After the Sunset (2 page)

And while it had been hard for Rand, severing all ties with the town he had grown up in, his warm welcome in Hillman twenty miles to the east had been overwhelming. Hillman had not been able to boast of having a large, thriving, eight-hundred-acre ranch in their county, but now they could. I had thought at first that it was the money he represented that they were responding to, but it was also the man himself.

Hillman had become Rand’s new hometown and was, as a result, reaping the benefit of both his philanthropy and his loyalty. He made a generous donation to the senior center, built a huge gas station/mini-mart with his friend AJ Myers that had already increased traffic in town, and donated five tricked-out computers complete with scanners and printers to the county library. He built a feed store, and put a new roof on the gymnasium of the high school when he found out it leaked during the last thunderstorm. In the next year, there were more city improvements in the works, and the proposed elementary school was at the top of the list. When Rand had been invited to attend school board meetings, he had been very touched. He was an important citizen in Hillman, his voice appreciated, his opinion courted, and his patronage counted on.

“Stefan!”

Wrenched from my thoughts, I found myself standing in front of Sheriff Glenn Colter. “Oh, Sheriff, what can I do for you?”

“You bought the Silver Spring from Adam Weber last week.”

I had to catch up with the conversation that we were apparently having.

“Didn’t you?”

“I didn’t,” I told him, taking another sip of my latte. “Rand did.”

“Adam said that you negotiated the deal.”

“That’s what I used to do, Sheriff,” I said, watching the lines in his face tighten. “And even though I teach school now, at Westland Community College, apparently it’s a skill I still possess. The whole background in acquisitions thing doesn’t just go away.”

“Well, Adam said that you were real fair with him so that’s why he sold, but that he didn’t mean to include the parcel of land down by the Dalton place.”

“That’s not what he told me.”

“Well, he wants it back.”

“Really?” I asked drolly. “You talked to him in Vegas, did you?”

“What I mean is,” he said, then cleared his throat, “that’s what he was fixin’ to tell you before he left.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Stefan.”

“You’re talking about the parcel that butts up against the Coleman piece, right?”

He grunted loudly. “We both know that those folks from Trinity want that piece, because the way it’s zoned now if Rand sells them the Silver Spring and clear down to the highway, then they can make their own drive and not run through Winston at all.”

“Yes, I know,” I told him. “And with the gas station in Hillman and a resort between the Red Diamond and Hillman… why would anyone even go through Winston?”

“Rand bought up the land, and now he’s fixin’ to turn us into a ghost town.”

I shook my head. “The people from Trinity—”

“That son of a bitch, Mitch Powell, wants to build a resort and a golf course and God knows what else out here, but only if he gets the land to the east where—”

“Rand sold it to him,” I said, because it was no longer a secret and would actually create a whole slew of jobs for all the neighboring towns. Mitchell Powell, golf pro turned entrepreneur turned multi-millionaire, was going to build
the
resort in the area. He was about to put Hillman on the map, thanks to Rand, who had basically collected a monopoly that no one had wanted or given a damn about, and sold it for buckets of money that he was poised to do great things with.

The Silver Spring, Twin Forks, and Bowman ranches, none of which had been working ranches in years, would all be converted into a huge, sprawling, hundred-acre monolith of wealth and prosperity. It would be a very posh, very exclusive, very expensive resort, catering to the rich and famous, that would be far enough from the ranch as to not adversely affect it or change the lives of the people who lived there. The Red Diamond would remain the same, and the land that Rand had bought would finally be put to good use. And even though the town of Winston itself would not see the boon directly, as there were no civic projects planned, the people who lived there would benefit directly from the hundreds of new jobs that were about to be created.

If you didn’t work on a ranch, there was nothing to do in Winston. You had to drive to Lubbock, just like I had to, to work. But now, thanks to Rand Holloway buying and selling and Mitchell Powell building, there was about to be a great influx of employment.

“Rand sold all three ranches to Powell?”

“Yessir, he did,” I said, walking around him to the driver’s side door. “Now move the cruiser. I wanna go home.”

The muscles in his jaw tightened as he followed me. “How could he do that to the town he grew up in?”

“He just created thousands of jobs for the people of the town he grew up in,” I told him. “Buildings will go up, and when that’s done, there will be jobs at the resort to fill. This community just got saved.”

“But where the resort would be…. Hillman will be the town the resort is located in, not Winston.”

“Why does that matter? The people you serve will be better off for the influx of jobs.”

“And Hillman becomes the point of interest between Midland and Lubbock while Winston is left as it is.”

“What would you have Rand do about that, Sheriff?”

“You’re a smart boy. You understand what I’m saying to you.”

I squinted at him. “Papers have been signed, Sheriff. Mitchell Powell has come and gone with deeds and rights and more lawyers than Rand said he ever saw in his life. The people who sold their property to Rand did so under no duress. We both know that the Silver Spring and the Twin Forks have been dead for years, and the Bowman place… well, all Carrie wanted to do was sell and move to Oregon to be close to her son. Running a successful ranch in this day and age is hard work, and for some it’s easier to simply get paid and get out. Rand found use for land that was going to waste, and because of that, his own ranch can be that much bigger and that much more lucrative and even more capable of supporting the men and their families, who live and work on it. Now I understand that you’re concerned about Winston, but Rand had to do what was best for the Red Diamond, and in the process, he ended up doing right by the town.”

“The mayor doesn’t see it that way.”

“I suspect Rand won’t give a damn.”

He scowled at me. “I suspect you’d be right.”

I smiled back.

He visibly deflated.

“It’s not your fault, you know. I know that you weren’t one of those who wanted Rand off the board.”

His eyes searched mine.

“I know your only reservations with Rand stem from the fact that sometimes he can be kind of an ass.”

“Sometimes?”

I chuckled, smiling bigger, unable to stop myself. “It’s late, Sheriff. Are you not eating at home tonight?”

“No. Mrs. Colter is visiting her sister in Abilene.”

“Well, would you like to come by the house and have some dinner? I have more than enough for three.”

“No thank you, Stefan, but I do appreciate the invite. I’ve got to go over to the Drake place and talk to them about Jeff.”

It took me a minute because nothing at all ever happened in Winston. It was why Rand and I had been such big news. “Oh, the drag racing,” I chuckled.

“It ain’t funny. They could get themselves killed doin’ that.”

“On the tractors,” I said, trying really hard not to sound patronizing. “Yes, I’m sure they could.”

He thrust his hand at me to shake. “Call me when you’re makin’ the lasagna again.”

“Yessir, Sheriff, I sure will,” I promised, taking the offered hand in mine.

He gave me a smile before I turned to get in my car.

“Stef.”

I looked back at him over my shoulder, opening the door.

“Call me if you’re makin’ the pot roast too.”

“Oh, okay,” I teased him. “I didn’t realize you had favorites.”

“Damn right,” he told me before he suddenly froze. “You ain’t makin’ any of those tonight, are ya?”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

He grunted before he got in the mammoth car.

It was actually really nice that the man had favorites. Before I began my life with Rand, my culinary skills were basic at best. But the restaurants in Winston were both barbeque places, and while they were good, sometimes variety was nice, so one of us had to learn to cook, and of the two of us I had more time. He really enjoyed it when I slaved away in the kitchen for him; why, I had no idea, but the look on his face when he came in the house and found me in the kitchen was enough to melt me through the floor. He really enjoyed the hell out of me being domestic.

I watched as the sheriff moved his SUV, honking as he drove away. The deputies both followed suit, and when I was headed for home, I had time to think about the transformation my life had gone through in just a short amount of time.

T
WO
years ago, Rand Holloway and I had gone from enemies to lovers in sizzling style over the course of his sister Charlotte Holloway’s four-day wedding blowout. The bride, my best friend in the world, had asked, ordered, commanded me to be her man of honor, and because she needed her brother there as well… Rand and I were forced to share space. It was a recipe for disaster, as he and I could barely manage to be civil for any extended period of time.

Rand and I had never been anything but a horror to each other, but that weekend the reasoning for ten years of guerilla warfare had become clear. Rand liked me, had always liked me, and in fact it was actually way more than that. He was sort of crazy about me. But putting an out and proud gay man together with a cattle rancher from Texas had been a tough idea for him to come to grips with. Once he had, though, once he had figured out the truth about himself, what he needed and what he wanted, he had been ready to let me know.

The path to true love had not been an easy one. While Rand and I were navigating the change from enemies to friends to lovers, my ex-boss, Knox Bishop, had been trying to kill me and frame me for fraud and embezzlement. It had been a very interesting week of my life and one that had, in the end, prompted my move across the country to live on a cattle ranch. And though I loved the man desperately, the transition was anything but easy.

Rand was a cowboy, and I was a city boy used to having access to all the things a metropolis had to offer twenty-four hours a day. Not that I didn’t love the ranch or the man who owned it, but there had to be a happy medium, and I ended up making all the changes while Rand’s life stayed pretty much the same. And while I understood that there was no other way for that to work—his ranch was the unchangeable, unmovable piece in the equation—even though logically I did get it, I ended up angry nonetheless.

I took my frustration out on Rand until I realized that the person I was really mad at was me. I was trying to live my old life and my new one all at the same time, and it wasn’t working for anyone.

What was nice was that I even had the opportunity to try out what didn’t end up working in the first place. I had been able to make the transition from Chicago to Lubbock because I was hired by Abraham Cantwell, my best friend’s new father-in-law, to restructure his financial office. Unfortunately, with the changing economy, my new job was short-lived. Mr. Cantwell had to let all but two of his staff go and eventually closed his business, retiring later that year. In looking for new gainful employment, I had been faced with the decision to either look for a job in an even larger city than Lubbock or stay there and take a position at a much lower salary than what I was used to. I could either commute, and keep an apartment in Dallas or Houston and visit on the weekends, or I could stay in Lubbock and go home every night to Rand. It was time to make a decision about my future, and since I had dived into the deep end two years earlier, I chose my cowboy and life on the ranch, even though the idea of losing myself there terrified me. When I fell back on my minor and took a position at the community college teaching Intro to World History, Rand had been beside himself.

“I have no idea why you’re so happy,” I had told him as I set up my small—tiny—cubicle of an office in late August in preparation for the fall semester.

“You chose us, Stef,” he had said simply, his smile out of control as he looked around the broom closet that was posing as my new work space. “I don’t think you know what you really did here.”

But I did. I had trusted him and believed in him, put faith in the life we shared, and had chosen to lean on him instead of standing alone. I had been halfway in and halfway out for two years and had finally, completely, committed.

“Stef.”

I looked over my shoulder at him and realized how big he seemed in the tiny office.

“You know I just signed that three-year agreement with Grillmaster to be the beef supplier for their entire restaurant chain.”

He had spoken so casually, but I knew it was a big deal. I had helped him get ready and coached him on the contract. His lawyer had appreciated my help, and now, apparently, it was all signed, sealed, and delivered. I was thrilled for him and his ranch and so rushed across the five feet and launched myself into his arms.

I was surprised when he caught me and put me down on my new desk, wedged himself between my legs, his hands on my face, in my hair, as he looked down at me from his towering height.

“This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to the ranch, Stef.”

It was a huge account, and one that I knew Rand and his lawyers—there were four now—had been working on for a while. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked excitedly. “We have to go out and celebrate
and—”

“You know why I wanted that deal so bad?” He cut me off, stilling me.

“Yeah, so you could be that much closer to financial—”

“It was for you, Stef,” he told me, pushing my hair back from my face, tracing my eyebrows with his thumbs, my cheekbones, to my chin. “That account is yours to take care of and grow and work. It was your idea to begin with. I wasn’t even gonna bid on that contract, but you convinced me to try. Without you being my champion, I would have never thought that I could do something like that.”