Fall for Me (Cowboys of Crested Butte 1)

“Who’s this, Renie?” he rubbed the horse’s nose.

“This is Pooh,” she said proudly. “She’s mine.”

“Great name,” he answered as he slowly walked around her, running his hand over the horse’s body. “She’s solid. You pick her out yourself?”

“Mom helped.” Obviously Billy didn’t think Pooh was a boy’s name, like her mom did.

“‘Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.’ You hear that before, Renie? Remember that. Talk to her, but to listen too. Will you do that?”

He must be a very good bronc rider if he knew how to listen to horses, she thought at the time. From that day on, Renie spent as much time listening to Pooh as she did talking to her.

She must’ve read the same page over at least twenty times when she put the book down and turned off the light. Billy either wasn’t coming home tonight, or he planned to get back late enough that she’d already be asleep.

Whatever happened between them tonight, made him stay away. Where had he gone, and who was he with? She had to stop thinking about it too much or she wouldn’t get any sleep at all.

Telling Renie to stay at the house had to have been the stupidest thing he’d ever done. On the other hand, he loved having her there. Hell, he couldn’t make up his damn mind what he thought about it.

When she touched him today, he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her. Since then it was the only thing he thought about. But, it was more than that. His mind drifted to the other things he wanted to do to Renie Fairchild. He tried to shake it out of his head. Thinking about kissing her was bad enough. More than that, it was…incestuous—or something.

It might have been a fluke. He’d see her tomorrow, and it would be as though nothing happened today. If it were that simple, he’d be inside his house, not sitting outside in his truck.

He told her he had a date. It was a lie, but at that moment, he had to leave, and the last thing he wanted was take her with him.

He went to the brewery first, then next door to the movie theater, and then he went to the bowling alley. All in all, he’d killed about four hours. He drove around for another hour, wasting gas until he decided he was being ridiculous.

Once he got home, he put off going inside. He’d been sitting outside in his truck for twenty minutes, and it was damn cold. It was January after all, and Monument, sitting at seven-thousand feet elevation, was colder on average than the surrounding towns and cities.

“Ah, to hell with it.” He got out of the truck and went in the back door of the house. One light remained on, in the kitchen. Renie told him she and her mother left that light on whenever someone would be getting home late. He decided it worked for him, too. He liked it. It made him feel as though somebody waited for him. He left it on even when he was at the house alone.

Renie was gone the next morning when he got out of bed. It wasn’t unusual for her. She was always running off somewhere, meeting up with that friend of hers.

Blythe. That reminded him, he needed to hire somebody to take care of the boarding stables.

He drove to his parents’ place and talked to his dad, William Prescott Patterson, Sr., whom everybody called Bill. His mom, Dottie, was like a grandmother to Renie. Which meant Billy was practically Renie’s uncle, and for the last twelve hours he’d been fantasizing about what it would be like to kiss his niece. Yep, he was fucked up all right.

His dad recommended the same man who ran the stables for Liv last year, after an accident kept her away from the ranch for a couple of months. Steve Sookan was his name, but everyone called him as Sookie. One of their more reliable hands, he’d worked for the Pattersons for a several years.

“You gonna let him stay in the house, Billy? That way he doesn’t have to come up from the bunkhouse,” his dad suggested.

“Why is he living in the bunkhouse?” Typically it was only used during busy times of the year, like calving season.

“Divorce. He’s trying to get back on his feet.”

Billy thought about it for a minute. “I’m not sure, Dad.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t want to tell his dad the real reason he didn’t want Sookie staying at the house, but he couldn’t come up with another reason off the top of his head.

“I guess it would be okay, but I told Renie she could stay at the house if she wanted to come down and see Pooh on the weekends.”

“Sookie’s harmless, but I would understand if Renie felt uncomfortable staying there alone with him.”

Sookie’s reputation with the ladies was the main reason he’d gotten a divorce. Billy didn’t want Renie within a hundred feet of the man.

“What did he say?”

“It doesn’t look good, Blythe. He said he didn’t want to hire someone who doesn’t have any experience with horses.”