Page 39 of Cowboy Dreams

I wanted to ask if he’d give the same promise to the broke gay men at Max’s, but I wasn't up to that conversation with the pain shooting down my spine. “Make it so.” I turned and hobbled off across the grass to the house.

Joe stuck to my side, but I managed to get through the kitchen door, out of my coat although I left it on the floor, and up the stairs to our room, without leaning on him. Just.

“Lie back down,” he told me, pulling the covers to one side. When I lowered myself onto the mattress, he eased my slippers off and covered me.

“You’re coming to bed too, right?” I reached for him. “My back's fine now I'm horizontal. Just a bit stiff.”

“I want to check on the horses,” he said, “and make sure everything is locked up but then yeah, I’ll be back.”

I lay there aching, useless, trying not to let my mind go running off on tangents, as he thumped off down the stairs. I heard the door close, then silence. I imagined Joe going to the horses, soothing them with those work-rough hands and his calm voice. Donner and Ro adored him.So do I. And I could’ve lost him!

My hands trembled and I clenched them into fists, wincing as tremors racked my spine, trying not to picture disasters, trying to find my composure before Joe got back.He’s fine. He’s safe. It’s over.Slowly, my shaking eased.

At least ten minutes later, I heard Joe come back in, then after a bit, his footsteps clattered up the stairs. I added “carpet the stairs” to my remodeling plans, pretty hardwood be damned. I tried not to think of anything else. Joe eased through the door like he thought I might be sleeping, but when he saw me watching him, he nodded. “All good. I moved them into the big pasture, farther from the barn and the smoke smells. They were grazing when I left them.”

“I’m glad. Donner didn’t hurt himself?”

“Not that I can tell in the dark. I’ll check again in the morning.” Joe stripped down his jeans, revealing the pale skin of his furry thighs and lean ass. He came over to me naked, turned out the lamp, and climbed into bed. At first he lay carefully over on his side, leaving me two-thirds of the mattress, but that wasn’t what I wanted.

“Come here,” I asked. “Please?”

“Of course.” He rolled toward me and draped an arm across my belly, his stubbled chin on my shoulder. “You doing okay, city slicker?”

“I’m… not sure.” I pulled in a breath, my voice back to shaking. “Th-that was a lot.”

“Yeah. When I saw the barn burning, I wanted to beat him to a pulp.”

“You got in a couple of good hits.”

“That I did.”

“I can’t believe a cop came out here to set fire to my ranch.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he did.” Joe chuckled.

“Huh?” I got angry, which was a relief from feeling scared. “You think that was ajoke?”

“What? No! Just, Morse may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but he’s not useless. If he planned to burn the place, he’d have brought cans of gasoline and a blow torch. Not a stick with cloth wrapped around it for a torch and a can of spray paint.”

“Oh.” My stomach rolled at the thought of gasoline and a bigger fire. “What was going on, then?”

“Well, it’s just a guess, but I think he came with his spray paint to mark up the barn again, but he found we didn’t repaint the place red, we painted it black.” He snorted. “I saw that spray can. It was black. So there are the Morse brothers, all ready to write gay slurs in five-foot-tall letters on the fresh paint, and it won’t show. At all. I think they got mad and improvised the fire part.”

“Makes sense.” I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. “You think they won’t get charged with arson then? If it wasn’t on purpose?”

“Nah. By the time you find a branch, wrap rags around it, soak it in paint, and light it on fire, I think you can’t call it an accident.”

I slid my leg over, tangling my calf between his. I wanted to crawl into his arms, but my stupid back kept me flat on the bed. Thinking of the fire made my stomach muscles quiver, but that wasn’t the worst part. “He had a gun.” A hard tremor racked me.

“Yep.” Joe kissed my neck, a barely-there brush of lips. “That scared you?”

“More now than then, actually,” I realized. “At the time I was just mad, but… he could’ve shot you and claimed it was self-defense. His word against mine.”

“And the cameras.”

“But he didn’t know that.” My breath caught in my throat. “One stupid, mean, bigot with a gun, and I could’ve lost you.”

“I don’t think he’d have gone that far.” Joe sighed, his breath warm on my skin. “I don’t know. It all worked out.”

---