Nothing But Cowboy (The Raffertys of Last Stand #1) - Justine Davis Page 0,1

for a moment.

“Better get rid of that hay, though. You know how she gets.”

“I know,” Lucas said ruefully as he started to brush at the stuff that had such a knack for clinging to everything.

It was funny, the effort he had to make to talk to the kid, to try and relate. He saw mainly his family, and friends he’d known a long time, so he didn’t have to think about it much. With Lucas, however, he had to think a lot. All of which he supposed had a significance he didn’t really want to think about. He grimaced inwardly at the irony even as the thought formed.

So instead he made the effort. “I remember when I used to forget, and walk in and shed it all over her clean floor. I’ve never seen a volcano in person, but…”

Lucas glanced at him. “I’ll bet you cleaned it up fast.”

“I did.”

“You always jump to do what she says.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

He considered that, and the fact that Lucas was actually holding his gaze, not looking away as he usually did. “She’s earned it. She held us together. If it wasn’t for her, we’d all be scattered to the winds. This ranch would be condos or something by now.”

Lucas frowned at that. But then, slowly, he said, “The first time she gave me an order, I jumped, too.”

Something in the way he said it made Keller hold his gaze in turn and repeat the boy’s own question. “Why?”

“It was the first time I felt like…like I belonged here.”

Keller’s stomach knotted at the way he sounded. He tried for a little lightness. “Hey, my orders don’t make you feel that way?”

Slowly Lucas shook his head. “No, ’cuz she’s the boss.”

The moment the words were out the boy’s eyes widened, almost in fear. And Keller knew he was afraid he’d pissed him off, since he, nominally, was the guy who ran this place. So he didn’t try to hold back his laugh.

“Then you’ve got the lay of the land, kid,” he said with a grin. And was pleased when Lucas relaxed and went back to brushing off the hay.

That pleased feeling had him wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to make this permanent. He might have made the first move, toward fostering Lucas, out of sympathy, but he’d gotten used to having him here now. And thinking about the kid leaving someday, if somebody else wanted to adopt him…no, he didn’t like that. Which surprised him; he’d never expected that.

Keller wondered how the kid would feel about him officially adopting him. He’d have to think about how to bring that up. Not just with Lucas, but with everyone.

They started toward the house.

“How bad do your toes hurt?” he asked when he confirmed his earlier guess by how the boy was walking rather gingerly.

Startled, Lucas gave him a quick glance before saying, “I…a little.”

“We’ll get you a new pair. In the meantime, maybe a pair of Cody’s will fit you better. In fact, maybe a pair of his boots, too. Better for working. Mine are too big, and Ry’s as well. And Chance only has combat boots.”

“What, he’s just going to give them to me?”

“Loan them.” Keller smiled. “Besides, we’ll probably have them back before he even notices they’re gone. You know how he gets.”

It was true that his youngest brother sometimes lost track of…everything when he was working on something with that quick brain of his, most likely something tech-related that none of the rest of them had a clue about. They laughingly called him Cody the Coder, which he inevitably answered with a twitch of his middle finger—except to Mom; she got only an eye roll.

But that was why this weekend Cody was at an exhibition in Dallas, of the latest and greatest in all the things he loved. Both Keller and their mother looked at it as an investment in the ranch. They were all fairly functional with computers thanks to Cody, and Keller himself kept the ranch records in a detailed software program his brother had developed for him to test out.

If it kept working as well as it had—and if he could ever get him to stop tweaking it—Keller thought he should really try to market it. There were unique aspects to running a ranch of any kind, no matter what you were raising, and Cody had covered them all. His last tweak had been to add an alarm notification, not when they were about to run