Cowboy Take Me Away (45 page)

Epilogue

Ten years later…

“See that silver-haired fox over there?” Carson said to Cal. “She’s comin’ home with me tonight.”

“You sure? That guy in the three-piece suit in the corner is eyeballin’ her. Looks like he’s gonna make a move soon.” Cal chuckled. “Of course, he’d have to get up and outta that wheelchair first.”

“Don’t care if he’s in a wheelchair. He puts a hand on her and I’ll beat his wrinkled ass.”

Cal snorted. “Good thing you’re carryin’ around a cane, old man. Your brawlin’ days have been over for a long damn time.”

“Piss off. That woman has been mine for sixty years. I ain’t ever gonna be too old to fight for her.”

Carolyn threw her head back and laughed at something Kyler said. She was holding someone’s baby but there were so many kids around that he couldn’t keep track of which ones belonged to whom.

“She is still something, all right,” Carson said to Cal, never taking his eyes off his wife.

“Yep. Think she’s got a sister?”

“I’ve heard that little whip of a thing is mouthy. Think you can handle her?”

“Been doin’ my level best to handle that spitfire for the past fifty-three years,” Cal said dryly. “Give me another ten years or so and I might have it figured out.”

Carson grinned. “Been a helluva ride, bein’ married to the West sisters.”

“Got that right.” Cal lifted his bottle for a toast. “Best thing I ever did was drag your ass to the dancehall that night.”

He raised his bottle and touched it to his brother’s. “Amen. And if I never said thank you…”

“You did. So how long is this party supposed to last?”

“Hell if I know. That’s the good thing about bein’ old; no one expects us to stay for the whole thing. They think we’re goin’ home early and goin’ to bed.” Which was partially true. He’d be taking his wife home to bed, but they sure wouldn’t be sleeping.

Cal snorted and didn’t say a word, but he knew what was on his brother’s mind, probably because the same thing was on his. “The blonde tornado is givin’ me the stink eye so I’d better see what’s up.”

Carson’s gaze remained on Carolyn until she sensed him staring at her.

After passing the baby to Vi, she started toward him.

The background noise and the groups of people faded away and all he saw was her.

Carolyn moved slower now. She looked a little different. After her accident a decade ago, her hair follicles had sustained damage and her hair had never grown back the right way. He’d expected her vanity would force her into wearing a wig. But she refused and kept her hair in a military crew-cut style. Those once blonde tresses were completely silver. Now she was the very definition of a hot, sexy and hip grandma.

She stopped in front of him.

“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. How’s about we run off together?”

“Does that line usually work for you, cowboy?”

He traced the edge of her jaw. “It did once. Got me what I wanted and it lasted for six glorious decades. So I wanna make sure you’re onboard for the next six decades with me.”

“Hmm. Well, I might have to think about it… There are pros and cons.”

“Such as?”

“The cons? You are still too handsome for your own good. And you’d prefer to answer all challenges with your fists.You still sneak the occasional cigarette. You cuss like a sailor. You drive like an idiot.” Carolyn placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. “The pros? You’ve got a full head of hair and your own teeth. You make me laugh. You set my blood on fire. You are still the best man I’ve ever known. So, I’ll keep you around for a little while longer.”

“Whew. I was worried there for a second you might want to upgrade this model for a newer one.”

“The training period for a new model is far too long. Besides, they’ve replaced all your worn out parts.”

In the last decade he’d had his other hip replaced and both knees. Most days he felt pretty good. He missed riding. He probably always would.

Carson leaned forward and kissed her. “How’s my bride?”

“Been sixty years since I was a blushing bride.”

“I can still getcha to blush though.”

“That you can, wild man McKay.” Carolyn fussed with the buttons on his shirt.

“Something on your mind?”

She looked up at him, worry in her eyes. “Liesl baked the anniversary cake. She used my Aunt Hulda’s recipe for the traditional German chocolate butter cake we had at our wedding. She’s hounding me to taste it to see if it’s authentic. And I don’t know what to say.”

Another strange effect of Carolyn’s accident; she’d lost all sense of taste. She could tell the difference between hot and cold; differentiate textures, but nothing else. After the six-month recovery period, when she attempted to return to daily cooking for them, she’d realized she couldn’t cook at all. She had some sort of disconnect in her visual language skills which resulted in difficulty reading and she couldn’t follow the most basic recipe.

So at age seventy-five he’d finally learned to cook. The only good thing about that? Since she couldn’t taste, she couldn’t tell the meals he prepared tasted like shit.

They ate out a lot.

And because cooking had been such a big part of what’d defined her, they’d kept her loss of skills to themselves. Carson told anyone who asked that after fifty years of kitchen duty she’d officially hung up her oven mitts and retired.

He curled his hand around her face. “Liesl is not lookin’ for the truth, sugar. She’s lookin’ for validation from her Gran-gran because she respects the hell out of you. So tell her whatever she did surpassed the original recipe and you don’t remember it ever tastin’ that good.”

“You always know just what to say, silver-tongued devil that you are,” she murmured.

“How much longer do we have to stay?”

“Another hour or so. They’re doing the whole cake-cutting thing and first dance thing, which is weird because we didn’t have either of those things at our wedding. I doubt they’re expecting us to stick around after that.”

“Good. I have plans for us.” He brushed an openmouthed kiss at the base of her neck. “Nekkid plans that include you, me, our hot tub and a bottle of bubbly.”

She laughed. “You really believe that hot tub is the fountain of youth, don’t you?”

“Yep. Makes me feel twenty years younger.”

“Lord, crazy man, I love you. You really will be chasing me around when you’re a hundred and five, won’t you?”

Carson smiled. “Count on it.”

Check out Lorelei James’s
Author’s Notes
and
FAQs
for behind-the-scenes information on the Rough Riders series as well as details on when other characters from this world will get their stories. Explore the
McKay-West family trees
, a
timeline for the series
and more at
www.loreleijames.com
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About the Author

Lorelei James is the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of contemporary erotic western romances set in the modern day Wild West and also contemporary erotic romances. Lorelei’s books have been nominated for and won the
RT Book Reviews
Reviewer’s Choice Award as well as the CAPA Award. Lorelei lives in western South Dakota with her family…and a whole closet full of cowgirl boots.

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Look for these titles by Lorelei James

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Rough Riders

Long Hard Ride

Rode Hard, Put Up Wet

Cowgirl Up and Ride

Tied Up, Tied Down

Rough, Raw, and Ready

Branded As Trouble

Shoulda Been A Cowboy

All Jacked Up

Raising Kane

Slow Ride

Cowgirls Don’t Cry

Chasin’ Eight

Cowboy Casanova

Kissin’ Tell

Gone Country

Redneck Romeo

Cowboy Take Me Away

Wild West Boys

Mistress Christmas

Miss Firecracker

Anthologies

Wild Ride: Strong, Silent Type

Three’s Company: Wicked Garden

Two to Tango: Ballroom Blitz

Dirty Deeds

The last McKay standing is knocked to his knees…

Redneck Romeo

© 2013 Lorelei James

Rough Riders, Book 15

Three years ago, Dalton McKay looked across the altar and saw the woman he knew he’d love for the rest of his life…only it wasn’t his bride. That’s when he took the McKays’ love-’em-and-leave-’em reputation to new heights—fleeing the ceremony and Wyoming.

Now a family issue has brought Dalton back to Sundance, giving him a chance to prove to everyone—especially the woman he thought he lost—that he’s a changed man.

Aurora “Rory” Wetzler has fallen for cowboy hottie Dalton’s smooth-talkin’ ways too many times. So he’s determined to convince her he’s playing for keeps this go around? Fine. She’ll call that bluff—she can’t ignore their intense chemistry or resist smokin’ hot sex, but she’s not willing to gamble her heart again.

Dalton has plenty of fences to mend with the McKays, but his biggest fear is that Rory doesn’t believe they have a future. He’ll have to pull out all the stops to show her they belong together for the long haul.

Warning: Contains a sexy cowboy who tames his sassy lady love with his romantic and his kinky side. In explicit detail.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Redneck Romeo:

“Rory, can I get two Bud Light drafts and a cherry Coke?”

“Coming right up.” She pulled the tap and dumped cherry juice over ice, aiming a stream of cola at the glass and swapping the full beer mug for an empty one. She lined the order on the bar top, then wandered to help a new customer.

Ten minutes later, she poured herself a Coke and leaned against the counter. Old man Duffy grinned at her.

“You’re scaring me, Duff. What’s that look for?”

“Missed you last week. Where were you?”

“At a two-day conference in Rock Springs.”

“Huh. I thought you mighta bailed on us. Can’t for the life of me understand why you’re still slinging drinks at the Twin Pines.”

“My job with the state is part-time. So while I’m waiting for a fulltime position to open up or a decent job in my field to magically become available, I’m working here to make ends meet.” Rory chomped on a piece of ice.

“It’s a waste. A gorgeous blonde amazon woman like you oughta be home every night, bein’ spoiled rotten by a man who appreciates and worships you.”

She laughed. “Now there’s a fantasy.”

“If I was fifty years younger…”

“I’d take you up on it.” And she would, no lie. Her love life—for lack of a better term—was a joke. She’d had one date in the last six months since she’d returned to Sundance. A pity date from the plumber who installed a new toilet at the Wyoming Natural Resources Council office where she worked.

She’d jumped out of the dating pool for almost a year when she’d been with Dillon. While she had no regrets about breaking off their engagement, she was lonely. She missed the companionship, even when that companionship was what had driven her away.

Rory kept telling herself that it was better to be dateless and alone than married to the wrong man. Some days it empowered her. Other days it depressed her.

Her love life wasn’t the only source of melancholy. Twenty-eight years old, with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, and she was still slinging drinks for tips. She was still living in the same small hometown in the same small cabin she’d grown up in.

The more things changed the more they stayed the same.

But she’d had a full, exciting life in college, which made it worse, living in Dullsville, USA again. She’d joined several exchange programs during grad school, which had added almost two years to the time it took to earn her degree. But it’d been worth it, seeing the world outside of Wyoming. She’d spent half a year in South America studying tropical land conservation practices. She’d lived on a large cattle ranch on the big island of Hawaii. She’d mapped wildlife habitats and migration patterns in Alaska and Canada.

After graduation she’d interned for a year with the Wyoming State Parks Department. But the hiring freeze meant she didn’t land a permanent job after the internship ended. Her relationship with Dillon, her boss in the WSPD office in Cheyenne, had hit the skids at the same time, so taking a part-time position with the WNRC in Moorcroft had been a no brainer. Her living expenses were next to nothing. Working part-time gave her time to apply for jobs all over the country, with every agency under the sun.

Pity she hadn’t bothered sending off any applications in the past month—she could only take so much rejection. Maybe that was another sign of depression? Or boredom? She knew it wasn’t a sign of contentment.

At least her mom seemed happy to have her around, although she and her husband, Gavin, were joined at the hip and lips when they weren’t traveling across the country. Most of her friends in the area were married or in a steady relationship. Even her stepsister Sierra was all grown up and living in Arizona while she attended ASU. Rory got a little misty-eyed thinking about when Sierra had shown up at the Twin Pines with her dad and Rory’s mom on her twenty-first birthday so Rory could make her first legal drink. She missed that sweet little brat.

“Rory? You are a sight for my tired old eyes today.”

She looked up at a new customer and grinned. “If it isn’t Donald, my favorite bald man. What’s up?”

“The wind for one thing. Getting cold out there.” He rubbed his hands together.

“You want the usual?”

“Nope. I’m feeling daring tonight. How about you add an extra kick to my red beer? A couple slices of jalapeños, some of them peppers and a handful of olives.”

“You got it.” Just like that her mood brightened. Hard to pity yourself when faced with a cancer survivor who’d been through chemotherapy hell. But Donald was always upbeat. Her favorite part of bartending was talking to customers. If she was totally honest, she hadn’t taken the bartending gig because she needed money, but to stave off loneliness. Hard to believe she could be lonely in her hometown, but she did spend many of her nonworking hours by herself. At least slinging drinks gave her some social interactions.

Rory slid the drink in front of Donald. “Taste it. If it’s too spicy I’ll dump it out and start fresh.”

He sipped. Smacked his lips and grinned. “Perfect. Your talent is wasted here, Rory girl. You oughta be in New York City, making killer tips as head mixologist or whatever fancy name they’re calling bartenders these days.”

“I’ll take the compliment, but I’m too much of a bumpkin to ever work with sophisticated clientele and booze.”

“How’re things going at the day job? You been out massaging black-footed ferrets’ poor tired feet and polishing the horns on the horn-billed prairie grouse?”

She laughed. Like most lifelong Ag men, Donald poked fun at state wildlife and conservation agencies’ policies. But unlike other men she’d run across, he meant it tongue-in-cheek. “I can always hope that’s on my to-do list at the office tomorrow.”

“If you catch one, let me know. My wife’s got a killer recipe for poached grouse.”

Rory groaned at his pun.

An hour later the crowd had dwindled. She asked Naomi, the manager, to watch the bar so she could take a break.

As she left the bathroom, a hulking guy barreled toward her. His hair was as unkempt as his scraggly beard. She flattened herself against the wall to let him pass, but he boxed her in. At six foot one, she was used to towering over most men. But this ZZ Top impersonator topped her by two inches.

Then he was in her face.

“Look, buddy, I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have any cash on me and if you don’t back off, I’ll—”

“Rory.”

She froze. That deep voice. The way he said her name reminded her of… No. Couldn’t be him. He’d just up and disappeared from her life three years ago without a word and as far as she knew, no one knew where he’d gone.

“Sweet Jesus. You’re even prettier than I remembered.” He ran his knuckles down her jawline.

“Stop it.” Rory jerked her head away. “I don’t know who you think you are—”

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

She had a split second of recognition right before he said, “It’s me. Dalton.”

And then he kissed her.