Page 54 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

“They’re hoarders, the Wickers, especially Walt. And when he passed away, his wife had no idea what to do with everything, so she simply packed up the things that meant the most to her, and whatever clothes she could take with her, and she went to live with her daughter in Lake Tahoe.”

“She passed last summer, and the kids have been coming here for a year, taking anything that means anything to them and trying to clean up as much as they can.” He gestured behind Cash and Boston to the yard.

“I told them if they didn’t clean up all the machinery in the yard, that no one would come look at this place.

So they did that, but they didn’t touch any of the buildings or the houses. ”

Boston swallowed, suddenly worried about picking up something that might make him sick or cause a rash.

“What equipment was in the yard?” Cash asked.

“Washing machine, bicycle, couple of cars,” Cal said, like everyone kept such things on their front lawns.

Boston and Cash exchanged a glance. “I don’t know about this,” Boston said.

“Open mind.” Cash lifted both arms and moved them forward as he drew energy back to him. “We’re going to have an open mind. We got a lot of men and young people in our family, and we can carry stuff out.”

“Yeah, but where are we going to put it?” Boston asked.

“We can get industrial dumpsters,” Cal said. “They deliver them to the property, and they come pick them up when they’re full.”

“There you go,” Cash said, grinning.

Boston rolled his eyes. “You know, I kind of liked you better when you were the broody bull rider.”

Cash laughed, and that caused Boston to smile. “We still want to see it,” he said to Cal.

He moved over to the door and typed in a code for the lock that had been installed there. Boston expected a disgusting smell to hit him the moment Cal opened the door, but it didn’t.

“You go first,” he said to Cash, and Cash bravely took the first step inside the house.

Boston followed, expecting to be walking through towers of boxes and stuff the way he’d seen on TV, but he entered to a fairly normal foyer with a dining room that expanded to his right and the living room to the left.

A staircase stood right in front of the door with a hallway leading past it, and when Cal moved out of the way, Boston could see a kitchen sink.

“This ain’t so bad,” Cash said.

“The family has worked really hard to move a lot of stuff,” Cal said. “This house is better than any other building on the property.”

“Maybe we should call Uncle Jem and tell him we’ll be there for dinner instead of lunch,” Boston said.

He toed the carpet where it met the tile in the front entry, and he’d want to rip out every piece of flooring and replace it.

After all, fifteen years of dirt and grime embedded into carpet…

. He shuddered; it definitely had to go.

“Great big living room,” Cash said, and Boston moved into that room with him. A loveseat had been turned over on top of a couch, and at least a dozen boxes stood on and around the hearth, but Boston could also see the size of the room.

“Not bad,” he said. It merged with the kitchen, which flowed all along the back of the house, even underneath the staircase.

“Big pantry over here,” Cal said. Boxes had been stacked floor to ceiling in the kitchen and along all the counter space in that room as well. The pantry held them too, but he watched as Cal walked through it into the dining room.

“That’s kind of odd.” Boston didn’t even know what to do with a formal dining room.

“So all of this space is your main living area,” Cal said.

“And then they put an addition on the side, and right on the other side of this wall.” He indicated the far wall of the dining room, but he couldn’t touch it, because the boxes here were stacked three deep.

“Is your garage. And did you see that door back there just before we came out of the pantry?”

“Yeah,” Boston said.

“That leads into the garage. Go ahead and open it.”

Boston did, and sure enough, the two-car garage expanded in front of him.

It held everything and anything imaginable on the planet, including rakes, old bicycles and toys, boxes, a canoe, an old ATV that Boston wondered if it ran, a ceiling fan, totes that looked like they had towels in them, and more. So. Much. More.

“So you come into the house right there,” Cal said. “You can take your groceries and stuff through to the kitchen, or just right into the pantry.”

“All right,” Boston said.

“Let’s go back this way.” Cal led them back through the pantry. “And there’s another door right here,” he said, indicating it. “This leads you into the master suite.” He opened the door, and something worthy of being called a suite appeared.

The king bed stood there with an enormous sleigh bed frame and canopy still intact. Two nightstands and a giant dresser still didn’t fill the room. Clothes had been discarded on the bed, as if Mrs. Wicker had considered taking them with her to California and then vetoed the idea.

Boston felt like he’d stepped into a museum and was seeing intimate things that he wasn’t meant to see, like a case study of how someone had lived their life. It both fascinated and frightened him.

“This is the master bath,” Cal said, indicating a door. “It butts right up against the back of the garage. See that? And it’s the width of the pantry.”

“Oh, yeah, I got it,” Cash said as he went into the master bath.

“This bathroom extends into the master closet, which you can get into on the other side of the bed, but it’s all connected with like a U.”

Boston walked it, noting that the upgrades to this place were more modern and had definitely cost a lot of money.

The bathroom had two sinks, a standing shower encased in glass, and a whirlpool tub.

It did lead into a closet that was roughly the size of Boston’s entire studio apartment at Silver Sage, and it still held clothes from corner to corner and floor to ceiling.

“What are they going to do with all this stuff?” Boston asked.

Cal cleared his throat, and Boston did not like the sound of that. He peered at the other man and nudged Cash, who’d been running his fingers along the sleeve of a corduroy jacket. He startled and looked at Boston, and then Cal.

“Yeah, what are they going to do with all this stuff?”

Cal swallowed. “They’re actually hoping whoever buys it will deal with it.”

“ Deal with it?” Boston asked.

“It comes with the house,” Cal said quickly. “And a lot of these clothes are vintage. They’re very popular these days.”

Boston gaped at him. “So I’m going to open a vintage clothing store now?”

Cash started to laugh. “We could have one heck of a yard sale.”

Boston glared at him. “We don’t even know what’s in any of these boxes.”

“Trudy Wicker has actually been really good,” Cal said. “Anything that she packed up, she labeled.” He pointed to one of the boxes almost blocking the doorway which led back into the bedroom. “See this one says ‘Daddy’s cowboy hats.’”

Boston could not imagine wearing another man’s cowboy hat, and he didn’t know a single cowboy in Wyoming who would do that.

“Great,” he deadpanned, and then he followed Cal back into the main bedroom. They had so much more to see, and now, instead of envisioning space, all Boston could think about was having to deal with everything that had been left behind.

He couldn’t even deal with what he had on his plate right now, and the thought of adding a property like this almost had him in tears.

He actually wanted to call Cora and tell her about it, so that they could laugh about it quietly tonight as he held her on her couch. But he couldn’t do that, and that only put him in a worse mood as Cal said, “Let’s get back in our trucks and I’ll have you follow me over to the other house.”