Page 3 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

THREE

B oston stepped out of the shower at the same time his phone rang. He had three ringtones assigned to various people on his phone—Cash, his daddy, and his boss—and everyone else got the same boring chime.

But the song currently blaring through his small studio apartment was a Country Quad song, and that meant his father waited for Boston to pick up. He grabbed a towel, and dripping wet, reached for his phone on the edge of the bathroom counter.

He lived alone, so he could walk around naked all he wanted, but he toed the door closed even more as he left a wet streak on his screen to slide on the call. He tapped the speaker, but it didn’t work, and he heard his daddy say, “Hello?” from far away.

“Just a sec,” he yelled. “I just got out of the shower.” He dried his hands on the towel and tapped the screen again. This time the speaker button did work, and he said, “Okay, you’ve got me.”

“You’re just getting out of the shower?”

“It’s been an afternoon,” Boston said, his stomach bubbling nervously over tomorrow’s Gold Status Group ride. He thought of the dark-haired beauty he’d rescued earlier, and something about her wouldn’t leave him alone. “So yes, I just got out of the shower.”

“That explains why you’re not at Uncle Morris’s for the Northern Lights fest…thing.”

Boston rolled his neck and started to scrub the towel through his hair. “I forgot about it.”

“Has he eaten dinner?” His mother’s voice on the other end of the line made Boston smile. She never thought he ate enough, and yet, somehow, he hadn’t died from starvation yet.

“It’s okay if you can’t come,” Daddy said. “You just told me you were, and I hadn’t seen you yet.” That was Dad-code for I was worried .

Boston loved that his parents worried over him.

He really did, and while no, he didn’t really want to make the half-hour drive to Uncle Morris’s tonight, he probably would.

Then Grams and Gramps could ask him who he was dating, and he could watch Harry and Belle, Adam and Joey, and Bryce and Codi being all cute and coupley.

And, there’d be a lot of food. Boston could cook decently well, but if he didn’t have to….

“It’s not going to be dark for a couple more hours,” he said.

“So I’ll probably come.” He finished drying himself off and ducked out of the bathroom and across the hall to his closet.

It stood down a hallway from his bedroom-slash-living-room, and no one could see this way unless they stood right at the end of the hall.

“I’ll tell Grams to save you some ham sandwiches,” Daddy said. “And fair warning.” He lowered his voice, and the music and chatter on his end of the line dimmed slightly. Boston assumed he’d walked inside to get more privacy, and he tensed as well.

“North and Skip are certain you’re going to have room in your summer schedule to do horseback riding lessons with them.”

Boston grinned, because while he sometimes felt like an outsider looking into the Young family, he did love his younger cousins. North and Skip were both six years old, and they’d already been atop horses.

“They’ve been plotting for the past forty minutes about how to ask you.”

Boston chuckled. “Yeah? What does that look like?” Because North and Skip couldn’t get themselves to Silver Sage, nor did they own their own horses.

“They’ve been berating Uncle Luke with questions, and then Bryce got here, and?—”

“He’s been helping them come up with a plan,” Boston said.

Daddy laughed. “I love how well we know Bryce.”

“If he can come up with the plan, why doesn’t he do their lessons?” Not that Boston would mind. He loved working with horses, and he loved going to Bryce’s horse rescue ranch—surely where the lessons would take place.

“Same answer as everyone else,” Daddy said.

“No time,” Boston said, though his father and plenty of his uncles had loads of time.

Heck, none of them even had jobs. Wait, Uncle Gabe was still a practicing lawyer, but as Boston ran through his other uncles—Tex, Trace, Blaze, Otis, Daddy, Jem, Luke, Morris—he didn’t find a single one with a job.

So Uncle Luke or Uncle Morris could take their sons to Bryce’s ranch and do the lessons. At the same time, Boston knew that wasn’t any fun.

“Well, I don’t know what this summer will be,” Boston said as he pulled on a fresh pair of boxers and then jeans. He plucked a blue button-up off a hanger and stuck one arm through it. “I’m getting a new boss, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Daddy said. “Did you meet her yet?”

“Not yet,” Boston said. “Listen, I’m headed there, and I have something for you.”

“Lay it on me, son.”

Boston smiled, grabbed his phone, and headed down the hall to get his cowboy hat and keys. “I’m taking an important group out on the Wicker Road Trail tomorrow, and I’d love to hear those two stories you have about the time you went there with Gramps.”

“Oh, sure,” Daddy said. “We’ll grab Otis when you get here, because he was there when we were boys, and he just took OJ, Lars, and Cole up there. So he might have something more to say.”

Boston nodded, though he knew the trail just fine. What he wanted was something unique, something personal, to share with the Silvers on the ride tomorrow. “I’m leaving now.”

“We’ll see you soon then,” Daddy said. “Oh, and Blaze said Cash is coming home for the month of July.” He let the words hang there, and they caused a tremor to move through Boston’s bloodstream.

“I’ll call him,” he said. “Because I hadn’t heard that.”

He knew Cash had come to a mini-crossroads in his career, and that he was struggling with knowing what to do. Every time he and Boston had talked about it, though, Cash had doubled down on his rodeo training.

So coming home for a whole month? During the height of rodeo season?

Boston definitely needed to call him. But right now, he hung up with his father and headed out to his truck. For some reason, he glanced around as if he might find that brunette from earlier waiting for him.

He didn’t.

He got behind the wheel of his truck, started it to get the air conditioning going, and took a minute to get the podcast about the Wicker Road Trail going.

Sometimes he hated how fixated on something he got, but right now, he simply wanted to make a good impression on all of the Silvers.

“Especially your new boss,” he muttered to himself, and his obsessive personality was actually serving him well.

The next morning, Boston gaped at the two coolers of food that Anne had ready for him. “Both of these?”

She didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “Yep.”

“There’s just six people going, right?” Him, Mae, Dustin, Cora, Jeremy, and Katherine. Six people did not need two coolers worth of food and drink for a half-day horseback ride. They weren’t even doing any of the walking.

“Actually just five,” Anne said, her enormous knife already dicing up a trio of colorful carrots. “Katherine decided not to go.”

He moved over to the blue cooler and closed it. “Did you pack food for her?”

“No.”

So two coolers for five people. Boston had no idea how they’d even eat or drink all of this. But he smiled at Anne and said, “Thanks. There’s a cart out back?”

“Should be.” She gave him a smile too, and her no-nonsense demeanor reminded him of his mother when she got busy at her flower shop. Boston didn’t want to be in the way or incur the wrath of the chefs at the lodge, so he picked up the cooler and headed outside.

Sure enough, a cart waited, and when he had both coolers, he started the walk back to the stables.

He’d done this trail ride before with more people and less food, and he reminded himself that the Silvers weren’t regular people.

They owned this multi-million dollar lodge and resort, and of course they required more.

At the stables, he, Cotton, and another horseman named Jimmy set about getting the saddlebags packed and the horses ready. Right about nine o’clock, just as the sun started peeking over the tops of the shortest pines in the area, Katherine Silver showed up.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said in her perfectly perky voice. She carried her two-year-old on her hip, wore a sundress and a pair of strappy sandals, and turned as her husband came up behind her.

“Kat’s not going this morning.” Jeremy took their daughter and kissed her cheek. “Did y’all hear?”

“Yes,” Boston said, moving forward to shake his hand. He did the same with Kat. “It’s too bad. I hope you’re feeling okay.”

She smiled at him, one hand migrating to her pregnant belly. “I’m fine. I just can’t ride horses until after these babies come.”

Boston gestured over his shoulder. “Come say hi to Dolphin, though. Otherwise, I’ll have to listen to him snuffle and cry the whole time.”

Kat grinned and giggled, and she went with Boston to say hello to the horse who preferred her over anyone. “Who are you going to put on him?” She ran her hands down both sides of his neck and leaned her forehead against his.

Boston had him saddled and ready, and Dolphin was a great horse despite his tendency to be vocal about things he didn’t like. “I was thinking Cora,” he said. “Do you think that would work?”

“Cora’s horse is Goldie,” she said.

Boston blinked and looked at Kat as if seeing her for the first time. He knew Cora and Kat were twins. Fraternal, not identical, but could she be who he’d met yesterday afternoon?

That woman had been riding Goldie.

He looked over to the pale yellow horse whom he’d also saddled. “I thought I might give her to your granddad,” Boston said. Panic began to build within him. “Kat, would you mind going over the equine assignments with me?”

He pulled a paper from his pocket as she lifted her head and looked at him. He met her eyes, and holy brown buttered biscuits. The woman he’d saved yesterday—and who had not left his mind for more than five minutes since—had to be her sister.

He’d met Cora Silver and hadn’t realized it.