Page 54 of A Nice Day for a Cowboy Wedding

Boone held up his beer toward Peach. “Thanks, Peach.” He then made a beeline for a table in the corner.

“How comewedidn’t see the trampling?” Gavin asked as they settled themselves around the table.

Boone shrugged. “Pretty sure it was on TV. Nothing stopping you.”

“Except knowing where the hell you were, what outfit you were with, and so on.”

Again Boone shrugged negligently. Shane kept his mouth shut because he couldn’t trust himself to say anything that wasn’t a lecture. Because he’d made sure to know all of those things, but it hadn’t occurred to him to check on how Boone had done in his event. He hadn’t wanted to know, because Boone’s success in the rodeo only ever felt like a failure to his mother.

He hadn’t protected Boone. Hadn’t kept him on the straight and narrow. Shane took a long, deep drink of the beer. A nice double of whiskey might dull the guilt, but he’d be driving them home, which meant this beer was it.

Gavin pushed back from the table. “Be right back. Think I see someone I know.”

Shane watched Gavin walk away, but he didn’t see whomever Gavin thought he knew, so he turned back to Boone. His little brother who was home and injured. His little brother who probably needed to be reminded he had a place here. No matter what.

“We’re glad you’re home.”

Boone quirked a sardonic eyebrow. “Are you?”

“I am. We’ve missed you around here, and I know Mom’s being a little cool, but it’s only because she’s been worried sick.”

Boone took a long, deep sip of his beer. “Probably not going back to the rodeo,” he mumbled, studying the wall hard.

Shane nodded. “Because of the injuries?”

Boone shrugged, which was as good as a yes in Shane’s estimation.

“You’ve got a place with us.”

“Maybe I don’t want one,” Boone said, his ice-blue eyes landing square on Shane and holding.

Shane fought his first impulse, which was to tell Boone exactly what to do. Come home. Stay home. Work the ranch. If they had all five of them running things, they could maybe convince Mom to expand, and it could support all of them. If they were smart, if they were careful.

But he knew that’s what Boone expected of him. Boone wanted demands, something to fight against.

Shane was done giving that to him. “I’ll support you in whatever you do, Boone. Just let me know how I can.”

Boone’s frown went from belligerent to confused. “Right now you can support me by getting me another beer.” He drained the one he had. “Or ten.”

Shane sighed. Boone wanted to get drunk, Shane would let him. He could keep an eye on him now. He wouldn’t always be able to.

“Oh, shit.”

Shane swiveled at Boone’s muttered oath, then repeated it. Somehow Gavin was in the middle of an argument that was heading straight for a fistfight. With Lou’s ex.

Oh, this was so not going to be good.

Chapter Fourteen

When Micah asked for the thirty-seventh time—yes, thirty-seventh, she’d counted—to go to the Tyler ranch,beforeshe’d even finished her coffee, Cora decided the whole thing was stupid.

Micah had gotten up voluntarily at five in the morning and was currentlybeggingher to go dogruntwork. Her child wanted to dochores, and she was refusing him because it might mean they were spending too much time with the Tylers?

It was idiotic, and this whole thing was Shane’s fault for bringing it up last night anyway.Hecould listen to her kid yammer on and on and on all morning. She was going to . . . do something somewhere quiet. So damn quiet.

She texted Shane that they were coming over, then got dressed while Micah stood outside her bathroom door, going on and on about the different horses he’d been allowed to ride, Boone’s fantastical rodeo stories, a barn cat that had curled up in his lap one afternoon.

She loved her son more than anything. Beyond sun, moon, earth, universe, and so forth. And it wasbeautifulhe was so excited about something to the point of chattering.

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