Page 51 of Westin

Westin rolled his head, still staring at that bottle, his fingers itching to pull the paper from around the screw-top lid. “My mother.”

Clint knew how Westin’s mother had died. There were long nights during the spring spent watching over heifers about to give birth for the first time. Nothing to do but talk, and sometimes those conversations could get pretty personal. It was how Clint knew about Westin’s trouble with alcohol; how he knew when Westin called him tonight and said he was in trouble exactly what it was causing the problem. Clint was a quiet, peaceful kind of guy. It was impossible not to open up to him.

Westin ran his thumb over the top of the bottle. “She used to tell me stories. I think she thought she was giving me a piece of my father by telling me about him. When I was little, I drank it all up, swallowing every word like it was the hottest thing around. When I got older, I started to see the cracks, started to see what an ass he really was. Who hands a woman a thousand dollars and tells her to ‘take care of the problem’ when she tells him she’s pregnant?” He shook his head, the anger he thought he’d left back at Rocking D flaring up again. “She thought he loved her, but he was only using her, and I knew that. I saw that, despite the rosy shine she put on the story. I knew. But I still had to go and prove it.”

Clint was quiet, absorbing what Westin had said. Hell, Westin was still absorbing it all. He’d known exactly how it would go, but he hadn’t realized how badly he’d been hoping he was wrong until it was over. All this time he’d tried to find a way to get close to Dominic Mollohan, all this time he’d struggled with the words he’d use when he told him who he was. All this time he’d played the scenario over and over in his head, imagining worst-case scenario, best-case. Something in the middle. But not once had he allowed himself to believe it would go exactly how he’d known deep in his heart it would.

“She was the sweetest woman I’ve ever known. How could he do that to her?”

Clint dropped down onto the curb beside Westin, obviously no longer worried about a wet butt. He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “Some people just aren’t capable of compassion.”

“I saw how he was with his wife. Nearly thirty years of marriage and he talked to her like she was a servant, like she meant no more to him than the girl who washes his underwear. I should have known then. Should have walked out of the house then.”

“You had a right to tell him the truth.”

“And he had a right to keep a civil tongue and not disparage my mother’s reputation. Did he honestly think I could just stand there and let him do that?”

Clint gestured to Westin’s ungloved hand, the bruises that were just beginning to show on his knuckles. “Looks like you didn’t.”

“No, sir.”

“Good.”

Westin snorted, surprised by Clint’s response. Normally he’d reprimand any Golden Sphinx man caught fighting. It was unprofessional and un-Christian. Golden Sphinx was nothing if it wasn’t a reputable ranch that operated under strong Christian morals.

“Fuck him,” Clint said. “He missed out on getting to know you, missed out on being a part of your life. That’s his loss, not yours. Don’t let some jackass set you back.” Clint rested his hand on Westin’s wrist. “Don’t let his indifference put you back in the bottle.”

Westin nodded, setting the bottle on the ground between his feet. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now. This was my whole reason for coming up here. I turned down a position in a master’s program, turned down five job offers.” He shook his head. “I’ve been so focused on this, on proving myself right, that I made it my whole world. I don’t have anything left.”

“You must have something, or you wouldn’t have called me. You would have just sat here and drunk that bottle until some cop was scraping you up off the sidewalk.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it. You wanted me to come talk you down.”

“Maybe,” Westin said again. He leaned forward, stretched out his back as he continued to stare at that bottle. “But why did I buy it? What am I doing here?”

“You just need something else to focus on, Brother.”

Westin shook his head. “There’s nothing else to focus on. My life is a damn mess. I don’t even know what I want, what I should do.”

“I know what you should do. You should help me open this security firm.”

“You’re serious about that?”

Clint nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. “I think I am. I’ve talked to Miss Dulcie, and she’s behind it. She even offered to give us some start-up money. We don’t really need it, but she’s insisting.”

“What about the tourists and everything else on the ranch?”

“I’ve already assigned most of the tourist duties to the boys in D bunkhouse. You can still do the chuck-wagon thing when you’re available, but everything else is under control. And the rest of the chores, well, there’s more than seventy employees on the ranch, and we’ve got everything down to a near perfect science. I don’t think it’ll make a difference if two or three of us are absent at a time. We’ll just have to figure out how to do both jobs without causing one or the other to suffer.”

Westin nodded, his eyes still on that bottle. “But what do we know about providing personal security for people? And who the hell out here will need personal protection?”

“You’d be surprised how many of those tourists ask about security services when they book their reservations. Rich people, Brother. They’re all insane and they all think someone’s out to get them.”

“You mean I’m going to have to follow some rich asshole around for a living?”

“It pays well. I looked it up on the Internet. People will pay between five and seven hundred dollars a day for that sort of thing. Seeing as how you only make about a hundred dollars a day now, that’s pretty impressive.”

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