Page 8 of 11 Cowboys

One of them might be Jason or Jaxon. I think there’s a Brody.

Someone introduced themselves as McCartney—he’s the one with the lyric tattoo. And I’m pretty sure there’s a Lennon and a Harrison. One of their moms loved the Beatles.

“More bread, ma’am?” one of them asks with a crooked smile and a dishtowel slung over his shoulder.

I blink up at him. He has blue-gray eyes and calloused hands. And the biceps and forearms of a man who doesn’t own a gym membership because his life is a workout.

“Uh, sure,” I say. “Thanks.”

He grins and moves on, refilling plates, ruffling a kid’s hair, and dropping back into his chair like his bones hurt.

There’s noise everywhere; dishes clanking, forks scraping, and the baby crying. A toddler spills her milk. A small boy wipes his nose on the tablecloth, but nobody blinks.

And somehow, in the middle of it all, there’s calm, like they’ve built a fortress around the noise. As if it’s part of the structure now, or even the whole foundation.

But I don’t miss the undercurrent.

I watch the gruff, dark-eyed one, who’s way too intense, grip his glass too tightly when Conway speaks.

I catch the one I think is Dylan flinching when one of the kids throws a crayon at the side of his head. Eyes flicker in my direction, wary, uncomfortable, and curious.

The conversation seems a little stilted, and it must be because I’m here.

These men want a woman to glue them together, but there must already be enough of a bond between them to seek out such an unusual arrangement. There must be a strong rationale behind it because if even one of them objected, it wouldn’t work.

But it still feels like something isn’t being said, and I hateit. Before my dad left and started his second favorite family, this kind of undercurrent was a regular at our dining table, making hair stand up across my forearms and my heart sink like a stone. I search for Brody in the crowd, finding his focus on his heaped plate.

The discomfort I feel is a creeping, swelling thing. My heart begins to speed and sweat gathers across my upper lip. I’m supposed to be a professional, but right now, I’m a lamb in a den of lions. I try to meet the eyes of the man in front of me, but he’s distracted by the cute toddler who clung to my leg outside. I fill my mouth with delicious cornbread and chew slowly, trying to quiet my growing anxiety, but it swells until I feel like I’ll burst with it if I don’t do something to break the rising tension.

I clear my throat, set down my fork, and look straight down the table.

“So,” I say. “What does a girl have to do around here to get a proposal?”

The laughter dies. The forks pause. Someone—Lennon, maybe—raises an eyebrow.

Then Levi chuckles. “Well, I like her.”

More laughter follows, laced with surprise, but I don’t laugh. I sit back, fold my arms, and wait. The table quiets again. Eyes shift toward Conway. He meets my gaze like he’s measuring me.

“You wouldn’t survive playing house here, city girl,” he says. Calm. Even.

I raise an eyebrow. “Already making assumptions.”

He shrugs, cutting a piece of roast. “It’s the truth… isn’t it?”

Someone clears their throat, cutting through the tension. It’s Harrison, I think, glasses flashing in the low light. “So, what exactlyisyour job? Are you a real reporter or the… what do they call it,human interestbait?”

I laugh, surprised. “Neither. I’m the editor-in-chief.”

The table goes still for half a second. Levi whistles low. McCartney straightens, as if he's learned I carry a gun.

“You run the whole damn magazine?” Brody asks, tone more skeptical than impressed.

For a second, I gape in surprise as dude-of-stone-and-grouch comes to life with a voice like a growl. “I assign work, approve stories, rewrite the headlines, clean up other people’s work. Manage the staff. Babysit executives. Massage my boss’s ego. I also order coffee or lunch when the interns forget.”

“You don’tlooklike a boss,” Jaxon says, voice rough but quiet.

My spine stiffens like someone rammed a metal bar in place of the cord. “Because I wear red lipstick?”