Janice Maynard - Million Dollar Baby

“What’s wrong?” she said, raising her voice in alarm.

He stumbled back into bed, his skin chilled. “The condom broke.” His voice was flat. She couldn’t read him at all.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m on the pill. For other reasons. And besides, it’s the wrong time of the month.” She was due to start her period any day, actually.

“I’m healthy, Brooke. Nothing to worry about there.”

“Then we’re in the clear.”

He yawned and pulled her into his arms, spooning her from behind. “Let me sleep for an hour, and we can go again.”

“You’re out of condoms.”

He kissed the nape of her neck. “We’ll improvise.”

Brooke lay perfectly still and felt the exact moment when Austin crashed hard. His breathing deepened. The arm that encircled her became heavy.

She knew the time had come for her to go home, but she couldn’t leave him. Not yet. This night had turned into something she hadn’t anticipated, something she hadn’t really wanted.

Here was a man who had known pain and loss. Even if they lived in the same town, he wouldn’t want a woman like her. She couldn’t even stand up to her parents. She had her own battles to fight. And she would have to do it without this sweet, gruff cowboy.

She inhaled his scent. Tried to memorize it. The way his body held hers seemed fated somehow. But that was a lie. He was a man she had picked up in a bar. A man with demons, like any other man.

Carefully, with her chest tight and her hands shaking, she extracted herself from his arms one heartbeat at a time. It wasn’t easy. Fortunately, Austin slept like the dead. Once she was out of the bed, the rest went smoothly.

She visited the bathroom. She dressed quietly. She took her bag and her purse and slipped out into the hall.

On the other side of the door, she started to shake. Leaving her one-night stand cowboy was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.

The drive from Joplin to Royal in the middle of the night seemed surreal. Punching in the alarm code and sneaking into the house was almost anticlimactic. She was too tired to shower. Instead, she tumbled into bed and fell asleep instantly.

Three

Two months later

Austin parked his truck across the street from the Texas Cattleman’s Club, got out and stretched. It had been three years...maybe four...since he had last been in Royal, Texas. Not much had changed. An F4 tornado a while back had destroyed a few homes and businesses and damaged others, but the town had rebuilt.

The club itself was a historic structure over a hundred years old. The rambling single-story building with its dark stone-and-wood exterior and tall slate roof was an icon in the area. Ordinarily, Austin wouldn’t be the kind of guy to darken the doors, but he was meeting Gus Slade here at 10:00 a.m.

Austin had plenty of money in the bank...likely more than he would ever need. But he didn’t have the blue-blooded ranching pedigree that men like Gus respected. Still, Gus had invited him here to do a job, and Austin had agreed.

Audra was right. He’d been drifting since Jenny died. It was time to get his business back on track. He’d rambled all over a five-county area in recent years doing odd jobs to pay the bills. The truth was, he was a damned good architect and had been wasting his skills.

Even this job with Gus was a throwaway. But it could open the doors to something more significant, so he had jumped at the chance.

He took his time crossing the street. No need to look too eager. Already, he had made concessions. Instead of his usual jeans and flannel shirt, he had worn neatly pressed khakis, a spotless white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his best pair of boots. Cowboys came in all shapes and sizes in Texas. Austin was shooting for ambitious professional for today’s meeting.

It was who he had been once upon a time. Until Jenny got sick...

Shoving away the unhappy memories, he ran a hand through his hair, flipped his phone to silent mode and strode through the imposing front doors. A smiling receptionist directed him to one of the private meeting rooms partway down the hall.

Augustus “Gus” Slade was already there, deep in conversation with two other men. When Austin appeared, Gus’s two companions said their goodbyes and exited.

Gus held out his hand. “There you are, boy. Right on the money. Thanks for coming. It’s been a long time.”

“It’s good to see you, sir. Thanks for offering me the job.”

Gus was an imposing figure of a man. He was tall and solidly built with a full head of snow-white hair. Piercing eyes that were blue like the Texas sky reflected a keen intelligence.

By Austin’s calculations, the man was probably sixty-eight or sixty-nine. He could have passed for a decade younger were it not for the leatherlike quality of his skin. He’d spent decades working in the sun long before warnings about skin cancer were the norm.

At a time in life when many men his age began to think about traveling or playing golf or simply taking things easy, Gus still worked his cattle ranch, the Lone Wolf, and wielded his influence in Royal. He had plenty of the latter to go around and had even served a few terms as TCC president. Though the burly rancher loved his family and was well respected by the community at large, most people knew he could be fierce when crossed or angered.

Austin had no plans to do either.

At Gus’s urging, Austin settled into one of a pair of wing-backed chairs situated in front of a large fireplace. The weather in Royal was notably mercurial. Yesterday, it had been in the fifties and raining. Today, the temperature was pushing seventy, and the skies were sunny, so no fire.

Gus took the second chair with a grimace and rubbed his knee. “Got kicked by a damned bull. Should have known better.”

Austin nodded and smiled. “I worked cattle during the summers when I was in college. It was a great job, but I went to bed sore many a night.” He hesitated half a breath and plunged on. “So tell me about this job you want me to do.”

When he had been in Royal before, Gus had wanted him to design and build an addition onto his home. Austin had still been paying for Jenny’s medical bills, and he had needed the money. So he had worked his ass off for six months...or maybe it was seven.

He’d been proud of the job, and Gus had been pleased.

The older man twisted his mouth into a slight grimace. “I may have brought you here under false pretenses. It’s not like last time. This will be a one-and-done project. But as I mentioned on the phone, I think being here at the club for a few weeks will give you the chance to meet some folks in Royal who are movers and shakers. These are the kind of men and women who have contacts. They know people and can make things happen to push work your way.”

Austin wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it made sense to rebuild his career. It had stalled out when he made the choice to stay home with Jenny during what turned out to be the last months of her life. It was a choice he had never regretted.

Even in the depths of his grief, when he had drifted from town to town and job to job, his skill set and work ethic had made it possible for him to command significant compensation for his quality work.

Did he really want to go back to a more structured way of life?

He honestly didn’t know.

And because he didn’t, he equivocated. “I appreciate that, sir. But how about you tell me the details of this particular project?”

“The club is hoping to do more with the outside space than we have in the past. Professional landscapers are in the process of developing a site plan for the area around the gardens and the pool. What I want from you is a permanent outdoor venue that will serve as the stage for the charity auction and can later be used for weddings, etc. The audience, or the guests, will be out front...under a circus tent if the weather demands it.”