Christmas Cowboy (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance #4) - Elana Johnson
Chapter One
Slate Sanders drove down the highway next to the Gulf of Mexico, the window down as the sun came up. The scent of the beach and seaweed touched his nose every so often, and he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.
He’d spent four years behind the fences and walls of River Bay Federal Correctional Facility. He hadn’t had a girlfriend or a wife when he’d gone into prison, and he hadn’t thought he wanted one now that he was out.
Images of Nate and Ginger walking hand-in-hand, their heads bent together, flowed through his mind. He then remembered the way Ted and Emma sat on the back porch of their cabin, the love between them real and infectious.
Maybe Slate had been bitten. Maybe he wanted to meet someone who would make his heart feel less like a black stone and more like a vital human organ. Maybe he could if he didn’t literally run away from every female he laid eyes on.
He’d been at Hope Eternal Ranch for almost two months, and he still hadn’t said more than hello to any of the women who worked there. A few women lived next door in the West Wing, but Slate never went there. More women worked out on the ranch, with the horseback riding lessons, or with other chores. He kept his head down and hadn’t spoken to any of them either.
He wasn’t sure why, other than he wasn’t sure Hope Eternal was his final landing place. He couldn’t go back to banking, but he wasn’t as keen to grab onto the cowboy lifestyle with both hands the way Nate, Ted, and Dallas had.
The three of them never went anywhere without their cowboy hats and boots, and they fit right in on this ranch. Slate hadn’t fit in anywhere, except with the other junkies.
“Can’t go back there,” he told himself. He absolutely would not go back to Austin, where he could easily slip back into the businessmen underground, where professionals worked their day jobs and then partied all night.
His phone rang, and Slate reached for it. Nate’s name sat on the screen, and Slate slowed down to pull over. The truck he’d been able to get wasn’t new or fancy, like the one Nate drove, and he couldn’t talk without holding the phone to his ear.
“Hey,” he answered as he pulled to the side of the road.
“Where are you?”
“Just driving.”
“You’re not going north, are you?”
Slate rolled his eyes, glad this wasn’t a video call. “No, Dad,” he said.
Nate didn’t laugh, sigh, or otherwise make any noise. He did say, “Ted worries about you when you leave before dawn.”
“Ted does, huh?”
“We all do,” Nate said.
“I’m clean,” Slate said. “I haven’t touched drugs in over four years, Nate.”
“I know that,” he said. “I also know, as does Dallas, how loud the call of addictive substances can be. We love you, and we want you to be happy.”
“I’m just driving by the water,” Slate said, looking over to it. “I like the water.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. Several moments of silence went by, and then he added, “It’s Sunday, and that means we’ll have breakfast at the West Wing.”
“Yeah, I know about it,” Slate said.
“You’ve never come.”
“No, I haven’t.” Slate didn’t explain further. He’d only been twenty-nine when he’d gone into prison, and he’d only had a couple of girlfriends in his life at all. Once the drugs had taken center stage in his life, Slate didn’t care about anything or anyone else.
He needed something else to focus on, but Slate had never felt so lost.
“I’ll let you go,” Nate said. “Just…call one of us if you need us, okay?”
“Okay,” Slate said. He stayed still on the shoulder for another minute, and then he eased back onto the road and pulled over into a parking lot at a beach. One other car sat there, and Slate barely gave it a glance as he got out of his vehicle. The warmth of the sun never really went away in this part of Texas, but the morning was definitely the best time to find a whisper of cool air.
He went down the wooden steps to the sand, trying to remember who he was. Thinking about who he was five years ago, before everything had gone down at the bank, was like trying to think about someone else. Trying to live someone else’s life, with memories that didn’t fit who he was now. There was nothing to remember about who he was, because he wasn’t that man anymore.