Get Bucked (The Valentine Boys 4)

And since we’d all decided to keep the family at home, in one home for four brothers and their families—or in my case one-day family—we’d needed something bigger.

“It’s magnificent,” Codie gasped, taking in the paint on the walls. “The gray was a good idea. It looks so bright and airy in here.”

I agreed.

The walls were a soft gray, almost white. And the ceilings were now layered with a pattern of pine. The exposed beams at the top of the peaks were a nice touch, too.

The room looked massive, and I had a feeling that we were going to be spending a lot of time in here.

“I’m not sure that I like the stupid vent in the middle of the wall, though,” Candy muttered, glaring at said vent.

She did have a point.

There was a solid wall and one single random vent in the middle of it. They could’ve put that anywhere.

“I’m going to have them move it,” she mumbled to herself.

Candy was a bulldog when it came to this house she was building. And it wasn’t just because she was about to be living in it, either. It was because she truly cared about her father’s jobs—and she made it to her specifications no matter what.

Even if it pissed off the foreman more often than not.

“It’s not bad…” Ace tried to explain.

But Candy was already shaking her head.

“I really don’t like it,” she said. “They could’ve put it on the roof, in the entryway right underneath it,” she said. “Or they could’ve not put it there at all and added another one to the ceiling. I’m not sure when they even did this, either. It looks awful.”

Rolling my eyes, I allowed Candy to do her micromanaging thing and walked over to turn on the ovens for Desi.

Desi was too busy sticking her head in the subzero fridge to notice me doing it.

“What do they need to be put on, Des?” I called out.

“Four hundred degrees,” she called, sounding muffled by the doors. “Do you realize that this really can get ‘subarctic?’”

Well, one would hope so.

It was as we were waiting for the food to cook that what I’d done today came up.

“So, did you do anything productive today?” Ace asked me.

I looked at my eldest brother.

“I went and had lunch with Georgia and Nico after running fence yesterday,” I told him. “Then I found Waylynn working at that diner over by the Motts place.” He knew exactly what diner and made a disgusted face. “Which then turned into her getting a job with Gibson. Gibson asked me to come over this morning to help him with the speakers at the Apache. After that, I went and collected my diploma from the post office box. I spilled Dr. Pepper all over it and tossed it into the trash…”

Desi, Codie, Ace, Callum, and Candy all gasped.

“What?” I asked.

“You tossed your diploma in the trash?” Codie asked, her voice screechy.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “It had Dr. Pepper all over it.”

Candy was up and moving toward the door before I could tell her anything more.

“I’ll go get it,” Candy muttered.

I frowned.

“What’s the big deal?” I asked. “It’s just a piece of paper.”

It was Banks who crossed his beefy arms over his chest and stared at me with an unblinking stare that might’ve intimidated me once upon a time. Now that I was mostly his size, though? I wasn’t nearly as intimidated by it.

“You graduated against a lot of odds, kid,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“I’m not a kid,” I told him.

I didn’t bother to dispute the ‘against a lot of odds’ part.

It was against the odds that I’d graduated.

“Do you realize that you’re the only one out of all the brothers to get a degree?” Callum asked. “That’s a big fuckin’ deal.”

I felt something close to pride fill my chest at hearing that from a brother that had once given up on me.

I’d done some bad things in my life. Made some very poor decisions.

And it’d almost haunted me to this day.

Yet, somehow, I’d been able to claw myself out of the shithole I’d let my life become.

I’d gone to school. Gotten my GED. Then college. And not with just an associate’s degree, but a bachelor’s.

I graduated with my architectural engineering degree as well as one in agricultural science.

That was no small feat while also working full time on the ranch, as well as traveling around to various rodeos making the big bucks as a bullfighter.

“Got it!” Candy said as she waved around the manila envelope that I’d tossed in the trash can as I’d gotten home this afternoon.

Ace got up and took it from her, ripping into it like it was the cure to cancer or something.

Then he grinned like a fucking loon and waved the wet diploma at us with excitement written all over his face.