Page 4 of Knot Her Cowboys (Big Sky Omegas #2)

D inner at the ranch was way more fun than dinner at the restaurants I used to work at. Here I got to see people’s faces as they bit into my food, see their delight and voracious appetites.

It felt fucking good.

A few campfires flickered away, central to a circle of picnic tables. Several looked to be for the staff who lived on-site, and the others had the guests around, chatting happily.

“Food looks delicious, baby.” Bryan leaned down to kiss my cheek, adding a scent mark immediately after. “You did great work, as always.”

“Thank you.” I smiled up at him. They’d been to my old restaurant loads of times when the conflicting hours kept us apart for too long.

I’d switched over to cooking for them, and providing my probably not appreciated opinion to the catering companies that fed us at the various business events I attended with my alphas.

This wasn’t the usual sort of food I made, but hopefully they’d like it anyway.

“We’re going to take plates back to our cabin,” Bruce told me.

Bryan frowned. “You said we could stay for half an hour.”

“That was before I saw the dining conditions.” Bruce huffed, focusing on me. “Are you coming with us?”

“No, thanks. Been way too long since I had a meal around a campfire and I’d like to get some sunshine.”

He frowned at me. “Why do you like eating outside? There’s bugs.”

“It’s about community. I promise it’s not bad if you just wanna sit for a bit.”

Bruce looked like he would rather toss himself down a ravine than eat dinner around the campfire.

“I suppose we don’t need to immerse in the culture quite this much,” said Bryan, his face pinched as he got to his feet.

“We’ll be inside when you come to your senses, Anne.”

“Suit yourselves.” I turned back to the plate in my lap, feeling the irritation in their gazes.

I should’ve brought them on trips like this a lot more often and done some exposure therapy to a non-city lifestyle.

They didn’t even like picnics in Central Park.

I watched them walk away, only feeling slightly guilty about not following them.

I wasn’t going to get to do this in Berlin, so I was taking advantage.

“Hey, Rowdy Rock!” Cash yelled out. “You enjoying your dinner?”

A series of whoops sounded from around the campfires, happy chattering filling the silence.

Cash dipped low to whisper to me. “Am I calling you Riley or Anne?”

“Either is fine. I can’t imagine it matters for one weekend.”

Cash nodded firmly. “You can thank one of our amazing guests for the food. A former local turned New Yorker. Let’s give Miss Riley a round of applause.”

I blushed while they clapped.

“Thanks for sparing us Cash’s cooking,” a gorgeous alpha said as he sat down to one side of me with a full plate. His long dark hair was pulled back in a braid, and the glint of the setting sun danced over his skin, making him look like he was constructed of polished copper.

“You’re more than welcome.”

He held out his hand for me to shake and I slipped my hand into his. “I’m Dakota.”

The deliciousness of sweetgrass and sandalwood flowed over me, my whole body reacting as if his scent was a tangible thing, caressing my skin. “Nice to meet you. You already know who I am, thanks to Cash’s big mouth.”

Dakota laughed. “Indeed I do. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow for the trail ride. I don’t run them very often, but I guess it’s my lucky day.”

My cheeks burned. “Mine too, apparently.”

“Dakota runs our equine therapy program,” Cash told me, dragging a camp chair to sit on my other side.

“That sounds amazing. I thought I might do that when I was a kid, but figured culinary school was a little more applicable for me to live anywhere.”

“Definitely more flexible if you want to live in a city.”

“ Want is a strong word, but I love the convenience. Probably hard to get middle-of-the-night takeout around here.”

“Not wrong about that,” Cash said with a laugh. “But you also don’t get any fucking stars in New York.”

“I do really miss the night sky. Sun should hurry up and set.”

“Soon.” Cash beamed. He gave Dakota the strangest look I couldn’t discern the meaning of, but my musing on it was quickly cut short.

“How long ago did you move away from here?” Dakota asked.

“Twelve years, give or take.”

“Did you ride horses before that?”

“Constantly. Almost everyone I knew had horses. Not sure how my body will do with the trail ride tomorrow, but we’ll find out. Might need to soak for a few hours after.”

“It definitely makes you use muscles you forgot existed.”

“Someone needs to get on board with memory foam saddles. I want to sit on a cloud.”

Cash snorted. “Did you develop the ass of a princess since moving away?”

“I take it you and Cash used to be friends?” Dakota asked.

“Best friends. I was shit and went no contact with everybody here when I moved. They all deserved better, but it was the only thing I could figure out to prevent how often I was crashing out.” I shrugged, staring down at my plate, unwilling to dig into just how many things had gone wrong to prompt all of that.

“Homesickness is weird and I wasn’t very rational about it all. ”

Cash looked like he wanted to say a thousand different things, but instead he took a bite of steak. Dakota’s thoughtful expression only made my guilt over the whole situation worse.

“How far away is Morgan? Maybe I can swing by and say hi before we head out on Sunday.”

“A couple of hours south,” replied Dakota. “About seventy-five miles due west out of Great Falls.”

Bit of a drive, but not the end of the world. Our flight wasn’t until the evening so I could probably get away with a decent visit. “Cool, thanks.”

“You started without me.” We all turned, another beautiful alpha joining us, this one with short black hair, the light curls catching the sunlight. The earthy scent of bay leaf and bergamot slid over me, the same tangible caress Dakota’s and Cash’s scents had been.

Goddamn.

I squeezed my thighs together. People around here needed to stop being so fucking pretty and smelling so damn delicious.

My alphas were nothing to sniff at in the looks department, both crisp and clean, broad-shouldered and possessing transfixing dark eyes.

But I was engaged, not dead. I could appreciate looking at these men without doing a single thing about my body’s reaction to them.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think my heat was trying to overwhelm the suppressants I’d started taking.

We didn’t have time for a heat with the impending move, so my blissfully reliable three-month cycle was kicked off its axis this time.

It wasn’t due for another week, but I had started the pills already just in case.

“Riles, this is Levi, our vet extraordinaire. Vi, this is Riley.”

He turned from Cash to me, a bright smile lighting up his face. “Good to meet you. Been hearing about the famous Riley for a long time.”

I whacked Cash on the knee. “You’ve been talking about me?”

“Not constantly ,” Cash defended.

“Enough that the entirety of the staff has heard about you at least once,” Levi added. “Shame Coo?—”

Cash kicked him and Levi cut off abruptly.

“Shame what?”

Levi coughed awkwardly. “Shame, uh, cooler weather is on the horizon.”

I narrowed my eyes, sure he’d been about to say something else. “Trials of summer. It’s never long enough.”

“Autumn in Montana is gorgeous as fuck, though,” Cash said, recovering the conversation.

“That would’ve been my preferred time to come, but Berlin awaits and I’ll just have to enjoy autumn there.”

“Berlin?” Levi whistled. “That’s a long way from rural Montana. What’s taking you all the way there?”

“Business. Or rather, my fiancés’ business. They’re looking at a merger with a German company, and I’ve been talking to the alpha pair involved. Everyone wants to see if we can form a pack as well as a business together.”

“What do you think about that, Riles?” Cash asked.

I shrugged. “Oskar and Karl seem nice enough. Communication style is something to get used to, though. They’re a hell of a lot more blunt over there, and I have to keep reminding myself no one is trying to start a fight. It’s just the way they talk.”

“Have you been to Germany before?” Dakota asked.

“Nope. A day trip to Paris was the closest I’ve gotten.

Backpacked part of the UK to expand my comfort zone after my second year in New York.

Found the most ridiculous seat sale on flights, slept in the sketchiest hostels imaginable, and took the Chunnel over with a friend I met at a pub.

In hindsight, not the safest move I’ve ever made, but it turned out really fun. ”

They kept me chatting all through dinner. Cash had been to most of the places I had traveled, and Levi to a few, so we had no shortage of conversation. Had the last time I sat in the sun and talked this long really been before I left?

All of the staff helped bring in the dishes and remaining food—little bit that there was—and then they got the fires going as the sun began its slow descent.

Cash barred me from washing dishes, insisting they paid one of the staff members to handle it and I didn’t need to be cooking and cleaning. I wasn’t about to argue with that.

Sunset was a breathtaking array of colors. The fields were lit up like shining gold and copper, the trees rich and dark against a coral sky.

“Are you gonna stay by the fires with us?” Cash asked. “Or are you gonna turn in? I know you had a long day.”

“I’m not ready for sleep quite yet. I’ll go see if my city boys are interested.

” I excused myself from the group and took the path back toward the cabins, the edges of it lit up by little solar lights punched into the ground.

The door was locked when I arrived, but the light was on. “Are you two still alive in here?”

They were both in bed, reading glasses perched on their noses, the bedside lamps glowing.

Bryan looked up with a smile. “There’s our little chef.”