Page 51 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

THIRTY-THREE

C ash stood several paces away from Boston, who’d parked himself on the steps out front. Meanwhile, the cousin barbecue bash continued in the backyard. He’d seen Boston leave several minutes ago, lifting his phone to his ear, and he’d just wanted to make sure that his cousin was okay.

One look at Boston’s face, and Cash had his answer.

“You can come over now,” Boston said, and Cash turned and headed in his direction.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He climbed the steps and sat next to Boston.

“It’s fine,” Boston said. “Doesn’t matter anyway.

” He shook his head, a terribly unhappy look on his face as he stared out across the front lawn.

The sun had gone down behind the Tetons at least a half-hour ago, but plenty of light continued to blanket the land, just in a more subdued way, with a navy-gray film over everything.

“Is everything okay?” Cash asked.

“No,” Boston barked. “Cora just broke up with me, or I broke up with her. I don’t know.”

“No,” Cash said. “I’m sorry, Boston.”

“Don’t be. It’s just some stupid thing that’s a few weeks old is all.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Cash said. Boston had often pushed him on things, forced him to talk about something, and offered advice whether Cash wanted it or not. The truth was he did want it, and he wanted to be the good friend to Boston that Boston had been to him.

“You really liked her,” he said. “What happened?”

“It’s just not a good time,” Boston said. “She’s taking over the whole operation at Silver Sage. I’ve known that, and yet I kind of hoped that I would be interesting enough and worth it for her. That maybe when she needed an escape, it would be with me.”

Cash nodded, but his words stayed stuck down in his throat. He didn’t quite know what to say anyway.

“But she didn’t want to,” Boston said. “Do you know where she is tonight?” He looked at Cash, his eyes squinted and disgust pouring off of him in waves.

Cash did not have an opportunity to even guess—not that he would know—before Boston said, “She went to Little Brown Bear Stream. Can you believe that?”

Cash felt the hurt and anger in his cousin’s voice as it whipped across his face. “I’m sorry, brother.”

“And then , she had the gall to tell me that I should have told her that she could’ve come to cousin night. I guess she saw some photo that someone posted, and she saw that Cole and Rachel were here.”

Cash’s heartbeat pounded against his ribs. “Yeah, I posted that.”

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault.” Boston waved one hand and let his arm fall angrily into his lap. “What does she want me to do? Read her mind? I didn’t know she’d cleared her schedule this afternoon. She never told me that.”

“You can’t read minds,” Cash said.

A loud cheer lifted up from the backyard, and Cash wondered what had caused it. Boston got to his feet and said, “Come on, let’s go back.”

Cash scrambled to follow him. “You really don’t have to.”

“If she’s going to accuse me of choosing cousin night over her, then I’m going to choose cousin night over her.” He rounded the garage and stomped along the sidewalk that led into the backyard.

“Oh, boy,” Cash said from the front corner of the house. He looked up into the darkening sky and found the North Star twinkling brightly as usual. “Lord, why can’t life be easy?”

It was a question Cash had been asking a lot lately, and he still didn’t have an answer for it.

But he knew one thing—Boston had been there for him for months.

Sometimes the only person, and Cash wanted to repay that favor if at all possible, so he jogged into the backyard to be at Boston’s side and shield him from any questions or curious looks that came his way.

He found Harry galloping around with a croquet mallet between his legs, as if it were a wooden stick horse. Everyone laughed, and Cash stepped next to Bryce and asked, “What in the world is going on?”

Bryce finished chuckling. “Harry just made it through gate seven with one tap.”

Cash grinned because he’d thought croquet would fall flat at tonight’s party. Bryce was the oldest at thirty-three after all, and Cash couldn’t remember the last time he’d hammered a hoop into the ground and held a croquet mallet in his hand. But everyone had dove in.

Harry approached and extended the mallet toward Bryce, his eyebrows raised. “Your turn, buddy,” he said. “I’d like to see you beat that.”

Cash laughed then, because the gauntlet had just been thrown down . All the cousins got along really great, but the Young DNA carried a competitive gene in it, and Bryce took the croquet mallet and said, “I see your one stroke win, and I’m going to match it.”

Cash woke the next morning to the sound of his phone ringing.

He’d been up way too late last night cleaning up after the party and making sure Boston was okay.

Bryce had not made it through gate seven with one stroke, but three, and Cash was quite sure that Harry would remind him about it for the rest of his life.

Right now, Cash fumbled for his phone, having to stretch further than he thought possible, until his hand finally hit the nightstand and then the device. He didn’t even check the screen before he swiped it on. He tapped the speaker button and then fell back against his pillow with his eyes closed.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Oh, I forgot you weren’t an early riser.” A southern, Texas drawl came through the line.

Cash smiled. “Jet McClellan, what are you doing callin’ me so early?”

“I’m an hour ahead of you too, man. I should be taken out back and shot.”

Cash chuckled with him. “Well, I’m up now. Might as well say what’s on your mind.”

“I was just wondering if you were still up in Wyoming.”

“Sure am,” Cash said, his defenses already flying into place.

A lot of rodeo happened here, and in Montana too.

Jet currently ran the circuit, and he and his brother competed in team roping events when they weren’t managing a dairy operation out of the Texas Hill Country.

He’d been living in Texas for fifteen years, though he hailed from Teton County.

“Where are you staying?” Jet asked.

“I’ve got a vacation rental right now,” Cash said.

“But I’m gonna have to be moving on here soon.

I’m not real sure what I’ll do.” He could go anywhere and stay anywhere.

He had multiple six-figures of savings in the bank, and he’d learned that he was a simple man and didn’t need much to keep himself happy—a nice bed and a good steak every now and then, and his favorite root beer, and Cash felt like he’d roped the world.

“Well, if you’re planning on staying in town a little longer,” he said. “My parents have a place in Dog Valley that’s going to be vacant for a few months.”

Cash sat up and opened his eyes, all awake now. “Vacant?”

“Oh, that got your attention, didn’t it?”

“It sure did,” Cash said. “Keep talking.”

Jet could talk and talk and talk and talk , and for once, Cash wasn’t unhappy about it. “They’re doing a six-month service mission in Costa Rica,” he said. “Something with the clean water wells there. It’s through my dad’s job at Springside Energy.”

“Yes,” Cash said slowly, leading him along.

“My youngest sister is finally out of the house. I guess she has been for a couple of years, maybe longer. I don’t know….” He trailed off, and then yelled, “Wade! How old is Lark?”

“This is not relevant,” Cash said, and Jet laughed right out loud, and that only prolonged the conversation.

“You are so grumpy.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s before eight a.m.,” Cash shot back.

Jet laughed again, and Cash took a moment to pull down from the top of his screen. Yes, it was only seven-fifty-two. He hadn’t seen this hour of the day in a long time, and he didn’t want to see it again for a long time.

“Anyway,” Jet finally said. “Lark’s off doing her thing.

And my mama was going to hire someone to come check on the house every couple of days.

You know, just to make sure it goes okay through the winter, that the pipes don’t freeze, that the wind hasn’t thrown a branch through the window, anything like that. ”

“Yep,” Cash said.

“And I told ‘er that I thought I had a friend in the area, and that maybe you’d like to stay in the house.”

“I would like to stay in the house,” Cash said.

“It would be free,” Jet said. “They’re leaving on August twenty-first, but my daddy’s already there. My mom’s just finishing up the gardening and everything, and then she’s going to join him.”

“All right,” Cash said.

“I don’t know if you’ll have to mow the lawn again or not,” he said. “Actually, I think my mama pays a neighborhood boy to come do it.”

“I can do it too,” Cash said. Heck, if he could stay in someone’s house for free, he could mow a lawn. He’d certainly done plenty of that growing up here in Coral Canyon.

“Anyway, they’re not going to be back until the end of March,” he said. “It’s the whole winter. But if you wanted to, you could stay there.”

Cash immediately thought of Boston and Beth, though Beth would be returning to Maryland in only a couple of weeks. He thought about the place he and Boston were going to see in just a couple of days. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t drive over to Jet’s parents’ house and check on it.

Heck, they might not even be able to buy that property, and maybe they wouldn’t want it until spring anyway, so they could buy it, but not live there.

The possibilities ran wild through Cash’s mind, and he said, “I’m definitely interested and want to do it.

I managed to extend my vacation rental here until the end of August, but they’ve got it rented for a Labor Day party, and then they’re coming back to do some work on the trees, and they don’t want me here.

They said I could come back in October, though. ”

No matter what, he had to deal with September with nowhere to live. He hadn’t looked too hard for anything else yet, but it definitely sat on his to-do list.

“Well, this sounds about perfect then,” Jet said. “You can head up there anytime after August twenty-first. Obviously, it’s furnished. You can use anything in their kitchen, and it’s got six bedrooms.”

“Yeah, send me the address,” Cash said. “And any instructions I need to know for how to get in, and I’ll go up there after the twenty-first.”

“I’ll finalize everything with my mama,” Jet said. “It’s good to talk to you, Cash.”

“Yeah, you too,” Cash said, smiling.

“Next time, I’ll check the time.”

“Ain’t no thing,” Cash said. “Stay safe.”

“You too, brother,” Jet said, and the call ended.

Cash replaced his phone on the nightstand and sank back against the plush headboard in the master bedroom, which he had claimed. He’d really enjoyed having Boston and Beth stay here with him, and Cash could admit, silently inside his own mind, that he really liked being back in Coral Canyon.

So he and Boston would go look at the property in just a couple of days, and if it turned out to be right for them, Cash thought they’d probably buy it. In the meantime, he now had the McClellan place to stay, and he’d just bought himself another seven months in the small town that he loved.