EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) Read online

  EMMETT

  Corbin Brothers, Book 1

  L E X I E R A Y

  Copyright © 2016

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  What the hell was it going to take for me to get noticed in this family?

  I didn’t hate my brothers. I didn’t hate the ranch. I loved everything so much that I gave it my all, but did anyone ever stop for a moment to thank me? Oh, thank you, Emmett, so much, for everything you’re doing?

  Of course not.

  In the dead middle of a family that could be the starting lineup for a basketball team — if basketball were the preferred Corbin sport, which it wasn’t — was the forgotten place. My place. And maybe it was easy for my brothers to forget about me because I was the most reliable one out of all of them.

  There was Hunter, the war hero, Avery, whose marriage had saved the ranch, Tucker, a highly decorated veteran of the police force, and Chance, the most lauded of all us Corbins, the one who had given up everything to keep this family together and the ranch going.

  There really wasn’t room for me in this family. That was just the truth of the matter.

  With so many big personalities and even bigger deeds — Hunter came back one leg short from Afghanistan; Avery found love in a marriage that started out as a business merger — I supposed that falling through the cracks was just going to have to be my role in this family.

  Except that I was done doing that. It was my turn to make my mark on the Corbin Ranch, just as the rest of my brothers were allowed to do.

  “Emmett, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times,” Chance was saying, papers spread over the surface of the folding table he’d shoved into a corner of the laundry room. “Money is just too tight right now to do what you’re asking to do.”

  “That’s right, you’ve been too busy telling me and not listening to me,” I said, thoroughly irritated. “It’s like the time I told you that you should move the office out to the trailer. Avery’s not in there anymore. Do you like the smell of freshly laundered denim to accompany your accounting?”

  “I’m too busy for any of that,” Chance said, waving his hand at me. “You just don’t understand what it takes to run this ranch anymore. It’s twice as big as before.”

  “That’s true,” I said slowly, patiently, like I was talking to a younger brother instead of my oldest brother. “But we also have twice the people, now. Twice the success. Paisley’s on the other end of this operation. If you’re having trouble keeping up, maybe you should let her shoulder more of the weight.”

  Paisley Summers was the Summers side of the newly minted Corbin-Summers Ranch. It was her and Avery’s wedding that cemented this deal, expanding our families’ ranches by putting a gate on the fence that used to divide the property line. It had been enough to stave off a foreclosure by the bank on the Corbin side of business — and it had helped Paisley remain in control of her side of the ranch. Everyone seemed to be pretty happy about the state of things, except for Chance, who never really seemed happy about anything, and me.

  Me because my ideas about how this operation could be bolstered were always ignored.

  “Emmett, we’re in the middle of construction for the barracks of the dude ranch project,” Chance said. “Why do you always bug me right when we’re busy doing something else?”

  “We’re always busy doing something,” I argued. “That’s the nature of the business.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you made room for Hunter and Hadley’s rehab business,” I said. “Then you made room for the Corbin-Summers merger. And then Avery’s idea about the dude ranch.” That was what the barracks were for — rich people who wanted a taste of the ranching life as some sort of niche experience, something quaint to chat about over pricey cocktails with their equally sheltered social circle. It had been a way to diversify the family business, something that both Chance and Paisley — CEOs of their respective sides of the ranch — had been able to throw their energies behind. The drought wasn’t letting up, and we were still rotating night shifts to keep watch over the cattle after a spate of thefts.

  “What you’re asking for is a lot more than just building a barracks and inviting people to come stay for a couple of nights on the ranch, pretending to do work,” Chance said.

  “Then let me explain it to you again,” I said. “It’s not hard. It would bring in a lot more capital than the dude ranch and the rehab business combined. Horses are life out here. It’s how people get around. You don’t have to buy gas to fuel them or worry about getting their oil changed or anything like that. If we had a facet of the ranch dedicated to horse breeding, then we could really give the family business a boost.”

  “What you’re proposing is more complicated than it already is,” my brother said, pushing himself away from the table and rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “I know this, and you have to know this if you know anything about the business. You’re asking for the use of an entire pasture when you know full well that the cattle need to be rotated among all of them to make this thing work.”

  “It’s just one pasture,” I said. “We have double the pastures now, with Paisley’s land.”

  “And double the herd.”

  “Think about the other changes we’re making to support our new projects,” I tried. “Paving the drive down to the river for the rehab. Carving out another slice of land for the barracks. Why can’t you find it in this place to devote some space to a horse breeding operation?”

  “Because what are we going to feed them?” Chance demanded. “If you can guarantee that the river will fill back up with water, that it will rain again, that the grass will grow and we can stop investing our time and money into buying grain or trying to make grain grow here on the ranch, then maybe we can come to an understanding about what to feed your goddamn horses.”

  My brother’s patience was at its end, and I knew I’d have to slip away and try again another day. It always worked like this. I tried to stand up for my interests, what I truly believed would help the ranch, and when I got shut down, I had to slink away, tail between my legs, to lick my wounds.

  “We’re already feeding our goddamn horses on the same things the herd is eating,” I said, a last-ditch effort to save some remaining shred of my pride. “If you ever cared enough to look at my business plan, you’d see what good sense this makes for the ranch.”

  “If our parents had wanted us to breed horses for a living, that’s what this place would be,” Chance said. “But they didn’t. That wasn’t their vision, or the vision of our grandparents, or our great-grandparents, and so on. This is supposed to be a cattle ranch, and that’s what we’re trying to keep on doing, Emmett.”

  I could’ve pointed out that things were as different now as humanly possible. Whatever ranching vision Chance was trying to preserve as a part of our parents’ legacy was night from day. Things had changed dramatically even over the course of the past year. That was the nature of life — it changed. The harder you tried to hold on to the way something was, the more different it became until you didn’t recognize what you now had to what you used to
have.

  If our parents were still alive today, they wouldn’t recognize our ranch.

  It had to bother Chance that there had been so many changes, but if it did, he never let it show. He poured himself into the business side of things, examining the operation from every angle, trying to see where we could nip and tuck in order to keep everything running.

  The Summers money influx had kept things going, but ranching was, more than ever, a losing business. We couldn’t turn a profit to save our lives, not until this drought ended, at least.

  “Are we down a person today?” Chance asked, eyeing me, looking tired. “Are we suffering somewhere on the ranch because you insisted on telling me your pipe dream again today?”

  I rolled my eyes at him, and pointed downward, toward my knee, still encased in a bulky brace.

  “Doctor’s orders,” I said. “I’m supposed to see Hadley today to find out if I can go back to full duty.”

  “It’s about damn time,” he grumbled, looking back at the spread of papers before him. They looked like bills and budgets and cattle logs, but there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to them. Chance needed someone to help him get organized, but he’d never admit it. That would mean another mouth to feed or pocket to pay, and there just wasn’t the capital for that.

  At least, that’s what he said.

  “Are you sure I can’t move your office out to the trailer?” I asked. “It’s vacant, and it wouldn’t take me much time.”

  “But it would take valuable time away from me,” Chance said. “What am I supposed to do when I’m supposed to be taking care of payroll and balancing the checkbooks and making sure the cattle logs are up to date?”

  “I don’t know, sleep?”

  “Very funny.” Chance shuffled a few papers around half-heartedly. “I’m more comfortable in here, anyway. It’s quiet during the day with just Zoe moving around. Quieter still when Toby will start school in the fall.”

  If I’d been a more daring man, I would’ve commented on that. Chance didn’t want to move the ranch’s office out to the trailer because he liked being around Zoe? He’d said the words himself, but I was pretty sure their meaning hadn’t registered in his mind. It seemed like we got something more than we expected with the housekeeper and her son when Hunter brought them home like wounded animals he hoped to rehabilitate. Chance had apparently taken a special interest.

  “Well, then, unless you have any objections, I’d like to move my things out there,” I said. “Doesn’t make sense to let the place stand empty. I’ll make sure it’s properly maintained, make sure nobody unsavory takes up residence in it.”

  “Do whatever you want,” Chance said tiredly. “I don’t care.”

  “Horse breeding operation?”

  “Shut up.”

  Avery had held residence in the little trailer ever since Hadley had entered the scene, so hell bent on pulling Hunter back into the land of the living that she’d required a place to stay inside the house. But now that Hunter and Hadley had their own cottage down by the river, and now that Avery and Paisley officially lived in the Summers house on the other side of the property, the house was slowly emptying out. With me moving out to the trailer, it was only Chance and Tucker inside the big house again. I remembered how warm and loud it had been when our parents were still alive, all of us in there. It had gotten quiet for a while, right when Hunter had returned from Afghanistan in several different pieces. I thought it would get quieter with most of us leaving to live elsewhere on the property, but everyone found excuses to come back. The Summers house might’ve been nicer, but the Corbin house had more history, more life.

  It would be nice to have a space apart from everyone else. I doubted anyone would really notice I was gone.

  I labored up the stairs and packed what few effects I cared to keep around — a few tomes on horses, my clothes and boots, a smattering of toiletries — and looked at my childhood room. It was strange to be a grown man here. I guess I’d never stopped to think about it. I’d expected to ranch with my family until my parents grew old and we took over for them, all of us living either on the property or around it, but I knew that wasn’t what all of my brothers wanted. All of them had plans to leave the place, or at least dreamed of it, but not me. This was the life I’d always wanted, even if it hadn’t turned out exactly the way I’d expected, ranching without our entire family intact. Things would’ve been much smoother if our parents hadn’t gotten into that car wreck, but there wasn’t much point in wishing for things that would never be. The important thing was that the ranch was still ours — at least for now. There always seemed to be something that was trying to take it away from us, whether it was the bank or offers from people interested in the operation or the land or the drought or some other disaster. The latest was a spate of cattle thefts that we hadn’t gotten to the bottom of, one of which had resulted in Avery getting shot.

  You could say one thing about life on the ranch: it was never boring.

  The trailer was stuffy, but that was nothing opening a few windows wouldn’t solve. Avery had never been thrilled with being on the ranch — not on the surface. He’d stayed out here to get away from us, I believed, even with Hadley in the equation. I liked the idea that being here would give me a little privacy away from everyone to think, to figure out what angle of the horsing operation I could tackle next, the perfect argument to convince Chance and the rest of my brothers that this would work well for our family’s business.

  It would come to me. All I needed was time.

  What I really needed was to get back to work. When I wasn’t working the ranch, all I could think about was the horsing operation. Then, I couldn’t help but pester Chance, getting under his skin in an attempt to escape my own boredom. If I was back on a horse again, riding with my brothers and the rest of the ranch hands, at least I’d be too exhausted at the end of the day to think about the things that might’ve turned out differently for my family and me if my parents hadn’t picked that night to ride into town, if the weather had been just a little different, if the road had been a little straighter.

  Jesus. I really needed a distraction. Putting my things away in the little chest of drawers that Avery had cleaned out when he finally started living full time in Paisley’s house wasn’t cutting it. I left that job only half done and made my way to the barn, the brace hindering my movements more than helping them, in my opinion.

  I shouldn’t have let myself get so worked up earlier. I’d gone to Chance because I needed to tell him something. Something important. Something that didn’t have a damn thing to do with a horsing operation. But now, I thought that maybe it wouldn’t do Chance a lick of good to know that I’d recently taken a strange phone call on the house line. The person, whose voice I didn’t recognize, had threatened both me and my family, telling me that if we didn’t leave, things were going to get ugly. Well, like it or not, things already were ugly. Avery had been shot, and we were still sending night patrols to stay with the herds to try and discourage thefts. I had no idea what could be even harder than that on this family. We were ranchers. We did this almost as a compulsion rather than out of any real passion for it. It was in our blood.

  A single phone call wasn’t going to change that, and I started to feel better about not troubling Chance with it. He didn’t really need to know. It would only cause him to worry.

  I arrived at the horse barn — by far, my favorite place on the ranch. I liked the smell of it, the solitude, the ability to truly do what I wanted to be doing. I remembered my parents the best here, both of them teaching all of us to care for the animals who helped us do our jobs. The rest of my brothers followed along grudgingly; I was the only one who really took to grooming and everything else. All of my brothers liked the wind in their hair, but none of them were terribly interested in helping the creatures that gave them that wind. All of the horses knew me and liked me, and I spoke soft words to them as I passed by their stalls, pausing in front of mine, Sugar. Sugar was a sweet ol
d mare, slower than some of the others in the stable, but dependable. The rest of my brothers had turned their noses up at riding her, preferring the more spirited ones, but Sugar was their loss and my gain. She was a pretty thing, too, gray with a white mane and tail I kept brushed to a glossy shine.

  “Hey, there, sweet girl,” I crooned as she nuzzled the palm of my hand. “You want to go for a ride?”

  Riding horses had been expressly forbidden by Hadley, but I figured if I galloped up to the clinic that doubled as the house she and my baby brother shared, she’d be persuaded to end my medical leave of absence from the ranch.

  Securing a saddle to Sugar was like second nature to me. Most horses fidgeted or kicked or blew up their bellies so you couldn’t get a true fit, but she seemed to like the attention and activity, waiting patiently until I fastened all of the buckles.

  Now came the true test.

  I’d wrenched my knee and torn some tendons fetching a calf out of the gorge several weeks prior, which necessitated rest and the enormous brace on my leg. Hadley had warned me against overexerting myself and doing further damage to my knee, but she also said there was a possibility that I could return to my normal duties today after a quick checkup down at the clinic.

  I wasn’t going to drive down there when I had a chance to ride.

  My knee gave a couple of twinges of protest, but I mounted Sugar with relative ease, confident that I would be even less awkward without the brace, and set out.

  It was going to be hot today. It was already uncomfortably warm outside, a lazy wind doing little to cool my face as I urged Sugar forward alongside the road leading down to the river. It was very nearly finished thanks to the dedicated efforts of the paving crew, but I knew the realities of maintaining such a road. If we had freezes and snowstorms come winter, it would require scraping and salting. With the change of each season, it would likely need repairs to cracks and potholes as the pavement expanded and contracted according to the weather. I wasn’t sure Chance understood what he had signed on for with this road, though maybe he did and that was one of the many reasons he despaired so much lately.