Page 3 of My Cowboy Bodyguard

I know we’re fortunate. If not for Gavin Richford adopting a slew of us kids from the home, who knows where we would have ended up.

He and his wife Frances became our parents four days after I turned fifteen. I arrived at the ranch braced, expecting more bruising, and instead encountered a love that was soft and welcoming, one like I had never known.

But I’m too far gone to drop my guard.

I guess it’s my destiny to live on the outside of love, looking in at it but knowing better than to put my hand out toward it and break someone.

Flint scowls, smacking his palm on the steering wheel. “Dad should have told us what was going on with the ranch. We would have come home before things got this bad. Everything’s a fucking mess.”

“Have you found anyone for the manager position yet?” Flint’s in charge of the ranch right now, while our folks are visiting a sick friend in Houston. He’s trying to untangle all the threads threatening to take the only true home we’ve known from us.

“I interviewed a few people but haven’t hired anyone.”

I get what’s taking so long. It’s hard to trust.

The last ranch manager we’d known for years took everything from the bank accounts and forged paperwork to get a loan on the place right under Dad’s nose. It was only all of us banding together and fighting like hell that’s managed to let us barely hang on to the place.

It’s still touch and go financially, which is why I’m teaching self-defense classes and why my brothers are taking on side jobs. It’s why we’re offering some of the cabins on the ranch as vacation stays.

Between that and still handling the ranch chores, all of us are working ourselves to the bone.

The truck bumps over a rough patch of dirt road leading to the main house. The rain helps keep the dust to a minimum. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be riding with the window lowered.

He stops the truck and as we exit, our brothers spill out of the house one after the other. There are eight of us that Dad adopted from the Home at one time and two more that he adopted later because the Home hadn’t wanted to relinquish its control.

Mom cried when my brother Jonas, who used to sleep hiding under the bed every night for months became hysterical and said, “If I promise to never ask for anything, can I stay? Please don’t send me back.”

That was the first and only time I had ever heard Dad cuss like that. He’d hugged Jonas and said no one was getting any of his boys.

“Family meeting,” Wilder says, striding toward the barn.

We all head up to the hayloft where there’s a scattering of chairs and a cooler that always has melting ice and a beer or two in it.

Flint sits on a sleeping bag on the floor.

Wilder glances at him, then at me and I can tell it’s bad.

His fists clench. “That bastard sold a bunch of the equipment. I didn’t find out until Roger Gardner came over a little while ago to claim all the tractors.”

“Fuck!” Marshall snarls. “Did he take them?”

Wilder shakes his head. “No, because River scraped together the money to pay him back for them on the spot. Roger bitched about it but he eventually left.”

They all start talking at once about what else we need to do to bring more money in.

I stretch my legs out, my body relaxed but my mind going a hundred miles a minute thinking about the times I’ve seen Amanda around town.

When she smiles, I get a hiccup in my heart. When she looks around nervously, I want to run to her and pull her into my arms.

That would shock her since she doesn’t even know me. Hell, it kind of shocks me. I can’t for the life of me explain why I feel the way I do.

But I’ll do whatever I need to for her to be mine, and I’ll morph into beast mode at full throttle to keep her safe.

Chapter 2

Amanda

The last customer leaves and I dim the lights before quickly locking the door. Like always, I stand in the semi-darkness and watch the buildings across the street, looking for moving shadows.

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