Free Cowboy Heaven by Cheryl L. Brooks Page A

the time, it’s the bull.”
    â€œYeah, well, we’re all young and stupid at some point,” he conceded. “It just takes some of us longer to wise up.”
    â€œNo shit. Are you good at anything besides calf roping?” I could’ve added more to that but thought it best to focus on his cowboy skills rather than his boy toy abilities.
    He shrugged. “Lots of things. I can fix fences and brand cattle and give them shots and stuff like that. I’m a decent mechanic and a fair carpenter. Just don’t ask me to sing around the campfire.”
    â€œNot much of a singer, huh?”
    â€œCouldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket,” he said with a grin.
    So much for the country music duo idea. “No worries there. I can’t sing a note. Rufus can, though. You wouldn’t think it, but if you close your eyes, you’d think George Strait was sitting by your campfire. Plays guitar pretty well too.”
    â€œYou talk about him a lot,” Troy observed. “But I still can’t figure out whether you like him.”
    He had me there. I wasn’t sure whether I liked Rufus myself. “He hired on here about the time I started high school, and I thought he was totally hot. Curly black hair and steely blue eyes—and he’s still got the body he showed up here with. I had such a crush on him, but then I met Cody and the rest is history.
    â€œHe worked his way up to foreman, and I married Cody and had the kids, so I haven’t given him much thought for a long time now. He’s also about twenty years older than me, so there’s that. But at thirty-five, he was a hunk. Can’t say he’s much fun, though, even if he does sing well. He’s kinda grim. If I were desperate enough, I might consider him as a potential husband, but so far, I haven’t been that desperate. I can’t recall him ever having a girlfriend, even when he was younger—at least not that I know of—and he rarely leaves the ranch. I tend to giggle a lot, which I know he doesn’t like, and he would be absolutely appalled to hear about even half of what we’ve done today. Very straitlaced. He doesn’t even let the guys put girlie posters up in the bunkhouse.”
    â€œI thought it seemed pretty tame in there,” Troy remarked. “You usually have to keep innocent eyes out of a bunkhouse.”
    â€œI always assumed that was because of me. After Mom died, I was out there a lot to help with the upkeep and the cooking. Nothing changed when I got older, so maybe that was the way Dad and Rufus wanted it. They’re two of a kind when it comes to stuff like that.”
    â€œPoint made,” he said, laughing. “I’ll be discreet.”
    I snorted a laugh. “I even had to be discreet with my husband. Cody and I worked out a code so we could talk dirty back and forth. No one ever caught on, and you wouldn’t believe the fun we had.” The side-splitting laughter, the camaraderie, the joy…all of it gone. I’d done my best to avoid dwelling on the sorrow and focus on the happy memories. Although sometimes the happiest memories were the most painful to recall. The mere mention of that secret should have triggered a pang, but oddly enough, it didn’t.
    â€œI can imagine,” Troy said. “You’ll have to teach it to me.”
    Teach it to him? I’d never told anyone about the code. I hadn’t even shared it with Jenny, and she was my best friend. Then again, perhaps it was the sort of thing only a lover needed to know…
    â€œLet’s see now… If Cody scratched his right ear, that meant he was hard as a rock. If I wanted to suck his dick, I chewed on my fingernail—stuff like that.”
    â€œGreat idea. What was the signal for fuck me?”
    â€œBiting my lip,” I replied. “Although sometimes I’d do it without actually intending to and Cody would start scratching his