A Cowboy Comes Home Read Online Free PDF

Maureen Jacobs, Mandy’s mother, extended him some Lyndon Valley hospitality. He wasn’t really in a mood for socializing, but he couldn’t insult her by saying no to her dinner invitation. So, he’d shut the ranch office computer down early, sighing his disappointment that the listing hadn’t come up on the broker’s web site yet. Then he drove the rental car over the gravel roads to the Jacobs ranch.
    There, he returned friendly hugs, feeling surprisingly at home as he settled in, watching Mandy’s efficient movements from the far reaches of the living room in the Jacobs family home. The Jacobses always had the biggest house, the biggest spread and the biggest family in the valley. Caleb couldn’t count the number of times he had been here for dinner as a child and a teenager. He, Reed and Travis had all been good friends growing up.
    He’d never watched Mandy like this. She had always blended in with her two sisters, little kids in pigtails and scuffed jeans, and was beneath his notice. Now, she was all he could focus on as she flitted from the big, open-concept kitchen to the dining area, chatting with her mother and sister, refilling glasses of iced tea, checking on dishes in the oven and on the stove, while making sure the finishing touches were perfect on the big, rectangular table.
    Caleb couldn’t imagine the logistics of dinner for seven people every single night. Tonight, one of Mandy’s two sisters was here, along with her two brothers, Travis and Seth, who was the oldest. And her parents, Hugo and Maureen, who looked quite a bit older than Caleb had expected, particularly Hugo, who seemed pale and slightly unsteady on his feet.
    “I see the way you’re looking at my sister,” Travis said in an undertone as he took the armchair opposite Caleb in the corner of the living room.
    “I was thinking she suits it here,” Caleb responded, only half lying. He was thinking a whole lot of other things that were better left unsaid.
    “She does,” Travis agreed, “but that wasn’t what I meant.”
    “She’s a very beautiful woman,” Caleb acknowledged. He wasn’t going to lie, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit the extent of his attraction to Mandy, either.
    “Yes, she is.” Travis set his glass of iced tea on the small table between them and relaxed back into the overstuffed chair.
    Caleb tracked Mandy’s progress from the stovetop to the counter, where her mother was busy with a salad, watching as the two of them laughed at something Mandy said. He didn’t want to reinforce Travis’s suspicions, but his curiosity got the better of him “Did she and Reed ever…?”
    Travis shook his head. “It was pretty hard to get close to your brother. He was one bottled up, angry man after you lit out without him.”
    Caleb felt himself bristle at the implication. He hadn’t deserted Reed. He’d begged his brother to come with him. “It wasn’t my leaving that did the bottling.”
    “Didn’t help,” said Travis.
    Caleb hit the man with a warning glare.
    “I’m saying he lost his mother, then he lost you, and he was left to cope with your father’s temper and crazy expectations all on his own.”
    Caleb cleared his dry throat with a sip of his own iced tea. “He should have come with me. Left Wilton here to rot.”
    “You understand why he didn’t, don’t you?”
    “No.” Caleb would never understand why Reed had refused to leave.
    “Because of your mother.”
    “I know what he said.” But it had never made sense to Caleb.
    Their mother was gone. And the legacy of the ranch land didn’t mean squat to Caleb. There was nothing but bad memories here for them both. Their father had worked their mother to death on that land.
    The sound of female laughter wafted from the kitchen again. Caleb couldn’t help but contrast the loud, chaotic scene in this big, family house to his own penthouse apartment with its ultramodern furniture, crisp, cool angles of glass and metal, its silence and