My Cowboy Promises by Z.A. Maxfield

Author:Z.A. Maxfield
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-26T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“All right. Declan it is.” Somewhere off in the trees, an owl hooted, startling him clean off his chair. City boy. “That was an owl. Chill out.”

He chuckled before taking a deep sip. Bared his teeth at the whiskey’s burn. “That is just awful.”

“Yeah.” I took the bottle back and grinned at him before taking a swig. “It’s cheap.”

It was as bad as I remembered. It scorched my throat and seared a path all the way to my stomach.

“Is this where you come when you want to be alone?” he asked.

I flipped a switch and the bug zapper glowed to life. A second later the first zap of the evening crackled through the air.

“Ah, now that’s the Hill Country Serenade.” I sat down on one of the chairs and invited him to sit opposite me. The tips of my fingers warmed and numbed, the liquor relaxing me like I hoped it would. I let out a deep sigh. “This is one of the few places I feel like I can be myself.”

Crickets made a racket all around us in counterpoint to the steady crackle of dying moths. Declan nodded. “It’s nice out here.”

Out on the distant highway, a truck rumbled past. “I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

He looked up and I let my gaze follow. The night sky was blissfully free of clouds. “Those stars look close enough to touch, don’t they? You grew up here?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you have horses?”

“For a time.” I glanced toward the barn. It was probably full of rats. Ugh. When I was a kid, we’d always had barn cats. “While my mom was alive we had horses and cows. My stepmother is . . . she’s not like my mother.”

“What was your mom like?”

“I guess you could say she was a lot like me. Or I’m a lot like her. She was rough and tumble. She liked the barn and always kept a bunch of animals. I guess maybe it was because she wanted a houseful of kids, and when that didn’t happen—”

“You’re an only child?” he asked.

“Mom got diagnosed with cancer for the first time right after I was born. She couldn’t have more kids after that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She died when I was in my sophomore year of high school.”

“That must have been tough.”

“She had the cancer licked for a while but it came back. We had some good times. I miss her every day. What about your parents? What are they like?”

“My father coached high school football and my mother teaches piano and voice out of our house.”

“You ever play?”

“Piano? Or football?”

“I’ve seen you play piano. You’re amazing. Ever play football?”

“Yes, of course.” He laughed. “You’ll be happy to know football was as sacred at my house back home as it is here in Texas. On Sunday, we prayed for the Buckeyes and any team Michigan was playing.”

“You’re a dark horse, Doc—”

“Declan,” he insisted again, his smile catching my heart and bouncing it against my chest wall like a big, fat medicine ball.

“Declan. Sorry.

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