He lifted his hands and moved them to my ass, jerking me forward until my body met his. “No. That was always his thing. Never was mine. I respected how hard my family worked building the McCall legacy, and if that’s truly what my brother wants, I’ll be there with him, but he doesn’t need me. At least not there on the ranch with him. There are things I can do to help out that don’t require me being somewhere I don’t want to be.”
“Where do you want to be?”
“That’s an interesting question.” He leaned in and kissed me. “After the accident, I felt out of place on the ranch. I wasn’t connected. I did my first real rodeo at nineteen and started competing seriously at twenty. I traveled from state to state, qualifying and competing. I was hardly ever home. I spent more time on the road than I did on the ranch. When I met Karah, she traveled with me in the beginning, but rodeo circuits can be exhausting and eventually she stopped doing so. We got engaged and I built a house because it just made sense. The more I think about it, I wanted a place to come back to that felt like home.”
“You built her a house?”
He grinned sexily. “I built us a house.”
“And she still left you.”
“She did.”
“You should give me her address. I think I want to see a woman about a cowboy.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“So you feel out of place because she left you with the house that you built for her?”
He shook his head. “That was part of it, but the biggest issue was I couldn’t process not competing. Being on my family’s ranch, settling into a role by helping my brother run things, made the reality of what I’d lost more real. I wasn’t ready to accept that my career was truly over, and moving on to something else, something more permanent like working alongside my brother, meant accepting the loss. I left. Didn’t have a damn clue of where I was going or what I would do. Ended up on a ranch right outside of Texas, mending fences, after having a beer with the owner one night. He asked me to stay, but I declined and moved on to the next town. The freedom felt good and I needed it, but more than anything, I needed to believe there was something out there for me, that didn’t have anything to do with rodeo or my family’s ranch, or at least I hoped that’s the case.”
“Then maybe you should keep looking.”
“Yeah, maybe I should…” His mouth ghosted over mine. “Or I could just hang around here for a while becausemaybeit’s time to stop looking.”
“Hmm, that sounds promising. I might be able to come up with a few things to keep you busy…”
“I’m sure you could.” His mouth was on me again at the same time his fingers pressed into my skin, bringing me a smidge closer. His thick, hard dick was pressed to the apex of my thighs and I swallowed a moan before I angled my head back and grinned.
“Let’s see, the stables and storage shed will both need to be painted and the entire south pasture really should be rewired…”
He laughed lightly and kissed me again. “We’ll discuss my free labor another time. Right now I have a different kind of work in mind.”
I was lifted from the sofa and carried to the living room. With no objections from me, my bottoms were removed followed by Ro burying his face between my thighs. I wasn’t sure how long he planned on staying, so I might as well utilize all of his skills while he was here.
I wokeup the next morning to a stiff neck, tangled in one of my cozy cable knitted blankets, feeling thoroughly satisfied and exhausted. After our second round of sex, Ro insisted on heading back to the cabin to shower and get rest. I almost asked him to stay but didn’t want to seem too eager because what were we truly doing.
The comment about remaining in Miller’s Pointe didn’t necessarily have anything to do with me, even though I assumed it did. I wanted to feel him out a little more before I completely put myself out there, but that didn’t mean I was opposed to him feeling me out, up, down, and all things in between while he was here.
I grinned and delivered a heavy eyeroll before I dragged myself from the sofa. Coffee was very necessary, so I started a pot then headed to my room to do my rounds in the bathroom. Once I was refreshed, mouth minty and skin care routine complete, I dressed in jeans and a thermal, covering it with a lined flannel shirt. We were supposed to get heavy snow today and there were several things I needed to get done prior to it falling, just in case. My first thought was prepping my babiesGood Girl and Bad Boy, just to be sure they were prepared for the extreme temperatures. While Wren had goats and chickens to think about, my horses were the only animals I had on the ranch and pretty much an extension of my family. I had both since I was a child, a gift from my father.
Wilde Reeves, who was one of the best horse trainers in Miller’s Pointe, purchased them from a rancher who couldn’t get them to settle enough to be used for his men. Wilde loved a good challenge, so he trained them both. When my father was looking for a horse for me, Wilde suggested Good Girl but I couldn’t bear with separating the siblings. So I forced my father to purchase them both. That had been ten years ago. My babies had some age on them but they were still in great shape and I loved them with my whole heart.
I finished my coffee and my stomach growled so I grabbed a banana to tide me over until later. My hair was all over the place so I headed back to my bedroom and worked through the process of combing my chaotic mane.
I managed to secure my coils into two French braids, my go-to, before yanking my boots on and grabbing my Jaxson. I grinned when I pulled it down on my head because the worn leather just felt right. It had been a birthday gift from Wren a few years prior when the new line came out and I wouldn’t shut up about it. The goal was to check on my babies then make breakfast, which I planned on sharing with Ro.
Or maybe not…
After I left my house, I realized Ro’s truck wasn’t parked in front of the cabin. I tried not to think too deeply about his absence and instead focused on what needed to be done in the next couple hours. It was just after seven and I wanted to be done by lunch. If we got snow, I needed to be prepared to stay in for a few days, which meant a trip into town to grab more groceries and get a few large crates of wood for the fireplace.
Thankfully the house had central air and heating but my dad kept the fireplace going throughout the winter, so I was accustomed to having it burning. There was also something so nostalgic about a lit Christmas tree paired with the glow of a fireplace that made late nights cozier. I needed to finish the pieces for my site and complete the orders I had for vendors at Jubilee. I wasn’t at all disappointed about getting another round of snow. If nothing else, it would slow me down enough to focus and get them done.
I sold wholesale to a handful of people with custom pieces specific to their brands as well as my own custom pieces on my site. Both kept a steady flow of cash coming in throughout the year. The money helped me survive emergencies when my percentage from the hay farmers who grew their crops on my land fluctuated.
When I pulled up at the paddock near the stables, my face split into a grin as I parked next to Ro’s truck. Part of me had rushed straight to the conclusion that he’d left when I didn’t see his truck in front of the cabin. I climbed out and walked to the stables where I found the barn door missing and Ro on a ladder. The new track we’d picked up from the hardware store on the way home from the tree farm was already in place and he was currently installing the trolleys that the doors needed to be affixed to.
“It looks bad when you beat me out here.”
