Page 78 of Road to a Cowboy

And he stood on Austin’s porch. Waiting for him with an expression that said where the hell are you going, Aus?

Austin’s eyes watered. He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat as his heart settled back in his chest.

Then he headed back up the street.

Because the road to his cowboy would always lead him home.

Epilogue

One Year Later—June

“So...”

Cursing himself for forgetting his sunglasses, Cal squinted as he glanced up at Las from his kneeled position on the grass outside the dairy barn, where he was assembling a new water trough. “So?” he prompted.

“I ran into your mom in town today.”

Cal gave Las an up and down glance, looking for war wounds, but he appeared to be in one piece. “Did she give you any trouble?”

“No. She nodded, kind of grimaced, and continued on her way.”

Sighing, Cal rubbed his jaw. “Sorry, Las.”

Las shrugged. “You’re still not speaking?”

“No, that’s...” Cal set the hammer aside and sighed again. “That’s not a relationship I want to pick back up.”

In a town the size of Windsor, it was impossible to avoid someone forever. Whenever Cal ran into his mom in town, he remained civil, saying hello and asking how she was, but he didn’t stick around for more than that. Other than that, Cal hadn’t initiated contact and neither had she.

It was for the best. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he felt free. Like he could breathe for the first time in years.

Austin had encouraged him to talk to someone about his childhood and the emotional abuse he’d suffered for years, and although Cal had been reticent at first, he’d eventually started seeing a therapist, and much to his surprise, talking to a neutral third party did actually help.

Las stuck a toe in the ground, and Cal glanced up at him again. “You lingering for a reason?”

“Obviously,” Las said with mock attitude. “I need your help.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I need you to read my preliminary report to the USNC about the cell grazing project and flag where I got information or data wrong.”

“I’ll swap you,” Cal said as he rose, wiping sweat off the back of his neck. Last week, they’d had snow. Today, it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. “I’ll read your report if you’ll give me your feedback on the proposal from the land trust.”

“Sold.”

Over the past year, Cal had met with ranchers in western Wyoming, and to his surprise, of the almost 110 ranches in Teton County, fifty-seven of them were interested in buying in to his co-op. Word of it had gotten around, eventually reaching the ears of board members on a few cattle associations, which was how his project had made it onto the desk of the executive director of Wyoming’s largest agricultural land conservation organization.

Cal hadn’t had to go to them. They’d come to him, and after a dozen meetings and even more phone calls, they’d submitted a full proposal outlining why he and his fifty-seven other ranchers should let them partner with them on their co-op.

“Agricultural lands are the only lands that are private within wildlife corridors,” their director of conservation and stewardship, Katie Kauer, had said on her first visit to Windsor Ranch in February. “If we don’t conserve it and the ranch owners have to sell for whatever reason, that land’s going to be split and subdivided, and those intact ecosystems and habitats will no longer exist, making it more difficult for species to roam and find habitat. That’s why it’s so important to protect agricultural lands.”

Las’s eyes had gone huge as Katie had finished, and he’d pumped a fist in excitement. If he wasn’t already deeply committed to Marco, Cal would’ve joked that he’d found his soulmate in Katie.

The best part of Cal’s project, though, was that it was all his. Whitney had given him the green light after he’d written his proposal, then stepped back and let him handle things. It had made him nervous at first, considering he was going to be investing Windsor Ranch money into the co-op. But as Whitney had reminded him, Windsor Ranch was family-owned, and he was family.

Cal had been buried in spreadsheets and research and legalese that made his eyes bleed for a year, and though he and his fifty-seven ranchers were still several months away from officially establishing the co-op, he was having more fun than he’d expected putting all the pieces together.

“Email it,” Las said now, his phone already in his hand. “I’ll give it a read right away.”

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