Page 18 of 11 Cowboys

The kitchen in this ranch house is a beast.

It’s long and wide and worn in the best way. All scuffed floors, shelves stacked high with mismatched crockery, two refrigerators humming like distant bees, and a stove big enough to host its own county fair. The air smells like onions softening in butter, garlic, and something herby like thyme maybe, or rosemary. It reminds me of home, only on a much larger scale.

Corbin’s already at the stove, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a kid perched on his hip while he stirs a pot with the other hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“You always cook like this?” I ask, setting my notebook aside and washing my hands at the sink.

“Only when I want people to eat,” he replies with a crooked grin, his kind eyes settling on the kid, who he gently nudges down with a kiss to her temple. “Otherwise it’s sandwiches and judgment.”

“Who’s this?” I bend to study the little girl with dark brown eyes and a shirt that reads Sweetie Pie. She must bearound four, I think. She looks at me sullenly and puts her hand back up to Corbin, whispering, “Daddy.”

At that moment, Levi breezes through, scoops Sweetie Pie up, and shoots me a panty-melting grin as he presses a kiss to her disgruntled cheek. “There you are, Hannah. Come play in the den and let Daddy cook.”

“I don’t want to play,” she barks, wriggling in his ridiculously strong arms, her feet flailing on either side, but he laughs and keeps going, disappearing into the hallway.

“Yeah, but you want to eat,” Levi says breezily.

“She’s yours?” I ask.

“Yeah. Three of them are. Hannah and Caleb are twins, and Matty’s a year older.”

“Wow, Daddy! Three?”

He shrugs. “We wanted more…”

The trailing away at the end of the sentence tells me a whole lot that Corbin doesn’t want to voice. I try to remember Rianna notes. One wife died suddenly of an aneurysm. Was that Corbin’s?

It’s a question I’m steering clear of, wary of hitting a landmine too early.

“So, you’re the one who does most of the cooking?”

“Most of it,” he nods, shifting to pull a tray of cornbread muffins from the oven with practiced ease. “Dylan sometimes handles breakfast. Conway thinks seasoning is pepper and a prayer. McCartney cooks like an artist. It’s beautiful, but there’s a forty percent chance it’s raw in the middle. Brody steps in when all other options have been exhausted, and we all brace ourselves.”

I laugh. “So you’re the reliable one.”

He shrugs like it’s what has to be done.

“Where’d you learn?”

“My grandma. She could feed thirty on a bag of flour and a bone. Said if you knew how to make a good meal, you’d never be without a seat at someone’s table.”

“She sounds smart.”

“She was. Tough, too. Cared for us... well, wheneverything changed.”

I glance over. “When your parents died?”

He nods but doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t press, avoiding yet another mine. Instead, I let the silence stretch for a moment, filled only by the sound of bubbling broth and my peeler scraping across the carrots Corbin slipped in front of me gratefully.

“So if you weren’t doing this—ranching, raising kids, cooking for seventeen—what would you be doing?”

“Eighteen.” He smiles, reminding me I’m another mouth he needs to feed. He stirs the pot. “Something with food. Maybe a bakery or owning a little diner in town. Something full of people.”

“And service,” I say. “You’d be good at it.”

He glances over, his brown eyes kind but shrewd. “What about you? What do you want out of this story?”

“The truth,” I say, rinsing the carrots and moving to slice. “I want to show people something that isn’t polished to death or filtered through a salacious lens. Something real. You don’t see families like this anymore. Or men like you.”