One Hot Cowboy Read Online Free PDF Page A

tours
    with Spec Ops before deciding not to re-up
    and returning to the ranch. Rory hadn‘t
    talked yet about what he’d seen or done
    while he’d been gone, but more than once
    Cabe had made the late night walk down
    the hallway between their bedrooms to
    shake his brother awake from the
    nightmares. Next day, Rory would go on
    one of his runs, fifteen miles through the
    arroyos and along the game trails. Just
    running and running until he came on back
    and headed out to the range to work.
    As if nothing at all had happened.
    “We’re square,” he’d muttered when
    Cabe had called him on it once in the year
    Rory had been home.
    “You ever talk to Rose?” Cabe asked.
    Seth had to be half way back to the house
    by now, given the speed at which he was
    taking that trail, and Rory would talk when
    he was good and ready.
    “Talking to her was your thing, Cabe.”
    Rory’s slow drawl carried just fine. “But,
    yeah, I’ve talked with her since she left.
    Not as much as I’d have liked, but she
    needed the space, had some things she
    wanted to work out.”
    What could Rose Jordan have to work
    out?
    As far as Cabe could tell, she’d left
    behind an admittedly bad childhood in
    L.A. and moved up here to Lonesome,
    where she was the apple of Auntie Dee’s
    eye. She’d then proceeded to thumb her
    nose at every rule and raise merry hell—
    with his brothers.
    “You ever reach out to her, Cabe?”
    Rory’s
    eyes
    stared
    straight
    ahead,
    examining the ribbon of trail with a rock
    steady gaze as he swung a leg over the seat
    of his own ATV. The nightmares that kept
    him up at night didn’t show in the daylight.
    That last tour of duty with Spec Ops had
    left a mark.
    “She wouldn’t have wanted that.” He
    fought the urge to take the ATV off the trail
    and into all the wide open space around
    them and just open her up. Go somewhere
    or nowhere, but feel the wind pulling at his
    face.
    “You don’t know that,” Rory pointed
    out. “You ever ask her what she wanted?”
    “She was your friend, not mine.” Cabe’s
    fingers tightened on the grips as he
    mounted up.
    “Only because every time the two of you
    were sharing space, you were busy listing
    off all the things she’d done wrong.”
    “Not every time,” he said defensively.
    “And you can’t tell me that the three of you
    weren’t up to your eyes in trouble
    whenever I looked.”
    “It made you look,” Rory said calmly.
    “You were busy whipping the ranch back
    into shape and don’t think I didn’t
    appreciate that. Seth and I, we were never
    worried about having a roof over our
    heads, but the ranch kept you damned busy.
    You were all work, work, work and no
    play.”
    “Someone had to be responsible,” he
    growled.
    Rory glanced over at him. “And you’re
    real good at it. Seth, he gets all over the
    place on the rodeo circuit. Hell, he’s still
    raising Cain. He can’t ever sit still for
    more than a week or two at a time. He
    knows that, eventually, he’s going to have
    to change something, but he’s not sure how
    or why—but he does know that you’ll
    always be right here, waiting for him when
    he’s ready.”
    Cabe felt that same surge of love for his
    brother that he’d felt since his five year-
    old self had tiptoed into the nursery to
    sneak a peek at the family’s newest
    member. He wasn’t sure what his brother
    was getting at, but he was doing his
    damnedest to listen. “What does that have
    to do with Rose?”
    Rory shrugged. “Maybe, nothing. But
    she had things hard in L.A. and she always
    worried that she was screwing things up
    here in Lonesome.”
    “She spent every minute of every day
    looking for trouble,” Cabe snarled. “That’s
    not worrying too much, Rory.”
    “Sometimes it’s easier to get the
    screwing up over and out of the way,”
    Rory pointed out calmly. “If the worst has
    already happened, there’s not as much left
    to worry about.”
    Cabe stared back at Rory.