Slow Burn Cowboy

He jerked the fridge open, grabbing a bottle of beer, then changing direction. He put the beer back and closed the fridge, making his way over to the bar on the other side of the room. His grandfather had been a good Irishman who believed in keeping his liquor supply healthy.

Finn reached out, closing his hand around a bottle of whiskey. “God bless you, old man.”

Then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He bit back a curse, lifting the device to his ear. “Hello.”

“It’s me,” came the sound of Lane’s familiar voice.

“Hi,” he said, barely managing more than a grunt.

“I need you,” Lane said, her voice breathy.

Those words were like a slug straight to his gut. And it didn’t matter that he knew full well this was in regards to something that had absolutely nothing to do with his body—his body reacted strongly.

“Do you?” he asked, keeping his eyes pinned on the bottle of liquid salvation in his hand.

“Yes,” she said, the word coming out in a long whine.

“It can’t wait till morning?”

“No,” she said, her voice emphatic. “The power is out in my kitchen. I flipped the switches and they won’t work.”

“Which switches did you flip?”

“All the switches. They won’t work! All of my food is going to go bad. I don’t have cheap food, Finn. My cheese. Think of my cheese. Donnelly cheese.”

He closed his eyes, letting out a long slow breath as he released his hold on the liquor bottle. “I’ll be right over.”

If nothing else, it gave him a chance to get out of the house. This house that was a constant reminder of his grandfather, the old bastard. An old bastard he missed, about as much as he wanted to punch him.

He was going to take the chance to get out of this house that now contained two members of his family who seemed determined to stay.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, then reached out, grabbing hold of his truck keys. The metal scraped against the granite countertop, the noise loud in the relative silence of the expansive room.

By the time he pulled up to Lane’s house he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten there. The entire drive over was a blank space. He had been too busy having imaginary, angry conversations in his head. With his brother. With a dead man.

Good thing he knew the road and the route better than he knew just about any other.

He walked up the porch steps, noticing that one of them wiggled beneath his boot. He would have to fix that for her. Then he looked at the porch light, at the excess of cobwebs hanging around it, made much more obvious with the direct glow of the porch light and the darkness behind it.

She hated messing with things like that too, so he should probably clear them when he came to do the step. He sighed, lifting his hand and knocking firmly on the wooden door.

It jerked open half a second later, revealing a nervous-looking Lane. “I hope it’s easy to fix,” she said, moving out of the way and allowing him entry. “I have deep concerns about my food.” She lifted her hand to her mouth, chewing idly on the side of her thumbnail.

“I can take some back with me if we can’t get it fixed—assuming there’s room in my fridge after all that casserole. Also, you can put some of it out in your cold room. Not perfect, but overnight it’s not going to be any warmer than your fridge out there.”

“There you go being all measured and logical.” She waved her hands, looking anything but measured and logical.

He hadn’t felt like either of those things earlier today. No, dealing with Cain he had felt decidedly un-calm and illogical. He could almost see himself standing in his house, being an ass to the brother who had driven halfway across the country to be there, the brother who had been through a whole hell of a lot in his adult life, and who was trying to do something good for his kid.

But he hadn’t been able to be any nicer. He just hadn’t had it in him. The ranch felt like his. He’d invested blood and sweat in that land. Probably even a few bone chips from the time he had busted his shin in a dirt bike accident when he’d been thirteen.

Yes, they had all spent summers there up to a point. But Finn was the one who had stayed. He was the one who worked it. The one who had gotten it into the state it was in, and now Cain just wanted to move in and use it as therapy.

“It’s a gift,” he said, rather than dumping any of those dark thoughts on Lane. “It’s probably just a fuse, and it’s probably just going to take me a minute.”

“I told you I flipped the switches,” she said, sounding grumpy.

“I know you did,” he said.

“You think I flipped the switches wrong,” she said, accusatory.

“I’m sure you’re a great switch flipper,” he responded, deadpan, as he continued to the fuse box.

He knew that the old cabin was a bit of a mess when it came to wiring. He had a rudimentary knowledge of those things, but he wasn’t an electrician. So while he was tempted to offer to sort everything out for her, it would probably be better if she got a professional. Which he’d told her before, but she never hired anyone to help out.

He had fiddled with her fuse box a couple of times before, so he already knew that the labels next to each switch were wrong. The one that claimed to be linked to the bathroom, in fact wasn’t. If he remembered right that one went to a back bedroom.

He knew for certain the one that was labeled living room went to the bathroom. But he wasn’t exactly certain which one went to the kitchen, since there had never been a fuse issue with it before. He turned off one that claimed to be the master bedroom, and heard Lane shout from down the hall.

“Now it’s just completely dark in here!”

He flipped it back on. “Sorry,” he said.

His hand hovered over the switch for the outdoor power, and then he decided to test it. Off, and then on.

“Nothing!”

“Nothing?” he asked.

“Nothing!” she shouted back.

He walked back to where she was, frowning. “Wasn’t the original part of this place built in the twenties?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, looking confused.

“I need to get up in your crawl space.”

“Wow, Finn. Buy a girl dinner first.”

He sighed wearily. “Lane...”

“Fine. But I don’t know what you’re going to find up there.”

“Knob and tube wiring, I hope.”

He went back out to the truck and grabbed his toolbox, then opened up the attic access in her hallway, lowering the built-in ladder down and climbing into the tight space. It didn’t take long after that to find a wire that had been chewed until it had lost its connection.

He fused it back together with his soldering iron and heard a triumphant hoot from down below.