I stared at the bag on the kitchen counter in the Big House. It was my only tangible proof that last night had actually happened—my own glass slipper or some shit.
The woman from the bar was heavy on my mind. I hadn’t slept at all. I was awake all night wondering about her.
Who was she?
Where did she come from?
Why didn’t I go after her after she kissed me?
Brooks was the answer to that last one. After she ran off, Brooks stood in the hallway of the Devil’s Boot, blocking me, with a stupid cocky smirk on his face.
“Honestly, the shit I find in this hallway stopped surprising me a long time ago,” he had said. “But this? This was unexpected.”
“Shut up,” I said. Not caring that he’d just seen me with a woman pressed up against the door, getting more fucking desperate by the second.
“Do you even know her name?” he’d asked. No, I didn’t know her name.
But I really fucking wanted to.
“I swear to god, if you tell Emmy about this, I will punch you in the face,” I told him. Even though I wouldn’t. But it was the only threat I could think of at the time. Lighting him on fire felt too aggressive. I also knew he was absolutely going to tell Emmy.
I didn’t think those two had a single secret between them at this point.
“I’ve already been punched in the face by a Ryder—that doesn’t scare me.” I thought back to when my older brother, Gus, had punched Brooks in the face when he found out that him and our little sister, Emmy, had been sneaking around behind our backs.
Brooks and Gus were best friends, so the sound of that punch was probably heard around Meadowlark. It took a minute, but they were good now. Even though I knew Gus still felt pretty damn guilty about it.
“On that note, don’t tell Gus either.” The last thing I needed was my siblings ribbing me about getting caught making out with a girl in a bar like I was a horny twenty-one-year-old kid.
“All right, I’ll make you a deal.” His smirk got bigger. “I’ll only tell Emmy, and she’ll probably tell Gus.”
“How the hell is that a deal?” I asked.
“Because I won’t tell him.”
“You are so annoying, you know that?” He just shrugged. At that point, I grabbed the woman’s bag off the floor, not knowing what I was going to do with it, but I didn’t want to leave it there.
So here it was on my kitchen table.
And I still didn’t know what the fuck to do with it.
I could ask Emmy. Or Teddy.
Actually scratch that, definitely not Teddy. I would never hear the end of it. Emmy would let it go after a while. Teddy would bring it up at my funeral. Teddy was my sister’s best friend and had been since Teddy’s dad moved her to Meadowlark when she was only a few months old. She was a notorious shit-giver, which I enjoyed when her sights were set on other people, but I didn’t need her coming after me.
A memory of the way the mystery woman had clutched at my shirt flashed through my mind. She was so…bold.
It was fucking hot.
And the way she moaned when I bit her lip? Goddamn. I might’ve gotten carried away, but everything in that moment just felt so good. The bass line coming from the jukebox, the dim hallway, my hand on her ass.
I felt my jeans tighten.
Get your head in the game, Ryder. You have a big day. You can’t be having spontaneous boners.
My dreams were becoming reality today. Just to be clear, my dreams were not the spontaneous boners.
It was technically Day One of Project Rebel Blue Guest Ranch. I’d been referring to it in my head as Project Baby Blue, but I wasn’t about to tell anyone that. Even though it was Day One of the designer, Ada, being on-site, we’d been working together through emails since October.
I looked at the clock on the oven—avoiding looking at the bag again. Half past six. I had a good three hours before Ada was supposed to arrive. I had a feeling it was going to be the longest three hours of my life.
I’d been waiting all winter, and now I was in the home stretch.
We had a bunch of cattle near the entrance of Rebel Blue, so this morning, some of the ranch hands and I would drive them to another spot. At least I wouldn’t be spending the next few hours sitting on my ass waiting.
The anticipation was killing me.
When my dad and Gus had finally agreed to the guest ranch, it’d felt like more than just them trusting me with a big responsibility.
It felt like they saw me.
Between Gus, the hard-ass but also dedicated, efficient, and hardworking oldest son, and Emmy, the fierce but also kind and caring champion barrel racer, it felt easy to get lost. I didn’t have an identifier like they did.
I was just Wes.
And that was fine. I didn’t mind, but I was still excited to have something that was mine.
I heard the floorboards behind me squeak.
“How are you feeling about today?” Amos Ryder’s gravelly voice came from behind me.
“Good,” I said. “It feels weird that it’s finally here.” My dad rounded the kitchen counter and stood across from me now.
He was wearing his classic Wranglers and cotton button-down. Before he started work, he always rolled the cuffs of his shirt up so you could see the faded swallow tattoos on his forearms.
“What time is the designer getting here?” he asked.
“Nine-thirty. Are you coming back here, or do you want to meet us at the site?” I asked.
“I’ll meet her here,” he said as he took a sip of his coffee—without letting it cool. I didn’t know how he drank it when it was still scalding. “This is your project, Weston. You don’t need me to be at the site. You can do this.”
If there was one thing that Amos Ryder always did, it was believe in his kids. And Brooks, too, I guess. And we didn’t even do anything to earn his unconditional support for us. He just did it. I mean, I guess that’s how some parents were. But still.
I was fucking terrified of letting him down.
I rubbed a hand down my face. “I know. It’s just—” I paused for a second, trying to think how to word my thoughts. I’d always been second in command—third, if we were getting technical. I lived in Gus’s shadow, knowing that he would end up running the ranch one day. I’d never done anything on my own. “It’s a big deal” is what I settled on.
My dad nodded. I think he understood the part I wasn’t saying. “What’s that?” he asked, gesturing toward the bag on the counter.
I didn’t really want to tell my dad how the bag came to be in my possession, so I just said, “A friend left it at the bar last night.”
Amos raised his eyebrows in question. “A friend?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. I brought it home because I didn’t want it to end up permanently smelling like cigarette smoke,” I said nonchalantly, I hoped.
My dad’s eyes narrowed, just a little, before he shook his head and took another sip of his coffee. “All three of you need to get better at lying.”
