Willaby was surprised when you stepped out the door. You‘ve grown a little since he last saw you. And if the bags of horse feed you stacked in the barn are any indication, you’ve gotten a mite stronger too.”
Cru looked at Val with a teasing smirk. “This weakling author could lift bags of horse feed?”
“And he helped paint the barn and mucked out the stalls,” Lucas said.
Val couldn’t help grinning at Chester and Lucas’s praise. They always had been good at building their boys up. “It wasn’t a big deal. The other guys have done much more than I have. I just did a few things around the ranch.”
“Still, we appreciate it,” Chester said. “We also appreciate the money you gave to rebuild our house after the fire. Which is why we wanted you to have a piece of the Double Diamond.”
Lucas and Chester had given a piece of their land to each of the six boys as a thank you for giving money to rebuild their house after a gas explosion had burned it to the ground. None of the boys had expected payment for their help and they had all tried to refuse the land, but the Diamond brothers would have none of it. Now that Cru, Logan, and Holden had all moved back and gotten married, each planned to keep the land and live on it.
Val was happy for his friends. And even happier that Chester and Lucas had people to watch out for them as they got older. But he had no use for his land. With his parents now retired in Florida and his sister living in Oregon, there was no reason for him to move back to Texas. Maybe he would divide his land between the other boys. They had always been better cowboys than he was.
Although he had enjoyed hanging out at the Double Diamond and playing ranch hand for the last month. It had been a nice break from the stress of writing the next bestseller. Maybe he should keep a small section of land and build a writing retreat. A place to escape the hustle and bustle of New York. But right now, he needed to deal with this situation.
“While I think the sheriff was just fishing,” he said, “I think he can still cause problems if he started spreading his suspicions. We all remember what happened after the townsfolk got riled up about Chester and Lucas bringing a bunch of wild teenagers to town.”
Chester grunted. “The crazy fools took a signed petition to that senator and had our permit to run the boys’ ranch revoked.”
“I don’t think it was the townsfolk pushing for that as much as Hank Gardener,” Logan said. “He hated us—or not y’all as much as me.”
“That’s because you were sniffing around after his daughter.” Chester spit another stream of tobacco, this time barely missing Val’s boots.
Cru laughed. “I think he was doing a lot more than sniffing. They were playing house in your old rundown shack.”
“And we still are.” Logan grinned foolishly. He had fixed up the old house that Chester and Lucas had lived in when they first bought the ranch, and now he lived there with Evie and their teenage son Clint. “I agree with Val. If the sheriff should start putting crazy ideas in people’s heads, it wouldn’t be good for the Double Diamond ranch, Holden’s new law office, or the Gardener Ranch.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Cru asked.
“Find Sam Sweeney,” Holden and Val answered at the same time.
Logan nodded. “If we find Sam, it will put a stop to any gossip and it will also help out Maisy. I feel sorry for the girl. I don’t think she wants to cause trouble. I really just think she wants to find her father.”
Lucas snorted. “She’s better off not knowing that lowdown snake. Which is why we didn’t tell her the truth about firing him. But maybe if we had, she wouldn’t have run to the sheriff.”
“She doesn’t need to know about what went on while Sam was here,” Chester said. “And neither does the sheriff. That’s ranch bid-ness.”
“I agree,” Holden said. “The less the sheriff knows the better. Until he has a warrant, we don’t have to talk to him at all. But it’s still a good idea if we find Sam.”
“I tried looking on the Internet and didn’t find anything,” Val said. “I have a call in to Linc, but he hasn’t called me back yet.”
“Keep trying,” Holden said.