Smooth-Talking Cowboy

He stared at the sign, red and white and sticking up out of the ground, with a damn sunbeam shining on it.

He shook his head, putting the truck back in Drive and pulling back out onto the highway.

He turned the radio up, blaring a country song about being back roads legit, which turned his thoughts to things he liked. To drinking. Ranching. Women. Everything that made life worthwhile.

That carried him the rest of the way down the road and all the way to the Dodge ranch.

He parked his truck in the gravel lot that Wyatt was considering having paved over, and looked around. It was bare now, but he knew that Wyatt had landscape plans. Knew that Wyatt had a whole host of modernization schemes up his sleeve. He supported them. He did. He just wasn’t sure anymore if he wanted to be an active part of it.

He frowned, killing the engine on the truck and getting out, walking slowly down the path toward the house, where he had a feeling he would find Wyatt sitting at the table in the dining area, his makeshift office, even though he had a real office. He claimed he preferred the one by the coffeemaker.

He opened up the front door without knocking, as was his habit. He had lived on the property for so many years, the entire place had eventually been opened up to him like a home. Quinn Dodge had been more of a father to him than anyone else ever had been. Surely more than the man who had been responsible for knocking his mom up and leaving her depressed and fragile, never to fully recover.

“Morning,” he said, knocking his boots against the welcome mat and stepping inside, calling out the greeting to whichever of the Dodge brothers—or sister—might currently be in residence.

He found Bennett and Wyatt at the small kitchen table that sat in the corner of the modest room. A large thermos of coffee sitting at the middle of the table, both of them with full mugs in front of them.

“Good morning,” Wyatt said, not looking up from the paperwork in front of him.

“What do you have there?” he asked.

“Looking over some different opportunities. Gabe Dalton has been doing some work with retired rodeo horses. And as crazy as it sounds, he swears that they would be perfect for the trail rides here. He has a few animals for us to look at.”

The Daltons were another big ranching family in the area, and Luke knew that Gabe and Wyatt were pretty tight from their days riding on the rodeo circuit. Gabe had spent a fair amount of time hanging around the ranch too, and as far as Luke could see he was a stand-up guy, honest and definitely trustworthy when it came to his opinion on animals.

“Sounds good,” Luke said.

“I’ll definitely want to take a close look at them,” Bennett said.

“Look under the hood?” Luke asked, moving through the kitchen and grabbing a mug out of one of the cabinets. “Kick the tires.”

“Hey,” Bennett said, “you wouldn’t buy a used car without a mechanic having a look. Might as well have the resident vet take a look at your used horses.”

Wyatt chuckled. “Fair enough.”

“What else are you looking into?” Luke asked.

“Well, I had a talk with Dane Parker about the potential of doing some joint venture stuff with Grassroots Winery. I’m not sure. It might all be a little bit fussy.”

Bennett shrugged a shoulder. “People like to drink.”

“I’m not sure this is a wine place.”

“People staying here might want to go on wine-tasting tours,” Luke pointed out, even though he agreed that wine was a hell of a lot fussier than anything he wanted to deal in. He preferred beer for casual drinking and hard stuff for serious drinking.

Wine didn’t fall anywhere on that spectrum.

“I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “I like Dane. But might be a lot of drama to step in the middle of. You know, seeing as Damien Leighton’s ex-wife now owns the winery. I was pretty good buddies with him when we used to ride bulls.”

“Sounds like you have a lot of options,” Luke said.

And frankly, he wasn’t really all that interested in any of them. He had liked the place the way that it was. Simple. Rustic. Appealing to the kind of people who wanted simple and rustic. At the same time, he also understood that you were going to catch a much broader base of people if you expanded the amenities.

But he wanted to get back to ranch work. Real ranch work. He wanted to dig postholes for fences. Wanted to wrangle cattle and ride horses.

He wanted a place of his own. His own land to work as he saw fit.

“How was Olivia?” Bennett’s question jerked Luke out of his thoughts. “You talked to her at the bar.”

“Yeah. I helped her out with her car, remember?”

Bennett nodded slowly. “Right. So you said.”

“If you want to talk to her, go talk to her. She asked me about you, too. But I’m not a carrier pigeon for the lovelorn. So, if you guys have something to work out, go work it out.”

Bennett’s jaw firmed, a stubborn expression crossing over his face. “She’s frustrating the hell out of me, because she’s manipulating me. I don’t understand why she doesn’t get that I just want to wait until I have some things in order before I marry her. I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry her. I said not yet.”

“Not a carrier pigeon,” Luke said. “I’m not giving this information back to her.”

Luke couldn’t understand why the hell either of them were being so stubborn. If they wanted to be together, they should just be together. He didn’t understand why Olivia felt like she needed a ring so badly, or why Bennett felt like he needed to wait. But, he wasn’t going to get into the discussion. Because it wasn’t his fucking problem.

He poured himself a measure of coffee, left it black and decided that he was going to get to work. “See you both later,” he said.

“You just came in here to steal coffee and pass judgment?” Bennett asked.

“Yep.”

He walked back out of the kitchen, across the stone floor that led to the front door of the large ranch house. He heard Bennett’s footsteps behind him. Luke kept on walking and shut the front door behind him just to be difficult. He heard it open just a couple of seconds later.

“Something going on between you two?”

Luke turned around. “Me and this coffee? Yeah. Seriously red-hot love affair. I crave it. It’s all I think about. I need it to survive.”

“You and Olivia,” Bennett said, his tone stiff. “I don’t know how...”

“No,” Luke said. “But, she’s a grown-ass woman and apparently single.”

“She wants a commitment,” Bennett said. “And we both know you’re not the guy to give that to her.”

Luke’s stomach tightened, and he chuckled past it. “Yes. We do both know that. I’m not giving a commitment to anyone. But you’re apparently not giving one to her, either.”

“It’s complicated,” Bennett said.

“How is it complicated? Either you love her or you don’t.”

“None of it’s about love.”

Luke stared at him. “Then what’s it about?”