The Cowboy and His Runaway Read online

  The Cowboy and His Runaway

  Rock Springs Texas Series

  Kaci Rose

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020, by Kaci Rose. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Cover By: Sweet Heart Books

  Blurb

  Maybe if she'd known that running for her life would have changed her life for the better, she would have done it sooner...

  Riley

  My momma always believed in fate, but I didn't believe until I met him. The sexy cowboy who'd found me hiding in his barn. A series of disastrous events led me to...him. He and his family took me in, protected me, and gave me the life I always wanted. But at what cost?

  Blaze

  I didn't expect to find the beautiful blonde in my barn that morning. Or the intense rage I'd feel after seeing her bruises. At that moment she became mine. Mine to take care of. Mine to spoil. Mine to protect from anyone who intended her harm. Anyone.

  Come meet the small town of Rock Springs Texas with a family that has your back, a town that knows your business, and men who love with everything they have.

  There is plenty of horses, nights under the stars, sweet tea, and a few road trips!

  Get ready for some HOT Texas Nights!

  Dedication

  To the coffee that kept me going and the kids that call me mommy.

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Dedication

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue 1

  Epilogue 2

  Want More Kaci Rose?

  Prologue

  Sage

  Did you ever have a moment sitting around with friends and family and think you need to get this shit down on paper? Like the stories needed to be saved and retold again and again. To your kids, to their kids, to anyone who would listen?

  I just had that moment last night. So here I am. Who am I? My name is Sage I have 4 brothers. 4 brothers who drive me crazy and are crazy protective. They are also my best friends and never really treated me like a girl, I was always welcome as one of the guys. I also have a sister while we are not super close, we are still close.

  We live on the 2nd biggest ranch in the state of Texas. How big? 410,000 acres big! The ranch has been in the family for generations and if the plan we have been working on pans out when the ‘neighbors’ ranch comes up in a few years we will push our way very close to the biggest ranch in the state. We have a plan. It’s in the works. The story of that is one I knew had to be written down. Hence why I’m writing now.

  So, a little about our small town. Rock Springs is a small ranch town. A feed store/tack supply/café is in the center of town. Along with a very basic IGA for grocery stores, the post office is the same historical building it’s been in since I can remember. All these are located on Main Street downtown (original I know what small town doesn’t have a Main Street?) Also, on Main Street are a few office buildings, the town Doctor, the town Vet, the Sherriff office, fire station, and some super cute shops. Just outside of town is a Dairy Queen and a block off the main strip is an urgent care (aka the Doctors House) and at the very end of the main drag in my brother’s bar.

  Jason, my oldest brother, took over the bar when the owner passed away and left it to him. He had helped to maintain and clean when the bar was closed during the day while he was in high school. Once he was able to tend bar he learned to do so. He then learned how to open and close and how to manage the bar. When Waylon passed away a few years ago and he left the bar to Jason because Jason loved it as much as he did. Waylon’s kids weren’t too happy because they had plans to sell it and split the money but since they had made it clear they didn’t want it he left it to Jason. After some court time, which Waylon had planned on and left money for Jason to use for court fees, Jason won and got to keep the bar.

  Waylon had renamed the bar at one point many years ago to WJ’s which was his way of including Jason in it even then. But everyone in town just calls the place Waylon’s. ‘Hey, you heading to Waylon’s tonight?’ ‘Let’s grab a drink at Waylon’s’ Well you get the idea.

  Rock Springs is the type of town everyone knows everyone and their business. I think it was a Miranda Lambert who had a song called Famous in a Small Town, and well, she might as well have been talking about Rock Springs! About 20 minutes outside of town is the Indian Reservation. This causes some tension. Some townspeople don’t like them, it comes from feuds with their families from way back and nothing to do with the people actually living there today.

  My family has always got along and worked alongside beside the reservation. Actually, the story as it’s been passed down, is when our great, great, (maybe a few more greats?) grandparents moved out here the first winter was really bad and the land was different than back east and the Indians took pity on them and help them out. Showed them how to work the land. In return the following spring when they went to slaughter a few cows for meat they gave one to the reservation.

  The tribe was so grateful they continued to help our family every spring and fall with the cattle, during what our family now calls the hell weeks of 12+ hour days. In the spring members from the reservation come and help us with weaning new cattle, doing vaccines, branding, and vet checks. We also pull some of them for sale. We do a few sales in the summer too. Then in the fall we prep for winter doing another cattle check and prepping enough hay. The reservation helps again. So, every spring and fall we still give them a full cow of meat as a thank you. While they don’t need the food anymore like back then, it’s a tradition we don’t dare break.

  So more about my family. My mom and dad are awesome. Not just normal mom and dad awesome but superhero awesome. See Jason is the oldest brother. Then we have Blaze who is my best friend, more on that in a bit, and my sister Megan. They are mom and dad’s bio kids. They adopted me, Colton, and Mac. They didn’t plan to it just so happened we needed a home, they had one and couldn’t turn us down.

  So, the short story (don’t worry I’ll give you the details later). My bio parents lived in the ranch ‘next door’ the main houses are close enough to walk to if you hop a few fences but still pretty far apart. So, our families were neighbors. Blaze and I are only a year apart but in the same grade and we became fast friends, heck to this day he is my best friend. Blaze met Colton and the 3 of us hung out along with Megan who was a year younger than me. Jason hung out sometimes but he was too cool to hang out
with us ‘babies’.

  I was the first one adopted when I was 12, a year later Colton joined the family. Mac is the youngest of us all at 3 years younger than me. So, in case you didn’t catch that Jason is 28, Blaze is 26, Megan in 24, I’m 25, Colton is 26, and Mac is 22.

  Oh, one last thing Mac is from the reservation his full name is Makya which stands for Eagle Hunter. But everyone calls him Mac and if they don’t let’s just say he’s been in more fights then I can count.

  So now you know about us, I’m starting with Blaze's story first because it’s one I think needs to be told and well he was the first one to agree to sit down and help me put it in the journal. I’m working on the others I promise their stories will come too!

  Chapter 1

  Blaze

  13 Years Ago, Sages Adoption Day

  Today my best friend became my sister and part of my family legally. It’s the first time I feel like I can breathe. She is safe, no one can take her from us and her piece of shit sperm donor is behind bars. She has been living with us for over a year now but the adoption is legal just days after her 12th birthday. My parents planned a family photoshoot on the ranch when we got home so we had official family pictures with her in them. We are a family of 6 now. Jason, Megan, Sage, and myself. Colton was there he spends more time with our family then he does his own.

  Sage wanted to celebrate down by the swimming hole so we were all heading out there and Colton was going to spend the weekend with us which wasn’t uncommon. He and Sage shared a lot of the same home life but Colton’s was only bad when his dad showed up, most of the time his mom was a single mom working, so he hung out with us.

  I was watching Sage as she helped mom prepare food for our dinner, we were taking down to the swimming hole on the east side of the ranch. She loves the ranch as much as I do. The last year I’ve really watched her come out of her shell and a few months back we talked about running the ranch together after we got out of school. Granted it would normally be handed down to Jason, the oldest son but while he loves the land and pitches in to help out where ever he was needed, it wasn’t his passion like it was mine.

  My dad knew that so he never pushed him. Sage loves the land as much as I do and since she wouldn’t be able to work her family's land, she took a love to my family’s land, now our family's land. I still remember how scared she was to bring up the idea of us working it together, but really, I hadn’t even pictured it any other way.

  Since she moved in, she took to helping my mom with the cooking. We not only cook for the 6 of us, 7 if Colton joins in but we cook for all the ranch hands that live on the property too. The ones that don’t have families, so on any given night we could have 15-20 people in and out grabbing food.

  We loaded up into two trucks and headed out to the swimming hole, Jason and Megan rode with dad, Sage, Colton and I rode with mom.

  Sage and Colton were in the backseat when Colt spoke up

  “So how does it feel to be all official?” He asked.

  “Honestly It doesn’t feel much different than it has other than the tension is gone because no one can come and take me away anymore.” She said.

  I looked over my shoulder at her and see her reach over and put her hand on Colt’s shoulder, she knows he’s struggling with his dad and the tension he could pop back into his life at any time.

  “I was thinking the same thing earlier today, it’s like the nightmare of the last few years finally ended and the book ends with and ‘They lived happily ever after’.”

  She laughed but I also could see a sadness in my mom’s eyes. She didn’t know what was going on with Sage at first. She and I hid it well only because she begged me. Her dad was an abusive drunk. I knew he was mean and loud but I didn’t know he was physical until I came home from school and was asking her to come riding with me and found her in barn crying with some nasty bruises.

  I went against every fiber in my being not to tell my parents, Sage was terrified of ending up a foster kid, and being taken away from me and my family. We devised a plan that the day she turned 18 at midnight we’d sneak out and run away to somewhere her sperm donor would never find her.

  The nights he came home shit drunk after he passed out, she started to steal money from his wallet. Now don’t judge her, neither of us is old enough to even get a legal job yet. She would hide the money for us to use when we finally picked up and ran. Besides he owed her that much.

  She then learned how to ‘work the system’ when to stay out of his way how to fly under the radar and things seemed ok for a while until I found her in the barn again, this time Colt was with me, I’ve never seen him so panicked. He learned the truth that day, we also found out he knew what she was dealing with because his dad was the same way, only he had the decently to disappear for a year or so at a time.

  The 3 of us bonded fast, then a year ago I was walking her home one night and we could hear her dad on a rampage from outside the house I saw the panic in her eyes and she begged me not to make her go home. We hid in the trees between her house and mine and I held her trying to calm her down. She was shaking. I knew at this point I couldn’t send her back. So, I took her back to my house and put her in the den on the couch. She begged me not to tell my parents and to wake her before anyone woke so she could sneak home.

  To this day she doesn’t know I went right to my parent’s room and spilled everything and cried myself to sleep. My parents agreed to allow her to believe they didn’t know and would make sure to wake me to wake her up to get her home. This happened for a few weeks until my mom was up one night with my sister who was sick and Sage came face to face with her. My mom says she had never saw Sage so scared, I told my mom I had. I think it broke my mom’s heart that day.

  That day when we were in school my mom went to talk to her parents, tried to get them to sign over guardianship to her for her silence on the matter. Seeing as Sage’s sperm donor saw her as free labor he didn’t agree and when Sage got home that day, he was already drunk and she got the worst beating she ever had. I found her but it took both Colt and I to get her back to my house. She wouldn’t talk about it but that day my mom called the cops. The sheriff was a family friend and that was the only reason I was allowed to stay by her side. Lots of pictures were taken, a trip to the ER, X-rays, and I had to tell the whole story of everything I knew. It took a while before Sage would talk about what happened that day, and she cried through it all, it broke my heart, it broke my parent’s hearts.

  Since it was a small town it was easy to get guardianship transferred to my parents. That weekend my mom and Megan decorated her room for her, it was right next to mine since my mom figured it would be a comfort since I was the one who was there for her through it all.

  Then came the trial and making her live it all over again is when the nightmares started. Every night. She has been in therapy but it’s not helping. We are hoping now that the adoption is done and her sperm donor is away for good, they will start to go away.

  We reach the swimming hole and all pile out. My parents start setting up and us kids want to head up the hill to the cliff and jump in. It’s tradition after all!

  Jason and Megan are the first ones to jump. Colt waits for us but jumps before we make it all the way to the top. I look over and see Sage lost in thought.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” I ask her as I nudge her with my shoulder.

  “I worry about Colt. When he heads home, he always looks terrified like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.” She says.

  “I know but until his dad shows up again, we can’t do much of anything we have no proof.”

  “That’s no way to live.” She shakes her head.

  I take a deep breath and check over the edge to make sure everyone is out of our way. I grab her hand and say “I know but all we can do is be there for him right now. Now let’s jump.”

  She looks at me and smiles and squeezes my hand, then says “On 3.”

  I count to 3 and we run to the edge and jump in
never letting go of her hand until we hit the water. We spend the next hour laughing and swimming. As we are sitting on the tailgate and eating with everyone Sage shocks the hell out of me.

  “So, I want to buy my family’s ranch,” she says out of the blue.

  Everyone is silent and just looking at her.

  “Think about it,” she says, “With him in jail, my egg donor won’t be able to keep it going for long. The sad excuse of a bio brother doesn’t want it and he was taken from their custody anyway. It will go up for sale eventually.”

  “I thought we were gonna run this ranch together,” I say

  “We ARE,” She says.

  Well, color me confused. And from the looks on everyone else’s face, they are as well.

  “We save up and we buy the ranch then we run both, we are basically combing them and this ranch then becomes the 2nd biggest in the state overnight. I’ve been thinking about this. We can remodel the main house so it looks brand new and figure out who will live there, the whole place will need a rehaul by then I’m sure but you can run this side I can run that one and we run them together. I know we can do this!”

  She is looking at me with a spark in her eyes. I open my mouth to speak but she keeps going.

  “My grandparents where amazing people and that should be my land by birthright. So, I got shitty parents, I don’t want to see what my grandparents worked so hard for to vanish.”

  I look around and I see it in my parent’s eyes, in Jason and Megan and even Colts.

  Well ok. Game on.

  By the time we head back to the house we have a game plan, since we have next to no debt on the ranch, we can start saving money. Jason agreed to get a job as soon as he could after school next year and start putting money aside. My dad said he’d open a savings account and we would all add money as we could.