Home for a Cowboy by Amy Aislin

Author:Amy Aislin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Windsor, Wyoming #1
Publisher: Amy Aislin
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

MARCO ARRIVED BACK AT WINDSOR Ranch in time for the Fourth of July party. Party, however, was too tame a word. Festival was more like it. Horse-drawn carriage rides, a scavenger hunt, stalls set up with local bakeries and cafés selling tarts and iced coffees and patriotically themed cookies, a bingo table, a pop-up bouncy castle for kids, a clown making balloon animals, a puppet theater, face painting.

The whole town had shown up. Seemed like it anyway. There were people everywhere, taking guided tours of the horse barn, towing kids to the next fun thing, licking popsicles, leashed dogs trailing behind them.

Reid had picked him up at the airport, and they walked together from the house to the staff cabins for Marco to deposit his duffel, weaving around toddlers and senior citizens and everyone in between. Twilight darkened the sky, and it smelled like hot dogs and sunscreen.

Reid said, “Jesus, I think it’s busier now than when I left to get you.”

“Fireworks are starting soon, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

People were rolling out beach towels and picnic blankets, claiming their spot on the grassy hill outside Windsor Ranch House. There were so many people that cars and trucks had been parked on the side of the highway for miles.

“We should grab our own spots,” Reid said as they jogged up the steps of their cabin. “Most of the seasonal staff is watching from the fire pit.”

Marco dropped his duffel on his bed. “Have you seen Las?”

“Not since the dance party.”

Since the night Marco had created this distance between them.

Was Las out in the crowd somewhere? If so, Marco would never find him. Did he plan on watching the fireworks from somewhere else? His bedroom at home, a vantage point in the fields on the other side of the highway, the highest window in Windsor Ranch House? Was he avoiding the crowd and festivities altogether and hiding out at his tent?

It wasn’t until he and Reid emerged from their cabin and found Las at the bottom of the steps, dark hair made darker by night’s fall, that Marco realized he’d been compartmentalizing a secret fear that Las would never talk to him again.

The ball of tension in his gut unraveled. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Reid clasped his shoulders from behind. “I’m joining the others at the fire pit. See you both later.”

Marco didn’t notice him disappear.

Las cocked his head. “What are you doing right now?”

Marco swept his gaze up Las’s tall frame. The cowboy boots, the jeans that hugged his thighs, the fog-gray T-shirt stretched across his torso, the leather cord with the green jewel clasped around his wrist. His body language was relaxed, one hand in his back pocket as if he’d put their . . . disagreement? differences?. . . behind him. Something about the open posture, the lazy smile, the familiar glint of something green on his person, made the craving for him that Marco always felt—but kept on the back burner—start to simmer.

Voice dropping, he said, “Whatever you want,” and locked his knees to prevent himself from lunging at Las.

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