Page 1 of The Cowboy Fix

Chapter One

Except for thatone time when he was a teenager and he fought with his dad on the morning he died, Nathan Lohmen had never questioned his place in the family more than he did right now. Or that he was the right brother to be the foreman of the family horse ranch. Even though Jonas and Blake had both come home, and over the years since they left keeping the Triple L going hadn’t been easy, he was still the best brother for the job. Now that he was mostly healed, he was more than ready to get back to running the ranch.

Sure, unfortunate events since his parents’ passing, first his dad and then two years later his mom, had toppled the family ranch’s fortunes. At this point, he couldn’t see a way forward, but if his brothers could come up with a fix he hadn’t already tried to correct the Triple L’s downward spiral, he would get on board.

They would need his cooperation. Today, his hips hurt, and he wasn’t in a cooperative mood. Still, while he thought his nurse, now his brother Blake’s fiancée, was being overcautious, he would do as she said and hang back while she, Blake, and the kids moved the few things she’d brought with her when she hired on to nurse him through his recovery.

He didn’t like taking a backseat, but until he completely healed, he guessed he had to be patient. That wasn’t one of his strong suits. He was tired of lying around and wanted to get in there with Jonas and Blake to fight for the Triple L.

He stood back and watched. The day was already warm and the sky blue and cloudless. When Blake and the kids were done loading Malorie’s Bronco, Nathan joined them to wish her happiness in the house she’d decided to rent in Strawberry Ridge until she and Blake got married.

He still had to use a cane but if he had anything to do with it, not for long. He had no intention of being an invalid for more than another week, at the most. Malorie saw him coming and frowned.

He didn’t give his future sister-in-law a chance to scold him, though if he was honest, that was his favorite part of their nurse-patient relationship. “Don’t give me that look. I’m fine, and you’ve told me more than once that exercise is good for me,” he teased. He quickly hugged her while Blake watched, his expression going blank. Just to tweak his brother, he hung on a few seconds longer than he should have before stepping back. “I’ll visit your new home as soon as I can drive.” He leaned close to her ear to say, “I wish you all the happiness you deserve.”

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “You don’t have to wait that long. Blake or I would be glad to take you,” Jonas said from behind Nathan.

When he looked over his shoulder, his oldest brother’s gaze held more than his usual share of quiet humor.

So, big brother was on to him. It was one of the things that made Jonas a successful attorney but an irritating brother to deal with.

Quite honestly, he did kind of wish Maloriehadchosen to give him her heart rather than Blake. A deeper part of him was glad. He’d only had feelings for her for a very short time before he realized she didn’t return them and that even if she had, something serious between them wouldn’t have lasted long. He was carrying around too much baggage that had been buried deep for too long. It was unlikely he’d make an easy partner anyway. And her soul was too kind to call him on his BS.

Blake punched him in the arm—not hard enough to hurt—for his impudence, then slinging an arm around Malorie’s shoulder, buckled her in behind the wheel of her Bronco before climbing into his Wrangler to follow her to town.

Nathan shook his head. No good deed goes unpunished—okay, whispering in Malorie’s ear wasn’t exactly his best deed, even if he was just wishing her well. He frowned. It also wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done.

The kids, all three of them, Blake’s Timmy—his young brother-in-law now son, and Malorie’s twins, Andee and Reece, leaned out of the windows of the Wrangler, waiving at him and Jonas as they disappeared down the drive.

Watching his step, Nathan headed slowly back toward the house.

Jonas kept pace. “Blake will be back after dinner. He wants to discuss something to do with the finances and then brainstorm our next move to put the ranch on more solid footing.”

Joy, Nathan sneered inside his head. This was not a discussion he was looking forward to. “Wasn’t adding riding lessons enough?”

“Nope,” Jonas confirmed Nathan’s thoughts on the matter. “Are you hungry? I’m making burritos with chips and dip.”

Against Nathan’s objection, Blake had put an ad in theStrawberry Ridge Journala couple of weeks ago. He’d taken on a couple of students as a result but those few weren’t enough to add much to the ranch’s bank account. Nathan didn’t need his brothers to tell him that. He’d figured that out on his own.

Wanting to argue that he’d done the best he could to keep the ranch going while his brothers were gone, he stayed quiet. He’d been the one responsible for the ranch. The buck stopped at his doorstep.

There was one thing they all agreed on. None of them wanted to lose the Triple L just because the ranch could no longer support itself. What they disagreed on was how to bring their home back from the brink of a quick sale.

Nathan was the lone holdout. Jonas and Blake didn’t know the ranch like he did. He didn’t want to turn the ranch into a business he no longer recognized or to change that feeling of it being the thriving mom-and-pop ranch he remembered from his childhood. Everything that Blake had done or suggested so far wasn’t anything new.

He hadn’t just been sitting back and twiddling his thumbs while he watched the ranch fade. Two months before his dad passed, Adam had sold off half the Triple L’s land and put the money into buying Rangerbred breeding stock and enlarging the barn. His dad had a dream but hadn’t lived long enough to see it through. Crop failures several years in a row due to unrelenting high summer temperatures that wouldn’t let up had further decimated the ranch’s reserves. One piece at a time, aging farm machinery had given up the ghost, making the finances even tighter when he had to replace them. The next year, he’d lost two of his dad’s prize mares giving birth. The vet bills were almost the last straw, so he’d taken up training horses and barrel racers. After that, the ranch limped along while he made a name for himself in the barrel-racing community.

He’d just started to breathe easy when he had the harebrained idea to start a goat’s milk business. It would have worked, too, if the bottom hadn’t dropped out of the market. The final blow was when the epidemic hit, and he had no other choice but to put his training business on hold and ride out the storm.

He wasn’t proud of having to sell off the last of his dad’s horses and subsequently laying off his few remaining ranch hands to keep expenses down, but he had to bite the bullet and make the hard choices. It still sat heavily on his shoulders.

He was just about to restart his training business with a refresher course for his previous clients and seeing what Rangerbred stock was available—the five horses they had that included the two mares Jonas had recently bought wouldn’t get them far—when he’d taken the tumble off Duke and fractured his hip.

So here he was fighting to heal, arguing with his brothers over how to fix the ranch’s financial problems, and fighting a mountain of regret that was almost more debilitating than all the other things.

He’d been adopted at three months old, before Adam and Zelda Lohmen found out they were pregnant with Blake. Even though they said, in their hearts, he was their son as much as his brothers, all his life he’d been fighting with the feeling that he was the outsider. Darker skin, black hair, black eyes, not as tall as Blake and Jonas. His half-Guatemalan ancestry could not be hidden or denied. So, he’d stuck close to his adopted parents until they both passed away by the time he was eighteen and learned everything he could about running the ranch. It hadn’t been enough, just like Blake’s horse-riding lessons weren’t either. He rubbed the dark beard he never quite shaved off.

Jonas held open the door and waited until he went into the main house first. Man, he hated not being one hundred percent in top shape.

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