Loving the Lawyer (The Cowboys of Katydid Farm Book 2) Read online

  Loving the Lawyer

  (The Cowboys of Katydid Farm – Book 2)

  Sam E. Kraemer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Sam E. Kraemer

  Cover Design: chyna_creatives

  Cover photograph: Depositphotos.com

  Pre-reader: Genevieve

  Formatting: Lyubomyr

  Published by Sam E. Kraemer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, printed or electronic form, without the express permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  WARNING: This book contains material which may be offensive to some readers: Graphic language and/or adult situations. For readers 18 and over.

  All products/brand names mentioned in this work of fiction are registered trademarks by their respective holders/corporations. No trademark infringement intended.

  Dedication

  This story is dedicated to my father who I think about every day. I remember the talks we had on horseback and like everyone who loses someone they love, I wish I could have just one more. Thanks, Dad, for showing me how to mouth a horse to judge its age and how to cherish the people you love.

  I miss you.

  Their story:

  Mickey moved to Holloway, Virginia, to work at Katydid Farm. From the day he arrived, the family treated him as one of their own, even inviting him to live at the farm house when his only option was sleeping in his old truck. Josh and Katie Simmons, along with their nephew, Tim Moran, made Mickey feel as if he’d finally been accepted and loved for the man he’d become, unlike the things that happened within his own family.

  He didn’t dwell on his unhappy past or his surprising break-up from a younger man who didn’t do him the courtesy of saying goodbye…of saying anything at all. Jackie simply walked away and never looked back. Mickey, however, tried not to be bitter about the events from his past which had broken his heart, instead choosing to look forward to the future with as much optimism as he could muster, and hope…he hoped it included the love of someone special, even holding out hope for the “more” he saw between Tim and Matt. He almost gave up before he met…The Lawyer.

  Jon was his parents’ son in every aspect of his life…family law attorney, like his father; empathetic defender of the underdog, like his mother; and loyal friend and supporter, like both of his parents. The path he was on dictated he marry his best friend, Audrey, and start popping out the two-point-five kids expected of them by both sets of parents, who also happened to be best friends.

  The glitch in the plan was Jon’s closeted status, along with his basic cowardice to explain the situation to his parents because seeing the disappointment on their faces and possibly breaking their hearts had never been part of the plan. In order to maintain his cover, he and Audrey continued to live the lie in front of the families while behind their backs, Jon hooked up with guys while Audrey hooked up with girls.

  Jon wasn’t looking for a relationship, and he swore off younger men completely based on having hooked up with his fair share of them during his clubbing days. Unfortunately, Jon’s libido didn’t get the memo when he met a tall, good-looking cowboy who worked for one of his clients. The guy wasn’t his type in any way Jon could imagine, but there was something about him and Jon couldn’t stay away.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other books by Sam E. Kraemer

  Chapter One

  Michael Joseph Warren, or "Mickey" as he was known to his friends, sat on the old John Deere tractor used around the Katydid to empty the manure spreader onto the hayfields to act as a fertilizer to promote growth in the pastures for the horses on the Katydid Farm where he called home.

  Mickey thanked the good Lord for helping him find the Katydid after Mr. Kessler sold the Bar K. The asshole who bought it, Mr. Leslie, was a fucking homophobe, and after Mickey and Jackie, his former boyfriend, were fired, Mickey wasn't sure how life would treat them.

  When he called Mr. Kessler about it, the man sent him to Southern Virginia to meet a friend of his who might offer Mickey a job as a ranch hand. Mickey went alone, preferring to keep Jackie out of it to protect him from the possibility the man was of the same mind as the man who’d fired them. He wasn’t hoping for much, believing it would be the same shit he'd dealt with in Kentucky, but he was pleasantly surprised when it was nothing like what he’d left behind. After he met Josh and Katie Simmons, along with their nephew Tim Moran, he knew he'd walked into something pretty damn special.

  "You just gonna sit there and burn gas all day?" he heard behind him, turning to see Jared Moore, another of the hands at Katydid Farm, grinning like an idiot at catching Mickey while he was daydreaming.

  Mickey covered quickly. "Naw, just tryin' to figure out the best place to put it. Any suggestions?" he asked, not really caring about the other man’s response.

  Everyone at the Katydid had been amazing to him since Mickey had arrived at the farm. They’d all gone out of their way to get to know him, and it seemed they’d accepted him as a member of the family. Katie and Josh took him into their home, for God's sakes. What kind of people took in a stranger? He could have been a fucking serial killer for all they knew, but they didn't hesitate to make him welcome. It made him want to live up to their expectations.

  "Hank mentioned somethin' about startin' a compost heap. Miss Katie likes a garden in the summer, and the straw we use in winter will eventually breakdown, but we might wanna change from sawdust to somethin' more biodegradable for beddin' in the summer, I think. I'll ask Tim to look into it with Dean Campbell 'cause sawdust ain't exactly great for spreadin' on a garden.

  “Just dump this load in the corner of the pasture down by that bunch of Sycamore trees. I'll get Stevie and Carl to go down there on Saturday and put up a fence around it. We'll just turn it over once a week and add to it. I'll ask Tim to see what's the best way to do it," Jared informed.

  Mickey did as he was told because he genuinely enjoyed working at the farm and he knew nobody ever asked him to do anything they wouldn't do themselves. He'd never actually felt accepted anywhere before he settled at the Katydid, but when he became friends with Tim, his boyfriend, Matt Collins, and the foreman's son, Henry Sachs, Mickey felt as if he’d been looking for that place and those people all his life. Things with Henry, though, they were a little tricky. Mickey remembered back to the fall after he'd arrived at the farm.

&nb
sp; "You need help with that little jenny?" Mickey asked.

  He'd been watching the good-looking, lanky kid slowly walk around the female donkey tied to a ring in the hallway, touching her sides much like a seasoned horseman. The young man seemed to have some horse sense, or so Mickey thought as he watched the guy. The younger man was about five-seven, maybe a buck and a quarter? The kid looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, and Mickey knew immediately the guy was too young for him.

  Mickey, himself, was twenty-three, though he'd claimed to be older when he’d met Josh Simmons. He was hoping to get hired at the Katydid so he embellished on his age a bit to put himself in a better position to get hired. Thankfully, Josh didn't ask him for his ID at the time, but later, Tim asked for his information so he could run a background check. He told Mickey if nothing came up, he'd delete the file and any information he uncovered regarding Mickey’s past which wouldn’t have an impact on his ability to do his job at the Katydid would stay between them. Mickey came to trust the man pretty quickly after that discussion because Tim lived up to his word.

  The fact Tim Moran was handsome as hell didn’t hurt Mickey’s feelings at all, even if the gorgeous blonde was completely taken with the former bull rider, Matthew Collins. After Mickey got over his initial crush on the Tim, he set out to make a friend of the man…and maybe one of Henry Sachs as well.

  "Well, maybe. If you'd just stick around to make sure she don't buck me off and kick me in the head, I'd appreciate it," Henry suggested with a cute grin on his face which had Mickey adjusting himself in his Wrangler’s.

  Mickey laughed at Henry’s comment as he climbed the fence to observe the kid walk, trot, and canter the little jenny. His feet were nearly dragging the ground as he rode her bareback around a pen, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was trained to neck rein, and she seemed to be very gentle.

  They'd all laughed when Josh had Matt Collins fit the small donkey with shoes, harkening back to when she’d arrived at the Katydid, horribly foundered and barely able to walk on her overgrown hooves. Some asshole had turned her loose in a hay field and basically left her to die which should have been punishable by a hot branding iron to the ass, in Mickey’s opinion.

  Thankfully for the jenny, Matt Collins’ son, Ryan, seemed to take to the animal, and they all determined she was gentle and had been trained at one point or another, making her suitable for the boy to ride.

  Mickey and Henry became fast friends, teasing and joked with each other as they worked with Josie. One evening, the two of them were in the barn alone, having run the jenny through her paces. Mickey would blame it on a buildup of sexual tension between the two of them which finally pushed him to do something very, very stupid. When he pulled Henry into his arms and kissed him, Mickey knew immediately what he’d done was a huge mistake and his stomach sunk lower than the worms in that compost heap while his heart was in his throat at what he’d done.

  Mickey pushed himself away from Henry almost as quickly as he’d pulled the kid into his arms for the kiss. “Fuck, I'm so sorry. I shouldn'ta done it. I had a boyfriend before I moved here, but he didn't wait around for me to find us a new place to make a life, so I've kinda been a mess, Henry.

  “I shouldn'ta kissed ya," Mickey told the younger boy. Henry’s handsome face was full of hurt, as Mickey could plainly see, and he felt like the devil about the whole thing. Mickey knew he let his wits get away from him because he’d been thinking with the wrong head, and the potential for damage to young Henry’s heart made him dizzy. He knew how it felt to have a young heart full of hope for love, only to have it ripped out and stomped on by people who should know better.

  The tall cowboy knew he had to try to undo some of the damage and tactfully explain things to the younger guy. When Henry turned on his heel and headed toward the door, Mickey knew he was running out of time. "NO! WAIT! Please, Henry, let me talk to ya. You're an amazing guy; I mean it. The only problem with an ‘us’ is I'm older than you…a lot older than you, and I shouldn't have…well, I took advantage of you, and I’m so sorry. I'd like us to be friends, Henry, good friends. I mean, you have a lot of years ahead of you to figure things out for yourself regarding who you want to date and how you want to live your life. Whatever you decide, you should enjoy spending your time with someone your own age," Mickey tried to explain.

  Thankfully, Henry nodded and smiled at him, allowing Mickey to release the held breath. It was a close call, but Mickey had already had his fill of younger guys, though not as young as Henry. Micky made a promise to himself he’d be much more cautious in the future when it came to romance. He decided it would be the last time he put himself in the position of hurting another person.

  From that night forward, Mickey made the decision his next candidate for a love connection would be an older guy…no more young, impressionable guys who would likely fall for him quickly, like Henry, and out of love easily, like Jackie. It seemed to be the best course of action, so he solidified his head and heart to look for opportunities to meet attractive, older guys.

  From that night forward, Mickey set out to do just that…find older, attractive men to maybe pursue a relationship…or maybe just have some hot, monkey sex? Unfortunately, as he'd come to learn, it was easier said than done.

  "Hey!" he heard behind him as he watched the spreader grind out the manure from the wagon. He'd been slowly pulling it forward to keep the pile neat, so when he looked up to see Stevie trot up on Chief, he was curious as to why the guy was in the pasture.

  The kid was handsome, to be sure, but as Mickey had observed on more than one occasion, the guy was a total jock. Mickey knew for certain there was no chance Stevie or Carl would ever make a play for him, and he was actually grateful. It was unwise to pursue sins of the flesh on the job, or as Mr. Kessler had told him once, 'never get your meat where you get your bread and butter.' It still made him laugh when the thought about it, and at the time, the older man was referring to a cowboy trying to date the daughter of a rancher down the road from the Bar K. As Mickey thought about it, they were words to live by…never mind the fact Stevie and Carl were both younger than him, though not as young as Henry Sachs. They were in direct conflict with the new leaf he’d recently overturned…only older men.

  Mickey turned off the tractor and waited for the kid to ride up close enough so he could hear him. "What's up?" Mickey asked.

  "Josh said we're done for the day. He said we have tomorrow off as well," the kid told him.

  "Great. Happy Easter," Mickey responded as he restarted the tractor to continue emptying the spreader, trying very hard not to think about the fact he had nobody to celebrate another holiday with him.

  That night, Mickey found a chicken and rice casserole from Miss Jeri, along with a note providing instructions for how to reheat it without drying it out. It tasted damn good as he enjoyed it, along with a few beers, while the family was over at the Circle C dying eggs and having dinner with Matt, Tim, and Ryan. As Mickey washed the dishes while listening to the radio groan out a sad song, he wished to hell he'd have taken them up on the invitation to come along.

  Funny thing was since Tim Moran had moved into the ranch house at the Circle C with Matt Collins, Mickey couldn't help being jealous. It wasn't because Tim wasn't his, though the blonde guy was hot as fuck. No, Mickey knew pretty quickly he didn't stand a chance against the bull rider from the first time he met the alpha male. He’d figured out the two men had a pretty strong love, totally obvious if one spent more than five minutes in their company.

  It reminded Mickey of the hearing for the custody of Ryan, Matt’s son, he'd attended in support of the family. He wanted to show loyalty to the people he was coming to love as family, and after the positive verdict, everyone was hugging everyone else. It was the first time he actually felt like he was a part of a happy family who genuinely loved each other.

  "Congratulations, y’all. This is great news!" Mickey exclaimed as he hugged Tim. He pulled away and smiled at his best friend. "The three of you
…damn, y'all deserve the very best."

  Tim smiled and winked at him. "You deserve the best, too, my friend. I know you'll meet someone special. It's just a matter of time, Mickey," Tim told him as they separated. Matt took Tim's hand and the two of them began to mingle with the crowd. Mickey hoped to hell his friend knew what he was talking about. He sure as hell wouldn't mind meeting someone like Matt Collins, or Tim Moran for that matter.

  After the party, he and Tim began hanging out more, and surprisingly, the bull rider invited Mickey over to the ranch for cookouts and movie nights with the three Moran-Collins guys. Mickey and Ryan got to be close, and sometimes, Mickey would volunteer to take Ryan riding to give Tim and Matt time alone.

  He knew if he had a man like Tim or Matt, he'd want time alone with him, so he took Ryan down to the barn and they saddled Chester and Josie, riding fences while Ryan told Mickey about a girl in his class named Gracie and his best friend, Rocky Whipple. Those were the times Mickey loved the most. Spending time with Ryan Collins was definitely time well spent.

  Mickey and the little cowboy rode the property every few weeks, and Tim and Matt fucked like rabbits, or so Mickey imagined to himself…in private, mostly in the shower. It was what he'd have done, after all, and he imagined it a lot.

  One Saturday in May, Mickey was riding Lady, one of Josh's mares, down to the back pasture. Hank was off for a week while his wife had surgery on her foot, and Josh had put Mickey in charge of the day-to-day operations at the farm because Jared Moore and Charlie Sanders were hauling a gelding and a mare to the new owners who had a ranch in Paris, Texas.

  Stevie and Carl were working on repairing a fence and replacing a gate at the back of the property. After the second cutting of hay later in the summer, they'd move horses down to that pasture for the fall, but the spring was the best time to fix it before the hay field was in full flourish.

  When he rode up on them, Mickey saw a girl sitting in the four-wheeler sipping a bottle of water. She looked to be about fifteen, and she was definitely of Latin descent. She was quite pretty, and she looked vaguely familiar as Mickey took her in.