Jake (Downton Cowboys #2) - Miley Maine Page 0,76

picks me up and takes me into the house.

Our home.

He makes love to me, and this time, we do not utter a word.

Reveling in the intimacy of a moment frozen in time, our eyes connect in an eternal promise of the oneness we both yearn for.

We may have just found our happily ever after.

Hope you enjoyed reading Jake’s story. Read Frankie’s story next which is the 3rd one in the Downton Cowboy series. Read an excerpt from Frankie right here in the following pages!

Excerpt: Frankie

Frankie

Watching the stars out in the sky from my large front porch, I was sipping on bourbon when I heard the phone ring in the living room.

Unhurriedly setting down the glass, I got up and made my way inside, pushing the door open as I did. The sweet sounds of the hanging wind chime prompted me to do a little dance on my way to the phone.

“’Ello!” I smiled into the receiver.

“Hey, man,” Danny’s voice greeted me through the line, “just wanted to make sure you ain’t fogettin’ ‘bout tomorrow.”

“Ha!” I chuckled. “How would that be possible? Lookin’ forward to it.”

“Great. Don’t you go pullin’ a Frankie and start day drinkin’ before ya get here, now.” He nervously tittered.

“Well, I’m countin’ on Gigi’s hospitality for that.”

We hung up and I walked right back out to finish my drink and enjoy the breeze.

My older brother’s little remark happened to sum up the way he, Jake, and Gus saw me. The Maverick of the Downton Family or “the wild brother” as they always referred to me. While I liked to live life to the fullest, The Three Stiffs—as I liked to call them—were always a little unsettled by the fire in my veins.

So what if I drank too early, played the field too much, or partied too hard? Where was that imaginary line that they had all agreed to draw and I constantly seemed to cross?

I adored my brothers, especially Danny who gave me an entire ranch all to myself when I turned twenty-five, just a year ago. But for the life of me, I would never understand why I was expected to follow their rules when we had all had a rough childhood and years of fun to make up for.

Danny had been lucky enough to work for a rich ranch owner who—in many ways—sort of adopted him as an adult. Since the man did not have any children of his own or any living relatives, he had ended up leaving his entire estate and millions of dollars in Danny’s name when he passed away.

My older brother had gotten lucky and decided to share it with us all. I was grateful for that. But he was also blessed enough to meet Gigi, a great lady who was obviously the woman of his dreams, which—along with our two brothers—led him to judge me more harshly when it came to my ways with women.

Each one of us had chosen a way of life that made us happy. Desperate attempts at healing the wounds our own father had engraved in our bodies and souls. The drunken thug who used us as punching bags was long gone, but the pain he had left behind was too much to ignore.

And dealing with it was mostly where our differences lay.

To make things more complicated, my approach to owning a ranch was baffling to my brothers, and while I could not blame them, I also could not fully comprehend their nagging that I should “find a good woman, settle down, and commit to endless days of work and family.” Where was that good woman? And what was the rush in settling down?

While I had worked on a ranch before, running my own was a whole new experience. That was why the first thing I had done when I took over the ranch was to find a trusted manager and a capable team of ranch hands to do it for me.

Knowing that it was going to take me more than a year to get the hang of things, I had limited my responsibilities to paperwork and making sure that nobody was ripping me off while taking my time acquiring the necessary skills by watching how everyone did their thing.

None of my men had suspected how little I really knew about running a ranch because I was no fool. I knew when to speak and when to let the manager take over. I called it delegation; my brothers called it carelessness.

I had to also admit that