Cowboy Love on Hold [Love: The Cowboy Way 1] (2 page)

Chapter 2

Brandon looked up at their house, unable to make his feet carry him towards his worst nightmare—having to watch Kimber and Wade together and in love. He could see without needing to be told that they were crazy about each other. Well, it served him right. He’d deserted them both, and they were living the life that should have been his. It was no more punishment than he deserved.

Wade appeared in the open doorway, two beers already in his hand, gesturing for Brandon to come in. “What’s keeping you?”

“It’s like stepping back in time. I haven’t been inside this house since I was a kid.”

“Hardly a kid. What age were you when you signed up?” Wade met him on the step and handed him a bottle.

“I’d just turned twenty. Jesus! That was almost half my life ago.”

“We’re getting old, Buddy, no need to remind me.” Wade raised his beer in silent salute.

Brandon followed Wade into the house and found that not much had changed since he’d last seen it. The wooden floors still gleamed, faded by years of wear and tear, their golden tones enhanced by the traditional Navajo rug in the center of the hall. The old bench sat where it always had, on the wall between the bottom of the staircase leading up to the bedrooms and the entrance to the den. Walking past the stairs, Brandon looked ahead into the Great Room as it opened up before him. Besides a couple of leather chairs, a computer, and an entertainment center dominating a corner next to the huge timber and stone fireplace, everything was exactly the same as he remembered it. Except Kimber—she hadn’t been a part of his memories of the house.

Finding her curled up in one of the leather chairs, engrossed in a book, Brandon couldn’t help wondering how she’d look in his home, the place she’d be right now if he hadn’t run away. He smiled to see she still did that thing—twisting a tendril of her wheat blonde hair around her finger over and over while she concentrated. He’d always loved her hair, although she wore it much shorter now in a shiny golden mass of waves that ended at her collarbones. He watched her silently, enjoying the rare moment to just look at her again after all this time, but then Wade came up behind him and slapped him on the shoulder, and Brandon tensed, reminded again of why he’d been forced to leave. Carefully stepping away from his friend, Brandon cast a glance at Wade’s face, unable to believe that he had forgiven and forgotten as completely as it seemed.

“Hey, Brandon.” Kimber got to her feet and crossed the room to hug him again, her smile a little shaky at the edges and the expression in her cornflower blue eyes full of some emotion he couldn’t quite put a name to. He was slightly more prepared for her touch this time, but not much. The second her hands grazed over his shoulders, the years slipped away, and he knew without a doubt that almost two decades of self-imposed exile had done nothing to lessen his hunger for the woman in his arms. And unless he was very much mistaken by her reaction earlier, Kimber was no more immune to him.

“How long ’til we eat?” Wade’s voice cut through Brandon’s thoughts, and Kimber pulled away at the sound of her lover’s voice.

“Brandon, are you okay with having leftovers? I don’t want to spend all night cooking, and I think I have enough chili for the three of us.” She turned to Wade. “You don’t mind having it again tonight, do you?”

“Hell no! I’d eat your chili every day for the rest of my life, you know that.” Kimber laughed and kissed Wade in thanks for the compliment. Brandon knew he was staring and forced himself to look away, turning to the window and gazing out over the landscape he knew like the back of his hand. The land bordered his on the northern side of the valley five miles away. Wade’s family ranch looked much the same as Brandon’s—high, dusty ridges dotted with Ponderosa pines, tall aspens, and mighty oaks, with a single track winding through the land and disappearing into the foothills of the mountain.

“Okay, you boys make yourselves comfortable, and I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

Kimber left the room, and Wade strolled over to sprawl out in one of the chairs, gesturing that Brandon should take the one opposite. He took a pull on his beer, grateful for a distraction as Wade stared at him silently, his gray eyes unreadable. The years had been kind to him. His dark hair had no gray in it at all, and his broad frame was larger and firmer than Brandon remembered. There was a small scar on his chin that Brandon didn’t remember ever seeing before, but he looked like the same old Wade, except that he seemed a lot more confident than he used to be.

The seconds ticked on, and Brandon had no choice but to hold Wade’s gaze, so he raised his eyebrows, inviting his friend to say whatever it was he had on his mind.

“You need any help…making arrangements for your mom, I mean?”

Okay, so Wade’s no braver than I am.
Brandon let out the breath he’d been holding, strangely relieved that they were only talking about his mom. Considering what he could have said, like—
why did you ruin our friendship by trying to seduce me?
—his mother’s death was safe ground.

“There’s not much left to do now but lay her to rest. You’ll come won’t you…you and Kimber, I mean?”

“Of course, Buddy. I’m just sorry there wasn’t more we could do to help. You should have let us know sooner.”

“I didn’t know you were still living in the area. This is the first time I’ve been back since I left in ’93.”

When he signed a second contract at the age of thirty, he promised his mother that he wouldn’t do more than the eight years. She died two months before he would have retired, while he was on his last ever assignment in Afghanistan, and his Detachment Commander had yanked him out of a reconnaissance mission to give him the news. With so little time left to serve and much needed to be done to sort out his mother’s affairs, the army had given him an early discharge, although he could be recalled to duty any time until his retirement date in May.

Wade’s eyes turned a steely gray, and he dropped his gaze to focus on his thumb worrying at the label on his beer bottle. “So what are you gonna do with your mom’s place? Are you moving back to Chelwood permanently?”

“I thought I might.” Brandon watched as a nerve began to tick in Wade’s jaw. “I think it’s about time I settled down somewhere.”

Wade met his gaze. “Settling down is overrated.”

Brandon couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. The only people who felt that way were those who had so much going for them, they could afford to nitpick. Nobody except his mother knew that, two years after he signed up, he enrolled as Special Ops, eventually joining a Paramilitary Special Operations unit. From that day on, he’d been told to protect the ones he loved by staying away from them, so he stopped coming home to visit. On the rare occasions he got to see his mother, they would meet at a safe house and spend a day just catching up. She would save up every scrap of gossip and news she’d heard since the last time she saw him and damn near talk his leg off. But he loved her and didn’t mind hearing about what was going on at home—until the day his mom told him that his best friend and ex-girlfriend were living together and said what a scandal it was because they weren’t married and all. Brandon had snapped at her, saying he never understood why some wanted to stick their noses into other people’s business. He apologized straight away, and she said she’d forgiven him, but his mother never mentioned either Kimber or Wade again.

The cruel irony of staying away from her so she would be safe, just to have her die of a heart condition he might have known about had he been home with her, haunted Brandon daily. Wade had no reason to complain about his life.

“Aren’t you happy? I gotta tell you, there are many who would die for what you have.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m a lucky guy—I mean, I have this place and Kimber. But there’s so much I wanted to do that I didn’t.” His gaze dropped again. “But the decisions about how my life would turn out were taken out of my hands, you know? I never really had a choice. Everyone else had it all mapped out for me.”

Maybe Wade had problems Brandon didn’t know about, but he was sure as hell having a hard time feeling sorry for him. “Hey, it’s never too late. Take me, for example. I’m about to embark on another life. Sure, I grew up on a ranch, but I have no idea how to run it, day to day. I’m not letting that stop me though.”

“You’re doing it alone? You’ve got nobody to help you?”

Brandon knew what Wade was really asking, but if he wanted to play it safe, Brandon wasn’t going to be the one to stir up the hornet’s nest. “Most of the workers stayed on after mom died, and the old foreman still lives in that cottage on the back forty. His wife comes over to do a bit of housekeeping and cook me a meal, so it’s not so bad. You remember Seth Miller, don’t you?”

Wade laughed. “That old buzzard is still alive? Damn, he must be almost a hundred years old by now!”

Relieved to see Wade smile again, Brandon strove to keep the tone light, reminding his friend of the times they’d driven Seth half mad with their tricks. “He damned near skinned me alive because of you. He thought it was me who put that skunk in his bed.”

By the time Kimber walked back into the room a few minutes later, there was no sign of the earlier tension. She looked bemused to find the pair of them roaring with laughter, but then she smiled and shook her head. “I’m not sure if I should ask what you two are talking about in here.”