Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2) (2 page)

Whether or not he agreed, Michael understood the subtext. The brass in Cheyenne would be shitting blue bricks over his newest peccadillo—him winging a madman threatening a kid with a knife, followed by his timeout in the corner playing camp counselor and tossing a hoodlum into the lake for beating up another kid. Oh yeah, they were definitely calling for his head on a plate. Maybe even Paul’s.

That brought him up short. The last thing he wanted was for Paul to take flak for his actions, as justified as they might seem in his own mind. Chewing his bottom lip, he dropped his gaze and let the guilt eat at him. He probably deserved it, every last damn bit, but guilt wasn’t the only pill he had to swallow.

Bitterly he barked, “So you’re putting me back on suspension.” It wasn’t a question and it wasn’t unexpected, yet bile rose in the back of his throat. He’d acted out during that rough patch, at least as much as a grown man could do, losing his temper when he should have been setting an example. Said a few things that could be taken the wrong way, and had. That was on him. No excuses.

He’d taken the disciplinary hearing to heart, had determined to dial up his sensitivity meter. What happened later—the shooting, him dealing in his own way with a delinquent—those events had justifiable written all over them, at least in his own mind. But guilt seemed to be in the eye of the beholder when it came to bureaucrats anxious to keep a low profile.

Paul was saying something, but Michael hadn’t been listening. He muttered, “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, it’s not a suspension.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“Some folks call it a vacation.”

A suspension by any other name... Michael mumbled, “How long are we talking about?”

Paul backed away, a leery expression on his face. “A month.” It was more a question than a statement. He quickly added, “With full salary and benefits.”

Michael wondered which kidney Paul had to cough up to get the powers that be to agree to that. Of course, squirrelling him away, out of sight and out of mind, might be the best solution all around. The bully’s lawyer parents might still come after him with a civil suit, but there were risks to having evidence of their son’s violently aggressive behavior splashed all over the internet. And now he had real, died-in-the-wool eye witnesses to back up his own testimony, putting the odds solidly in his favor.

With some relief, Michael agreed, “That’s generous,” but pointed out the department didn’t have the manpower to handle high summer traffic and all the problems that cropped up as it was. His being gone meant pulling somebody off paper shuffling and onto horseback or an ATV, getting their wingtips dirty. Plus, he was only one of two in their quadrant with the training to deal with environmental issues.

He offered, “How about we make that half time instead? You know, let me check on census data. Do some sweeps around the lakes. Make sure nobody’s getting into trouble out there.”

Paul looked tempted, just for an instant, but then he said, “I got my orders. Now you have yours, Brooks. I don’t want to see you back here until mid-August.” He tapped the folder with the incriminating evidence. “Are we clear on that?”

“Crystal.” Michael stomped to the door and yanked it open.

Paul called out, “Relax, have some fun. When you come back, all this will be behind you.”

Michael muttered, “I don’t know how to have fun.”

As he walked through the door, Paul said, “I know, son. But try.”

****

I
nstead of his usual meandering route to what he laughingly called home base, Michael hopped on the interstate for the two mile run to the truck stop. After filling his dual diesel fuel tanks, he ran into the market to pay for the fuel and picked up a turkey sub and a cold soda, then headed south to the KOA campground.

Even mid-week, the place was a beehive of activity. With Jubilee Days bearing down on Laramie, rodeo participants and fans alike were gathering in preparation for the weekend’s start of festivities.

Parking next to his travel trailer, Michael left the engine running as he ran inside to grab his checkbook and his final guilty pleasure, a pack of Marlboros with five cancer sticks remaining. He’d saved them for when he needed a pick-me-up. Today seemed like just the right time to indulge in a bad habit.

After climbing back into the cab of the truck, he carefully extracted a smoke, lit it and inhaled deeply. The acrid burn was a pleasure he’d long denied himself. That, along with other things... things he wasn’t going to think about. Not now. Probably not ever.

On his way to the fairgrounds, he stopped at the office to pay his month’s rent. Sally at the counter waved him toward the office. “The girl will take care of you, Michael.”
The girl
was Sally’s daughter. He had to fish for the gal’s name, experiencing a flush of guilt for forgetting it, not that he had any particular reason to remember.

No reason at all. Other than the twenty hundred times Sally had tried to hook him up with her. Her, who is her?

Deb. Dora. Doreen?

Dolly. Shit, it’s Dolly.

Plastering a smile on his face, he sidled into the makeshift office and nodded in greeting to the doe-eyed young woman tapping on a keyboard. As usual, she blushed crimson and stuttered, “H-hi, Mr. Brookes. Nice day today.”

It could be hailing a blue streak and the girl would say the same thing...
hi, nice day
, always mister, not Michael, keeping him at arm’s length despite the fact her mom was fondling an imaginary engagement ring just in case.

From the counter Sally announced, shrill enough to rattle the windows, “Dolly’s doing barrels, ya know.”

Michael loudly agreed, “Yes, I know.”

“Don’t start ’til nine-thirty. Last event.”

“Thanks, got it.” He clicked his pen and raised his eyebrows at Dolly who was tittering as she cupped her hand across her mouth. She had a chipped tooth from a face plant into a barrel. The mother hadn’t seen fit to send the kid to the dentist to get it fixed, treating it like normal wear and tear. Dolly, self-conscious and shy at the best of times, obviously didn’t see it that way.

Not that he had a right to judge. He had some gouges and scarring to show for the few times he’d been on the wrong side of a bull’s foul humor back in college. The rodeo boys hadn’t gotten to him fast enough as Mr. Django did a foxtrot on his hard skull. After waking up to dancing girls circling his head instead of the male strippers he fancied, he switched to team roping and the opportunity to blow out his knees and shoulder instead.

Seemed a fair trade at the time.

Dolly mouthed, “Three seventy-five,” as Michael scrawled his signature on the check. Sally must really want him to take the girl off her hands if she was still letting him get away with paying winter rates during the high season. He was a hundred and ten percent certain it wasn’t his sparkling personality and devastating good looks that tipped the scales.

He was flirting with his thirty-second birthday at the end of the month, pretty much over-the-hill by most standards, but he had a steady job, drove a late model dually and kept his patch of real estate clean and tidy. And he said
yes ma’am, no ma’am
, tipped his hat and opened doors for the blue-haired ladies at the grocery store, and kept his drinking and other habits out of public view.

Michael felt moved to say something nice, even though he realized how the mother’s big ears on the other side of the door would take it. The girl deserved better than being a slab of meat hung out for anything wearing a jockstrap to consider. No beauty by any stretch of the imagination, Dolly overcompensated by being nice in a browbeaten way. She’d make somebody a good wife. Grateful, attentive.

If he batted for that team, he could do a hell of a lot worse than to take her out and show her there was more to life than being under the thumb of an old bat too cheap to see to her kid’s dental hygiene.

He smiled. Not with teeth. That was a bit too personal, too welcoming. Too fucking filled with promise. He asked, “You running Samson on Saturday?” The gelding was her fastest mount, though not necessarily her steadiest. He’d been the one to drop his shoulder and buck-pitch her during the sharp left turn. She’d landed on the lip of the barrel. With her mouth. Ouch. She was lucky to have any teeth left at all.

Dolly’s eyes sparkled as she nodded yes enthusiastically. Eyes darting toward the door, she asked sotto voce, “Will you be there?”

Michael tapped his forefinger on the girl’s nose, and this time he flashed her a genuine grin. “Wouldn’t miss it. But only on one condition.”

Blushing crimson, Dolly stuttered, “S-s-sure.”

“I need someone to hold my gelding while I get ready for the calf roping Friday afternoon. Think your ma would let you off to help me out?”

Dolly peered over his shoulder, her face lighting up with hope and delight. He was certain mom had just given the kid a thumb’s up. What mom, and Dolly, didn’t know was that his partner for the event was a painfully shy nineteen year old planning on becoming a veterinarian.

Feeling smug about his plans for playing cupid, he said his goodbyes and resumed his trip to the fairgrounds so he could sign up for the two events. He hadn’t planned on competing, but now that he was on enforced layup, so to speak, there was no reason why he couldn’t get back into rodeo competitions again.

It offered a bright spot in an otherwise shitty time of his life, the bittersweet memory of the last time he’d indulged his passion being when he’d had a steady partner to come home to. A man to love and to share nearly everything with.

A man who’d left him alone when a better offer had come along.

Paul had been partially right. He did need to get his head screwed on straight. But mostly he needed to get back out there, find somebody to have a real live conversation with. Give his right hand a rest.

Maybe being on vacation wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Breaking Ties

––––––––

“S
eamus, hon, are you sure about this?”

Sonny cringed. He loved his mom to bits, but when she went all mother hen on his ass, questioning his choices like he was still her baby boy, it rankled. Big time.

“Leave him be, Maggie. Boy’s not a boy no more. Knows his own mind, I’m thinking.”

Thank you, Gramps.
He could rely on the old gentleman to be the voice of reason in the family. The Rydells oscillated between the matriarchy, with Maggie the titular head, and his dad’s dad jutting out the family chin and plopping down a size fourteen boot when the ladies overstepped.

The ladies were his mom, two sisters, and a passel of cousins, aunts and hen house neighbors who tipped the scales solidly onto the distaff side of things. He’d grown up way too aware of his feminine side. If it hadn’t been for Gramps and his own crazy-ass buddies on the high school basketball team, he’d have ended up Barbie-dolling his way through Julliard instead of heading west young man and cowboying up at Wyoming State.

It’s a phase, sweety. Get it out of your system. Music will always be there for you.

Mom, God bless her, wasn’t wrong. Music
was
there for him. It was his rock, just not his passion. He’d found that in the empty spaces of the high country he’d dreamt about all his life and now got to call home. Or, at least he would once he got the good ship Rydell on the road to Vegas and Gramp’s retirement home in the desert suburbs.

He’d asked the senior Rydell why Vegas, why not Atlantic City which was closer to home and the beaches they’d all haunted for generations. Gramps had countered with, “Why Wyoming, son?” and waved the road atlas under his nose.

Sonny had smiled and replied, “Distance. I hear it makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Damn straight, Sonny boy. Good to know that fancy doctorate of yours is worth the paper it’s printed on.”

Sonny wasn’t sure about that, but he’d fallen into a perfect storm of political expediency and the need to woo voters with judicially applied government funds. Having a Rydell on the House’s Natural Resources standing committee hadn’t hurt either. His research proposal had earned notice and then legs.

Now, here he was, standing in front of his new temporary home, desperately trying to ease his family out the door so he could collapse, have a beer and then cruise into Laramie to catch the rodeo. He had the weekend to unpack, organize his bona fides, get himself oriented with a stack of topographic maps, then do the meet ’n greet with his new boss first thing Monday morning. No pressure, none whatsoever.

They all waved as Sonny’s two sisters pulled away in the U-Haul, heading south toward Vegas with his grandfather’s belongings. Gramps had Mom by the elbow. She was digging in with her sensible heels, torn between arguing with her father-in-law about who was driving the next leg and fussing over leaving her youngest to fend for himself in the middle of fucking nowhere. His mom had a mouth on her when it suited.

He and Gramps exchanged a look. The old man nodded and mouthed
be safe
, then yielded to Maggie’s logic, folding into the passenger side with a groan and a sly smirk. He enjoyed losing skirmishes, all six-five of him, especially when it meant passing the baton to his only grandson. Sonny said a quick prayer under his breath that he was up to the task of winning the war and not crashing and burning.

Being the last of the male Rydells was a heavy burden to carry. Though he’d come out to his family at age fifteen—to acceptance and
took you long enough to figure it out, bro
—his mom still entertained hopes for a reversal of fortunes and at least one direct male descendant. He kind of understood her position. His sisters and cousins, all of them were baby factories, all producing daughters, one after another. He really needed somebody in the family to take one for Team Rydell and pop a boy, just... not him.

The situation made for a lot of good-natured teasing. He’d miss it, on one level, but he was more than ready to break the ties binding him to their world. He wanted to make his own mistakes, find his own way. Make his mark in his career. Maybe being a researcher with the USDA Forest Service didn’t seem very sexy to his family—or anyone else—but for him it was a dream come true. A dream tinged with a measure of guilt that he’d had a career boost from a well-positioned relative. But that made him all the more determined to prove his worth.