“Please keep her away from the bunkhouse,” Levi pleads to the girls on my arms. “Those cowboys are worse than Jesse.”
“No can do, amigo,” Stevie tells him as she drags me towards the back hallway. “Bunkhouse is part of the tour. Now shoo, go clean the guest house, Cinderelly.”
I can’t stop my laughter as the sisters drag me down the hallway and out the back door onto a dark wooden deck. Before they can lead me down the stairs, I pull them to a stop as I take in the mountains and the beautiful grasslands. Levi was right; New York sunsets had nothing on Montana.
“Let’s head down to the barn,” Stevie suggests, grabbing my attention to see her climbing onto a four-wheeler buggy. “The horses are really the best part, in my opinion.”
“Have you ever been horseback riding before?” Addie asks as she climbs onto the makeshift seat behind her sister.
Climbing on next to Stevie, I grab the metal bar in front of me as she turns it on. “I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to, but I’ve never been able to get out of the city to do so.”
“Wait,” Addie yells over the roar of the engine as Stevie takes off down the gravel road. “Have you never travelled before?”
“Only once, but it was for a work event and was only for the weekend,” I respond with a shrug. “It’s hard to travel with my schedule, and it’s even harder to find time in my daughter’s schedule.”
Stevie goes flying down the hill, causing Addie to cuss and slap her shoulder. “Let’s make it there in one piece, yeah?”
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad,” Stevie fires back. “I’m the safest driver here.”
“And that fact is terrifying,” Addie mumbles so quietly I almost don’t hear her.
We reach the fork in the road a couple minutes later, and it’s only then I see a post with arrows pointing in different directions. Pointing to the left, where we had just come from, reads Main House, Guest House, Chicken Coop, Pasture 12-18 and Cabin. Pointing to the right in the direction we are heading reads Barn, Bunkhouse, Corrals, and Pasture 1-11.
“This might be an extremely dumb question,” I say loudly enough so both sisters can hear me. “But why is your chicken coop over near the houses instead of closer to the barn?”
“Momma ain’t big on being around all the cowboys near the bunkhouse,” Stevie answers as she peels right and starts driving through the grass. “Says they’re too rowdy for her when they’re all together like that, but she loves taking care of the chickens. So, our father spent a whole week with a few of the boys building a new and better chicken coop closer to her, so she would quit complaining.”
Addie chuckles from behind me. “The cowboys bitch about it all the time, though. If I can’t get a batch over to them, one of them usually has to make the haul out there at three or four in the morning because heaven forbid they don’t have eggs for breakfast at least twice a week.”
“And they call me dramatic,” Stevie mumbles with a shake of her head, causing a soft laugh to slip past my lips.
As I look out in front of me just as we crest a hill, I see the barn finally come into view. It’s a large black and white building to match the main house with a giant H on the front. Off to one side is a large rectangle corral with a few smaller round ones a few feet away from it. In one of the smaller corrals, I spot a few men with cowboy hats sitting on the wooden beams watching another being bucked wildly on the back of a dark brown horse.
Stevie pulls up beside the barn and shuts off the engine. She doesn’t wait for us as she beelines it towards the action. Addie just chuckles and gestures with her head for me to follow.
“Get your ass off that fucking horse,” Stevie yells as she climbs up the wooden beams to rest over the top. The four men sitting atop it beside her look at her with amused expressions. “It was my turn to break one, Lane.”
“You’re not allowed to break any of the horses,” a male in a black hat says to her, appearing at her side just as Addie and I step up behind her.
“Not allowed?” She seethes, eyes narrowed on the man. “You let Addie do it.”
He rolls his green eyes, and after glancing between the two sisters, I can easily see the resemblance. “Don’t start.”
“Before she puts a foot up your ass, let me introduce you to Marlowe,” Addie says, interrupting them. “Nash, this is Levi’s girlfriend. Marlowe, this is our oldest brother, Nash.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” He grips the front of his hat between his thumb and forefinger and tips his head at me.
I smile, sticking my hands in the back pockets of my jeans. “And you.”
“Levi trusted y’all alone with her?”
“Momma didn’t leave him much of a choice,” Stevie informs him, which earns her a chuckle.
He turns to Addie. “I thought I gave you the day off. Kolbi is cleaning the stables.”
“I wasn’t going to miss meeting her,” she tells him, gesturing to me. “Had to make sure she was real and all.”
“All right, enough of this,” Stevie says, hitting the arm of the cowboy sitting beside her. “Colt, Jett, go set up the barrels. I want to show our city girl here some real talent.”
