Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

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Wes’s palm touched a breast. A naked, ample, sweaty breast attached to none other than Miss Bess Scandy, exposed in all her glory from the waist up. In full REM sleep, her painted-on lips slackened wide enough to call an entire ranch to supper. An unearthly, hog-like noise ricocheted around her vocal cords and rumbled up through her nasal cavity.

His stomach rolled.

Jesus Christ…he hadn’t.

Had he?

Fuck if he could remember anything past his sixth round. Or was it his tenth? No…wait. He did remember something. Amsterdam wrapped in a raincoat, damned near staring through him. Had he dreamt that?

His skull felt bashed in by a surly bull’s hoof; his dry mouth was a vast wasteland of sour death. Wes shifted enough to realize he still wore his pants, the underwear beneath—a most unusual state for him, usually reserved for his deployment days when sleeping commando could get your pecker fired clean off your body. He drifted into the comfort of knowing nothing had happened between him and Bess then drifted right back out again knowing he had come close.

He had to get out of there without waking her.

The Elvis and ’Cilla-themed room gyrated in a dizzying circle of cheap memorabilia that chronicled the King from sexy to bloated and every phase in between. Wes peeled his hand from Bess’s skin with slow delicacy, the fleshy mound like flypaper in the too-hot room. Her snoring quieted. Inch by meticulous inch, Wes extracted himself from her limbs, the sheets, the bed, until one hand gripped his boots and the other rested on the door. He gritted his teeth and turned the handle.

“I’ve tried everything I know.” Bess’s voice was as sharp as a rap on the shoulder, not at all slurred from slumber.

Wes’s pulse slipped out of rhythm. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Throwing myself at you don’t work.”

He exhaled, not wanting this conversation but knowing it was a long time coming. She was big-hearted, always making the wrong choices that put her last, as if she didn’t believe she deserved better. Wes turned to find the sheets pulled high to her chin, a layer of armor against what she had to already know.

“Thank you for taking care of me, Bess. I wasn’t myself last night. I’m sorry if I led you to believe anything more would happen.”

“It’s her, ain’t it? The new girl.”

Bess might have been talking about the new German shepherd down at the precinct for all the sense her words saw fit to clear his fog-addled mind. “What new girl?”

“One minute, you’re telling me all about how you just aim to have fun and that my hair looks like sunshine and the next, that gloomy artist girl looks your way and you’re going on about some foreign city all night. Rotterdam.”

“Amsterdam?”

“Whatever.”

He remembered none of it. Truth was, the sculptor was nothing close to his type. He didn’t typically…well, ever…go for the serious, inwardly-tortured vibe. “Look, she’s just become my problem out at the ranch. That’s all.”

“You could have said no.”

“Refuse the mayor? When she insisted on a welcome home parade after my last deployment? That would have looked real good.”

“Word around town is art girl took this job because her brother wanted to move here, he liked it so much. Died before that could happen. Soldier or something. Hey, maybe you knew him.”

Wes’s limbs quaked, as if the gossip was an eighteen-wheeler barreling down on him and he felt powerless to move out of its way. He didn’t want to ask—he shouldn’t—but somehow, he suspected that he already knew. “Who’s her brother?”

“Daniel. Same last name, but he’s supposedly a half brother.”

Daniel Blake.

His insides dropped out, like the footholds in the decayed buildings eight thousand miles away, where each step had the potential to give way or detonate. Wes braced his palms against the motel door to stop the room from spinning, yeah, but to also remind him of his place—Close Call, Texas, in a shit motel. Not at the enemy’s gate. Not the ambush that had eviscerated his Marine brother.

No. No, the gossips had it wrong. No way Amsterdam was related to Daniel, though the similarities discharged through his brain like f

ully-automatic rounds—European boarding schools in childhood, Daniel’s knowledge of culture and art, the entirely-too-proper mannerisms Wes had spent the better part of a summer leave trying to deprogram out of him, and—oh, God—the eyes. Why Wes had been so drawn to Amsterdam’s. On some level, they reminded him of his dead friend. The very same friend who would be here today if it weren’t for Wes and his insatiable need to keep things balanced.

He really was going to be sick.