Brokedown Cowboy

“Ignore it,” she said out loud, “like always.”

It was the only thing to do. They would have to go on as though undiegate had never happened. She was just having a little Connor relapse due to the close proximity. Probably not aided at all by the recent amount of time she’d been spending taking care of him. And definitely not helped by her extremely long bout of celibacy and singledom. When things settled down she would have to focus on getting a date. Yes, that would help. A little bit of normalcy, a man who wasn’t Connor filling her time.

Yes, that would help. And if in the meantime, she spent just a little bit of time thinking about how Connor had looked in his underwear, well, she was only human. It didn’t mean anything. Just a little healthy female-to-male appreciation.

That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_6ba683d8-5092-54c6-9f71-10d0d686840b)

THE MORNING THE INSURANCE settlement money went into Connor’s bank account he felt as if there was a timer ticking down. And there was a part of him—a much larger part of him than he might have imagined—that wanted to take the money and go down to Cancun. Just disappear from all this for a while, from Copper Ridge, from responsibility.

But he couldn’t do that. Because of the ranch, because of his family, because Eli’s election was coming up, and he had to be there for that.

Damn responsibilities. He would rather have a margarita.

But his family needed him here, and if there was one thing he wouldn’t do, it was abandon them. Their mother had walked out when things had gotten tough, and Connor wasn’t going to do the same.

No, he wasn’t his mother in this little play. He was the one who was left behind.

He was a lot closer to being his father.

He gritted his teeth. No, he wasn’t. He saw to his responsibilities.

Like getting the barn built?

Yeah, he had to get the barn built. He had enough money to hire a crew to come out and get it done, which meant he needed to get started as soon as possible. There was no excuse. Maybe that was something else Liss could help him with.

Liss. That was also feeling slightly difficult at the moment.

And it was his fault. Because she had seemed fine after their little mostly naked run-in a few days ago. But his brain had latched on to the vivid image of what she might look like in the mint-colored thong and hadn’t let go. It was starting to drive him crazy.

On the long list of things he never wanted to talk to anyone about was the effect grief had on his sex drive. It just wasn’t something anyone needed to know about. Yes, they all had a fair idea he wasn’t getting any, if only because it was a small town, and they all lived in each other’s pockets.

Okay, the town at large didn’t know, but Eli knew that he didn’t see women coming back to the property, and Jack knew that when he left the bar with a woman, Connor always left alone.

They wouldn’t have to ponder his actions too hard to figure that out. Plus, he had admitted as much to Eli during the world’s most horrific conversation a few months back. But what he hadn’t admitted was that it was more than not feeling like engaging in a flirtation or a hookup.

It was that his give-a-damn was busted on such a bone-deep level that he didn’t even fantasize about hooking up. It was pretty easy to abstain when you didn’t even feel like jacking off to deal with a morning erection.

A morning erection that had become a lot more insistent since Liss’s thong had come into his life.

Connor groaned and scooped up a pitchfork full of manure from his horse’s stall and chucked it into the back of the truck. He was going to deal with this the way he had dealt with it back in high school. Hard work. That was, in his experience, the world’s most effective boner killer. Except for the obvious. And he wasn’t going to do either obvious thing. For equally obvious reasons.

“Hey, Connor, did that pitchfork do something terrible to you?”

Connor turned and saw Eli standing at the entrance to the stalls. “I’m shoveling shit, Eli. How excited am I supposed to look?”

“All right, fair enough. You just don’t normally look actively angry while doing it.”

Connor stuck the pitchfork into the shavings and leaned against it. “I got my insurance money today.”

“Well, damn,” Eli said, monotone. “Those bastards. Finally settling the score with you. I have half a mind to go and slap handcuffs on them.”

“I didn’t ask for your sarcasm.”

“I don’t know why you’re standing there looking so upset about finally getting what you’ve been working toward for the past few months.”

Connor winced internally. But he was not about to have the same argument with Eli that he had already had with Liss. “I guess it’s just time to rebuild. And I have a hard time feeling very enthusiastic about rebuilding. I don’t have a great track record, Eli. I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I tried to do the best I could by this ranch. By the family. But every time I try to make something better, nature finds a way to burn it to the ground, for lack of a less obvious metaphor.”

Eli frowned. “I know things have been hard, but everything that’s happened...do you really think that’s all about you?”

“Sure, or I have a lightning rod above my head. It’s either that or it’s random, Eli. Tell me which one is supposed to make me feel better.”

Eli rubbed his hand over his forehead. “I doubt anything I could say would make you feel better. Except that no matter the answer, you have to keep doing things.”

“Sometimes I’d rather not.”

“That was what Dad did,” Eli said. The total lack of judgment in Eli’s voice made the statement even worse. As though he couldn’t blame their dad, and wouldn’t blame Connor, either. But Connor would. Connor did.

“Yeah, well, it’s not what I’m going to do. I work, don’t I? I work the ranch every day. Not leaving it to my kids to do, not that I have any, but you get the point.” Connor let out a long, slow breath. “It hasn’t escaped my notice that anything new I bring onto this ranch seems to die.” He met his younger brother’s gaze. “Tell me that’s not true.”

“I can’t,” Eli said, his voice strained. “Connor, you’re probably the only person on this earth more connected to Jessie’s death than I am. I was there. I was the one who had to tell you. I feel it. The brutality of it, the suddenness of it. I feel it down to my bones. Please know that I don’t take what you’ve been through lightly. And when I tell you I think you need to move on, when I tell you that I want to see you happy, it’s not because I don’t realize what you went through. Because I was there, Connor.”

Connor knew Eli was talking about his reaction to his wife’s death. Eli was the only witness to that moment, and he was probably the only one who remembered it with any real clarity. Connor could hardly piece together the memory, and it was probably all for the best. The moments after the words had left Eli’s mouth had been a blur.

* * *

IT WAS LATE, and the only person he’d been expecting was Jessie, so the knock at the door was a surprise. Connor opened the door, and his brother turned to face him, something in his expression strange. Wrong. The porch light was on, a ring of gold surrounding Eli’s frame.

Eli stepped inside, not saying a word. Another thing that seemed wrong.

“Connor, go on and sit down.”

He complied, because he’d never seen his brother look quite so desolate. Not even when their mother had left. Not even after their father had died.

“There was an accident tonight,” he said, his voice breaking.

And he didn’t even have to finish the sentence, because right then Connor knew. His whole body went cold, and something in his gut turned, and he knew. He knew it wasn’t Eli, his brother, just paying a visit, but a sheriff’s deputy doing his duty. A brother doing his duty.

“Jessie died tonight, Connor.”

* * *

THERE HAD BEEN nothing after that. Just a kind of strange buzzing in his head that wouldn’t go away. And he was aware of saying things, but not of what he’d said. He couldn’t remember anything that had happened after Eli spoke those words. He couldn’t remember the rest of the night or the whole next day. A full twenty-four hours that were gone forever.