“Morning.” Clay, sun-bleached hair sticking up all over, stumbled half asleep into the kitchen, one hand rubbing his lower back.
“Morning. You feeling okay?”
“I think I’d rather have broken bones than this soft-tissue injury crap. I woke up real stiff.” Clay laughed as his inadvertent joke registered. “In many places. April’s still sleeping or I might have been tempted to stay in bed myself.”
Mason smiled. Yeah, waking up in bed with April was enough to make any man stiff and tempted, himself no exception. “You need a pain pill for your back?”
“In a bit. I’ll take a cup of that coffee now though.” Clay pulled out a kitchen chair and sat heavily.
“You got it.” Mason poured him a steaming cup and paused. “I don’t know how you take your coffee.” After what they’d done the night before, that fact struck him as totally ridiculous.
Clay shook his head and then winced as his neck must have reminded him his pills had worn off. “Just a spoon of sugar, and don’t beat yourself up over it. I didn’t drink coffee back when we were eighteen. Neither did you. I guess it’s a habit that comes with age.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” Mason glanced out the window again. Now that it was daylight, he got a nice view of Clay’s property. “The barn and the fields look good. A little work and this place will be perfect.”
Clay laughed. “Yeah, if I had the time to do it myself, or the money to hire out the work, it sure could. As it is, I don’t have enough of either at the moment to get the job done.”
Mason turned to him. “I could do some of it for you while I’m here. I’ve got a month leave.”
“I can’t have you working while I sit here and watch.”
“You’re hurt, and I’m used to work. I’ll go nuts here with nothing to do.” Especially when April left again for New York in less than a week.
Clay hesitated then finally agreed. “Okay. Maybe if you just string the fencing in the new paddock. I already sank the posts. I’d like to be able to rotate the field where I turn April Dawn out.”
“You want me to go get her today from the Carson’s and bring her back here?”
“I left her there not only because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take care of her by myself, but because I’ve got no feed and no hay here. I need a delivery of bedding and to clean out her stall… I can’t do all that right now.”
“But you’re not by yourself. I’m here. Besides, it will be good to be around horses like when we were younger.”
Clay grinned. “Okay. Since you’re bound and determined to make me indebted to you, I’ll let you muck my stalls and unload my feed and hay too. Happy?”
“Yes.” Actually, Mason was. Some hard physical labor might take his mind off the pointlessness of resuming this thing between the three of them when it was destined to end with them apart. Which was actually probably for the best, because how the hell could the three of them all live together without people eventually noticing something was off?
Speaking of noticing something… Mason tilted his head in the direction of the bedroom. “What do you think her parents are going to say that she spent the night here in the house with the two of us?”
Clay laughed. “Still worried about Mr. Carson’s shotgun, are you?”
Mason had faced worse than that, but yeah, he was. He wasn’t stupid. “Mess with a man’s daughter and pay the consequences.”
“She told them she’d be spending the night on the couch in case you needed help nursing me during the night.” Clay waggled his eyebrows.
“I thought I was supposed to sleep on the couch,” Mason reminded him.
“You slept in the chair, because that is the kind of dedicated friend you are.” Clay grinned.
Mason shook his head. “You think you got it all figured out, don’t you?”
“For now I do. We’ll work on the rest later.”
“Work out what later?” April wandered into the kitchen silently on bare feet, wearing an oversized T-shirt he recognized from the old days and looking worlds away from the girl in the red dress who had appeared at the hospital.
“How to get the rest of the fencing up for the other paddocks, that’s what,” Clay lied smoothly. “Get yourself together, darlin’, because after breakfast we’re heading over to your parents’ farm.”
She frowned sleepily. “Why?”
“I want to tell your daddy when we’ll be collecting April Dawn.”
Mason shook his head, hoping that was all they collected from April’s daddy.
Clay continued. “And I want to see if Mason can still sit a horse after all this time.”
That brought Mason’s gaze around. “What?”
“April Dawn needs to be worked out. I can’t do it and I can’t think of a better man for the job than you.”
Mason groaned. Clay was still up to something. Probably hoping that once he got on a horse he’d forget all about his Army career.
A tiny song began to sound from the other room and April dove through the doorway to grab her bag. “That’s my boss’ ringtone.”
Mason watched her through the open door. Little did Clay know, the only incentive Mason needed to not re-up, to come back here and trade his combat boots for cowboy boots, was April and the fact she still affected him like a drug he couldn’t get enough of. But as she nodded her head vigorously and placated her boss with promises of returning to New York by the end of the week, Mason figured that like all drugs, it would have been best if he’d just said no. Too bad it was too late for that now.
April finally disconnected the call and came back into the kitchen, frazzled.
Clay looked concerned. “Everything okay, darlin’?”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Just some work stuff.”
Mason didn’t like the expression on her face, and liked her boss even less for putting it there. He stepped closer to April, pulled her to him and planted a hot full-out kiss on her mouth. When he pulled away, her eyes drifted open slowly and he saw the heat in them. “How about we postpone breakfast and the trip to your parents’ for a bit and head back to bed?”
Clay grinned. “I like how you think, my friend.”
***
Being around horses again, not to mention at the Carson’s farm where so much of his youth had been spent, felt surreal. But no more so than when two lanky kids came around the corner of the barn, one dark-haired, one light-haired, both dressed in worn boots and jeans and sporting cowboy hats that had seen better days.
The sight stopped Mason in his tracks. Next to him, Clay laughed. “Yeah. Brings back memories, doesn’t it?”
It sure as hell did. These two could have been he and Clay when they’d started working for Mr. Carson at thirteen, when they were clumsy kids still trying to navigate their pubescent bodies. Mason remembered that summer well. They couldn’t get enough to eat they were shooting up so fast, and their mothers often bemoaned how fast they outgrew clothes. That had been the year they’d first became friends with April, the three of them inseparable by summer’s end.
“It’s going to suck when she’s gone.”
Mason’s sobering observation wiped the cheerful look right off Clay’s face. “Then let’s not let her go.”
Mason frowned and glanced sideways at his friend. “What do you suggest we do? Tie her up in the barn?”
Though the kinky side of him liked that idea for a short-term bit of fun, it was no way a long-term solution to the problem.
“I haven’t figured that out yet, but I like your idea about the barn.” Clay waggled his eyebrows devilishly.
Mason shook his head and sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ll be back in Germany in a few weeks anyway.”
“Shouldn’t you be just about done with your tour of duty, or whatever it’s called?”
“Yeah, my contract is almost up. This one, anyway, until I reenlist.”
“But you haven’t reenlisted yet?”
“No. Not yet.” He had planned to do it before he left Afghanistan, but then Clay had been injured and he’d left for home without another thought.
Mason could see the wheels in Clay’s head turning.
Clay grinned. “Good.”
“Why? What would I do here? I’m not a good enough rider to rank in the top ten the way you do. I’m a soldier now, and happy that I’m a good one.”
“You’re a cowboy first and always will be. It’s in your blood, just like it’s in mine.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “So, what? I’ll just follow you around and carry your saddle for you on the circuit like some roadie?”
“No, that’s not what I’m suggesting. Look, Mason, if I ever want to get my farm in shape, and keep it running smoothly, I’m gonna need full-time help.”
Mason scowled at Clay’s feeble attempt to get him to stay. “You already said you can’t afford to pay someone to do that right now. As crappy as my pay is in the Army, it’s still better than getting paid nothing to muck your stalls.”
“I’m not talking about hiring you. I’m talking about a partnership.”
“A partnership in what?”
“Stock trainers. You and I. I choose the green horses at auction and train them when I’m not riding on the circuit. I can come home between rodeos. You run the farm and work with the stock when I’m traveling. At first we can just train and sell the broncs, at a huge profit, of course. Then, after I retire from competition, we can consider becoming contractors. Instead of selling, we supply the rough stock for the competitions.”
Mason pictured a life where he could wake up each morning to good hot coffee and watch the sun rise over Clay’s barn after sleeping soundly each night, the kind of sleep you could only get on a farm after a hard day’s work. A life around both the horses and the rodeo he loved without having to get thrown in the dirt and depend on winning for his livelihood. Possibly a life that had some sort of a relationship with April in it, even a long-distance one. At least they’d be on the same continent with him in Oklahoma.
Mason shook the images from his head. “You’re crazy, Clay.”
So why was he tempted? More than tempted, actually.
“Yeah, I’ve been called that before. But that’s neither here nor there. It’s a good idea. You should see what I’ve been offered for April Dawn. We could make good money doing what we love. Just think about it. Okay?”
Mason drew in a deep breath, frightened at how good it all sounded. “Okay, I’ll think about it, but what the hell does it matter? She’s still going back to New York.”
“I’m working on that.”
He narrowed his eyes at his friend. “You’re up to something again, aren’t you?”
Clay just grinned. “Don’t you worry. Now let’s get these two kids to bring April Dawn on over and we’ll see if you still remember how to ride.”
Mason let out a long, patient breath. “All right, but if I end up in a body cast because of you, you’ll have my commanding officer to deal with.”
Clay shrugged. “As if a mere man could scare me after I’ve faced El Diablo and lived to tell about it. Come on. No more procrastinating. Throw on a vest and let’s get you back in the saddle.”
Chapter Twenty
April had never felt so conflicted in her life. She loved both Clay and Mason. But Mason was going back to the Army, Clay was going back on the road and she would be damned before she would sit at home like the little woman waiting for them to come home. So she would leave the men she loved to go back to her life in New York, and she was totally miserable about it as the number of days until she left grew shorter.
Standing next to the fence and watching Mason in the saddle had taken her back a few too many years. She might as well have been eighteen again, so in love she’d do anything.
The two men who held her heart captive stood talking now with two young boys watching them wide-eyed. Her dad had told her how the two kids he’d just hired worshipped Clay. What kids wouldn’t? He’d started out just like them, mucking stalls for her daddy after school, and now he was one of the top-ranking riders in the country.
April smiled and watched them listening with rapt attention as Clay explained something to Mason. She’d been inside with her mother visiting for a bit, but she needed to be closer to them. Her time here was so short she didn’t want even this small distance separating them. She moved closer and Clay smiled, looping an arm around her as he kept speaking with Mason.
“I think I know what’s wrong.”
Mason frowned. “What do you mean, what’s wrong? I stayed on her, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t pretty.”
Mason scowled. “Hey, give me a break. I’ve been riding Humvees the past few years, not horses.”
Clay laughed. “Yeah, I know, but I’ve been thinking about it. How you used to ride when we were in competitions together. I don’t know why I didn’t see it then, but it’s clear as day now.”
“What’s clear?”
“Your style, the way you ride…you’d be better riding bareback than on a saddle bronc.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Bareback?”
Clay nodded. “Yeah, listen to me. You use more muscle. You try to overpower the bronc. That technique works better for bull riding or bareback bronc. Saddle bronc takes more timing, feeling the cadence of the horse, going with it, not fighting it.”