Shared By the Cowboys by Cassie Cole
38
Mason
The corrugated metal sheets for the windbreak were finally delivered the next day. I loaded them into the back of my truck and drove out onto the ranch property. I parked it in a low area between two hills. Rebecca had been riding Wildfire, and was already waiting for me. We tied up her horse and began unloading the materials.
My gaze drifted over to Rebecca while we worked. In her tight jeans, tight coat, and leather cowboy hat, she looked like everything I’d ever wanted in a woman. Pulling sheets of corrugated metal off the truck with her work gloves, not caring if the rusted metal brushed against her clothes and got her dirty. When she first came to the ranch, I didn’t expect much from her. Someone to tend to the little chores around the ranch while my brothers and I did the heavy lifting.
But now that she had been here two months, I knew better. She could hold her own, and then some.
We built the wooden frame first, then I held up the sheets of metal so Rebecca could screw them into the wood. We built the cattle windbreak in sections, eight by eight feet, so we could easily put them away when spring came. When the first one was done we stood on one side of it and waited. The biting wind was gone while we were standing behind it.
“Know what I’d be doing right now?” Rebecca said while taking a drink from her water bottle. “If I was back in Great Falls, I mean.”
“Not building a cattle windbreak, I suspect.”
She shook her head. “It’s Black Friday. I’d be avoiding all the shops and stores in town, because they’re always a zoo. And then I would forget, and I would order pizza for dinner, and then get stuck in traffic on the way to get it.”
I chuckled. “No Black Friday out here.”
“No,” she agreed happily, “there’s not. You know what happened last year? My coffee machine broke on Thanksgiving. So I decided to brave the crowds to buy a new one.”
I took the water bottle from her. “How’d that work out?”
“About as well as you’d expect. A ten-minute trip to Wal Mart turned into a three-hour gauntlet. I should’ve just borrowed a cup of coffee from Janice in the condo next to mine.”
The walkie-talkie on our hips squawked with Cody’s voice. “What’s takin’ you so long? You playin’ hanky panky out there?”
I grabbed mine and replied, “We just started.”
“Just started on the windbreak, or just started on each other?”
“It’s thirty degrees out here,” Rebecca argued. “Not even the most handsome Cassidy brother could convince me to take my clothes off.”
“That’s good, since the most handsome Cassidy brother is talkin’ to you on the radio right now.”
“Shut up and let us work,” she replied with a laugh.
We put away our walkie-talkies and started on the next section of the windbreak.
“It’s peaceful out here,” Rebecca said. “If you ignore the radio interruptions. Fewer people. More nature. Air that’s fresher than you can believe.”
“That’s why we bought this place,” I said. “We wanted our little slice of heaven.”
She grinned at me, then focused on her task.
I smiled at her. It was undeniable now: I hadn’t felt this way since Penny. The feelings I had for Rebecca might even be stronger than for Penny. The thought scared me, but it excited me, too. I saw a future with this woman, and I knew Blake and Cody did too.
The only remaining hurdle was if she planned on staying. I had wanted to ask, but I was afraid of what the answer might be. She had been waffling about it, and if she said no…
Well, I didn’t know if my heart could take it.
“Don’t let their teasing affect your decision,” I said. “About whether or not to stay. After your contract, I mean.”
“It won’t affect anything,” she replied. “Actually, I’ve already made my decision.”
“You have?”
She put down the drill and turned to face me. I held my breath. For a few long seconds my entire future was in her hands. She could crush me, or she could make me the happiest man in the world.
“I’m going to stay,” she said.
“Really?”
“I love it here,” she went on. “I can’t see myself leaving in a month. Or in a year.”
“Probably has to do with the three cowboys seeing to your every sexual desire,” I said casually.
She laughed and pressed her body against mine. “That’s probably a small part of it.”
Rebecca raised her lips to mine, and we kissed while the winter wind hissed around the sides of the barrier.
She’s staying, I thought happily. Rebecca is staying with us. I didn’t know how long it would last—another three months, another year, another ten. But for now, knowing that she wasn’t leaving was enough to make me feel like the luckiest cowboy in the world.
The walkie-talkie clicked and Cody said, “Hey, got a question for y’all.”
“When are you going to tell them?” I asked.
“Tonight. I want to open that bottle of wine I got on our last grocery run, to celebrate.”
Suddenly, to the north-east, a wolf howl split the air. I jerked my head in that direction. It felt like a bad omen.
“No,” Rebecca replied on the radio, “we’re not fooling around.”
“It’s not about that. We’ve got a visitor.”
We looked at each other. “A visitor?” she asked.
Was it the county tax assessor? We’d been told that our property might get reassessed at a higher value once we made our repairs, which would result in higher property taxes next year. But I didn’t expect them to show up until spring.
Cody’s voice held a strange tone to it as he replied, “Becca, do you know a woman named Terry?”
