of you.” He snickered, and Shea damned the hot rush of embarrassment to his cheeks.
“Well, he didn’t. I slept in my truck.”
“Better there than with an ex you don’t really care about. Ain’t it time you told him that to his face?”
“I tried, but he don’t like listening.”
“Maybe you gotta talk louder. Or not tell him when you’re doing shots. You were on fire last night.”
“What good are you two if you don’t save me from myself?” Shea grumbled, not really angry with his friends. The only person he was well and truly mad at was himself. “I’ll see y’all later. We have to shear the sheep, and there’s an auction I wanna go to after lunch. They have some horses I think we can get at a good price.”
“Whatever you say, Boss.” They trotted away, and he started the truck.
“And cut out that ‘boss’ shit,” he yelled after them and grinned, gunning the motor.
He, Craig, and Johnny grew up together. The two men had been a couple since they graduated high school, and had given him the courage to come out to his father. When both Craig’s and Johnny’s parents turned their backs on them, Shea’s father had given them jobs and a place to live without question.
A fresh wave of grief hit him square in the chest at his loss. “Dammit, Daddy.” He pounded the steering wheel. “Why you? It ain’t fair.”
“Don’t be wishin’ ill on others, now.” Shea could hear his father’s quiet rebuke as if he sat next to him in the truck. “Concentrate on yourself and bein’ the best you can be.”
He parked in front of the main house, in the paved area they’d put in once they decided to convert Forget Me Not into a dude ranch. Then he hotfooted it up the steps and let himself in. His stomach let out a growl, and he hoped Aunt Patty had a big breakfast waiting. Sniffing the air with appreciation, he crossed the wide-open space of the rustic front room toward the rear of the house. He pushed open the kitchen door, and spying Patty standing in front of her huge professional stove, he went over, slipped his arms around the only mother figure he’d ever known, and kissed her soft cheek.
“Mornin’, gorgeous.”
“Don’t think that’s gonna butter me up none, Shea Montgomery.” She turned around and pressed her lips together, but not before Shea caught them twitching upward. Sky-blue eyes that matched his own sparkled as she pointed to the table. “It’s a good thing there happens to be extra. Go on and sit yourself down.” She flicked him with her dish towel.
When his mother died giving birth to him, Patty had put aside her own grief at her sister’s death and moved in to help his lost and bewildered father raise him. And even when she married his father seven years later, she’d never let Shea call her Momma, so she’d always been his Aunt Patty. Shea couldn’t have been happier for them and loved her more than anything in the world.
“Here you go,” she said, placing a plate heaped high with fluffy pancakes, crispy turkey bacon—gotta watch the fat if he wanted his abs to keep making him money—and scrambled egg whites.
Happier than a pig sleeping in the sunshine, Shea dug into his food. Patty set a steaming cup of coffee in front of him and sat across the table with her mug of lavender tea.
“Thank you, my love.”
“Don’t thank me just yet. Tell me, where’d you find yourself this morning when you woke up?”
Crap.
A hundred different excuses popped into his head, but Patty would see right through his bullshit. He never could fool her. Whether he was skipping school or trying to figure out a way to hide a bad grade on his report card, somehow she always knew. Yet here he was, thirty years old, and he still hadn’t learned his lesson. He gave her a half smile before opening his mouth—
“You know I can see right through whatever you’re cookin’ up in that head of yours. That Shea Montgomery smile fulla charm might work for the fellas up there in Dallas with them underwear pictures they take of you, but it don’t hold no water down here, ’specially with me.”
Chastened, Shea cast his eyes to the big old farm table and propped his chin in his hands. “I, uh, had a little too much to drink with Toby and spent the night in my truck.”