Maisey Yates - Christmastime Cowboy

“Yeah, you do. And I don’t think you would ever allow a ghost from your past to be responsible for your failure.”

They were just ribbing each other, and Liam knew it. But there was something a little too close to the truth in those words, and they gouged him in tender places. “Whatever the reason,” he said, “I’m not going to hang you out to dry.”

“You’ve gone soft.”

“If I have, it’s because of your wife’s cooking,” he responded. Then he slapped his hand against his stomach—which was still rock hard, thank you very much—for good measure.

“What’s your timeline to get the shop up and running?” Finn asked, crossing his arms over his broad chest, clearly done with the banter. Finn had limited patience for banter when it came to discussions of the ranch.

“I’m not sure. We’re going to look at property sometime this week. I have to get in touch with Gage West. I think once we start in on it we should be able to get the sale to go through quickly. But if something happens with the loan, I have the cash to front it.”

“I’m not having you do that, Liam,” Finn said. “I’m not putting your finances at that big of a risk.”

Liam bit back a frustrated curse. His brother didn’t understand because to him, that amount of money had more value. And Liam could understand that. He’d come from poverty. But now he had money. And he didn’t know how the hell else he was supposed to contribute. “What do I care? Do you see me spending money?” He looked down at his boots and lifted them up, tapping them on the floor, a sprinkling of mud landing there on the hard wood. “How old do you think these boots are?”

Lane, Finn’s wife, appeared from the kitchen, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her brown eyes glittering. “I don’t know how old your boots are, Liam Donnelly, but if you want to live to be any older than you are, I suggest you clean up that mud mess because I sure as hell am not going to do it. I’m not your maid.”

He bit back a comment about her being the cook. He had a feeling that right now, she would launch rockets from her eyes and leave him reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash. He didn’t know what the hell Lane’s problem had been lately but she’d been in kind of a mean mood for a while.

“I’ll clean it up,” he said. Though, not anytime soon. “I was just telling your husband that I don’t need all the money I have sitting in my bank account. I can afford to invest in the expansion of the ranch.”

That turned Lane’s focus to Finn.

Finn shot him a deadly glare. “Just because you can doesn’t mean I’m going to let you. This venture is ours, it’s equal. We can all put the money back into the storefront that we’re making on the ranch. We don’t need you to invest that much capital up front.”

“But I can,” Liam said.

And damn it, there had to be some use for that money. For that money that just felt like a weight. He had busted his ass, worked himself blind from the time he had been given the money to go to college. Twenty years old, coming in late, working up from a deficit, and he had done every damn thing he could to make sure that he succeeded. He didn’t graduate early. He didn’t graduate at the top, but it didn’t matter, because when it came to work, nobody was more willing to beat their knuckles bloody pounding the pavement than he was.

He worked long, and he worked hard. And he had amassed a fortune for himself working at large corporations and major cities. Investing in start-ups that became wildly successful, funding businesses and increasing profits.

And then one day he had stood in that corner office and looked out over Manhattan, in a position in life a boy from the sticks certainly had never imagined he’d be in, wearing a custom suit and honest-to-God Italian leather shoes and he had felt...

Exactly the same as he had twelve years earlier.

He didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel different. He didn’t feel healed. He didn’t feel any different from the boy who’d been stuck in his home. Afraid to make too much noise. Afraid to breathe wrong in case it brought his mother’s wrath down on him.

That was when he had gotten word that his grandfather had died and left him a quarter of a ranch in Copper Ridge, Oregon, and he had thought it might be time for him to go back.

For him to go back for the first time since Jamison Leighton had sent him packing with a bribe.

There was more here. More here than in that corner office. He wasn’t exactly sure he liked it or wanted it, but at least it offered a change of pace.

And his brothers.

He hadn’t grown up with Finn or Cain, and living with them, getting to know them had been... Well, there was something in that. Being around Alex again, the brother he had been raised with... That was always a little bit of a mixed blessing.

Not because he didn’t love Alex, he did. Alex’s happiness was the proof that he had done something right early in his life.

Their life growing up had been awful. But Alex’s had been a little less awful. Because Liam had been the lightning rod. And Alex had never even known it.

So yeah, he felt like he was on the right track here. And after all that emptiness, that seemed like a pretty good deal to him.

“Fine,” Liam said, “using my money won’t be the plan. But if loans or anything like that hold stuff up, let me do it.”

Finn opened his mouth to argue.

“Let me, Finn,” Liam said. “Let me give you this.”

His brothers seemed to give with themselves all the damn time and he couldn’t figure out quite how they did it. He knew how to create things. Knew how to make money. And he knew how to give money.

That was what he did.

“Fine,” Finn relented. “If we get into dire circumstances, I’ll let you throw some cash at it.”

“What’s the point in having a rich brother if you don’t use him?”

“I do use you. For hard labor. Which frankly I find more useful, Liam. I can earn more cash. I can’t grow another pair of hands.”

Liam shrugged, then started to walk toward the stairs. “Liam!” Lane called after him. “Clean up the mud! I’m trying to plan a Thanksgiving menu and you’re tracking mud all over the place.” She whirled around and went back into the kitchen, leaving a trail of sulfur in her wake.

“Boy,” Liam said, “she’s about as fun as a bee-stung wolverine at the moment, isn’t she?”

Which wasn’t fair. He knew that Lane was putting a lot into her and Finn’s first married Thanksgiving. Even though he was a jackass, Liam understood that.

“Hormones,” Finn said.

Liam’s eyebrows shot up. “Hormones?”

A slow smile spread over his brother’s face. “She’s pregnant.”

“Holy hell.”

Finn laughed. “Definitely putting that one in the baby book. What your uncle Liam said when we told him you were going to be born.”

“Why haven’t you told us yet?”

“Lane wanted to wait. You know, something about the second trimester, or something. But it’s close. And, I don’t want to keep it a secret anymore. So, congratulations. You’re going to be an uncle.”

“I’m already an uncle,” Liam said. “It’s just that my niece is almost an adult.”

“I wonder what Violet is going to think,” Finn said with a grin.

“A baby cousin might be something she can’t play it cool about.” Cain’s daughter was in the throes of teenage snark and angst, so it was difficult to guess how she’d react to much of anything.

As far as Liam went, he was happy for his brother. But it kind of underscored the fact that everyone around him was living in a completely different phase of life than him. A different phase of life than he was ever going to live. Marriage. Family. Babies. None of it was his cup of tea. Not at all. All that happy family stuff was just a load of crap as far as he was concerned.