Loving the Broken Man (The Cowboys of Katydid Farm Book 3) Read online

  Jase hit the alarm on the table next to the bed in his new apartment. It was set for six, and while he wasn't exactly used to getting up at that hour, he was eager to prove himself, so much so he'd hardly slept at all.

  He quickly dressed and hurried down the stairs of the carriage house and over to the main house, seeing Mickey in the kitchen through the French doors at the back of the house near the pool. He was still in pajama pants and no shirt, but he appeared to be making coffee. Jase quietly knocked on the back door, seeing Mickey turn and offer him a bright grin.

  His boss walked across the kitchen to flip the lock, opening the door for him. "I forgot to get ya a key so I'll have Jonny dig one up later. The other hands don't have one because they don't live here, but you need access to the house. We have a house alarm, but we only set it if nobody's home. We're pretty fortunate to have the sheriff live up the road, so we don't worry too much about break-ins.

  "How'd ya sleep? I remember when I first started livin' at the Katydid, I had a hard time sleepin' in a strange place that was so damn quiet. I hope it wasn't too bad for you," Mickey offered as the coffee pot hissed.

  "I slept okay…" he began. When Mickey arched his eyebrow, Jase felt his face flush. "Well, I haven't been sleeping too well since I left El Paso, but I guess it's just because change isn't easy. Hell, you'd think I'd be used to it because we moved every few years. Army brat," Jase explained, realizing he hadn't really told Mickey anything about himself.

  It then dawned on him Mickey and Jon hadn't really asked him any questions, and it had him worried a bit. "I-I can fill out paperwork for you so you can do a background check," Jase offered.

  Mickey chuckled. "No need. My anal retentive, best friend forwarded me your file, not that I thought it was necessary. We're in the middle of the same thing as Matt and Tim, regarding adoption and guardianship with Meg and Terry. Jon thought it would be better for you to stay in the garage…excuse me, carriage house, but I wanted you to stay here with us.

  "See, we have home visits all the time because of the kids, and Jonny's worried the social worker might ding us because of you livin' here in the house with us without being a relative, not that it always makes a difference," Mickey explained.

  It all seemed to be a lot clearer to Jase in that moment. "That's why Mr. Collins wanted me to live at the Katydid? I thought it was because they thought I was some sort of freak who'd molest their sons or maybe a drug dealer," Jase explained as he watched where Mickey went to get mugs for coffee and glasses for juice.

  Jase went to the fridge and pulled out a gallon of orange juice, placing it on the counter to help. "Does anyone like milk in their coffee?" he asked as he looked into the refrigerator.

  "Help yourself to juice if you want some right now. I'm just settin' up for breakfast later. Since you're up, we can go down to the barn and start the day before the other hands get here. I'll be right back after I get dressed. Help yourself to coffee, too, and if you don't mind, pour me one with a spoon of sugar," Mickey instructed as he pointed to the shelf where a blue, sugar bowl was visible. It had a lid and two arms up in the air with a small spoon held in one hand.

  "That's cute," Jase responded as he took it down from the shelf.

  "It's Merlin's sugar bowl from 'The Sword and the Stone'. We bought it when we took the kids to Disney World over Spring Break. I'll be back." He watched Mickey hurry up the stairs and made a few mental notes for his journal as he poured himself a cup of coffee and added a splash of milk.

  Mickey and Jon definitely seemed to be very much in love, as signified the previous night when the couple had gone together to put Meg to bed. Dan had gone up and read a story to the girls and the three men said goodnight to the two girls. When they returned, Mickey said, "They want you to come up and say goodnight, if you don't mind. Meg says goodnight to everyone in the house."

  Jase laughed as he went upstairs and found them in a pink room in a big bed with steps at the side. "You wanted to tell me something?"

  Kayley sat up and patted the bed next to her. He walked over and sat down in the spot as he waited for her to speak. "We wanted to tell you goodnight, and Meggie said if you want her nightlight, she'll let you use it since I'm here and I can hold her hand if she gets scared. We're worried about you bein' up at the 'partment by yourself."

  He saw movement across the bed and look up to see Meg reach over and pick up her purple glasses, placing them on her cute little face before she grabbed a lighted, fake fish tank. "You can use it. If I get scared, I'll get in bed with Daddy and Poppy. You wanna?" the little girl offered.

  Jase smiled and took both of the girls’ hands. "Thank you so much for the offer, but I brought my own nightlight. It's shaped like a, uh, a baseball, you know, cause I'm a guy. But, if I needed another nightlight, that fish tank's pretty sharp. You name the fish?"

  The girls giggled. "It ain't real," Kayley chided, giggling again.

  Jase got up and walked around the side of the bed to offer an examination as if he didn't believe them. They both giggled as he picked it up. "I'll be darned. It sure looked real. Okay, you two get some rest. Hopefully, we can swim again tomorrow if the weather cooperates and your dads say it's okay," he explained.

  He leaned down and kissed Meg on the forehead, taking her glasses to place them on the bedside table before he walked around the full-size bed and leaned down to Kayley. "I don't have a dad, Jase. I have Uncle Danny. Night," she told him as she kissed his cheek and snuggled under the covers.

  As he pulled the door three-quarters shut, he thought, 'If I have anything to do with it, you'll have a dad, Sweet Pea.' She needed a dad.

  "Hey there, Sunshine," he heard, causing him to look up from his coffee to see Danny standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

  "Hey, Dan. How'd you sleep?" he asked.

  "Better than usual. Maybe I need a new mattress at my house. How 'bout you? New place okay?" he asked as he picked up one of the mugs Mickey had left on the counter and filled it from the pot. Jase noticed Mickey took his black, so he decided he'd learn to drink black coffee so nobody thought he wasn't manly…in case that was something they might think.

  "It was fine. I'll adjust to the quiet soon enough. It's the first place I've had all to myself, really, so I'm looking forward to it," Jase answered.

  Dan nodded. "Let's get down to the barn. Pete and Todd should be here any minute."

  "Sure," Jase agreed, downing the hot coffee in a few gulps. The burn made his eyes sting a little, but when Danny laughed, he wasn't sure what he'd done that was so funny.

  "You ain't gotta drink it so fast. These are barn mugs. Mickey keeps the fine china for up here at the house, but he has these Walmart mugs for takin' to the barn. You're gonna burn your guts drinkin' that hot coffee, Stretch," Dan chuckled.

  Standing next to Danny, Jase once again noticed he had several inches on the man, though the sandy-blonde was more muscular than him. Jase guessed the handsome man had about twenty pounds on him, but it was all muscle…muscle Jase hoped to develop for himself with farm work.

  The two men took their coffee down to the barn where a short, suntanned man with light brown hair and a tall, slender-built redhead were busy opening stalls to let out horses. "Are they going to clean stalls?" Jase asked.

  Dan turned to him and smiled. "Mick runs a tight ship. On Saturdays, all the horses go outside, weather permitting, and they clear, hose down, and disinfect the whole place. Some of these mares in this barn are worth a lot of money. Miss Ally, who I'm sure you'll meet soon, used to ride in equestrian events. I don't know much about it, but I'm sure Mick can explain it.

  "Miss Ally breeds these mares to prime studs and sells the foals for top dollar. She's bred her mares to Charlie a few times, and the foals have been incredible if you like horses. Myself, I'm more of a cattleman. Anyway, Mickey can teach you anything you need to know about horses, I promise. He's got quite a colorful story himself, which I'm sure he'll tell ya sometime. Anyway, let's get to cleanin' manure. I
hate shovelin' horseshit," Dan complained as they walked into the barn.

  "HELLO?!" they heard from the hallway.

  "Hey! Pete, Todd. It's me. How you boys doin’?" Dan greeted with a friendly smile.

  Jase watched them turn to him and return his smile with big ones of their own. "Dan." "Danny!" They walked over to him and shook his hand enthusiastically. Jase was impressed.

  He then turned to Jase and pulled him closer. "This is Jason Langston. He's gonna be workin' here with y'all for a little while. You boys take care of him, will ya? He's just startin' out in the business, and he's eager to learn, so y'all help him get it right, okay?"

  They both grinned at Jase and shook his hand. "Welcome, Jason. Nice to meet ya. Where ya come from?" Todd, the older guy asked. Jase was judging him to be about forty, but he had a nice smile. He was on the thin side and his bright red hair had a few grays, but he seemed to be the welcoming sort.

  "I'm from Texas, but don't be impressed. I've lived all over the country because my dad's in the Army, so we moved every few years. I've never worked with horses, but I'd like to learn whatever you guys think would be useful," he offered, hoping he sounded sufficiently non-threatening.

  The other man, Pete, started to laugh. "Welcome, Jason. It's a pleasure. Um, what we do on Saturdays is clean the whole barn. Cuts down on fleas, flies, and certain bacteria that can cause problems with the horses. It's not fancy work, but it keeps these ladies in good health, and Miss Ally and Mr. Ham pay us to do it how Mickey tells us. Glad to have a few extra hands. My son has a soccer game this afternoon and if we get on it, Todd and I might be able to go and not be late," Pete told them.

  Without another word, the four men went to work with wheelbarrows and shovels, emptying the stalls from the bedding material. They then rolled up the rubber mats and took them out onto a concrete slab where they put Jase to work scrubbing them with a shop broom and some disinfectant.

  Mickey eventually joined them and pitched in, joking about Danny disliking horses, yet so willing to clean up horse shit with everyone in the barn as they wheeled out the bedding. Jase was curious what the bedding was because it looked nothing like the sawdust he'd seen at the Circle C and the Katydid.

  "What's this material?" he asked as he studied it in the wheelbarrow Mickey wheeled out.

  "Peat moss. It has a high absorption rate, and it's good for the fields when we spread it in the hay pastures. It breaks down better than other stuff we've tried, and we only have to completely clean out the stalls once a week…on Saturday," he said with a sly grin.

  "How does it compare to shavings or sawdust?" Jase asked.

  Mickey looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. "Ah, a man who looks at the big picture, I see. I like that. We buy it in bulk so we get a break, and yeah, it can be a little more expensive per unit, but we don't use as many units a week of this bedding as we would of sawdust, shavings, or straw, and as I said, we can spread it for fertilizer. Tim looked at it for the Katydid, but Josh was hesitant to pass the cost onto boarders, and with only four horses at the Circle C, they don't have to worry about it. Ally only wants first class for her mares, so we decided it was the best."

  Jase nodded, happy with the complete explanation before he went back to work cleaning the compression mats that covered the concrete floor of the barn. Pete came out to help him hang them to dry over a fence after he brought out two more. They continued to rotate them until all of them were cleaned, and after they were replaced in the stalls, Jase was shown how to spread the peat moss from the large pile in the room next to the feed room.

  Mickey showed him how to clean the wet stall where horses were bathed and groomed, and he showed him the birthing stalls, though they wouldn't be used until the next spring as all of the mares had already foaled for the year and were bred back.

  Todd and Pete left about ten that morning, as Jase, Dan, and Mickey returned to the house. "What's next?" Jase asked.

  "After a late breakfast, I'm gonna take you into the office and show you where I am in the bookkeeping process, and about two o'clock, we're gonna beg off work and have ourselves a day of relaxation. There's a Nats game on the television, and Jonny's not working today or tomorrow so we can all take the time off.

  "See, we don't have the cattle aspect around here so our weekends can be low key. Later this afternoon, we can go let the mares and the few foals back inside, and then they're fine until I run down to feed and water in the morning before breakfast.

  "Oh, we have fences to look after, and pastures to fertilize to ensure there's hay later in the summer, but that's what we do Monday through Friday. We actually don't do too much on Saturday and Sunday because we have a family…which I can see you being a part of," Mickey explained to him. Jase felt his face flush a bit, but it was the best news he'd ever heard. Being a part of something like the operation at Wonderland was exactly what he'd been hoping for when he hopped on the bus in El Paso. It seemed like he'd finally found his place to fit in.

  Chapter Nine

  "I thought these were illegal?" Dan pointed out before taking a puff of the short, 'Cohiba' Cuban cigar as he and Jon sat under a large umbrella on the pool deck. Mickey and Jase were in the pool entertaining the girls with dolphin rides, where the girls rode on their backs while the two men swam around. Terry and his friend, Clay Monroe, were with Clay's mom in Richmond at a mall. Dan noticed the word "mall" wasn't said aloud in front of Megan, and he could commiserate as to why. Kayley's selective hearing, which never seemed to hear him scold her or tell her to clean up her toys, always honed in on anyone using the word 'mall'.

  The boys needed camping gear for a planned outing of the soccer team for a few days in the next month after school was out, and Dan had watched with a smile as Mickey went over the list with Terry, emphasizing he follow it to the letter. It made Dan laugh because the boy rolled his eyes every few seconds before he finally grabbed the list, kissed Mickey on the cheek and took off up the stairs to change clothes.

  "A client of my dad from DC gave 'em to him, but Mom won't let him keep 'em at the house in Richmond. He has a humidor in his office here, so I grabbed us two and left an IOU," Jon informed as he referred to the cigars with a huge plume of blue smoke billowing up into the air.

  "You like livin' out here, Jon? I thought you were a city boy," Dan asked. He loved the country life, but he knew Jon grew up in Richmond, which was likely more exciting than living in Dillwyn, much like the life Jase had lived in his many travels was more exciting than living in Holloway.

  "I thought at first I'd hate it, but having a family changed it for me. I still take Megan into Richmond every day because that's where her doctors are and her school. If this area was able to offer any of the same services as we get in Richmond, I'd open a small private practice here in a heartbeat so I could come home for lunch and be at all of Terry's games.

  "But, for now, I'm too young to retire, and I just made partner, so that's not really in the cards. Meg and I don't mind the ride. It's only an hour each way. She sleeps on the way to school in the morning, and we get to talk about her day in the afternoon. When I get home, Mick takes her and they have their time while I hang with Terry and talk or play video games, or sometimes, he and I go ride the fences for the guys.

  "We feel like we're doing our part, but I know Mick and the guys keep up with things here, as does my mother. She and Pop come out once a month, and every couple of months, we spend the weekend in town with them where we take the kids to museums or the theater, so I see it as having the best of both worlds," Jon explained.

  Dan took another puff and contemplated what the man had said for a moment, knowing there was no way he could actually offer Kayley the same experience in life. "I don't know about museums and stuff because I barely got outta high school, and I have no desire to move to the city," he replied.

  Jon laughed. "I think you've found your soul mate in Jason. He doesn't seem to care for the big city either, based on a few comments he's made to us about the places
he's lived over the years."

  That perked Danny up. "Uh, what do ya mean?"

  "Earlier, when he and I were cleaning up the lunch dishes, I asked him how he thought he'd like living out here, considering he's lived in seven different places all over the country. He said the one thing he's never had is roots, and that's what he wants to put down…roots. You think you could help him with that Dan? My Mickey wants the same thing, which was what made it hard for him to leave Holloway. Of course, you all made it easy for Jase to want to go somewhere else by treating him like shit. Shame on all of ya," Jon scolded with a tender smile.

  "Yeah, I know, we really dropped the ball on Jase. Matt and Tim are fightin' like two cats in a sack over him. I swear, in all the years I've known Matt Collins, I've never seen him so jealous or actin' like such a damn fool," Dan related.

  Jon laughed. "Jason definitely looks like a younger version of Matt, and let's face it, when someone younger or better looking comes into our territory, we all get protective. I'm not saying Matt has any reason to worry because Jase is like a little puppy who's eager to please, but Matt should trust Tim more. Everybody knows you couldn't blast Tim away from the bull rider."

  Dan chuckled at the reference to the term they all used for Matt. "I know. When I get back home, we're gonna have a long talk, Matt and me. He's gonna have to get over his shit because I'd like to bring Jase back to the Circle C sometime in the future. We're gonna get to know each other over e-mail and phone calls, and I hope to bring Kayley to visit over the summer if that's okay.

  "I can't help myself, I guess. It's sad I'm so damn whipped and I ain't even kissed the guy, but he's the first person I've met who actually set me on my ass. I just need to take my time…right?" Dan asked.

  "Oh, I'm not the right guy to ask because I nearly fucked it up with Mickey for good. I jerked the poor guy around twice, and I'm shocked he'd even take a chance on me after how I treated him." Dan could see Jon watching Mickey and Jase in the pool with the girls playing some game of blowing bubbles. They all looked happy, and it gave him a warm feeling in his heart.