Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

F alling in love with a cowboy was sort of like falling in love with a buffalo. It was dangerous, it involved a lot of shit, and about the time you did it, they ran off to deal with the herd.

They’d ridden down from their camping weekend to a ranch that was like a fire ant hill that somebody had kicked good and hard.

Cowboys had been running this way and that. Horses had gotten out somewhere, and in God knows where Montana there was a company transport trailer that had gotten broke into, and now there were animals running all over the damn roads.

Zebras or some such shit?

No one had the time or the inclination for a plated meal, so he spent all of his time making lunch sacks and things people could pop in and take.

Sophie helped about half the time. The rest of the time she was out being a kid, doing teenager things with other teenagers, which, he supposed was all right.

Sixteen wasn’t an age to learn how to be a chef. Sixteen was an age to go out and have a good time and learn how to be a human being. Still, it didn’t help his feeling of loneliness.

It was kind of like having a full body Band-Aid on, and then having it ripped off. It stung like a bitch, but afterward it left you a little numb and you had to get back to work.

Ames hadn’t been home because he was dealing with the zebra situation. So Sophie stayed up at the main house, and Nathan stayed in his little house, spending a lot of time thinking about what?

Shit.

Thinking about having bared his soul to a man who was terrified that he was going to do what he was meant to do in life?

He chuckled at himself.

Was that even a sentence?

He was sitting at one of the picnic tables outside the main kitchen, thumbing through his notebook trying to think of new menu plans, new recipes.

Daydreaming about God knows what.

He was thinking about being back where he had been, trying to get to where he wanted to be.

Nathan didn’t know.

What he did know was that there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do to help any of these people do any of the jobs they did because he was not a cowboy.

He was a queer chef from Austin whose idea of boots involved lots of buckles and black leather. He wore button-fly Levis and T-shirts that showed off his belly. His belt bore the buckle it had come from the store with.

He did not own any stretch jeans, however. He wouldn’t go that far. He was still a Texan.

He wanted Ames to come home, so he could ask had he fucked up?

Were they fucked up?

It hadn’t felt too terribly horked by the time that they had left the campsite.

But it hadn’t felt like—there wasn’t that romantic comedy magic you’re supposed to have when you tell somebody that you love them, and then you find out that they love you back and there’s all this future ahead of you and shit—but it hadn’t felt bad.

It had felt like…like grown-up love.

He rolled his eyes at himself as if that was such a fucking thing.

This was his way of justifying the fact that they were not compatible.

At least their lives were not compatible. What they wanted was not compatible.

They were pretty damn compatible. They compat-ed along with the best of them. Not just in bed, either. He could talk to Ames for hours. That was part of the problem, right? They’d told each other some pretty deep stuff. Secret dreams. Real desires. What they both needed out of life.

Which was why he wasn’t sure he could reconcile anything he knew about the two of them going forward…

“Hey, Nathan. How’s it going?” Kase startled the shit out of him, standing maybe six feet away. He hadn’t heard the man.

“Man, you scared me.” He managed to find a grin for his boss, who stood there in a T-shirt, ancient Wranglers, and even older boots. For a man worth millions, he dressed in Walmart. “You need something?”

“Just to make sure that my chef isn’t unhappy.” Kase grinned at him. “We’ve gotten used to having you around.”

“Oh.” That was nice to hear. “Now, you all have Nanette, and you know it.”

“She is a queen among women, and I love her with all of my heart, but we all got to admit that at some point she’s going to get tired of taking care of us all. Just like the grannies. Besides, you bring a certain je ne sais quoi to this whole ranch situation.”

“Listen to you, using fancy French words.” Nathan cackled because he could remember having been in France for the first time, working and thinking he was never gonna get this. He was never going to understand this damn language. He was too dumb, too Texan, too whatever.

But he did learn. You know, when the option was starving and losing your job, you learned a lot.

“I know, I know. I’ve got two of them taking French right now and needing help with lessons. I—I took Spanish. Why they’re taking French, I don’t know. They speak Spanish already.”

Nathan shrugged. “Well, if they spoke one of them already, then they wouldn’t be learning it, right?”

Kase gave him a patently fake glare. “Shut up, Nathan.”

“Shutting up, Boss. What you need?”

Kase came to sit, stretching up as tall as his little bitty body would go, which wasn’t very far. “I didn’t need anything, really. You seemed so damn unhappy. So I thought I’d come see what was what.”

Oh. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

What was he going to say? Hi, I’m fucking one of your cowboys, and we may or may not be madly in love with one another. And we may or may not be already on the road to breaking up, which was going to make everything awkward, and I don’t know. Yay.

It seemed a little inappropriate at best.

“You sure?”

“I’m trying to find the rhythm of the work here. It’s totally different than the insanity I’m used to. It’s a challenge—a good one, for sure, but I have a learning curve.”

“I can see that,” Kase admitted, hat shading his eyes. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Make zebras stop escaping?”

“Damn, that would be a trick, wouldn’t it?” Kase shook his head, chuckling low. “Speaking of zebras, how’s Ames? You heard from him?”

Oh fuck. “Yeah, he’s out there herding and searching. They found all but one. I’m assuming zebras aren’t particularly big on recall.”

“Not particularly, no. Um, I don’t suppose that you…” Kase stopped and sighed. “Never mind, I’ll talk to Ames when I can.”

Nathan arched an eyebrow. There was no way he was going to let his cowboy get in trouble. None. “Now look, there is absolutely nothing work wise that connects me and Ames. Ames is not allowed into my kitchen. I managed not to die on horseback, but that’s really as far as it goes. I can’t do anything rodeoesque, so… That’s weird.”

“I know.” Kase twisted his lips. “I really know, but we’ve got a touch of a problem.”

Huh. Odd. “This is a little worrisome and more than a little weird. Does it have to do with Sophie? Is Sophie okay?” He hadn’t talked to her in a few hours.

“It does, but only on the most vague of…look, I can’t get hold of Ames. You know, Montana is notorious for dead spots.” Kase rolled his eyes. “But somebody dropped off two puppies. Today. And Sophie says they’re yours. Y’alls. And I don’t know what to do with them.”

“Puppies.” Nathan blinked, because that was a curveball.

“You don’t know anything about puppies?”

Nathan shook his head. “I do not know anything about puppies. At all.”

Like at all at all.

He needed to talk to Sophie.

“Hmm. Okay, well. They said they would have dropped them off at Ames’s place, but no one was there. The kids and I can keep them until he gets back.”

“Yeah, I have no idea what the plan is there.” Puppies… “Can I come see them? Me and Sophie?”

“Of course you can. Hell, you can come sit with them in the X-pen and keep them company.”

“What the hell is an X-pen?”

“It corrals them up some. Keeps them from running all over the house and peeing. And keeps our dogs from being all over them.”

“So, what kind of dogs are they?” He didn’t need a dog, but God, he was curious.

“Border collie and bloodhound.” Kase’s words were dry as dust.

Nathan blinked. “Is that bad?”

“No.” Kase’s head shake made him feel better. “No dogs are bad. Some are more stubborn than others, and some need a lot of work, but no dogs are bad. They’re real cute. There’s a black-and-white one and a brown-and-white one.”

“And they’re both mine?”

“That’s what the lady said.”

Oh, man. He had to find Miss Sophie, and he needed to talk to Ames, like right now.

He texted,

Call me. Need to talk

as they wandered into the little high school area Wat had set up, and found Sophie. “Uh. Can we chat?”

She gave him a wide-eyed stare, because he’d never shown up at school before. “Is something wrong?”

“No, but. It’s your…” Dammit. “Mr. Kase here tells me that someone dropped off puppies. For me.”

She clapped one hand over her mouth and stood, kind of dancing, like she had to pee or something. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s puppies. The puppies are here. I didn’t think they’d come until Uncle Ames got back.”

“Would you like to explain?” Kase asked, as if this shit happened daily.

“Sure! Uncle said that…well, you see, I was going to get him a kitten because everybody needs a pet, and Uncle Ames said no, he needed a dog. Maybe a purse dog that he could have put bows on, and we couldn’t find one, but we did find a passel of bloodhound border collie puppies and so Uncle said that we’d get two—one could be for Chef and one could be for him. And they could live together happily ever after.”

“‘Happily ever after’, huh?” Kase grinned over at him.

“Shut up, Boss.”

“Shutting up, I’m going to see the puppies.”

Sophie made a squealing noise that could only be heard by dogs and other sixteen-year-old girls, obviously, because the teenagers came flocking, and they ran together through the house. They managed to make a beeline for the pen where the puppies were, because obviously she had a psychic connection with them or something.

When he got to the pen, he knew he was fucked, for sure.

God, they were cute. Seriously, little fuzzy balls of white with different-colored spots, and Nathan was in love like bang.

“Are they boys or girls?”

Kase picked one up, glanced at their bellies. “This one’s a boy.”

That was the little black-and-white one. Then the smaller brown-and-white pup was picked up. “And this is a little girl. So you got one each. You’re gonna have to get them fixed.”

“I don’t know that that’s up to me. I think that’s an Ames question.”

“You like him though, don’t you? I mean, we get to keep them, right?”

How on earth was he going to tell this big-eyed little girl who’d lost so much that no, she couldn’t have dogs?

He still wasn’t sure how one of them had ended up being his.

He simply nodded. “Yeah. We’ll talk to Ames as soon as we can and have him bring home supplies, I guess, or we can go out and get them later.”

“Okay, I want the little girl to be called Honeysuckle,” she said.

Nathan tilted his head, pondering that. “Then we should name the boy Thorn.”

Kase rolled his eyes. “Well, there you go. Y’all have dogs. Like I said, we’ll keep him over here until we get hold of Ames and figure out what’s what.”

“That’s fair. I really appreciate it. I just wasn’t sure.” Well. This was unexpected. “And I do appreciate it.”

He’d never had a boss keep puppies for him before.

Lord save him from cowboys, he had a dog.