Free Her Summer Cowboy by Katherine Garbera - Her Summer Cowboy Page A

only went so far as soon as they pulled up on the ranch, Hudson was only too happy to get out of the truck and get away from his brothers. He knew he was going to have to see his dad, but he wanted to get Emma settled first and then taking her around in his own truck, show her the ranch and his hometown.
    “Tell Dad I’ll be over to see him in a half-hour or so. I’m going to show Emma the house and her bedroom.”
    “Will do,” Alec said.
    There was a chorus of ‘nice to meet yous’ from his brothers and Emma. Then the SUV was gone and the two of them were standing on the front porch of the old foreman’s house. It was a ranch house that had been built in the late 1800s and had been given to Hudson when his mom died. Each time he came home he worked a little more on it, and he paid one of his cousins to keep the house maintained.
    “Come on,” he said, taking the key from his pocket and opening the front door. The house was his place as much as any other on earth. There was a console table that he’d bought in Chicago when he’d worked up there on a construction site for six months.
    “This is your place?” she asked as she stepped inside.
    “It is. My dad is big on giving us all our space. This place is mine. Lane’s got a cabin and some acreage closer to Copper Mountain. Carson has his own place out toward the Christmas tree farm and Alec lives on the main homestead in a house he built himself. I’ve got another brother Trey, and he sold his place with an old red barn to Lane’s friend Monty.”
    “You all seem pretty close,” she said. “I love your brothers. They are funny and sweet. I’m a little jealous that you have so many. I always wanted some siblings of my own.”
    “Did you think to ask for one for Christmas like Evan?” Hudson asked.
    “No. That might have worked. I was a very spoiled child,” she said with a grin.
    “You turned into a very nice woman so they did okay with you,” Hudson said. He’d fallen into treating her like a stranger again. Being around his brothers always brought back that old dynamic. He was the middle kid. The one who got bossed from the older two and who bossed around the younger two.
    “It was good to see them all.”
    “They must miss you.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “To all show up at the airport like that,” she said. “They want you to stay home this time.”
    Hudson knew she was right. It made him feel like he wanted to run. Somehow the more welcoming his brothers were, the more worried he became about how things would be with his father. In that moment he missed his momma so damned much. She would know how to make it okay for both him and Pops. She would have never let them stay angry at each other for so long.
    He shrugged.
    “It’s easier to think of being on the road than how much this place is a part of me,” he said at last; he led the way up the stairs to the landing, opening the first door on the left. There was a big wrought-iron queen-sized bed in the middle of the room and some rugs that his sister-in-law, Sienna, had bought for him. The top of the dresser had a clock radio and a black-and-white picture of him and his brothers when they were kids hung in the corner.
    “I know what you mean,” she said, putting her bag on the bed. She brushed her hand over the quilt that his granny had made for him when he’d gotten his first big bed. Then smiled at him with that sad sweet expression he saw too often on her face.
    “How? You usually stay at home,” he pointed out.
    “I do. But that’s its own kind of running,” she said. “I like this place. It feels like you.”
    “Thanks, I think. Not sure what that means.”
    “Just that if I had to picture a house for you, it’d be something like this,” she said. “You’re going to see your dad and then what will we do?”
    She sat down on the edge of the bed and really all he could think about was lying down next to her. Forgetting about the edginess that being here was