“Okay, spill, honey, what’s wrong?”
“There’s a guy.”
“Ooh!”
He shook his head. “No, not ooh. I mean yes, ooh. But he works for me here at the ranch, and I don’t know?—”
“Is he gay? You don’t want to be all goo-goo over a straight boy, Icky.”
“Yeah. I went through a gay cowboy thing?—”
“Hey, slow down, slow down. There’s a gay cowboy thing?”
“Of course there’s a gay cowboy thing. Why wouldn’t there be a gay cowboy thing?” That was ridiculous. Cowboy Wanted had been lovely to him.
“I don’t know. Where did you find it? I didn’t know that they made gay cowboys.”
“Internet, of course.” He checked on Chrissy, who was napping. He’d have to wake her pretty soon so he could start picking the kids up at school. “Yeah, they totally make gay cowboys.”
“Oh, well that’s cool. I guess so now you’re going to be knee-deep in gay cowboys?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Don’t be gross. I’m serious.”
Brian chuckled, and if Ichabod closed his eyes, Bri could have been right here in this dining room with him, about to start sanding the floors.
“It sounds to me like you’re crazy.”
He shook his head and headed to get him a drink. The sound of the ice had made him thirsty. “No, I’m just… There’s this guy; his name is Ellis. He’s cool and he’s nice, and he loves the kids, and the kids love him, and he works for me, and he likes horses, and he knows all sorts of stuff about cows, and I like him. And not just in that oh-I-wanna-fuck-him way, but in a he-makes-me-think-thoughts sort of way.”
“Breathe, Icky. You’re fixin’ to pass out. Damn.”
“I know. I know, right? Does that make me a bad person?” He didn’t want to be a bad man, but he did want Ellis, pretty badly.
“Honey…” Ichabod knew that tone of voice. He’d heard it a thousand times. “Chris has been gone for, what? Going on almost four years soon?”
He nodded. “Yeah, that doesn’t seem like very long to mourn him, does it? I mean. You think that I’m a bad person?”
“For wanting to fall in love again? Hell no, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think you’re an amazing person. I’m your best friend. It’s partly my job to think you’re amazing, but I do think that you’re amazing and a little bit stupid.”
He snorted and poured some iced tea. That was about right, wasn’t it? “Only a little bit?”
“Maybe a lot a bit, but you have to relax. No one is going to think that you’re a bad person for falling in love. Unless he is a creep, and even then they would think he was the creep, not you. But you’re totally allowed to be in love or in like or in lust or anything.”
“I like him a lot,” he admitted.
“Well, does he like you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think he’s waiting for me to make the first move, which is weird because I’m, you know, officially his boss and stuff.”
“Right. Ranch foreman, Iremember.”
He nodded and glanced out of the kitchen window, catching sight of Ellis in the pasture, working with one of the new horses. Ellis picked them up from auctions, from other ranchers, from rescues.
He loved to watch the man work. The late-late summer sun kissed his skin, the lean muscles worked hard. “Yeah, ranch foreman.”
“You know, that’s actually kind of cool that you have a ranch foreman.”
“You think so?”
