Page 6 of Up in Smoke (The Bunkhouse #3)

TRIPP

“Don’t be a little bitch. She’s not gonna kill you.”

Well, she might. Better him than me, though.

“I’m not,” Heston spits. “I’m trying to find the right tag.”

“Hurry up, then!” I grit my teeth, attempting to hold the calf and keep an eye on her angry cow at the same time. Furious might be a more accurate description.

Working chutes are suddenly my favorite modern invention. If Gage weren’t such a tightwad, we’d have one in the north pasture. Instead, he’s cosplaying as a bullfighter to keep the cow from drilling me into the ground while Heston tries to tag the bundle of black fur in my arms.

There’s no easy way to tag newborns in an open pasture.

Our current approach involves getting a little punchy with a rope and quick feet.

When Heston steps up next to me and the tagger finally clicks, I release the calf immediately.

It hops to the side, kicking its back legs in the air.

Gage takes off at a sprint in my peripheral.

“Run, boys!” he shouts over his shoulder with a laugh.

Heston grabs the back collar of my shirt to pull me to my feet, and we take off toward the Kubota. We no sooner jump into the back when the cow skids to a stop on the ground behind us, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

Her disapproving huff makes me flinch. Every year, without fail, we procrastinate and leave her calf for last. We really outdid ourselves this time, though. It’s practically dark out.

She might be the best cow in the herd. Of course, she’s protective of her babies and is the most likely to smash your skull into the nearest cactus, too. I call her Sugar.

My body jolts back as Gage hops in the driver’s seat and takes off. Heston nearly flies out of the bed, but he grabs the light bar on top of the cab at the last second.

I place one hand on the top of my head to keep my hat from flying off. “We should have brought the horses.”

“You’re not wrong,” Heston agrees, shouting through gusts of wind.

Golden light spills over the freshly emerged spring grass in the pasture ahead of us.

With the sun dipping just behind the tree line, and little specks of cows grazing in the distance, it’s a view I wish I could frame.

There’s a certain feeling out here, a rare contradiction of wild and quiet, that I’m attached to.

Everything around me has started to shift lately, but not this place. Not my home.

We hit several bumps, but Gage doesn’t bother slowing down. He’d love nothing more than to throw one of us off.

I have no room to talk. Last summer, I hit an armadillo while driving with Gage sitting on the front of the four-wheeler. It may have ended in a row of stitches.

“The hell?” Heston says.

“What?”

He nods ahead, and I turn my line of sight to the bunkhouse. The sight before me explains a lot. Gage wasn’t trying to kill us. He was speeding toward a van and a line of black SUVs parked behind our trucks.

It’s only another minute before we’re parked and stalking toward the front door. Gage doesn’t get a chance to rip it open because Blythe steps out in a white sundress—lips pressed in a thin line and hands behind her back.

“Babe,” she starts with a convincing smile. “Before you get mad at me for not telling you, I didn’t have a choice.”

Gage’s lungs deflate in his chest, probably for the first time since we took off in this direction. “Are you trying to kill me, woman? What did you think I’d do seeing all these cars out here?”

Stab somebody, if I had to guess. I wish I were kidding.

She slips her hand under his chin and pulls him down for a kiss. He’s utterly defenseless now, and Heston and I exchange eye rolls. Mine is sarcastic, but his is entirely nauseated.

“I had to keep it a secret so that y’all wouldn’t come up with an excuse to bail, okay? It was my last resort.”

Gage crosses his arms as he puts the puzzle pieces together in his head regarding what he’s about to walk into. Blythe flips her hair behind her shoulder, stands her ground, and holds up her left hand.

“If you recall, you asked me to marry you? Say the word, and we’ll elope at city hall instead,” she suggests. “But I’d like to have a nice little wedding here with our family and friends. That would involve you and your posse of degenerates not showing up in cow shit-covered Wranglers.”

I snort, and Gage looks down at his jeans which are, sure enough, filthy. Blythe isn’t a true Bridezilla—she’s just been hounding us for weeks to get our suits fitted with no success, and I’m betting that is what this is about.

Don’t let the long blonde hair, glowy skin, and bubbly optimism fool you. When it comes to taking matters into her own hands, she’s a force. If her mind is already made up, you might as well plead your case to a tree stump.

“Go take a shower, listen to the lady with silver hair, and this will finish quicker than Tripp on his wedding night.”

I frown and pull my shoulders back. “Hey.”

She peeks around Gage’s body with a wink. “Kidding. Now, come on. And be nice .”

I’d never get married, first of all. More importantly, my lasting power is just fucking fine, thank you.

If I remember correctly, that is. It’s been a while. With that thought, I furrow my brows and wonder if I should try to remedy that again tonight.

Last night’s disaster was a one-off. The weekend before that was just bad timing—I have blue balls just thinking about it. I mentally flip through the options of who I could text, but no names excite me enough to pull my phone out and plan the hookup.

It might take a few beers and some scrolling through my contacts list before I land on someone to help me get my mojo back.

Nothing could have prepared me for the state of our bunkhouse when we slowly walk through the door.

The scent in the air is closer to a perfume counter than its typical leather, and every inch of available space is smothered in a variety of pink or white flowers.

My spot on the couch is covered in strips of . . . fabric?

“An ambush,” I say, shaking my head.

Heston turns right back around after coming to the same conclusion. “Nope.”

Savannah rushes from the living room to step in front of him, bracing two hands on his chest and doing her best to halt his momentum. A laughable attempt, honestly. He’s roughly nine times her size.

“It’s happening,” she states with a daring look. “Warren is almost here, too. And you better not warn him in the group chat,”—she turns mid-sentence to point a finger at me—“or he’ll make up an excuse about being held up with a broken tractor at the shop or something.”

I hold my hands up in retreat. “And miss the look on his face when he walks in here? Nah.”

Heston knows good and well that Sav will win in a game of back-and-forth. He surrenders without a fight and shuffles to his room. Gage is standing behind Blythe at the table with his face in her neck, having already conceded. I blow out a breath with my hands resting on my head.

There are plenty of things I’d rather do tonight than try on a stuffy suit. Watch the game or paint the ceiling with a Q-tip, for example.

But this isn’t so bad, really. I don’t mind letting the girls tell us what to do because the look on B’s face on her wedding day if our pants don’t fit over our boots or the backs of our too-small jackets have rips would be worse than a few hours of playing dress-up.

The other guys feel the same, I’m sure, and our quips are more habit than anything. I’d be calling the nearest mental hospital if we ever made it through a day without some sort of rowdy banter like this.

My eyes catch on a rack of suits as I stroll into the kitchen. I twist my expression just thinking about how suffocating they’re going to feel compared to what I’m used to. Most of the shirts I own and wear this time of year don’t even have sleeves.

“This should be interesting,” I mumble while screwing the top off a beer and heading down the hall for a shower.