Shared By the Cowboys by Cassie Cole

47

Rebecca

The next day I drove to Missoula with my laptop. The guy at the repair shop looked at me like I was an idiot when I handed it to him.

“It fell out of my lap.”

“Sure it did,” he replied.

I started to pull out my purse, then stopped. “You know what? It didn’t fall out of my lap. That was a lie, and I’m not doing lies anymore. The truth is I tossed it in the fire on purpose in a dramatic show of love for my three cowboy boyfriends.”

His mouth hung open as he tried to decide if I was pulling his leg. “It’ll take a couple hours. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

Fortunately, the hard drive was on the side of the laptop that wasn’t melted, and the man was able to recover all of my data. None of my book was lost.

Knowing that I wouldn’t have to rewrite anything made it easy to focus on ranch work for the next few weeks. We repaired the sagging part of the front porch and other areas of the house. We even installed new insulation in the attic to keep heat from escaping.

Mason spent his mornings working in the shed out behind the barn. Whenever I tried to peek inside he quickly ushered me out and closed the door, like he was working on a top-secret project. All I knew was that he was doing a lot of sawing and painting.

Finally, one morning at the ass-crack of dawn, he woke everyone up and told us to come outside. We bundled up and walked down the snowy driveway to the road. The old sign for Blue Sky Ranch had been taken down and was leaning against the fence, and a new sign was hanging across the driveway like a giant arch.

CASSIDY RANCH

Blake - Cody - Mason - Becca

“You finally replaced the sign!” I said.

Blake crossed his arms and cocked his head while staring up at it. “I really like the order of the names.”

Mason put an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “I decided to do it alphabetical, instead of by age. So you can be listed first, for once.”

Blake responded only with a huge grin.

“Mighty thoughtful of you, brother,” Cody said. “I especially like the name on the end.”

“Wasn’t enough room for her full name, so I went with the shortened version,” Mason explained.

“I’m not ungrateful, but this feels like a pretty big commitment,” I teased. “What if we break up in six months?”

“Then we’ll find a new woman,” Mason said. “Hopefully one named Becca.”

“I can always climb up there and paint over her name,” Blake said nonchalantly. “Needs to be a short name, though. No Elizabeths or Katheryns.”

“Could always shorten it to Beth, or Katy,” Cody pointed out.

“Oh, yeah. In that case, we’re good, Rebecca. You can mosey whenever you want.”

I stuck out my tongue at them.

Once we had finished all the little repairs around the ranch, there wasn’t much to do until spring. That gave me plenty of time to work on my novel. I worked around the ranch in the morning, then spent my afternoons in the chair by the fireplace, typing away on my new laptop.

It was easier now that the guys knew. I didn’t have to hide what I was doing, and I wasn’t hampered by guilt. It was a much better environment for creativity, and the pages in the book slowly accumulated.

But there were other roadblocks to my writing.

“Come on. Just a peek!” Cody said one afternoon after coming in from tending to the herd.

“No,” I replied.

He held his hands in front of the fire, basking in the heat. “Let me read a sample. You can pick which chapter to show me. Please?”

“I don’t let anyone read it before it’s done,” I said. “Not even my editor or agent.”

Blake walked into the den with two mugs of hot cider. He placed one on the table next to me and said, “You know we’re stronger than you. We can easily overpower you and take what we want.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you still talking about the laptop?”

He grinned and bent down to kiss me fiercely, lips tasting sweet like the cider. “Both. First I’ll take you, then I’ll take the laptop.”

I hit the Windows key and the L key on my laptop. “Now it’s locked. You need the password.”

“Maybe we’ll torture you to get it,” Cody suggested.

“That’s not nice!”

“It’ll be the fun kind of torture,” Blake promised, leaning close enough that I could feel his hot breath on my skin. “Tying you to the fence and ripping your clothes off. Running my tongue up and down that pretty little body. Tasting every inch of you. Nibbling at your clit and digging my fingers into your pussy…”

His lips were right next to my ear by the end, and I was ready to toss aside the laptop and spread my legs for him right there. But then he pulled away.

“And right when you’re close, we’ll walk away.” Then he demonstrated by returning to the kitchen.

I groaned. “That is torture.”

Cody chuckled. “Then you’d better let me read some…”

“No! You can read it when it’s done, just like everyone else.”

Cody groaned.

“What’s the fuss?” Mason asked as he walked inside and removed his work gloves.

“Becca won’t let me read any of the book.”

“Not until it’s finished,” I clarified.

“What’s the point of sleeping with a big-time author if we don’t get a sneak peek at the goods?” Mason asked.

Cody pointed at him and nodded in agreement.

“You know I’ve written other books, right?” I asked. “You can read those right now.”

“I don’t care about a bunch of other characters. I want to read the book I’m in.”

“Technically you’re not in the book,” I replied. “There are characters loosely based on the three of you.”

“Sure they are.” Cody gave me a dramatic wink.

The first draft was done by the end of February. Which was good timing, because that was when the snow was thawing and ranch work took up more of my time. We planted new crops in the field—with the help of an actual agriculture expert, rather than relying on my fake-experience.

We also allowed Mister Pam to mate with the hens so we could breed more chickens. One thing I had forgotten from my family ranch: chicken mating was rough. Mister Pam mounted the chickens from behind and dug his talons into their backs, ripping out a few feathers in the process.

“We fuck prettier,” Blake told me one day while we watched the process in the chicken yard.

“Damn right we do,” I replied. “Although I do like it when you’re a little rough.”

“Yeah? You want me to tear your feathers out?”

“No,” I said, folding myself into his body. “But if you hit the right spots tonight, I might scratch your back up.”

After a few weeks of candling eggs—holding them up to a light to check which ones were fertilized—we ended up with six new chicks. Mason and Blake drew up plans to build a larger coop with two stories.

“We’ve got a lot of work in the next month,” Mason said at the dinner table. “We might need to hire a ranch hand to help with everything.”

“Make sure it’s someone hot,” Blake replied. “Someone who’s willing to sleep with all of us.”

“Where would we ever find someone like that?” Cody asked innocently.

I rolled my eyes at them.

My editor sent me her book notes at the end of March. It took me two weeks to go through her edits and make changes to the novel.

One evening, while Cody and Mason were playing cards, I walked into the den and placed my laptop on the table.

“We’re in the middle of a game,” Mason said.

“Oh, okay,” I said. “I assumed you would want to read a sample of the book, but if you’re busy…”

The two of them grabbed the laptop eagerly. Blake scrambled up from the couch and came running over, shoving his way in to get a look.

I smiled while their eyes scanned back and forth, illuminated by the computer screen.

“Girthy manhood?” Blake looked down at himself. “Am I girthy?”

“You sure are,” I replied.

“Damn, Becca. This is makin’ me all sweaty.”

“It’s better than porn,” Blake said.

Mason shrugged and got out of his chair. “It’s all right.”

“Just all right? Seriously?”

He nodded. He was totally serious, I realized.

I crossed my arms. “You don’t approve of it?”

“I don’t not approve,” he said. “I just prefer the real thing.”

I yelped as he picked me up and carried me upstairs.