Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Sam scraped his plate clean. He'd eaten in a myriad of fine dining places, but nothing beat a family recipe made with love, and he told Sophie that.

She blushed and made a show of clearing the table.

Everyone helped to clear away, and Ashley pulled out a tray of exquisite mini cheesecakes, serving them with hot black coffee.

I miss this when I'm not here. Not the food or the desserts, but the families he'd become involved with.

The table was packed. It seemed like everyone on the ranch was there, even Adam, although he sat at the other end from Sam, between Gabe and Ethan, who fielded questions as Adam looked more and more tired. Those three also had their heads down, doing a lot of talking; about what, Sam wasn't sure. Maybe the poor guy was getting some of his memories back, and hell, how hard must it have been to lose everything?

Ashley hurried the kids out the door with a quick kiss for Gabe, and Jay went with them, carrying a dozing Josh, an awkward mess of long, coltish limbs and fluffy brown hair.

God, that kid was cute.

Sophie excused herself with coffee and her Kindle, but not before she pressed a soft kiss to the top of Marcus' head.

And then it was him, Marcus, Ethan with his arms around a tired-looking Adam, Nate, Gabe, and Luke all sitting around the large, scarred table.

Marcus cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Nate, who rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Is this gonna take long?" Luke asked. "I have a project I need to finish."

Luke was at the University of Montana, on the Bozeman campus, studying art, talented and dedicated to what he did. He was home this week, something about a semester break. Sam didn't fully get the college system, never having experienced a single day of it. All he knew was that Luke was home, and Kirsten too, who was in her first year at a college in Seattle, or somewhere like that.

Sam always thought the two of them would end up with each other, but since college, it seemed that they were happier as friends.

"Five minutes," Gabe said and elbowed him.

Luke elbowed back, and then they did that stupid brother-grin thing they shared.

Part of Sam bemoaned that even though he had a brother; Ben was more likely to stab him than tussle with him.

"Seeing as no one else will do it," Nate began with a put-upon sigh. "We have a proposal for you."

Sam realized Nate was talking to him, and he sat back in his chair. "Okay?"

Maybe they wanted him to cater something or organize a wedding or an event, something in his remit. He wondered if it was Gabe's wedding to the gorgeous Ashley, but Gabe wasn't jumping in after his brother started, so it couldn't be that. And Sam was already working with the couple on the catering, anyway.

"We know that without Branches, or more specifically, the work you do at Branches, we wouldn't be pulling in the passing trade, so to speak. The ones who see the leaflets Jay produces for the family days."

Sam narrowed his eyes. Nate sounded an awfully serious and not one iota teasing or laughing. "Thank you." He hesitated as he said that.

Where is this going?

"All the families are here." Nate gestured around the guys at the table, at himself and the other two Todd brothers, at Adam, the only Strachan at the table, and at Marcus and Ethan, the Allens' representatives. "And we've been talking."

Nate cleared his throat again. "Gabe said you'd been talking about moving to Miami, heading for the sun, setting up a restaurant down there?"

Sam glanced at Gabe, who dipped his head. "That was just us shooting the shit, talking about—Look, why is that…?" He didn't even know what he was asking.

"We don't want you to go, any of us. So we voted. We'd like you to have a permanent stake in the ranch, to become part of the place, so when you work, you see payback, you get a sense of permanence." Nate looked at Sam steadily as he said that.

"Oh." Sam was just this side of freaked out with the way everyone was staring at him.

"So instead of a salary, you'd profit-share, like on some kind of bonus scheme or something. I don't know how, we didn't get that far, but hearing you talk about leaving was a kick up our collective asses."

Sam shook his head; it was all way too much to take in. They were looking for him to agree to a long-term commitment? He'd already decided, just that day, that he was staying at Crooked Tree. All his wanderlust thoughts had been wiped out by going back to see his family. He didn't need to move to another state to escape the crap at home; he'd already done that by coming to Montana, and he loved it here.

Here at Crooked Tree they liked him, they even forgave him for his quick and fiery temper, put it down to him being a chef. But it all sounded wrong. Like he was being rewarded for something he'd already decided to do, and he wasn't that much of a bastard. "I'm not leaving," he admitted. "I'm happy here. But I do have something I want to say." He considered his words carefully. "I want to buy into Crooked Tree."

"The arrangement we all agreed to would be…." Nate looked down at the papers in front of him and frowned.

"Not an investment as such," Gabe finished for him.

Sam shook his head. "No, I want to own a part of it, maybe just Branches, or a percentage of the whole thing, something like that, but I'd like it to be my stake in the rest of my life." Then he stopped, because that was kind of forward, and God, could he sound any needier? But his grandmother's insistence that the family reject was never going to succeed was fire in his blood.

Silence.

Nate's only comment was physical—he raised his eyebrow in question, a typical Nate reaction.

Sam went on. "I have…" an inheritance? It wasn't exactly that, more like blood money. He cleared his throat and saw everyone waiting expectantly, and abruptly he wanted more, but how could he ask for that when he wasn't family? "I have some money that came to me this week."

He saw the men at the table share looks that spoke of compassion and regret at Sam's supposed loss.

"Two fifty, a quarter million, and you can have it all if I can have a permanent place here. Part of the ranch."

Somewhere to stop and take stock of everything I want. There. Saying that felt right and was the most perfect end to this otherwise shitty week.

"Fuck me," Luke murmured, "that's a lot of money."

Gabe elbowed his brother. "Wash your mouth out."

Luke pushed him back. "You do that."

Marcus interrupted the good-natured bickering. "We were thinking more of a partnership, not an investment."

Sam nodded. He hadn't expected the idea to fly. He might feel like this was home and these people were friends, but they would never truly be family. As always, he was on the outside looking in. "I understand," he offered. "It was just a thought, to give the ranch a cash injection and at the same time I would… y'know."

And that sentence had started so strong .

More silence, and Sam waited for them to laugh him out of the room.

"Why not?" Nate said to Marcus. "That would make sense, give Sam a stake in the place. It would be a fair way of doing things. We could get the ranch valued, assess an investment."

Adam cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "I can't speak for Cole"—Adam pressed his fingers to his temples, evidently in the middle of one of his headaches—"but Sam can certainly buy into my cut, and I'll invest the money in extending the stables." He looked up and met Nate's eyes. "We need that," he said simply, then ruined the serious effect by yawning.

"I agree, and I'll match that from my share," Gabe said. "It makes no sense for Sam to be such a big part of Crooked Tree without some kind of say in what we do."

Luke nodded. "What Gabe said."

Nate looked at his brothers and nodded. "Okay, then the Todd family is in."

"We can't give you what Justin would have," Ethan murmured, casting a look at his dad, who closed his eyes briefly and then nodded. "But I'll sign over part of a future inheritance from Dad; have our lawyers draw up something official. We could get everything valued properly; make sure we're not ripping you off somehow."

"Seriously? A real investment? I would actually own a small part of Crooked Tree?" Sam was waiting for the catch, and when Nate tapped his pen, over and over, on the pad in front of him, he knew Nate would add the provisos. Here came the extra bits: he would have 0.002 percent, and only for a year or something. Sam had never owned anything before, apart from his bikes, but he wanted to be part of the ranch so badly.

"I think that is decided, then," Nate concluded.

Sam slumped back in his chair, the prickle of tears warring with the absolute sheer joy of expectation clutching at his chest. He could make a stand here, make something real. "I don't know what to say," he whispered.

Nate held out a hand; Sam shook it. "Branches wouldn't be what it is without you," Nate pointed out. "It's good business sense."

Sam left the meeting feeling lighter than he'd done all week, and he made his way up to his apartment over the restaurant. He stopped just inside the door, pressed his hands to the wood, and grinned.

His grandmother would be turning in her grave if she could see that he wasn't throwing the money away, that her gay grandson would actually amount to something.

"That shows you, witch," Sam said to no one.

That shows all of you.

A noise woke Sam from a deep sleep with dreams that may or may not have revolved around a naked Ryan Reynolds. He lay for a minute, blinking up at the ceiling in that perfect moment between dreams and reality, thinking it might be just the right time to get off to the fantasy in his head; his hand closed around his erection.

Crash.

It sounded like someone had dropped crockery from a great height. What the hell?

Sam pulled on his jeans, his erection a dwindling memory, and tugged on a worn tee. As he slid his feet into sneakers, he was alert for more noise. He glanced around, looking for a weapon of sorts. Why didn't he own a baseball bat, or a hockey stick, or something he could use? His cell was charging in the kitchen, he shouldn't have needed it at on hand at Crooked Tree, for God's sake.

Branches was always painfully quiet after everyone went home.

A quick glance at his alarm clock: 03:07. He tilted his head, concentrating on sound and hearing nothing. Carefully, he descended the stairs to the back way into the restaurant. The door was closed; he pressed an ear to it to try to make out who was there. No one came into the restaurant after it closed.

Sam imagined the path he'd take when he went inside. He'd cross immediately to the knife block and grab the first blade he could reach. He didn't have moves, but he could fake it. Then he would grab his cell and call Nate, or Ethan, who was home this weekend… Ethan was good; he was a cop and had a gun in a lockbox in his car.

Cautiously he pushed the door open. His eyes worked to focus through the dark; the moon was filtering in a small amount of light. Sam couldn't see anything out of place from this angle. The tables were set for breakfast for the people booked into cabins. Nothing looked wrong.

He crept out into the eating area and made his way to the kitchen in his stealthiest mode, reaching for the knives in the knife block and pulling the first one he could find, the one with the sharpest carving blade. They weren't his best knives, they were the ones out for show; Sam's working knives were wrapped up and put away safely, but this would do.

His cell was maybe six feet away, and holding the knife like the characters he'd seen in horror movies, he reached for the phone.

But he hadn't turned the fucking charger on at the wall, and the thing was as useless as a fucking dead thing.

He pocketed it anyway and moved toward the large walk-in pantry. Something crunched beneath his feet and he glanced down—the white of pottery shards on the floor. It looked like a bowl had fallen from the pile stacked ready for cereal in the morning, and it had smashed into tiny pieces on the floor.

The shadows in the kitchen were giving him hives and Sam swallowed as he reached for the light switch. Illumination was what he needed.

Light flooded the space, and he whirled around, knife extended, waiting for someone to jump him. He might only be five nine and not that built, but he was fast on his feet and he'd watched enough action movies to know where to stab someone.

There was nothing.

No one was there…

Except the pantry door was ajar, and he opened it further. Leeks and potatoes scattered the floor. "What the actual fuck?"

Did an animal get in there?

Then he felt the breeze on his back. The window was open, not enough to be obvious at first, but enough to let the cool night in.

"I don't remember…" leaving that open .

Sam pulled it shut, cursing his stupidity and accepting he'd likely been lost in his own head last night. He set about disinfecting the surfaces, because hell, if an animal had gotten in then he was not cooking where it had been.

Finally, he checked the pantry area. Apart from the loose vegetables, nothing major was missing. The bottles, cans and cartons were a little out of order, but that could well have been down to him, when he'd gone looking for olive oil. He threw away everything on the floor, checked the doors and windows, and climbed the stairs, heading to bed. He took his cell, the charger, and his fuck-off knife with him.

And he hoped to hell he could get Ryan Reynolds back in his brain so he'd at least spend the next couple of hours sleeping in hot company.

Sam woke feeling like he had a question that needed answering. Something about his nocturnal activities made him uneasy. The window had been open….

Once dressed and downstairs, he checked in the pantry, squatting where the bowl had smashed, and looking closely at the area. Red on the corner of the unit by the floor—a dried deposit of something dark rusty red. Maybe paint… or blood?

That last one sat right with him.

"Can I get a coffee to go?" Ethan asked from behind him.

Sam whirled and fell back against the counter. Ethan reached out and grabbed him before he fell.

"Sorry," Sam apologized and hustled Ethan over to the coffee machine. "Usual?"

"Please." If Ethan spotted anything odd about Sam, he didn't mention it.

Sam should just tell the cop what he'd found, his suspicions that an animal intrusion could potentially be something more, but he said nothing. Nothing awful had been taken: some food, bottled water, that broken bowl. It wasn't like Branches was a place in town. Whoever broke in would have had to make a real effort to get there just for a handful of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Was it the kids, maybe? Josh? There was no way he was getting Josh in trouble until he asked him.

"How are you doing?" Ethan asked with that expression everyone used with Sam, the one that said they weren't entirely comfortable asking because Sam had just gotten back from a funeral.

"I'm fine." And there was the standard reply.

Ethan looked at him steadily, his patented understanding-cop expression firmly in place. "Has to be hard losing a grandparent."

Sam wanted to snap back that he'd given up on his entire family, let alone his grandmother, a long time ago. But he didn't, because Ethan had lost his brother, and that had to be way harder than what had happened to Sam. "Yeah," he said instead and changed the subject. "Are you going back to Missoula today?"

"Yeah, but only for meetings, just for the day." Ethan shrugged, like he was saying a hundred things all at once—that he would miss Adam, and that he really didn't want to go.

"How's Adam?"

"He's doing well. Remembered a few more things, nothing too soul-destroying."

"Good." Was that the right answer? Sam couldn't believe Adam had to relive parts of his past like they were new. There were parts of Sam's life he'd love to forget and never revisit.

Sam hadn't seen a couple quite as tight as Ethan and Adam. They were solid and close, and Ethan was there for Adam every single minute. Likewise, Adam would stare at Ethan, and there was so much love in his eyes. Sam had to admit he was a tiny bit jealous.

Add in the disgustingly kissy Nate and Jay, and Sam was the only gay man in a hundred-mile radius without his own guy.

"Maybe you can help me before you go?" He handed Ethan the coffee in the travel cup.

"Sure, what's up?"

"You know the ranch well, right?"

Ethan nodded. "Spent most of my childhood around the acres," he said with a smile.

"Where can I take my dirt bike? I mean, I use it the other side of the river, but I don't go much past the ranch. As I'm investing in this place, I want to explore, away from the horses and the trekking, just go to a really remote part of the ranch. Where no one else would go."

Ethan frowned in thought and then brightened. "That's easy. Go up past the staff houses; keep on going after Ember Bluff—you're talking maybe only half a mile because it gets dense with forest up that side of the mountain." Ethan tapped a finger on his cup. "I don't think Adam takes the horses up there; it's too wild. Maybe you get some hikers, but they're mostly drawn to the river and the other side up to Silver Lake and the trails beyond there. You'd be okay taking your bike there. You can check in on the cabins for us, the old logger places, and report back. Otherwise one of us needs to get up there. It can be your first job as co-owner, for which, by the way, congratulations."

Sam dipped his head. "Thank you, and I'll log what I find." Sam parceled up two of Ashley's choc-chip muffins and passed them over. "Drive safe."

Ethan grinned and left the restaurant, holding open the door for Ashley herself, who hugged him, and for a moment they chatted about muffins and Adam. Poor Ethan, all he got asked was questions about Adam.

Ashley walked over to Sam. "You okay, sweetie?" she asked, all concern and motherly insight.

Sam swallowed his instinctive reply. "You think you could cover for me this morning?" he asked before he even realized what he was doing.

Ashley cradled his face, looking so concerned. She probably thought he was upset about his grandmother. He almost blurted out that actually she was entirely wrong and he was fine.

"Of course, Sam. Do you need anything? Do you want to talk?"

"No, I'm fine. I just need some time. Gonna take my bike out."

She nodded, probably thinking that was a good thing, and everyone dealt with grief in their own way. She wouldn't question why he needed some space, but he felt like a bastard for using her kindness. Impulsively he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"You macking on my girl, Samwise?" Gabe said as he pushed into the restaurant for his early-morning caffeine fix.

"You shouldn't let her out," Sam said with a teasing smirk. "And stop with the hobbit jokes."

Gabe shoved his arm, but not too hard. "Asshole. And you are hobbit-sized."

"I got this," Ashley said, adding her own shove to her fiancé's arm. "You go."

Gabe instantly got serious. "You okay, Sam?"

Sam's guilt level rose dangerously high. He couldn't quite look Gabe in the face. "I'm okay. Just need the morning."

Gabe nodded and Sam stepped back before the middle Todd brother could pull him into a hug. Because that would kill him.

He went through the back to his bike, picking up the two smallish bags he'd packed. He had food, water, and half the contents of the medical box added to stuff he kept up in his apartment.

Something wasn't right, and he felt compelled to find out what the fuck it was. Because someone was taking stuff from the restaurant and leaving bloody marks, and call him stupid, but going unarmed up against someone in the woods seemed like the perfect thing to do today.

Clearly he was being an idiot, but he was doing this thing.

Sam just wasn't sure why.