WHISKEY COWBOY

  A Foster House Novella

  WALKER ROSE

  LE Publishing

  Copyright © 2024 by Walker Rose

  Editing by My Brother’s Editor

  Proofreading by Fairy Proofmother Proofreading, Deaton Author Services, Judy’s Proofreading, and Bookcase Media

  Cover design by Ever After Cover Design

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters, places, and events in this story are fictional. Any similarities to real people, places, or events are coincidental and unintentional.

  No AI Training

  Formatted with Vellum

  The woman I spent one hot night with ends up being my boss’s daughter, and if I want to keep my job, I won’t touch her again.

  I work with my two brothers on Hawthorne Guest Ranch. We do the behind-the-scenes stuff with the real ranch and have strict orders to stay away from the guests, the staff, and especially the boss’s daughters. I do what I’m told, but when a woman comes into the bar and says she’s passing through, well… I give her a night to remember and try not to think about how I’d like to see her again.

  I do see her again. The very next day, when she’s introduced not only as Jamison Hawthorne, but our newest staff member.

  I try to stay away from her, but she has a way of making a guy want more. Only I don’t have more to give her. All that’s in my name is an old mine some whiskey CEO wants to turn into his next distillery. Yet if I keep sneaking around with Jamison, I’ll lose my job and get my brothers fired too. So it’s up to me to figure out how to be more for Jamison than some whiskey cowboy.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  Also by Walker Rose

  CHAPTER ONE

  Iverson

  The man sitting across from me looks as out of place as a fish in a cow pen. Neon signs surround us, along with wood-paneled walls and a grungy wood floor. Nothing about Bootleg Tavern is refined. It’s old and worn and destined for the rough and rowdy. Myles Foster came dressed for business.

  When I knew him, he wasn’t wearing black slacks with a crease, loafers that are probably expensive as hell, and a gray dress shirt. He resembled me. Plain T-shirt, worn jeans, cowboy boots, and a shitty attitude.

  The attitude is the same.

  “I’m not selling,” I say and take a drink of my whiskey.

  The tract of land with an old gold mine my dad left to me and my two younger brothers is all we have left of him, all that the Hennessy name is known for. I take another pull of my whiskey and let the charred oak and vanilla flavor play over my tongue. He drove all the way to Huckleberry Springs, Montana, for nothing. He can find some other abandoned land to buy for his new distillery.

  “Think on it, Iverson.” Myles taps the bar top and points to my drink. “You ordered Foster House. You can be part of the story.”

  I snort. What story? He got rich making whiskey. I’m a hired ranch hand. Where do I fit in? “It’s not just me. It’s my brothers too.”

  “Selling it will do a lot more for you than what it’s doing now.”

  “Not if you don’t know any more good fishing spots.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  Silas, the older bartender, stops in front of us, his wary gaze on Myles. “What can I getcha?”

  Myles puts a couple of twenties on the table. “I’ll have what he’s having. Put his on my tab.”

  Silas grunts and swaggers away, the old rodeo injury he likes to tell us about every weekend putting a hitch in his stride.

  “You and your brothers will come out of the deal very nicely,” Myles says.

  Not that nice. Myles can’t replace the only good memories Haven, Durban, and I have of growing up. “I’m not selling out.” I take a drink. Damn, he makes good whiskey. It’d be harder to say no if he made cheap shit. “Besides—Huckleberry Springs is a bit far from Denver, isn’t it?”

  This little town is over an hour southwest of Billings. Last I heard, Foster House Whiskey is produced outside of Denver in an old, converted mine. Myles has a type when it comes to where he builds his distilleries.

  He folds up the sleeves of his shirt. “I live in Bourbon Canyon now.”

  Surprise filters through me. We both have history in Bourbon Canyon. I don’t think his was much longer than mine, not enough to draw him back.

  “Which is why I’m here,” he continues. “I married Wynter. Wynter Kerrigan.”

  I scrub a hand down my face as the name encourages other long-buried memories to the surface. “One of the four adopted girls?”

  “Yes. The youngest.”

  I cock a brow at him. Myles is at least five years older than me, putting him somewhere close to forty-four. He was a teenager in the foster home my brothers and I were shuttled to after our dad went missing. Wynter was even younger than me, as I recall from the short time I was there. “What’d Mae think of that?”

  Mae Bailey and her husband, Darin, were a stable point during one of the most unstable parts of my life. I don’t like to remember that time period, but Myles’s presence brings it all back. So does asking about my dad’s land that got left to me and my brothers, with me in charge.

  He gives me a smirk. “She was thrilled since Wynter was twenty-eight when we met again.”

  I shrug. I don’t know him, and I didn’t keep in contact with him or the Baileys after my brothers and I were hauled out of Bourbon Canyon to live with our mom in Casper, Wyoming. It was a surprise to all three of us to find out she was alive. It was also a shock to realize she was unhinged, and that was why we were living with Dad until he died.

  I shake the memories off. Life came full circle. I’m back in Huckleberry Springs, where I was born and where my life hunting, fishing, and camping ended when Dad went missing and was later found dead.

  A glass of whiskey slides in front of Myles. He takes a drink and seems to savor the flavor. He sets his glass down, but I keep my gaze on the amber fluid. How’d a guy who had a life similar to mine get enough money to start a distillery? How’d he make it into a top-shelf product? How did he turn into a businessman who still looks at home in the roughneck bar?

  My curiosity gets the best of me. “Don’t you get sick of it?” When his dark brows rise in question, I tip my forehead toward his glass. “When you’re around it all the time?”

  He rolls the liquid around in his glass, studying it. “No. I get more curious. What other flavors can I pull out? What can I add? Have you tried our line of cinnamon whiskey?”

  “Isn’t that what all the kids drink?” The ranch where I live and work attracts pasture parties and secret camping trips for teens trying to get wasted and have sex. I’ve flushed enough of them out of the trees and found the cheap bottles of beer and Fireball littering the land.

  “That’s mass-manufactured shit that uses chemical flavoring.” He takes another sip. “We infuse our whiskey with real Ceylon cinnamon. It adds a bold, yet delicate, flavor, and once it hits your tongue, you won’t ever drink the fake crap again.”

  I grunt, but my interest rises until I can’t help but ask, “What else do you infuse?”

  “Anything I think will sell.” He chuffs out a laugh. “I still have to make money, but I’m not willing to do so at the expense of quality.”

  “You make a lot of money, judging by the look of you.” Even his hair is neatly combed. Not a black strand out of place.

  “I do. That’s why I’m here. I can pay you more than that tract of land is worth.”

  “Mining companies have already come sniffing around.” The land was stripped long before I was born. Even shortly after Dad was born. My grandparents went broke trying to milk more gold, platinum, and palladium out of the dirt. Could there be more found with modern technology? Maybe. But the natural beauty has been restored, and I like it that way. Haven and Durban do too. “I told them no, and I’m telling you the same.”

  People always want to profit off what isn’t theirs.

  He tosses back the rest of his drink. “They’re companies only after money. I’m a guy lucky enough to have a company that can pay it forward. If I want to keep doing that, I have to expand.”

  “I’m a charity case?”

  “You’re a friend.”

  “Is that what we are?” Yeah, I’m a cynical bastard. Myles and I didn’t have anything to do with each other until he came sniffing around my property.

  He stands but pauses with one hand braced on the bar top. “One thing I’ve learned from Mae—and from Darin when he was alive—is to give a shit about the people who flow through our lives.”

  That’s exactly what my brothers and I used to do. Flow through people’s lives. We went to school and worked as kids. As adults, we continue to jump from place to place until we made our way back here. Huckleberry Springs is our home. We found honest work. We’ve built a stable life. I’m not taking that away from them. “How philanthropic.”

  “I can be. At Foster House, I give preference to

people who’ve been fosters. Those who know what we’ve been through.”

  We. My brothers and I were with the Baileys for three months after our dad died before our mom was located. Three months of morning ranch chores, three meals a day with snacks, and routine. If we stayed longer, Darin told us we could learn some of the work that went into the Copper Summit bourbon distillery they owned. That all went to hell once I walked out the door to follow yet another social worker to an unknown world.

  He presses a business card with the trademark Foster House yellow on the trim into my hand. “Think about it. I want to build a second site to expand the spirits we make and utilize more techniques, and I’d like it closer to home. I’d rather work with someone I know to make it happen.”

  My heart clenches on the word home. He wants to build on my home. “I said no.”

  “The Old Hennessy Mine,” he continues, undaunted. “It’s got good bones. I wouldn’t tear anything down. Just build it up. Like the Baileys did for us.” Then he was gone.

  I finish my whiskey, but I don’t leave. The Old Hennessy Mine. It’s what people around town call it. Some townsfolk know me and my brothers are the Hennessy boys found living alone after their dad passed away, but most stay out of our business. Usually because we slam the door in their face. The land is ours, but we’d need money to do anything with it, and three cowboys don’t earn the big bucks. To get the funds we’d need, we’d have to sell. Or finance. Fuck, I don’t know. I learned how to rope cattle, not invest, and my roping skills have paid me actual money.

  Stewing over the meeting with Myles, I think about the mine. Dad used to take us around the structure but never inside. He didn’t know how solid it was, and twenty years later, neither do I. The thing is nothing but a liability. I chase kids off my boss’s property every other weekend during the summer. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets too curious and gets hurt. They might be trespassing, but it’d be on my conscience. My brothers’ too.

  Silas appears in front of me, his cowboy hat down low. “’Nother? The rich guy left enough to cover it.”

  “One more, Silas. You can keep the rest.”

  “I don’t need the money, Iverson,” he says as he pours more Foster House into my glass. I should’ve told him I wanted something else. Fuck Myles Foster and his millions of dollars. “If I do, I can sell the silver belt I won in the…”

  I tune him out without meaning to, but I’ve heard this one several times before over the last five years I’ve been working at Hawthorne Ranch.

  William Hawthorne’s my boss, and I respect the hell out of that guy. He reminds me of Dad, except he does nothing but work. The guy loves it, and I do too, but Dad balanced his life with recreation. Still, I admire William for having something he’s passionate about.

  I take a sip and stare at the whiskey inside the glass. How do distilled grains have a vanilla flavor? How does Myles infuse cinnamon? Yeah, I’ve tried his cinnamon whiskey. It’s some of the best alcohol I’ve ever had.

  His offer runs through my head. With all that money split three ways, I could do a lot. I could get my own place instead of living in the bunkhouse with the other Hawthorne Ranch employees.

  I work someone else’s land instead of my own. Dad put all his assets in a trust, and when I turned twenty-five—well beyond the years of Mom trying to get her hands on it—it became mine and Haven’s and Durban’s, with me as the executor. I’ve done nothing with that role.

  Haven and Durban claim they aren’t interested in selling either. Guilt gnaws at my insides. We could be doing more with it, but what? How? I’m the oldest. I’m supposed to have the answers, but my brothers and I are content.

  Or have we become complacent?

  A cloud of lilies surrounds me as a woman slides into a seat two stools down. I tuck my chin down and peer at her out of the corner of my eye. I thought I knew all the women in town. But this girl is heads and tails above them all. Long, glossy chestnut hair hangs down her back. The neon lights of the bar reflect off the silky strands covering her bare shoulders. Her sundress—goddamn. I can only catch a glimpse of the long, tanned flesh of her legs without leaning back and leering at her. All I can see beyond her curtain of hair is the delicate slope of her nose and long lashes.

  Silas squints at her, and the girl tips her head, arching a brow.

  “What can I get you?” he asks with a note of awe in his voice.

  So he doesn’t know her either.

  She sucks in a breath and straightens her shoulders. “Kinky Blue, please.”

  Her husky voice rolls right into my brain and sticks. I’d hear that voice late at night when I had only myself to get off with.

  “What?” Silas asks, insult filling his tone.

  Instead of doubling down, she laughs. “It’s a vodka.”

  “Is it blue?”

  My lips twitch. It isn’t often Silas is shocked, but this girl’s drink order does it.

  “Yes, in fact it is. Tastes like candy. But I can just have a Malibu Coke.”

  Silas’s lips form a line. “I can do is a plain rum and Coke.”

  “You don’t have Malibu?”

  He just shakes his head.

  “Rum and Coke it is.”

  Surprised and a little pleased that she doesn’t argue with him about why he doesn’t have much selection, I concentrate on my own drink.

  A few minutes go by before she turns toward me. “You don’t look like the type to order a Blue Kinky.”

  Damn. A woman who looks like that saying the word kinky to me? If I was taking a drink, I would’ve choked.

  “Just whiskey for me,” I say, not wishing to encourage her. I’m nursing my drink after a week of being anxious over Myles’s request to meet. A whole lot of fucking would ease the tension too, but I need to straighten myself out first.

  I don’t have to go out of my way to pick up women, but when they learn I have nothing to offer, they often leave quickly enough. I’m good for a good time. That’s it. Usually, I don’t mind.

  Perhaps I’m raw from the feelings my talk with Myles brought up, but I wish I had more to offer someone like this. A person who comes off as gorgeous and good-natured in the smallest of small-town bars. She’s refined, and not just because she’s sitting primly with one long, curvy leg crossed over the other with a strappy sandal dangling from her foot.

  “I like whiskey too,” she says in that voice that’s pure sex, “but I wanted something lighter. Summery, you know?”

  “Like a beer?” I ask as if that should be an obvious choice in a place like Bootleg Tavern. Silas has the five most popular beers on tap, along with the traditional tequila, rum, vodka, gin, whiskey, and bourbon. There are no umbrellas, little swords, and it’s a rare treat for him to throw some peanuts on the bar.

  “I haven’t had a Miller Lite since my pasture party days.” She laughs, and damn, the light tinkling sound goes right for my gut. She’s vibrant in a way I haven’t seen for a long time. She reminds me of easier times, like when my brothers and I explored the trees and wielded our bear spray at any shadow that moved. “I’m sure if I ordered a Fat Tire, I’d get the same stink eye.”

  I scan the line of taps with the most common, most commercial beers. Silas likes the originals, and he sticks to what he likes. His patrons learn to like it or make their drinks at home.

  Hawthorne Ranch has a fancier bar. Since it’s a working ranch, in addition to being a vacation spot that offers its guests a taste of life in the West, my boss caters to their pocketbooks. I work the cattle and stay away from the guests. One warning to me and my brothers that we’d get booted out of Huckleberry Springs is all we needed to stay away from the tourists.

  We came too far to get back home, and I’m not ruining it.

  “I think you’re out of luck,” I agree.

  She twists toward me, and even though I don’t want to start anything tonight, I turn my head. Those legs are too tantalizing to resist. A guy can look. Doesn’t mean I’ll touch.

  First, I have to make sure it’s okay to even chat with her.

  “You a guest at Hawthorne?” If she says yes, I’m done. I steal one glimpse before she answers. The skirt of her dress rides up her lush thighs even more when she changes her position. A simple brush would push the fabric past her panties and⁠—

 

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