Grace chuckles. “I bet. Y’all get a lot done today?”
Cooper flicks the excess water off his hands before reaching for a dish towel. He leans against the counter and shakes his head. “It feels like the weeds are growing faster than we can pull them out of the ground.”
Knowing all too well how insurmountable that specific task can be, Grace gives him a conspiratorial look. “That’s the point, you know.”
Folding his arms over his chest, Cooper asks, “What?”
She shrugs, looking back to her task. “At my old place, weeding used to be at the bottom of the barrel for duties. Reserved for anyone who managed to piss off the foreman.” The chili begins to bubble, morsels of onion and tomato rolling to the surface alongside the ground beef and pork. She gives it a good stir and then turns around to face Cooper, who still looks confused by her statement.
She smiles and says, “Crew’s fucking with you.”
Cooper’s mouth hangs a little loosely, but then he sighs and throws his head back. “Of course he is.” His jaw tenses, and he looks as though he’s scheming on the best way to enact his revenge on his older brother when Caleb and Mikey walk into the kitchen, their stench immediately masking the warmth and richness of the simmering chili. Cooper glances at them, then straightens up. “So, what’d you two do?”
Mikey, gulping down water from a metal canteen, kinks a brow. He gasps for breath once he’s sated, and wipes his mouth before saying, “What do you mean?”
“To get put on weeding,” Cooper says. He jerks his chin toward Caleb and says, “Apparently y’all did something to piss off my brother and that’s why we’re out there pulling weeds that will grow back ten times taller by the morning.”
“Ah.” Caleb nods. “Yeah. We, uh…” He trails off, like he’s trying to decide if he should even broach the topic. Grace tilts her head, waiting for him to fess up.
“Well, you see,” Mikey cuts in, setting his canteen on the counter so he can use both of his hands. “It went like this—”
“They took the compact tractor on a joyride last weekend and blew out the clutch,” Grace supplies, knowing that if he hadhis way, Mikey would tell the story as though it were some epic saga full of adventure and intrigue.
“Wait,” Cooper says, looking between the three of them. “That’swhy the tractor is out of commission? That’s why I have first-degree burns on my fingertips?”
“Well, no,” Caleb argues. “You have first-degree burns on your fingertips because you thought poking at an engine block would get you a gold star with Forty.”
Grace looks at Cooper, who is shaking his head slowly. She laughs at the horrid awe on his face and says, “Get it now?”
Cooper honks out a humorless laugh. “I get it,” he replies, “I get that my brother is a vindictive piece of work.”
“He ain’t all bad,” Caleb says, yet again coming to Crew’s defense. Grace wonders if he even realizes he’s doing it, or if it’s an instinct born out of years spent working by Crew’s side. “Look at it this way: At least you ain’t hauling hay in this heat.”
“We have a hay baler,” Cooper counters. “Why would anyone be hauling hay?”
Mikey and Caleb share a look, then a laugh. There are probably a dozen stories between them about the ultimate ranch punishment—hauling hay by hand during a Texas summer when a perfectly functional hay baler sits thirty feet away in a hangar. That kind of job is reserved forrealinfractions, because it’s the kind of job that results in only one of two things: The ranch hand in question either sucks it up and sticks it out, knowing they’ll never err so badly again, or they pack their bags and find another place to work.
“C’mon, city boy,” Mikey says, wrapping an arm around Cooper’s shoulders and walking them out of the kitchen. “There’s an ice-cold beer in that cooler with your name on it.”
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The beer offered to Cooperturns out to be the first of many. Grace partakes, too, nursing her Budweiser and observing the poker setup sprawled across the dining room table. Alec has taken great care to arrange it. His bunk is the messiest of everyone’s—rumpled clothes spilling out of every nook and cranny—but his poker set is immaculate. He begins to shuffle the cards, and his tan, sun-leathered hands are a stark contrast to the pristine white of the reverse side. Grace watches them flow through his fingers fluidly, like a waterfall of paper. She zones out slightly while watching, the long day attempting to saddle an obstinate horse catching up with her. Only when the bunkhouse door swings open does she return to herself, glancing over to see who’s barged in so dramatically.
It’s Pierce—he’s holding an open magazine tightly against his chest and his eyes are sparkling with mischief. He’s breathing heavily, like he ran here, his hair windswept and wild. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this,” he says, approaching the table.
“You’re late,” Alec barks, still shuffling. “Buy-in is ten.”
Pierce waves Alec off. “Shut up and listen to me. Remember how we heard that Easton was doing some modeling out in California?”
“What of it?” Forty asks from his place at the head of the table. His feet are propped up, ankles stacked on top of each other as he counts out single dollar bills.
“Well,” Pierce says, his lips bursting into a grin. “Turns out, it was true.”
He turns the magazine around, holding it wide for everyone to see.
It’s quite a picture. A tanned, smiling man with pearly white teeth sits on a beautiful horse, wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a pair of very tight-fitting black briefs. His body is ripped, likenever eats carbs and spends four hours in the gym every daykind of ripped. He has an eight-packandbiceps that are nearly as big as Grace’s head. She clocks theCome and get itlook in the man’s sparkling blue eyes. How a photograph managed to capture such a clear message, she isn’t sure.
“Holy shittin’ Christmas,” Raymond hollers, standing up immediately to rip the magazine out of Pierce’s hands. “How is this an ad for cologne? What about a shirtless idiot riding ahorsein the middle of the day says,Yeah, I smell great?”
