ONE
JAKE
Ileaned against the arena rail, watching the final event in the Poplar Springs Charity Rodeo. The weekend rodeo brought in a huge crowd, but my eyes weren’t on the people. I was focused on the horses. The horses bred at my ranch had put in mixed performances.
The four and five-year-old horses had done well, but the younger ones had been less than stellar. Somehow, they seemed weaker in comparison to the stock from our ranch from before I’d taken over. Lacking. And I knew why.
“How’s it going?” Brian, my twin, came up beside me and balanced a basket of curly fries on the rail. His hands were loaded with a wrapped sandwich, a brownie, and a can of Coke.
“Hungry?” I commented with a nod at the food. “Or is some of that for me?”
“Touch my food, and I will arrest you again.” Brian shot me a look. “I’m a starving man.”
“If you’d relax a bit, you could have been eating all weekend.” Every kind of barbeque and festival food imaginable had beenavailable at the rodeo, but Brian tended to micromanage his duties as the town’s sheriff, so he had been too busy handling security concerns to stop for meals. I’d watched him crisscrossing the grounds almost nonstop from the moment he arrived.
“Too much to do. It’ll be over soon, thankfully, and we can get back to some semblance of normal around here.” Brian stuffed three fries in his mouth.
“Did you actually watch any of the rodeo?”
Brian pulled the tab on the Coke and gulped down half of it before answering me. “I caught the events Cal was in and some of the juvenile events. Henry’s decided he wants to compete in barrel racing.”
Henry was our nephew—the son of our late brother, Luke, and his wife, Amy—while Cal was the rodeo headliner. Coincidentally, when he’d arrived in town, we’d discovered, to our shock, that he was the half-brother Brian and I had never known we had. Mom had kept that first pregnancy of hers from before she met our father a secret. We still hadn’t talked about it as a family and I wasn’t sure we ever would.
“What’d Amy say?” I asked.
“Nothing to Henry, yet, but she did mumble something along the lines of ‘over my dead body,’” Brian said.
Brian took a bite of his barbeque pork sandwich. “Your stock’s done well,” he said and I let out an irritated grunt. Brian stared me down as he shoved another large piece of sandwich in his mouth.
“Not as well as I’d like,” I finally said once he stopped chewing so loud.
When the announcer called out the next rider, I turned my attention back to the adult barrel race finals. The rider’s horse was sired by Twister, the black stallion owned by Julia Lett, a local veterinarian. Twister was possibly the finest horse I had ever seen, and all of his offspring were buckle or ribbon winners in every rodeo they competed in. Twister had put in a smoking performance himself earlier in the day in the bareback event, as had two other horses he’d sired.
I was suffering from a serious case of horse envy wrapped up in a deadly case of regrets.
“I need a new stallion,” I said, voicing my thoughts aloud.
“Always a good purchase,” Brian agreed as he continued eating. “Have you started the search?”
“No need. I’m going to buy Twister,” I said as I watched the clean lines of the horse’s progeny running through the barrels. “He’s the best stud in the area.”
“When’d you decide that?” Brian asked.
“About thirty seconds ago,” I said, knowing that snap judgment would annoy my brother, who thought everything through carefully and methodically. Growing up, I was always the hothead while Brian kept his cool. We’d gotten nicknamed “Fire and Ice” in school and the monickers fit.
“Is that a good idea? I don’t mean to get in your business. God knows I’ve got enough on my plate, but?—”
“You mean with Caitlin in your house?” I couldn’t resist the dig. When Brian’s ex-girlfriend returned to town for a waitressingjob at Bite and Brew, she’d needed a place to stay for a few months when her original plans fell through, but I still couldn’t believe Brian had offered her his guest room. Talk about asking for trouble.
“I meant with my job as sheriff,” Brian said, giving me aback offlook. “Leave Caitlin out of this.”
“Sure,” I responded agreeably before returning to the subject of the horse. “Twister’s the finest stallion I’ve seen in years.” The animal was nimble and smart, able to work flawlessly with his riders. His offspring seemed to have the same qualities.
“Don’t make a hasty decision,” Brian cautioned, without adding the words “like last time.” He didn’t need to say it. I’d taken a wrong turn with the horses, and I needed to right it by getting back to my dad and brother’s original plan for the stables. To do that, I needed a new stallion for stud. The one I’d bought just weeks after the accident that killed Luke and our dad was not the kind of horse to sire champions.
“Twister’s getting a lot of buzz right now. That doesn’t make him perfect. Although I suppose Luke would have snapped him up based on reputation alone.”
“And Luke would have been right. I’m buying him.” Twister was going to rebuild Thorne Ranch’s stock.
