Page 16 of Rope Me, Cowboys

Amber went to the stairs and sat down, patting the step beside her. After a second, I approached, but I tried to keep my distance as I sat down beside her. I was an oaf taking up most of the width of the stairs next to her trim shoulders, though, and our shoulders brushed against each other.

“Tell me something,” she said.

“Uh huh,” I said, wary of her questions.

“Sawyer told me none of you are married. How is that possible? Just look at you.” She made a choking sound and rushed ahead, her words coming so fast it made my head spin. “I mean, not saying anything, but seriously. You’re all good-looking guys. In the old days, people would have thought you were gay. But now that it’s legal, even that wouldn’t stop you from getting married. So what’s the deal?”

She stopped talking and nibbled at her sandwich, looking at me expectantly. I started turning over answers in my mind, but before a minute was up, she must have decided I wasn’t going to answer. New York must move at warp speed. Even her talking was fast.

“And look at this place. You could have five little families living in these cabins, have your kids all growing up together. Plus, you have that huge lodge. You’re a catch. All of you are. Are there just not enough women up here in the wilderness or what? Because otherwise, I don’t get it.”

I shrugged, not sure how to answer that question without making her think I was all kinds of sick in the head. “We’re a team,” I said at last. “Like any good team, we all have our individual roles, but as a whole, we have one goal. What’s best for one of us is best for all of us.”

“And…women aren’t good for you?”

“Not so far,” I said. “Women who see us as a catch are just after what we have. And right now we’re barely holding onto the ranch.”

Amber nodded, chewing slowly. “I get it. You don’t need the distraction. And you don’t want someone who’s only after your money.”

“Exactly,” I said, relieved to let her do the talking.

“It’s hard to find someone who’s interested in you for who you really are,” she said. “I thought out here, people might be more…transparent, I guess. All the people at my school were so driven, which is good, but it’s also like, they only wanted you for what you could do for them. It’s almost like in the old days, when people only married for political gain. Except at school, people were dating for those reasons.”

“Sounds like a lot of drama.”

“It was,” she said with a sigh. “I’m so glad to be done with it. My parents literally chose who I could date in high school.”

I pulled back to look at her. “Why’d you let them?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, her blonde hair cascading over her shoulder. “I never really liked anyone I couldn’t date, so it didn’t matter that much to me. If I’d been in love with someone else, it would have been different. But I wasn’t, and I guess I wanted to make my parents happy. They may be jerks sometimes, but they’re still my parents.”

I had a strange urge to pull her into my arms, to brush that hair back from her face and tell her we’d never do something like that to her, that she was safe now.

“A lot of people’s parents did that at my school,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to leave the country with my best friend. Just to get away from it for a while, get to really be ourselves, away from gossip blogs and news hounds.”

“That sounds like a good thing,” I said. “Doesn’t your mom want that, too? That’s why she sent you out here.”

“She sent me out here as punishment,” Amber said. “And to get me out of the spotlight. I think she’s afraid I’d make some kind of international scandal if I went overseas. But she’s already probably plotting who I need to be friends with at college. As soon as I start school again, my parents are going to want to know who’s going to the same university as me, and how I can arrange my schedule to get in classes with the important ones. It’s so orchestrated.”

“I can’t imagine living that way,” I said, shaking my head. “Out here, we do as we want. We have an understanding with other ranchers and folks around here. Our rules are sometimes a little different from the law. But we make it work.”

She grinned sideways at me. “It’s like you’re still living in the wild west.”

“It can get a little wild,” I admitted.

Amber sighed and set her plate between her feet. “I wish I had that much freedom. My two boyfriends in high school were both chosen by my parents. They each got to pick one. It was a source of conflict, of course, like everything else. My mom didn’t like the guy my dad picked, and when we broke up, she blamed it all on him. And then the guy she picked…well, let’s just say I’d rather not talk about him. Just once, I’d like to pick my own relationship with someone my parents don’t choose for me. Someone with a less than stellar approval rating, or someone completely politically incorrect. You know what I mean?”

Did I ever.

15

Amber

That evening, as I was hanging out in my room, the unmistakable scent of frying onions wafted up from the kitchen. Curiosity got the better of me, and I headed downstairs. When I stepped into the kitchen, I found Sawyer standing at the stove, stirring the onions in a black cast iron skillet.

“You cook?” I asked.

He turned, the wooden spoon still held in one hand, and gave me that knee-melting smile. “Sure do,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry.”