he knew it would be Cy. His brother had an alarm set to text Ames every Sunday evening, and he lived and died by his alarms. Ames was grateful for them, because setting the reminders helped free Cy’s mind enough so that he could function.
Hiring a shop manager had helped a ton, and the last eight or nine months since he’d gotten back together with Patsy had completely transformed him again.
Ames was happy for his brother. He was. He absolutely was.
He reached for the next bale of hay he needed to throw down the conveyor belt, grateful for the leather gloves he wore. He focused on the work, because he wasn’t the only one in the loft, and he couldn’t just be tossing things wherever.
He was grateful for the sun. For the sky above Texas. For Jeremiah Walker, who had hired him on at Seven Sons Ranch.
Ames’s new habit the past few months was to go over all the things he was grateful for whenever the heaviness and enormity of life started to press down on him.
“Just a couple more,” Orion said over the walkie on Cub’s belt, and Ames met the other cowboy’s eye.
“One each,” Cub said, his bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief. Ames wondered if he’d ever been as carefree. He’d never been one to pull pranks and laugh at every little thing someone said, the way Cub did.
He’d been told when he was eight that he’d inherit two billion dollars when he turned twenty-one, and that his father expected him to do something with it. The Hammond boys didn’t have “the talk” until they were thirteen, but once Wes knew, it trickled down the brothers until Colton had told the twins the day after he’d turned thirteen.
Ames supposed he hadn’t been much fun since then. Cy didn’t seem to carry the same worry about things that Ames did, and he’d dated a ton in his teens, designed and built tree houses, and then did a welding certificate while he waited for his money.
He’d always known what he wanted to do with his inheritance—open a custom motorcycle shop.
Ames drove one of the bikes his brother personally designed and built, and he was grateful for that too.
He tossed his last bale of hay onto the belt, glad his shoulders didn’t ache constantly the way they had when he’d first started at the ranch. He only worked a few days a week, and that was just fine by him. He didn’t need the crazy, packed, full-time schedule of a cop, though he had originally come to Three Rivers to join the police force here.
In the end, Texas had experienced some natural disasters in the few months leading up to his arrival that had every county and district across the state tightening their budgets. The position he’d interviewed for and received just after Christmas suddenly wasn’t available anymore.
This time, he hadn’t kept the secret from his brothers or his parents. He’d told them all—and then surprised everyone once again when he’d announced that he was moving to Texas anyway.
He could still see Gray’s drawn face and unhappy eyes as Ames loaded up his truck on the day he’d moved, only six weeks ago.
You don’t have to do this, Gray had said. He was much less intimidating than he’d once been—especially when he was holding his little girl.
Ames loved Gray with his whole soul, and he had missed running with his brother. He missed getting Hunter after school and working with the boy on his history homework. He missed driving him out to the farm and staying for dinner. Hugging his mother. Holding baby Jane.
He missed a whole lot of things, and Ames started to spiral as he climbed down the ladder from the loft to the main level of the barn.
Orion stood there, cinching the hay bales onto the trailer. “Thanks, guys. That’s it for today.”
Cub whooped, but Ames just nodded. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and replaced his cowboy hat. He didn’t mind the work, though it was incredibly hot in the Texas Panhandle in June.
But he didn’t have much else to do. He’d bought a small fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood in Three Rivers. An older neighborhood, and the woman who’d owned the house before him had lived in it for sixty-two years.
Her kids had finally convinced her to move into an assisted living facility, but they’d promised not to sell the house until she passed away. That had happened a few months ago, and Ames