AVERY (The Corbin Brothers Book 2) (2 page)

“Avery, I really need you to look at the cattle logs and keep better track,” he said, his voice quiet.

“All — all right. I’ll do better.” But only because I felt bad for Chance. Not because I actually cared about the ranch.

“Because unless I might be going crazy — and God knows I actually might be — I think something underhanded is going on,” Chance said. “I think we have cattle missing.”

All of the air went out of me in one whoosh. “What?” What the hell else could go wrong? Only a fire sweeping through the ranch could cause more damage than this, if Chance’s instincts were on target.

“Not many,” he said. “But enough for me to check the cattle logs.”

And without the updated records, there was no way to know for sure. I felt like both an asshole and an idiot, now.

“You know, I think I’m going to stay in town for a while,” I said.

“I just want to get back to the ranch, Avery,” Chance said, sounding much older than his 35 years.

“You can go ahead,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll find a ride back.”

He sighed. “Call one of us if you don’t. Don’t try to walk all the way back home.”

“I only did that once, and never again.” The ranch was so far removed from town that I’d found myself still walking at first light and all of my brothers out looking for me, worried and angry.

“We have beer at home, if that’s what you’re after,” Chance tried again. “You could save your money and drink at home.”

“I think I’ll leave that to you,” I said. “I’m guessing you’ll need all the beer you can handle.”

“Thinking about picking up another case at the gas station,” he admitted. “Try and be back before first light this time, won’t you?”

“I’ll try.”

My guilt released me a little as I watched Chance drive away, the truck idling for a moment at the last stop sign before revving and motoring away. I felt best when I was in town, and when I was alone. Solitude was pretty hard to come by in this family, even if we did work such a large piece of land. We had to work it together, and as often as I did want to be alone, I wasn’t. The single greatest gift Hadley had given this family was coercing me to move into the travel trailer she got Hunter to fix up. That was my fortress of solitude. I could, for once in my life, be separate from my brothers. Our parents had had us with such regularity that I was never even in school by myself. Hunter always trailed me, or once, notably, I was in the combination middle and high school with Emmett and Tucker, right after Chance had graduated. None of the teachers ever called me by the correct name until they evidently met by committee and just started calling us collectively “Corbin.” It was an easier identity for everyone to remember, the Corbin boys of the Corbin Ranch, than to try and ferret out any of our individuality.

Okay, fine. Maybe I was a little thankful to be with my brothers in school when our parents died. That was the only comfort I had then — strength in numbers — to try and forget our grief.

I was starting to get maudlin and I wasn’t even drinking yet. There was only one thing to do about that.

Pointing myself in the direction of the only bar in town, I walked with a purpose to my steps. I wanted to drink to forget all of this bullshit — the foreclosure, the ranch, the disappointment in my brother’s face, the idea that he’d have to break the bad news to everyone, everything. Every single thing. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to even daydream about what I might want to be doing once the ranch was repossessed. That used to be my favorite distraction, the surefire way to make the hours working the ranch fly by — playing the game of what if my parents hadn’t died, what if I didn’t have to work on the ranch, what if I had a choice to do anything I wanted to do in the world instead of this. I could usually come up with some pretty interesting — if unrealistic — possibilities. I could’ve been a football star, I was convinced, if I’d been able to stick with it instead of help out on the ranch. In school, I was better even than Chance on the field — everyone said so. Even if I’d never make it to the NFL, then at least I could get paid to play on an arena team or some other squad. I was used to not having money. I could find ways to make ends meet.

Or maybe I’d just travel the world, doing odd jobs to fund my tickets and accommodations. This was my favorite alternative to ponder. I would select a destination at random and point myself in that direction, letting the wind blow me all around the world. I’d cool my heels beside magnificent swimming pools at all-inclusive resorts — my odd jobs were always somehow very lucrative — and have a different lover for every single city I experienced. Why couldn’t that be possible?

Tonight, though, I had one purpose and one purpose only: to forget all of my problems, all of my family’s problems. To forget, even, that I was a Corbin.

This town was too small for me to go unrecognized, but maybe I could pretend not to notice all the nods I got bellying up to the bar. The bartender slid me a beer — I never had to ask for what I wanted to drink — and I looked to drown myself in it. If not this one, the next one. I’d drink until I could forget about all of this, taking great care not to think about how this kind of drinking almost did my baby brother in, that after I got drunk, passed out, and woke up again the next morning, all of the problems would still be there. Fuck it, and fuck them. At least for tonight, I was going to drink until I didn’t have any worries.

My vision was already swimming when someone sat down next to me much too close for comfort, the length of a thigh pressed against mine.

“Avery Corbin,” a woman’s voice purred. “You are positively drunk. I can see it and smell it a mile away.”

I narrowed my eyes to try and focus on the person who’d interrupted my binge and shook my head.

“No,” I said. “This is exactly what I don’t need right now, Paisley. Go away.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, pouting. “It’s no fun drinking alone. I won’t let you do it. I care too much about you.”

“Get out of here.” I waved my hands at her like one might shoo a fly. I wanted nothing to do with Paisley.

“Don’t you want to have a beer with an old school chum?” she asked, covering my hand with her own until I yanked mine out from underneath. “Don’t be like that, Avery.”

“I want to be by myself.”

“Rough day?” She fluttered her long eyelashes at me. “Tell Paisley all about it. I love to hear about long … days.”

It wasn’t my imagination. Paisley Summers was coming on to me. I’d never sampled the fruit from that tree and had never so much as fantasized about it. Well, that was a lie. Any man with blood running through his veins had to have fantasized about being with Paisley Summers before. She was gorgeous, the only daughter of a wealthy rancher, and had a way of making men feel like they were the only person on the planet when she was around.

I just didn’t like her. I never had. I never would. She came on too strong, was somehow too into me when she could have anyone else in town. Even now, even as it made me hopelessly dizzy to turn my head and check, men in button down shirts and baseball caps and the odd tie here and there were eyeing me with no small amount of envy. They saw me with Paisley and assumed I had something they didn’t have.

Well, I supposed I did have something they didn’t have: the Corbin name. That was, after all, why Paisley was so interested in the first place. My name.

“Don’t you want to go somewhere?” she was busy warbling as my thoughts meandered. “Keep this drinking up much longer and you won’t be able to find your way home.”

“I know my way home,” I said gruffly, “and I don’t need any help from you.”

“You’ll probably get a public intoxication charge if you try and walk out there,” she said.

“I will not.”

“Resisting arrest.” She smiled at me as if the idea pleased her. “Drunk and disorderly conduct.”

“I won’t.”

“I could take you home. Free of charge.”

“Just leave me alone, Paisley. Christ.” She was like a gnat, but I didn’t know why that shocked me. She’d been that way all our lives.

“Touchy,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “That’s probably why you’re not very popular with the ladies here. You need to work on your manners — and your sense of humor.”

“What can I do to make you go away?” I groaned, gripping my head tightly between my hands. “You don’t even ever come to this bar.”

It was true. Even though Paisley’s father’s ranch backed up to a quadrant of the Corbin Ranch, Paisley never came out drinking — at least as far as I knew. I was sitting on this very barstool at least three times a week, and sometimes much more often than that. I would’ve noticed if Paisley came in here. Even if it would’ve ruined my buzz, like it was swiftly doing tonight.

“Can’t two old friends catch up?” she asked, examining her pristine manicure. God. Each and every one of her gestures seemed perfectly calculated. She was such a princess. That — among other reasons — was what turned me off about her. God only knew what she did with her days. I could only imagine — manicures and pedicures, massages, online shopping, trips to the city. If anything, I felt sorry for her father. Sam Summers was a hell of a rancher — one who deserved sons or something to carry on the name of his ranch. Paisley sure as hell didn’t seem like she was very interested in carrying on the work that was so important to her father.

But then, look at me. I certainly wasn’t very interested in carrying on my parents’ work, my family’s heritage. Maybe Paisley and I had more in common than I thought.

“Fine,” I said. “If you cover my bar tab, you can sit here.”

The corners of Paisley’s mouth curled upward. “I’m already sitting here, silly.”

“You can sit here without me getting up and leaving,” I amended.

She propped her chin on her fists, those clear hazel eyes shining. “I made a mistake leaving you alone for so long, didn’t I?”
“Are you going to cover the tab or not?”

“Avery Corbin,” she sighed. “Always the man with the plan. Good business acumen. You’ve got a deal, then. I’ll pay your bar tab, and you’ll be nice to me.”

“No promises,” I muttered.

“Then no bar tab,” she chirped, patting my shoulder. “A deal’s a deal, Corbin.”

“Don’t call me Corbin,” I said, scowling. “It’s Avery.”

“Of course it’s Avery. Now, do we have a deal, or not?”

I thought about the foreclosure, about the cattle logs, about Chance going back to the ranch alone, despondent, casting around for a good way to tell everyone else about our ranch’s misfortune. I thought about the tab I’d racked up to try and avoid thinking about all those things, about the money I had in my own measly bank account that would probably have to be pooled together with the rest of my brothers to see what we could do about the repayments to the bank. I was stupid to blow so much money on alcohol. Chance was right. He was always right about everything.

“Deal,” I said impulsively, and Paisley grinned. It wasn’t that she was unattractive. It was just that she was so … accessible. Paisley had been throwing herself at me for years and years. Maybe tonight, though, she could be just the distraction I needed.

“Talk to me, then, Avery,” she crooned. “What are you doing out tonight? Shouldn’t you be at home after a long day of work?”

“I really don’t want to talk about that.” I signaled the bartender for another round, and this time, he brought me a beer and Paisley a fruity little cocktail. Typical.

“Then what do you want to talk about?” she asked, toying with the straw, clinking the ice cubes together. “I’ll talk about anything you want.”
I shrugged. “Okay. How did you spend your day?”

“Let’s see.” She drummed her pink fingernails against the surface of the bar. “This morning I got up and went for a jog. The sun came up while I was out — it was gorgeous. Don’t you ever just stop and watch the sunrise? I like to try and make it a point.”

“The sun comes up,” I said. “I’m already on the horse, working.”

“Then you get to see the sunrise every morning.” She sighed rapturously. “How wonderful.”

“I don’t think it’s particularly wonderful.”

“Maybe you should. Try shifting your views on the sunrise. Be thankful for it. Appreciate how beautiful it can be coming up over the horizon and gilding the land.”

I studied her as she took a dainty sip of her dainty drink.
“What are you doing here, Paisley?”

“Here at the bar?” She clinked her drink against my beer bottle. “Having a drink with a handsome man.”

“I mean here in this stupid town.”

“I’m from here, silly, same as you.”

“You might be from here, but you don’t belong here.”

Paisley blinked at me. “That’s hurtful, Avery.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be.” I really didn’t. “It’s just that you seem so fancy.”

“I seem fancy?”

“Look at your nails, and then look at mine.”

We placed our hands together so she could understand what I was talking about. Hers were soft, the cuticles trimmed, the ends of her nails long and shapely. Mine were hard, calloused from use, the fingernails rimmed with dirt, jagged with injury. I still had scabs on the palms of my hands from an incident with barbed wire several weeks ago.

“There’s nothing wrong with having nice hands,” Paisley reasoned. “All you’d have to do is be more careful with yours. Since you work with them, that’s something you should always be doing.”