now, the burden fell solely on his sunbaked shoulders.

Nat set to work applying fresh rubber stops to the metal gates so the banging wouldn’t spook the animals. Earbuds in place, he ignored the world beyond the periphery fence. The sidewinding melody of a steel guitar calmed his pre-auction nerves—and was why he failed to notice the SUV tires eating up his good grazing grass until they had damned near galloped up his ass.

Rubber stops tumbled out of his hand. His pulse played catch-up, the way it did when he accidentally stepped into a steer’s flight zone. Spine straightened, he slow-crawled a gaze from the pristine tires to the glossy black rims of a late-model Cadillac, as out of place on a ranch as a drag queen singing show tunes would be.

Well, shit.

Austin Pickford exited his trust-fund vehicle. The banker stood in place as if he could spare no more than a minute, as if the pasture were a mine field. Nat supposed to the guy’s imported alligator loafers, the pasture was Cambodia.

Nat swiped the adhesive bumpers out of the grass and resumed circling the curved race. “You visit all your borrowers this often, or can I tell my mother we’re officially courting?”

“Nice to know the impending sale hasn’t affected your juvenile sense of humor.”

“Juvenile? Keep flattering me like that, and we’ll be married by nightfall.” Nat shot him a wink for good measure.

Austin rolled his eyes and jingled coins in his suit pocket.

Nat and Austin had a history straight out of rural Shakespeare—same graduating class, same primal ambition, the occasional quarrel between well-established families, a general distaste disguised as friendship. Austin went away to a private university to study finance. Nat attended state school to try for an ag degree. But Nat couldn’t escape the truth that the Meier family couldn’t do what they did best without the generations-old backing of Pickfords. Close Call Community Trust was the only lender left in town. Banks close to the city didn’t understand the financial cycle of ranching past how much a porterhouse at some country club in Houston set them back. Nat and Austin had history. Around here, history counted for something.

“To what do I owe this honor?” Nat called over his shoulder. As in, spit it out and be on your way.

“Came out to check on you. See if you needed anything.”

Liar. The guy was probably measuring for drapes at the main house before he drove out here. Every time Nat thought about the collateral he’d put up last winter to expand his operation, his stomach threatened to empty, full or not.

“Unless you have a new weigh scale in that fancy trunk of yours, I’m good.”

“’Fraid I can’t help you there.” Austin took a few minefield steps away from the safety of his luxury car. His silk tie lifted and twisted on the stiff breeze. “What I can do is tell you what I’m hearing.”

Nat slowed his gait. Good-old-boy gossip came in two forms: bet-the-farm accurate and grizzled, half-baked accurate—usually while buzzed on Shiner at the roadhouse’s Thursday polka night. Either way, previous generations had hundreds of years of droughts and windfalls between them. The year Nat lost his grandfather’s prized truck was the year Nat learned to pay attention to such things.

“Word is, the market is softer than anticipated. Exports are down. More consumers going to plant-based proteins.”

“All things beyond my control.” Nat shook steel rails as he circled the race. A loose belly pipe snagged his progress. He bent down to inspect the fast

ening bolts. “We’re selling at the right time. First major auction before all the spring-born calves land on the market. Everything before that is speculation. Nothing more.”

“That isn’t all, Meier. Vet’s been out here daily. That happens, people start to think you’ve got a problem.”

Nat’s breathing stalled. He tucked his chin to his collar, mostly so his hat brim blocked Austin, the Cadillac, rigs barreling past, the problems back at ground zero where pink eye had spread to four heifers before they caught it and isolated them. Bet-the-farm accurate, that gossip. With pliers from his tool belt, he tightened the offending bolt. And his voice.

“Only problem I have is getting these ramps ready for transport.” As in, be on your way already.

“Hope you’re right. For your sake.”

Nat’s knuckles whitened around the pliers. He thought of a thousand things he wanted to say but only one his upbringing allowed him to say. His dry tongue felt thick and leaden. “Thanks for stopping by—”

“What the hell?”

Austin’s tone was equal parts delight and alarm—enough of a contrast that Nat glanced up. Idling on the highway’s shoulder was a gigantic plastic shrimp on wheels, its antennae snapping on a robust gale. Two cartoon shrimps shaped into a heart with the words “Bae Shrimp” adorned the food truck’s pink paint job.

Before Nat could echo Austin’s sentiment, a passenger exited the cab and waved to the bearded driver. At a distance, the bare-legged and sandaled figure—undoubtedly feminine—looked like a traveling Sherpa: massive backpack, woven poncho of some sort with brightly colored fringe, stained and wrinkled brown hat that looked as if it had been fished out of a shrimp boat rudder in Galveston. But there was something familiar—the energetic way her tan legs slipped through the tall grass like a native species, the confident, fluid strides despite the heavy load, the slight freedom in her hip rotation. It wasn’t until the stranger removed her hat that Nat realized she wasn’t a stranger at all.

Well, shit.

Austin spoke first. “Isn’t that—?”

“January?” Uttering her name felt like a decade-old trip wire set off in Nat’s chest. One false move? Boom. “Yeah.”

Two airhorn blasts penetrated the slow acceleration of the truck’s diesel engine. The crustacean drifted down the road.

January Rose was damned near perfection. Named for the month of her conception—the only stretch when the Texas heat subsided long enough for two people to want to generate heat of their own. Or so the story went. She was magnificent trouble, the kind of charmer that could lead a devout man straight into the devil’s back pocket and leave him wanting more. Ten years ago, Nat had entered her flight zone and she had left his heart stampeded. The only thing worse than that kind of pain was ten years plus one day for her to do it all over again.

* * *

January settled into the kitchen nook in her mother’s trailer—really more of a recreational vehicle—really more like shack blown together by a Texas twister. The living space, if you could call it that, had a history as the hump hideout for ranch hands over the years. But in typical Mona Rose fashion, she had repurposed the old place into a home. She carved out a homespun feel, complete with gingham curtains, guinea hens pecking the ground between her geraniums, and bacon sizzling on the stove the moment the prodigal daughter came knocking. She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother that somewhere between the rice terraces in China and a research boat off the coast of Belize, she had become a vegetarian.

Her stomach growled anyway, partly because her last square meal had been yesterday afternoon, partly because the fatty aroma catapulted her right back to childhood, before she had left so much shrapnel in her wake.

One meal. What could it hurt? After, January would get what she came for and be on her way.

A rustic honey dipper offered January the perfect fidgeting diversion from the decidedly non-shrapnel vision that had welcomed her: open button-down shirt; hat brim obscuring all but lips that moved like an answer to a prayer and an altar of a chin; the same tall, lanky stretch that had always dwarfed her. Nat looked good. Beyond good. Honey-collected-on-the-neighboring-farm good. Right then, the guilt she’d been carrying like a South African Xhosa head-pack since she had made the choice to come back to Close Call, since she had made the choice to leave all those years ago, eased.

She picked up the morning paper, folded so the advice column was prominent. The question to Dear Agnes read:

None of my friends have curfews. My mother is being unreasonable. I am a seventeen-year-old honors student with a bright future ahead. Why can’t she trust me? Signed, Missing Out.

Dear Missing Out: The job of a mother is not to give you what you want, but to protect you until you have all the things you need in this life. From the boundaries she set, I know one thing without doubt. When you walk out the door to be with your friends, your mother counts the moments, checks the clock, pushes aside a thousand what-if thoughts, questions the decisions she’s made, and prays that when you walk back through that door, you’re a better, stronger person than when you left. If having a curfew eases her burden, even in a small way, you owe her that as back pay for her hours of worry. Besides, nothing is open past midnight except legs and the hospital. Your mother sounds like a wise woman. Signed, Agnes

January’s gaze circled back over the phrase nothing is open past midnight except legs and the hospital. A Mona line, if ever January had ever read one. Her mother had said it to her on several occasions. The rest of it, not so much.