Frog by Mary Calmes (ebook reader android TXT) 📕

brought the conversation to a halt as she zeroed in on me.

“Yes, ma’am.” I sighed, so comfortable with Cy leaning on me, his thigh and knee pressed to mine.

“Why?”

“It’s just nice to be inside on a rainy night, makes you thankful.”

Her breath quavered. “Yes, it does.”

“Where is your family, Weber?” Mr. Benning asked me.

“I don’t have any family to speak of, sir.”

“Oh?”

I shook my head.

Cy cleared his throat. “Weber’s mother passed away when he was fourteen, and his father, who was a roughneck on an oil rig, was killed in an accident a year later.”

Angie’s eyebrows furrowed as she looked at her son. It was nice to see her worry for me.

“Weber and his older brother Spencer were alone after that, and so Spencer, who was seventeen at the time, looked after Web.”

“And where is Spencer now?” Mr. Benning asked his son instead of me.

He cleared his throat. “Spencer was killed in Iraq when he was twenty.”

The room was silent until Angie coughed softly.

“You must have things of your mother’s and your father’s and your brother’s kept somewhere, don’t you, Weber?”

“Oh yes, ma’am,” I smiled at her. “I have a storage space in Abilene that I used my brother’s life insurance money from the army to pay for. It gets paid automatic every month and will for another ten years or so. But at least I know it’s all safe.”

She nodded. “And if, heaven forbid, anything should happen to—”

“I have the address,” Cy told her, “and the spare key.”

“Your son is my emergency contact in my wallet.” I smiled at her. “If I get trampled or shot or gored or—”

“Stop,” he cut me off. “She gets it.”

She nodded fast.

“Well, if I die, someone’ll call Cy, and he can dispose of things as he sees fit.”

“And your profession is that of a ranch hand? Is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What did you do before that?”

“Rodeo. I was a bull rider.”

“Which accounts for the injuries.”

How did she know I’d been injured? “Ma’am?”

“Cyrus told us earlier that you had been hurt not too long ago, but he didn’t say how. Bull riding must be very dangerous.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t think so?”

“It’s takes a toll, but so does workin’ a ranch or bein’ out on the road.”

“And you’ve been on the road a long time, haven’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am, I have.”

Her lips were pressed together tight as she stood up. “Okay. I’m going to bed.”

I didn’t expect her to walk around the coffee table, bend down, put a hand on my cheek, and kiss me on the other. She bolted from the room right after that.

“Me too,” Rachel echoed her mother-in-law, darting over to me, leaning over to kiss my forehead before she too nearly ran from the room.

Fuck.

“Good night, everyone.” Mr. Benning smiled, and then he too walked by me, patted my shoulder, squeezed it, and followed after his wife up to bed.

I couldn’t stifle my groan.

“What?” Cy asked me

“They all think I’m some sad sack now. For Pete’s sake Cy, why’d you have to go and tell ’em that I’m a damn orphan and get all maudlin on me?”

“I—”

Carolyn caught her breath and then leaned over and hugged me tight.

“Oh for crissakes.” I groaned louder the second time, and Cy chuckled softly.

After a minute, I ordered Carolyn to get the hell off me, and I went to take a shower. Cy and I had a small room at the end of the hall on the second floor, and we had to share a bathroom with others. When I was on my way back to our room, sleep shorts hanging off my hips, hair sticking straight up, too hot to put on my T-shirt yet, I heard someone call me. Turning, I found Ross.

I tipped my head and squinted, sizing him up. Usually, I didn’t make snap judgments about people. I took my time deciding if I liked them or not. But Ross was different. I hated him. And I wasn’t stupid; I knew why. He easily deserved the man I was crazy about, and I did not, plus he looked like a damn fashion model. He and Cy fit. Me and Cy were a train wreck that continually happened.

“You heard me and Brett talking earlier, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

He took a breath. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I mean, I won’t lie and say that when you’re gone that I’m not going to ask him out, but for now…. I’m leaving in the morning. I can’t compete with the whole orphaned cowboy bullshit.”

I moved to walk around him.

“It’s crap, though.”

I stopped and looked back at him.

“You don’t leave a man that looks like that or works that job or has the financial portfolio he has alone. You just don’t. You keep thinking that you can ride off and he’ll just be here when you get back each time, and that’s idiotic. You should not even have a choice. A man like you, lacking in prospects and everything else, where do you get off even being here or—”

“Oh.”

We both looked to the end of the hall where the gasp had come from, and there was Cy, standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a big fluffy brown robe, hair tousled, smiling, his bare feet poking out from under the flannel pajama bottoms.

“Hi.” I heard Ross exhale.

Cy forced a smile, and then his eyes flicked over to me. “Web?”

Dear God.

Really, you would have had to be blind to miss the open joy on the man’s face or the carnal heat in his eyes. Without thinking, he licked his lips, clenched his jaw, and took a deep steadying breath. No doubt about it, the man liked me just a little bit.

“Are you coming to bed?”

“Right now,” I assured him, striding down the hall fast, brushing against his robe on my way into the room and hearing him call out a goodnight to Ross before he closed and locked the door behind me. I turned to face him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Wantin’ me instead of the guy who’s better for you.”

He