His family’s welcome home dinner at the Murphy’s Bar M ranch had been a noisy, enthusiastic gathering of friends and family. Toby Keith, George Strait, and Dierks Bentley had belted out honky-tonk from hidden outdoor speakers, adding a country-western soundtrack to thick steaks sizzling on the grill and myriad conversations tumbling over each other like the river’s water crashing over rocks during spring thaw. While he’d appreciated the turnout, Sawyer had found trying to keep up more exhausting than a day humping his gear over miles of Afghan goat trails.
His dad was a typical rancher, never using two words when one would do, so his official welcome home speech was short and to the point, but Dan Murphy’s husky tone, and momentary brain fart when he’d lost his train of thought, revealed to everyone how relieved he was to have all three of his sons safely back from war.
Which was all it had taken to cause another shitload of guilt to come crashing down on Sawyer’s head. What the hell had he done to deserve steak, music, beer with moisture dripping down the side of the bottle pulled from an old metal tub, and all those well-meaning folks who just wanted to talk? And talk. And effing talk. By the end of the evening, he’d decided that if one more person came up and thanked him for his service, he was going to tie cement blocks to his ankles and throw himself in the river.
“Still, I wanted to be there,” she said. “I heard from Heather that you got a big turnout.”
Heather was her best friend, whose husband had been like Sawyer’s third brother back in the day. But that was then. And this was now, and sometime between Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” and Aaron Tippin’s “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly,” Sawyer had decided that, in many ways, his life was proving to have been easier, and certainly less complicated, in Afghanistan than back here in the real world.
“Have you ever been to Grand Central Station at rush hour?” he asked.
Lips he’d tasted too many times in his dreams turned down. “You know I’ve never been east of Las Vegas.”
Yeah. He knew that. If only the damn rodeo championships had been held in a state where it took more than a nanosecond to get legally married, he might have been able to stop her from getting herself hitched to the totally wrong guy.
The problem was, after how he’d treated her, there would have been a better chance of the Cascades morphing into the Big Rock Candy Mountains and Modoc Mountain erupting and sending streams of Jack Daniels trickling over the rocks than of her listening to why she shouldn’t get married to anyone but him.
“I’ve never been to New York, either. But I’ll bet last night’s dinner came close. Seemed like nearly everyone in the basin showed up. Guess they couldn’t pass up the Bar M’s grass-finished rib eyes.”
Her gaze swept over him. Then her generous lips curved. “Your dad could’ve served hot dogs, or no food at all, and the turnout would’ve been the same. You’re a hometown hero, Sawyer. That’s a big deal. Especially around these parts.”
“I’m not a hero.” The actions that had won him that silver star had not been born from heroism but from red-hot anger at having seen one too many men in his Marine Ranger unit killed by IEDs and ambushes. Just having it brought up again caused the hole inside Sawyer to grow larger.
“Well, you won’t find many who agree with that, but I’m not going to ruin a lovely spring day by arguing.” She flipped a blond braid over her shoulder. “Let’s go look at the pastureland.”
She leaned down and spoke a word into her horse’s perked ear. An instant later, it took off like a shot, leaving Sawyer to follow.
Even caught off guard as he’d been, Sawyer quickly caught up. Together they galloped side by side along the river, then streaking along the dirt trail through the woods, their horses hitting their powerful stride as they raced across the rolling fields of breeze-bent meadow grass.
Five minutes later, they’d reached the pasture nestled up against the mountain lowlands. Austin might have edged him out by a nose. Or maybe he’d beat her. It was too close to tell. But for that brief time, Sawyer had felt . . . maybe not quite alive. But not exactly dead, either.
They reined in, slowing the horses before bringing them to a stop.
The grass was still winter short but greening up. The paddocks were empty, stretching out to the boundary line that separated their families’ properties. Sawyer envisioned cattle—his cattle—grazing on rich green grass dotted with balls of sweet white clover and experienced something that vaguely felt like anticipation. Which came as a surprise after so many mornings waking up dreading the day. And the next. And the next.
“You’ve been away a long time,” she reminded him unnecessarily. Like he hadn’t had a countdown separation day calendar in his head for months? Especially since getting that email about her divorce, which meant he wasn’t going to have to deal with living up close and personal with her husband. Watching some lucky bastard living the life he’d once hoped would be his.
But before he’d returned home, he’d had one last mission to fulfill. Promises to keep. Which he had, even if the past three months had felt like one long, unending act of contrition.
“Does it look the same as you remember?” she asked, breaking into memories of suffering too many pots of coffee, photo albums, and tearful hugs.
“Even better.” After all the years spent in a dusty, barren landscape, the green pastures, foothills, and the glistening white mountain with its cap of snow were a bright, much welcome sight.
He glanced over at her and saw the concern in her eyes. Was she worried he wouldn’t lease it? Or worse yet, that he would? While leasing wasn’t as bad as selling out, it had to sting to have someone else’s herd grazing on pasture that had been in her family since both their four-times great-grandfathers had arrived at the river originally seeking gold.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Sawyer didn’t have a plan B if she decided to back out of the deal, but felt he had to ask.
It was her turn to shrug. “It’s not like it’s being used. We sold off all the stock except the horses and Desperado last fall.”
Desperado was a huge Hereford-Brahma cross-mix who’d been born to buck. It wasn’t that he was vicious, but despite his sixteen-hundred-pound muscular bulk, he could spin quicker than a rattlesnake’s strike. He was also smart enough to somehow sense a rider’s moves, then pull a swift and effective counterattack to unseat him.
Many cowboys over the years had tried to ride Desperado. Only Sawyer had managed to last the full eight seconds, and while he’d enjoyed hearing the cheers of fans rock the rafters of the grandstand, he’d mostly credited his success to knowing the bull so well. And the bull knowing him. What most of those he’d sent flying into the air in under three seconds didn’t realize was that, despite his name and reputation, the bull was docile as a newborn lamb when at home in Green Springs Ranch’s pasture.
“Coop said you kept the wily old guy for breeding.”
“That wily old guy just happens to be the gift that keeps on giving. He has prodigy throwing cowboys into the dirt from Canada, most U.S. states, through South America, to as far away as New Zealand.”
“Green Springs was the best rodeo stock provider on the circuit.”
They’d always bred their rodeo horses and cattle with as much care as any Thoroughbred breeder aiming for a Triple Crown. Before his retirement, Desperado had been universally known as a class act. Not only did the bull not go after a downed rider, the way most tended to do, he actually appeared to try to avoid any fallen cowboy.
“Past tense being the definitive description,” she said on a sigh. She tilted her hat a bit, shading her eyes from both the sun and his gaze. “One thing I’ve learned is that looking back into the rearview mirror doesn’t do any good. Life moves on whether you’re ready or not. As you undoubtedly know firsthand.”
“Yeah. I do.” He paused, giving a moment’s thought to lost Marine Raider Battalion Spec Ops whose voices he could still hear in his head. Especially when he was lying in his rack, wide awake at zero-dark-thirty. “How’s your dad doing today?”
The reason she’d given for not coming to the party was that her father had taken a fall. Sawyer’s brother Ryan, River’s Bend’s sole doctor, had dropped by the ranch and checked the older man out before coming to the party. He’d reported that, while Buck Merrill was shaken, nothing was broken.
“Physically, he’s okay. Though I do wish he’d let Ryan talk him into a wheelchair. Or at least a walker. He’s so damn stubborn and prideful that he won’t admit the cane just isn’t working anymore.”
“After battling off polio when he was a kid, it must suck for him to have it hit in what should be the prime of his life.”
“It does. Especially since ranching is not only what he’s always done, it’s
who
he’s always been. And now that’s being taken away from him.” They’d been friends long enough that Sawyer heard what she wasn’t saying and didn’t need her to fill in the blanks.
“He’s not happy about me leasing his land.”
“It’s not about you.”
Her gaze moved out beyond the pasture, where shaggy evergreens climbed from the foothills up the snow-topped mountain rising majestically above them. Despite the slight bite in the air, the wedge of Canadian geese flying overhead on their way home was another sign of spring. Which wasn’t any guarantee of warm weather, since snowfall in May, or even once flurries on the town’s Fourth of July parade, wasn’t unheard of in this part of the Cascades.
Being away had only reaffirmed Sawyer’s belief that the best thing that had ever happened to his family was when Malachy Murphy discovered this homeplace while searching for gold in Black Bear River. And he knew Buck Merrill felt the same way. Gold dust might glitter and, if a guy was lucky, could bring riches. But that wealth was easily spent, too often quickly gone. While the real treasure, the land, was forever.
“If it were anyone else leasing the pasture, it’d be even harder on him,” she said. “But you’re practically family, and to be perfectly honest, we need the money. Still, I can’t deny that he’s having trouble dealing with the idea of
any
cattle grazing on it but our own. He’s convinced that he’ll be back on the circuit soon.”
“You sure that’s not possible?” As much as Sawyer wanted this prime piece of land, and had intentions of offering to buy it and the neighboring section if Buck Merrill ever was willing to sell, no way did he want it at the expense of hurting a man who’d always been like an uncle. The bond between the Merrill and Murphy families was as long and wide as the river, even including a scattering of marriages between second and third cousins over the generations.
“Anything’s possible,” Austin allowed, without sounding at all optimistic. “But I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it. Literally.”
She shook off the complex brew of emotions that had her eyes glistening in the spring sun.
Cowgirls don’t cry
. Sawyer knew her father had drilled that edict into her from the cradle. Although at first glance, a man’s attention might be captured by the silky blond hair she’d inherited from her Scandinavian mother, her blue eyes, lush pink lips, and slender-as-a-willow body, inside, Austin Merrill was as tough as any Marine Sawyer had ever served with. He also knew that inside that protective outer shell was a soft and closely guarded heart.
There’d been a time when he would have put his arms around her, held her tight, and assured her that everything would be all right. That he’d
make
it right. The same way he’d ached to unbreak her heart back when they were seven. Which, he’d belatedly come to realize, was when he’d lost his heart to the pretty blond cowgirl next door.
But hell, not only had
he
been the one to break her heart years later with the lame apology and lie about the kiss not really meaning anything, these days Sawyer was having enough trouble straightening out his own life.
He sure as hell didn’t have any business messing with anyone else’s. Especially hers.
“I’ve got some money set aside,” he said. “It’s yours if you need it.”
She tossed up her chin in a gesture he’d seen countless times over the years. “We’ll be okay.” Knowing that her pride went deep to the bone, just as her dad’s did, Sawyer wasn’t surprised by her response. “Especially now that I’m no longer paying Jace’s hefty travel expenses.”
“I’m sorry the marriage didn’t work out.” Which was only partly true. Sawyer was sorry as hell that she’d had to go through a divorce. But he couldn’t deny that he wasn’t at all unhappy to have the guy out of the picture.
“It was a mistake from the beginning. I acted impulsively and paid the price.” She squared her shoulders, and he watched the familiar glint of determination flash in her eyes. “But now I’m moving on, turning the page, starting a new chapter, whatever cliché you want to call it.”
“Sounds as if we’re both pretty much in the same situation,” Sawyer said.
“And back together in the same place,” she agreed.
Their eyes met. And held for just a moment too long. As the years spun back, his fingertips practically tingled with an urge to reach out and trace her face.
And then what?
And wasn’t that the effing sixty-four-thousand-dollar question?
Her mare, apparently bored with standing still, began to impatiently sidestep. Seeming grateful for the interruption, Austin picked up the reins and began heading toward the cabin. “Are you sure you want to stay in here?”
“If you’d rather I throw my gear in the bunkhouse—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I just thought you’d be staying with your family on the Bar M.”
“With the honeymooners?” It had been a little weird to see his widowed dad acting like a besotted newlywed. Weird but nice.
“I think they’re sweet.”
“And I’m happy for them, but I think it’d be better if we all have our own space.” He’d come down to the kitchen last night for one last beer, only to find Mitzi seated on the kitchen counter, his dad standing in front of her, and although—thank you, God!—they were both still dressed, it looked as if clothes could start flying any moment.