Tempting the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 1)

The feed store was also the most reliable place to ship packages.

His gaze fell

to the passenger riding shotgun: a fat, manila envelope addressed to his college professor. The first hundred pages of his manuscript. Sure, finishing the damned thing last night was a high in itself. But a crazy-impulsive rush came as he typed out a cover letter and sealed it up, not unlike those moments on the cabin roof. He felt the inertia of his life shifting, like a train switching tracks. If the rest of his existence made no room for spontaneity, his writing could be the place that provided that rush.

He grabbed the envelope and went into the store.

Lon Smith broke his conversation with Close Call’s resident gossip queen and buckle-chaser, Miss Bess Scandy, to greet Nat, shake his hand.

“Hey there, Nat. What can I get for you?”

“Need some dog food. Fifty-pound bag, Active Wilderness brand.”

“Sure thing, sure thing,” said Lon.

Lon sent his son to the back room to haul out the requested bag while he rang up the purchase.

“Hear you got some help out there for the sale,” said Lon. “We’re real blessed to have such a hometown hero.”

Inwardly, Nat cringed. Wes always wanted to go stealth for a few days before word got out that he was home. People meant well, Nat knew. But too many questions, mostly ignorant ones, while Wes was just starting to remember what it’s like to piss in a toilet instead of a tube set Nat’s teeth to gnashing.

As if Lon could read Nat’s mind, he added, “Mack was in earlier for some last-minute stuff before you head out tomorrow.”

Right. Nat made a mental note to talk to Mack about the Meier brother code.

“Nice to see you, Nat.” Miss Bess toyed with items in the “gauntlet of riff-raff,” as Clem called it when Nat was little and begged for something stupid like a plastic top. Wire baskets lined the register with everything a body didn’t need and nothing it did—in Clem’s mind, the typical cowboy vices—booze, bullets, and ’baccy, as well as toys. Miss Bess, known to most as the horniest divorcee in town, took special interest in a kids’ Tarzan drink cup with a phallic straw. “You tell your brother I said hello.”

Nat’s attention was slow to pull away from her testing the ease with which Tarzan’s straw slipped through the lid. The suggestive sight made him want to ask Lon to add bleach to his purchase. Give his eyes a good wash. Miss Bess may have been stacked, but she was twice Wes’s age, nearly his weight, and ten times the drama of any other woman in town. He knew for a fact that Wes would rather jack Tarzan.

“Will do, Miss Bess.”

“I hear someone else is heading outta town tomorrow. Way outta town.” Bored with Tarzan, Miss Bess had moved on to lip balm wrapped in a Holstein pattern. “Senegal, Resistol, something dirty like that…”

Nepal.

Fuck.

“Shame the girl couldn’t stay longer, but that one’s always been hard to catch. Guess you’d know a little something about that, huh?”

Nat’s lungs felt like a water balloon hit with an arrow, tip pierced, a split second before it burst. This was news to him. Why hadn’t Mona told him?

Lon gave him a sympathetic look and said, “Forty-eight seventy.”

Might as well have been the shrapnel count of Nat’s heart for all the number meant.

Lon pointed. “You want to mail that, too? Pick up don’t come for another hour.”

Nat remembered the envelope in his hand.

His breath came on quick. The room slipped a little. Miss Bess looked at him with shiny gizzard lips, still rubbing them together from sampling the lip gloss.

“You all right, son?” Lon had known Nat since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Son wasn’t a loose term, it was an endearment born of concern. “You want to mail that?”

“No,” said Nat, too fast, too fucking sharp.

Lon blinked and finished the transaction. “I’ll have my boy load your dog food into your truck.”

“Thanks,” Nat might have said. He wasn’t sure.