Page 37 of My Cowboy Freedom
We passed him and headed to the porch.
By the time we got there, Elena was blushing so fiercely we could have signaled an airplane.
And just like that I realized the awful truth: Elena was going to get laid and I had zero prospect of saying the same.
Not anytime soon, at any rate.
Not if Sterling Chandler and the rest of them were going to cock-block me with every new guy who came along.
We were just outside the ranch house when Elena stopped me. “What’s that look for?”
“Declan Winters wanted me to come in for a blood draw today. Did you know that?”
“I’ll take you later if you need to go.”
“I could have gone with—”
“Not that again.” She turned to me, exasperated. “I told you—”
“What’s up?” Sterling Chandler stepped out onto the porch. “I heard Maisy barking her head off. Everything okay?”
“I was up in one of the blinds, and she hates that.”
Sterling Chandler was the last person I wanted to explain myself to. Especially if he didn’t think I was capable of choosing my own friends.
“What were you doing up there?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not allowed up there now either?”
His expression was quizzical. “Of course you’re allowed up there. But since hunting season is more than two months away, I was just asking—”
“Maybe I should have carried Maisy up there, but I didn’t, okay? I was six feet away. It’s not like I jumped out of an airplane.”
“Nobody said—” He glanced toward Elena, who shook her head, and then looked back at me. “Who pissed in your Cheerios?”
“Rock wanted to go to Bitterroot with the hands this morning,” Elena reminded him.
“You need to go into Bitterroot?” he asked. “Elena will take you.”
“I will. I said I would,” she told him.
He was still looking back and forth between us. “And still... I sense a problem.”
“He wanted to go with the boys earlier.”
“Okay. Now I see.” Chandler was a man used to running things and he didn’t draw the line with other people’s lives. His wife had left under a bitter, bitter cloud, and now his daughter was pissed as hell and still he never learned. “You’re mad because I told you to stay away from the new hand. But son—”
“I need to start my chores.” I turned toward the back of the house and walked away before I lost my temper and said something I’d really regret.
My birthday was coming up soon. I wasn’t a kid anymore anyway. And maybe I had medical problems, but I was still a man, and my dick worked just fine, thank you very much. Maybe Skyler was interested, or maybe he’d be revolted if I came on to him.
At nearly twenty-four goddamn years old, the choice was mine to make.
“What are you looking at?” I growled at the sweetest, most patient dog in the world, which just made me feel worse when her little doggy face fell. “Aw... I’m sorry, girl. I know you were just doing your job. I won’t do that to you again.”
I wouldn’t either, because I shouldn’t have forgotten. Maisy’s job was me.
She went everywhere with me and watched over me like I was her pup. She’d been trained to let me fall on her, for Pete’s sake. To turn me on my side by grabbing my clothing, and to keep me from aspirating if I upchucked.
