Page 8 of The Wrong Ride Home (Wildflower Canyon #1)

elena

Of course, Mav would be there.

He probably wanted to interrogate me about Duke and how I was handling him. No surprise, considering how Duke behaved with Maverick. The man was giving me whiplash. Get the fuck out. Stay where you are. Sell my fucking horses.

Damn it all to hell, he was selling the ranch!

While Nash was dying, I lied to him plenty.

I told him, of course, Duke wouldn’t get rid of the ranch.

It had been in the family for generations.

He’d save the Wilder legacy. But I knew from Hunt that Duke didn’t want to have anything to do with Wildflower Canyon.

He’d warned me that once Nash died, he and I would have to find new jobs.

“It’s good that you’ll be able to leave, Elena,” he told me one night when we sat outside the ranch house drinking Nash’s good bourbon.

“You love it here, though.”

Hunt had come to Wilder Ranch when he was ten, an orphan, alone.

Nash had taken him in, taught him ranching, and treated him like a son, probably because Gloria had taken Duke away to Dallas a couple of years before that.

I knew why Nash and Gloria’s marriage had fallen apart.

Duke didn’t know. Nash had never wanted him to know.

If he did, maybe he’d have been there for Nash; perhaps he wouldn’t want to sell this land piece by piece to the vultures waiting to develop it into something unrecognizable.

“It’s time to move on. We’ll leave together.”

“Maverick will hire you in a heartbeat,” I reminded him. He’d hire me, too, but I wasn’t interested.

“I want to leave Colorado. Maybe go to California? Wyoming? Montana? Don’t you want to leave?”

“I do. Well, we can go to Texas. Knox Lawson has offered me a job a few times.”

The famous country singer was a fan of mine and had asked me to take care of his horses.

He had a ranch outside of Austin, and I knew I had a job there if I wanted it.

It’d probably pay better than Wilder since Nash still treated me like a ranch hand even though I all but ran the place along with Hunt.

“Maria is gone now. You have no more promises to keep,” Hunt reminded me.

“I can go on my own, Hunt. You shouldn’t lose your home because of me. ”

“You’re my sister, Elena. You are my home. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

That was our plan until Duke asked me to leave. I had no choice but to call Maverick. I needed a place to stay, and he was the only person I trusted except for Hunt.

What a clusterfuck everything was! I knew it would be like this after Nash passed, and the chaos was living up to my expectations.

The bunkhouse door slammed shut behind me as I stepped into the cool evening air. The sun hung low over the horizon, throwing gold across the dirt yard, stretching shadows long. Hunt’s truck sat parked a few yards away, and I was halfway to it when I heard Sawyer’s voice cut through the quiet.

"Guess you’re on your own now, huh?"

I slowed but didn’t stop, didn’t give him the satisfaction.

Sawyer was kicked back on an overturned bucket by the firepit, boots up on another, a cocky smirk plastered across his too-young face.

A couple of the other hands lingered around, smoking, talking, letting the day settle into their bones.

No one laughed at Sawyer’s jab, though. They were all smarter than him.

The kid couldn’t read a room if someone spelled it out for him in boot leather.

"Shut your damn mouth, Sawyer," muttered Cal Tate, an older cowboy, as he tipped the ash from his cigarette.

Sawyer grinned wider. "What? Just sayin’. Nash kept her under him , didn’t he? Had Hunt watchin’ her back, too. But Nash is dead now, and the new boss don’t want her here. She ain’t got no protection anymore."

I finally stopped, rolling my shoulders like I was working out a kink in my neck.

Slow. Measured.

Then I turned to Sawyer and took one deliberate step forward. The flickering fire threw shadows across my face, and doubt slid into Sawyer’s smirk.

"You think I needed Nash Wilder’s protection?" My voice was low and easy like I was just making conversation.

Sawyer hesitated, but that idiot pride of his kept him from backing down. "Ain’t that?—”

"Because if you think that," I continued, getting closer, "then you’ve got a real short memory. You were here last year when I put down that green colt that flipped and shattered his leg, weren’t you? You were there when I ran off those rustlers near the south fence, weren’t you?"

Sawyer swallowed. I smiled. Not the warm kind.

"Boy, I’ve been working this ranch since you were still askin’ permission to stay up past dark. You think I need a man to keep me safe?" I kicked the bucket his feet were on, and his boots hit the ground.

The fire crackled.

Sawyer sat up, and I knew he was contemplating if he’d live to see another day if he struck me, which was what he wanted to do. That was the problem with bullies; they let their cocks lead them around .

Cal laughed, low and knowing. “She’s got you there, dickwad.”

Sawyer was about to stand up, fury on his face, when I kicked the bucket he was sitting on, and he fell on his ass.

Cheers went around the cowboys and the hands; someone whistled.

“On your ass, asshole,” Jace cackled.

I turned around and walked toward Hunt’s truck, feeling their eyes on me.

Sawyer had wanted trouble. Lucky for him, I was in the mood to give it to him. Hunt was itching to fire him, but if we were going to kick out every fuckwad who decided to play a misogynistic asshole in ranch country, we’d not have enough people to run the place.

Blackwood Prime was a twenty-minute drive on a cozy street off Main in the town of Wildflower Canyon.

Maverick owned part of it, so I ended up there for drinks and food with him and his sister.

I couldn’t afford to come here regularly, not on my salary, but then again, it was my friend’s place, and there was a standing order never to charge me a cent, though I did pay my bill in tips.

Maverick had given me carte blanche to eat and drink there, but I was happy at the bunkhouse and only came around when he or his sister, Joy, insisted.

This wasn’t my kinda place. I did better at a honky-tonk bar, where the beer was cold and cheap, the music was loud, and nobody cared if your boots left horseshit on the floor—in fact, it was expected.

Places like The Rusty Spur, where Hunt and I would grab a pitcher after a long day, listening to old cowboys argue over who had the best cutting horse—back in ’92.

Or The Barrel & Bridle, a bar just off the highway, where ranch hands played poker in the back, and the jukebox only took quarters.

Those were the places I liked spending my money.

On rare Friday nights, Hunt dragged me to Raider’s Dance Hall, where the floors were scuffed from decades of two-stepping, and the neon signs buzzed as steady as the steel guitar from the live band.

And when we just wanted to sit and drink without the noise, we’d go to The Broken Bit, a hole-in-the-wall joint off Highway 82, where Miss Patsy poured the strongest whiskey in town and didn’t put up with anybody’s bullshit.

At Blackwood Prime, though, the leather was polished, the wine list long and mostly in French, Spanish, and Italian, and instead of hay and stale beer, you were assaulted with the smell of expensive perfume.

Rich white men pretended they had grit, and men with grit pretended they had money. The food was expensive, the lights dim and intimate, and every conversation felt like a deal being brokered over high-priced bourbon.

I didn’t belong here. And I didn’t even care to.

I spotted Maverick Kincaid before he saw me—at the bar, his Stetson on the counter like a damn crown. His sister sat next to him, talking animatedly, hands moving as she spoke.

The moment her eyes landed on me, her face lit up like a sunrise.

"Elena!" She practically launched herself out of her barstool, all blonde waves and bright eyes, wrapping me in a hug before I had time to react. Joy hugged like she loved, with her whole damn heart—wholly and unapologetically.

"Hey, Joy." I patted her back.

Maverick kissed my cheek and winked at me. “How’s it goin’, Wildflower?”

"Did your brother tell you the stunt he pulled this mornin’?" I asked as I slid onto a barstool at the corner of the bar, where it curved just enough to fit the three of us.

Maverick and Joy sat on one side, angled slightly toward each other, looking like they belonged there—two sides of the same coin. I took the other side, facing them. The polished wood was cool beneath my arms as I leaned in.

She grinned wide. “Well, hell, woman, why do you think I needed to see you? He told me about Duke Wilder and the pissin’ contest they got into over you .”

“Hey, Elena.” The bartender slid a coaster in front of me and poured me a glass of water.

“Bailey, how’s it goin’?”

“It’s good. Real good.” She smiled at me. “You lookin’ good, Elena…actually, you lookin’ dangerous. I’m tired of seein’ women all prettied up when they come here, and you look like you just wrangled a steer. ”

“And damn if I didn’t take a shower and swipe some mascara on before I came here,” I protested.

Bailey cocked an eyebrow. “I buy the shower, but the mascara…hon, do you even know how to use a wand?”

“A wand…like one with magic?” I asked, puzzled.

“A mascara wand,” Joy explained, laughing.

Bailey chuckled. “See what I mean? Hon, women shouldn’t fake orgasms and or makeup—it doesn’t end up well. Except on you ‘cause you don’t need any goop on your face. How can you look like this when you spend your day out under the sun?”

“Good genes?” I suggested.

Bailey rolled her eyes. “Your usual?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Maverick’s phone rang, and he sighed. “I got to take this.” He stepped away, and Joy leaned toward me.

“Gimme.”

I sighed. “Nothin’ to give.”