Overprotective Cowboy - Elana Johnson Page 0,1

days, bud,” Nate said, glancing up as a guard walked by their table. “Hey, Percy.”

The guard turned, surprised, but his face melted into a smile when he recognized Nate. “Nate,” he said. “Wow.” He glanced at Ted as he stuck out his hand to shake Nate’s. “How’s life out there?”

“So great,” Nate said. “I’m engaged now, and Connor hasn’t died yet.”

Percy laughed, and Ted did a little as well. “Wow, engaged.”

Nate cut a look at Ted, who’d heard this news before. “Yeah, she owns the ranch where I did my reentry.”

“And you’re going there too, right Ted?” Percy asked.

“I suppose so,” Ted said, annoyed that he’d known before Ted had. But he knew that was just how things were done in the Bureau of Prisons. The prisoner was always the last to know his own fate, it seemed.

The bell rang, and Nate got to his feet. “That’s yours, Ted. See you Monday.”

Ted stood up and hugged Nate again, realizing he only had to count down three more days. He watched Nate head for the exit along with all the other visitors, and a flash of gratitude and appreciation for the man filled him.

Ted didn’t get a lot of visitors, as his family lived a few hundred miles away, and neither of his parents could make the drive alone anymore. They emailed still, and he talked to his mother on the phone every week, even if the conversation was only fifteen minutes long.

He waited in the room with all the tables and chairs where visiting took place until the guards released them, and he had to make a decision about that afternoon’s automotive class. It would be his last one, and he hadn’t anticipated that.

So he’d go, because Dallas ran the workshop, and the man who was part of the Mulbury Boys never went anywhere without the scent of grease accompanying him. He loved running the workshops, and he even had special permission to work in the shop when he wasn’t doing classes. The beauty of the low-security facility.

There were plenty of rules too, and Ted had bucked against them at first. He’d been in the unit for a while before Nate had shown up, wide-eyed and clenching his fingers into fists as he entered the unit for the first time.

Ted remembered exactly what it was like to walk into the facility for the first time, and he and Nate had tried to make the transition as easy as possible for newboots after that.

He wouldn’t be tinkering with an engine for a couple of hours though, so he returned to the dormitory, choosing not to go outside quite yet. Spring had arrived in Texas, and Ted wondered what the air at the ranch tasted like. Nate had told him about the bees the ranch cultivated, and Ted closed his eyes, almost able to hear the buzzing and taste the honey.

Almost.

Ted had lived his whole life with the word almost riding on the back of his tongue. The fact that he’d almost used a knife in the brawl he’d gotten into which had landed him in this facility was the biggest one. Yeah, that was a very big almost.

“I saw Nate leaving,” a man said, and Ted opened his eyes to look at Slate Sanders. He’d joined the Mulbury Boys the moment he’d come into the facility, because he was a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and extremely laid back.

“Yeah,” Ted said. “He came to visit me. I’m going to Hope Eternal.”

A smile formed on Slate’s face, though Ted could see the longing in his eyes. He’d received a sentence of only thirty months, though, and he’d be out in ten. He could be in the camp too, but he’d stayed in the low because of the opportunities here. With more people, there was more access to health care, and infinitely more classes and opportunities to learn something.

Slate needed something else once he left this place, and he’d wanted the chance to take as many classes as possible so he could find something he could do after his sentence was up.

He came from the financial sector as well, the same as Nate, though Slate had been a stock broker out of Dallas, and Nate had been an investment banker in Houston.

Dallas had been a surgeon who liked to take apart engines on the weekends, and he’d really embraced his mechanic side behind locked doors and high fences.

“That’s great,” Slate said.

“Yeah,” Ted agreed. He honestly had no idea if the ranch