Chapter One
Aaron Walker laughed with his buddy, but it was all an act. Inside, the conversation was hitting too close to home and irritating a sore spot he’d been nurturing for years.
“I mean”—his longtime friend Lucas laughed—“Brock got married before you. I didn’t think any girl could get through his thick head.”
Aaron bristled but covered his reaction by taking another swig of his Coors. He drained the bottle, the last gulp piss warm.
His cousin Brock’s head wasn’t thick; he had Autism Spectrum Disorder. He’d found the perfect strong, independent woman. The wedding hadn’t been anything more than a sudden phone call and a courthouse visit, but the two weddings before that had involved the entire family, followed by the town. Then a fourth cousin’s wedding had been almost as large, with just as much celebration.
That left Aaron odd man out of the Walker Five farm and ranch. One lonely Walker left single while the other four enjoyed wedded bliss. Not that it bothered Aaron at all.
He changed the subject. “How ’bout the Moore Mudders? They had a killer season.”
Lucas looked at him with bleary eyes. “I don’t follow high school football anymore. When I walked off the field senior year, I was done.” He took another sip of his Morgan and Coke. Ice tinkled, and he made a slurping sound.
Aaron rubbed his face. How long had they been at Barley ‘n’ Hops? Long enough for Lucas to see sloppy drunk in the near future. Aaron eyed his empty bottle and calculated how much longer he’d have to sit before he was good to drive. Technically, he could drive home and be fine, but he hated to flirt with disaster.
The long to-do list he carted around every day wouldn’t get done if he was either parked in jail or thumbing it on the highway because he’d lost his license.
Lucas shook his glass at the server walking by. She sauntered over and picked up their empties.
“When’d you get off, Trina?” Lucas asked.
Trina glanced at Aaron. He shrugged in a what’re ya gonna do way to cover his rampant disappointment. She focused back on Lucas. “I’m going home alone, and you’re going back home to your wife.”
Lucas’s gaze averted. “I was just askin’. Why don’t you get me that drink?”
Trina left with more attitude swaying her hips. Lucas looked around, his gaze hitting on every woman, single or not.
“Dude,” Aaron said. “I hope you’re nothing more than big talk.”
“Fuck off.” Lucas glowered at the wet ring left on the table. “At least I have someone.”
“You won’t if you keep doing that.”
“Then what’s your excuse, Walker? You’re like a girl repellent.”
“I get plenty of action.” His words were empty. Girls ran faster from him than a metal pole in a lightning storm, and he and Lucas always laughed about it. Tonight, it didn’t feel so humorous.
Yeah, they thought it was all sweet that he took care of his little brothers. Now that they were not-so-little, the ladies didn’t think it was as charming. That’s if the subject of him having siblings came up. After a couple of times hitting it at a girl’s place, Aaron had to reveal that his parents lived with him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t live with them but had bought and paid for the house he’d grown up in after his parents moved out. They’d moved back in, and he was the farmer who lived with his parents.
He was starting to doubt he could ever find a woman who’d accept his life situation. He took care of his family. It was what he did. He didn’t want a wife who’d abandon them, but damn. They never stuck around long enough to see if he was worth more than a quick fuck.
Lucas hunched over the table. “The only action you get is the ass wiggle as they walk away. I told you that you shouldn’t have let Mommy and Daddy move back.”
Aaron scowled at his friend. He’d ask when Lucas had grown so negative, but the guy had had too much to drink. He got obstinate and argumentative after a few hours of drinking. Aaron was already prepping himself to wrestle Lucas into his truck to drive him home.
“But I did let them,” Aaron said and nodded at Trina as she dropped off the drinks and left.
She was cute. They’d had a thing not too long ago. He’d show up when she was done with work and they’d go back to her place. She had a three-year-old and didn’t want to bring men around she wasn’t serious with, so he went inside after the sitter left and was gone by dawn. In the light of day, they were nothing more than acquaintances.
Was she still single?
Lucas dove into his drink. Aaron tried to make small talk that didn’t revolve around his lack of companionship and Lucas propositioning other women.
His friend slumped to the side, the unfocused gaze on another woman. “Look, Elizabeth What-the-fuck’s-her-last-name is in town. Lemme go talk to her.”
He veered out of his seat. Aaron scrambled up and blocked him, steadying his drunk friend at the same time.
“Luke, seriously. It’s time to go home.”
“Fuck you, I’m talking to her.” Lucas pushed to go around. Even though he was evenly matched in size to Aaron, he barely budged him. He must be really drunk, or only making a half-hearted effort, like he didn’t want to hit on a woman other than his wife.
Why do it then?
“Nope.” Aaron tucked him under one arm and grabbed his wallet with the other. He threw some money on the table. They were probably paid up, but stiffing a single mom wasn’t an option so he’d rather overpay. “I’m gonna take you home. I’ve got a long weekend of moving cattle with Cash.”
Lucas struggled, more out of pride than putting any real effort into it. “I can drive myself.”
“I know. But I’ll drive you. You’ve made it clear all night that I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Lucas snorted and wove out of the bar. The cool late summer air hinted at the weather change they were going to see within a month. Thus his grand plans of harvesting all weekend, then all week, then put on repeat until the crops were in.
He muscled Lucas into his pickup. The height of his Dodge Ram was almost too much, and it was like stuffing a two-hundred-pound sack of unruly potatoes into the passenger seat.
“There you go.” He leaned in and buckled Lucas, who glowered out the windshield.
“I can drive myself.”
“I know you can,” Aaron repeated.
This scenario had become the standard between them the last few months. They went from being inseparable in high school, to drinking and study buddies in college, to Lucas meeting his wife Shaylee and ghosting Aaron. But Aaron had been happy for him, just like he’d been happy watching all his cousins settle down, assuming he’d be in the lineup.
No luck.
Instead Lucas came back around, and it was like they both regressed back to their early days of drinking in bars and trying to find love if only for a night. Lucas had never been someone Aaron thought would cheat, and he didn’t think the guy had yet, but he couldn’t keep standing by like he supported the efforts.
Aaron got behind the wheel and headed toward Lucas’s place. He farmed outside of Moore, on the opposite side of town as Aaron and his family. But where Aaron ran a farm and ranch business with four of his cousins, Lucas was a party of one.
All the lights were off at Lucas’s place, not even the exterior house light was on.
“Is Shaylee gone for the weekend?”
Lucas tried for the door handle. It slipped out of his fingers. He refocused, using his whole body, and tried again. Aaron jumped out and ran around before Lucas face planted from the height of the pickup.
He caught Lucas as he slipped out of his seat. That last drink must be hitting him hard.
Slinging Lucas’s arm around his shoulders, he steered him toward the door.
Lucas sniffled.
“Don’t wipe your nose on me.” Aaron glanced over and did a double take. “Are you crying?”
They’d known each other since middle school when they’d both gone out for football. Living on opposite ends of town, they’d gone to different elementary schools. Years of football, baseball, classes, farm injuries, stupid kid injuries… They’d been through it all together. Aaron had been Lucas’s best man. In all that time, he’d never seen Lucas cry.
“No.” Lucas stared at the dark house.
Just that sloppy drunk. Aaron picked his steps carefully, the lone yard light not reaching the front steps enough to cast more than shadows.
“She left me,” Lucas mumbled.
“What?” Aaron said, not paying attention, intent on the rocky path to the door.
“Shaylee. She packed a bag and left. She’s in town, shacking up with the dentist.”
Shaylee was a dental hygienist. The dentist she worked for was a newly divorced bachelor who had half the single women in town flocking to be his clients. Was that what Aaron needed? A lab coat and glasses that made his eyes look weird?
Thinking of himself at a time like this didn’t help Lucas, or him. No wonder Lucas hadn’t been acting like himself.
“I’m sorry, man. Wish you would’ve told me sooner.” Aaron could probably pinpoint when Shaylee left based off Lucas’s change in behavior. He kicked himself for not digging into it more, but Lucas was a proud farmer. He reached out for help the only way he knew how. Getting drunk and bullshitting.
The dentist was drilling more than teeth while Lucas was getting rebuffed over and over again, adding more drinks to dull the pain.
Once Aaron bumped inside the never-locked door, Lucas shoved away from him. “I can walk on my own.”
He shuffled to the leather recliner and slumped into it. His cap popped off his head and he tossed it on the worn carpet next to him.
Aaron glanced around. A basket of laundry sat in the living room and clothing hung inside out off the back of other chairs in the room. He swayed back to peek into the closed off the kitchen. Dirty dishes lined the chipped laminate counter and the square table.
Shaylee had done a lot of the housework because Lucas could be in the field for ten or more hours a day, but this mess wasn’t like Lucas. In college, they’d been roommates and he’d been almost fastidious. It was the only time in Aaron’s life he hadn’t had to pick up after anyone.
Lucas reclined with his head on the headrest, his arms draped over the sides, eyes closed.
“So what happened?” Aaron couldn’t leave. He’d definitely have to wait for the worst of the alcohol to flow through Lucas’s bloodstream, but his best friend needed a best friend.
“Working all the time. Not giving her enough attention. Don’t appreciate what she does around here.” Lucas rubbed his eyes and dropped his hand, eyes still shut like it was easier to talk when he didn’t see that someone was there listening. “Like…I work long fucking days, man. I’m tired when I come home, but I thought we had a good sex life.”
Aaron crossed to the couch and collapsed on it. “But she knew the life when she married you. I mean, she went to school with us.”
“Yeah, but she was a city kid, and younger than us, so all she saw was the big, flashy truck.” He blinked his eyes open. The room was still dark. Aaron hadn’t had time to turn on the lights before Lucas dropped his personal shocker. It was probably better that way. “It’s like they don’t know that we really use those trucks. For work. Hard work. She gave away the chickens last year, did I tell you?”
Aaron shook his head. There’d probably been a lot of signs Lucas had missed. His happy go-lucky friend had landed hard in reality.
“Yeah. Said she wasn’t cut out to butcher the birds. Then I put the kibosh on her idea of an island vacation. Where the fuck would we get the money for it? She said she’d work more. And she did, she must’ve really worked for it. Well, she won’t have to anymore because Dr. Do-me will foot the bill.” Bitterness dripped off his last statement.
Aaron stared at his boots. His pant legs were half untucked and, dammit, his boots didn’t even match. Luckily both pairs resembled each other enough that maybe it hadn’t been obvious in the bar. He should’ve noticed his haphazard appearance, but he’d thrown food on the table for Jackson and Nicolas after their basketball practice and found something for his aimless dad to do so he’d stay out of Mom’s hair. Otherwise those two would bicker incessantly and that wasn’t good for the boys to see.
The wedding ring on Lucas’s finger was visible only as a darker shadow on his limp hand. Aaron debated whether to ask the next question, but he had to keep the guy talking. “Are you guys going to get a divorce?”
Lucas glared at the far wall where his wedding picture hung. The happy bride smiled serenely next to Lucas as she lifted one side of her dress to reveal a cowboy boot; shoes Lucas never wore. Another early sign Shaylee thought she was marrying something she wasn’t: the sexy cowboy with money flying out of his wallet and his finger in all the city council business.
Nope. They were farmers. Aaron’s own operation achieved financial successful because his dad and his uncles had combined all their land and formed the Walker Five. Aaron and the rest of the new five grew up learning the ins and outs and educated themselves. The ranch supplemented the farm if it was a bad growing season, but they could still weather a few bad years without the cattle income.
“D-i-v-o-r-c-e,” Lucas said morosely. “She hasn’t filed, yet, but I will. If she thought this was some cry for help, she could’ve done it without hooking up with someone else. No, I’m done. I give you shit that no one’s going to tolerate your hot mess of a family life, dude, but the reality is you’re the lucky one. That way you don’t get roped into the lie that is marriage. You don’t get saddled with the woman who wants you to make all the money and shower her with it, then bitch about all the hours you put in to do it. We ain’t going to find anything real with our work, and that’s the truth.”
“But our parents—”
“Different time, man.” Lucas fell quiet, then snorted. “Your parents should’ve gotten divorced ages ago. I don’t think I went to your house once when they weren’t arguing.”
“They don’t argue, they needle each other. They feed off it.” Aaron should’ve grown up to expect the same dynamics in his own relationships, but he’d been surrounded by solid marriages. All his aunts and uncles were still married, except for Dillon’s mom, who was widowed.
Lucas sighed, and his lids drifted shut. “Face it, dude. We’re decent guys and that’s not what women want. This life, us, it’s not what they dream of.”
Aaron waited a few minutes without saying anything. Lucas’s breathing steadied. He was asleep. Aaron glanced at the clock ticking above the bookshelf. Eleven. He should be climbing into bed, enjoying the warmth before he had to get up and work in the chilled air all day.
It’s not what women really want.
Hope had bloomed eternal since Aaron had gone on his first date. But now he was twenty-nine. Was he destined to be Uncle Aaron, the bachelor uncle who dressed funny and cracked stupid jokes everyone rolled their eyes at?
Well, he didn’t crack jokes, so there was that.
Lucas snoozed, but Aaron wasn’t comfortable leaving. He puttered around the house, snagging laundry and tossing it into a pile for washing. No matter how good a friend Lucas was, Aaron wasn’t sniff testing the man’s laundry.
In the kitchen, he stacked dishes and emptied the dishwasher. Ten minutes had passed. With a heavy sigh, he filled the dishwasher, started it, and hand washed the rest. The floor needed a good sweep, and it got it.
Another glance at his friend. Hell, he’d been around Lucas much more drunk than this. It was probably all right to go. He slid off the man’s work boots and covered him with a blanket before going back out to his truck.
The cab was still warm, and Aaron sat behind the wheel staring at the dark yard. His house wasn’t much different than the one in front of him. His dad was the oldest and had built their house before the other uncles. It was a 1980s sprawling ranch with two bedrooms and an office upstairs and three downstairs bedrooms with a moderately sized family room.
Growing up, it’d been enough room for his parents, Aaron, and his brothers. These days, it could feel claustrophobic with his brothers fighting the way teenage boys do and his parents carrying on the way they did.
What a pleasant thought. At least everyone might be asleep by the time he got back. One of the few moments he got to himself.
He drove home. The streets were quiet and once he left city limits, he didn’t come across another car. Heading down the road to his house, he passed the first of his cousins’ places. Cash’s house was on his right, the trees failing to conceal the barns and corrals. Dillon was on the left, his trees fully enclosing his property, only the soft glow of a yard light lifted over the tops.
Brock’s was the next on his left. The trees blocked his house, but Aaron knew there’d be no lights on other than the yard and outside house light. Brock hit his bedtime like clockwork, especially now that he had Josie and didn’t have to make excuses for why it was so important to him to get to bed after the nightly news.
He reached the dead-end that his house was on. To the right would be Travis’s place where he was probably snuggled in bed next to Kami after reading the latest issue of The Progressive Farmer.
And there was his property. Half the lights were on even though his family were probably each in their bedrooms. His brothers’ beater trucks sat askance in the driveway, blocking the garage where his mom kept her car. Aaron idled to the big rectangular shop a hundred yards from his house and parked in front of it. He killed the engine and crossed to his home, his boots crunching on the gravel the only sound in the night.
The warm glow of alcohol had faded long before driving Lucas home. He shivered and shoved his hands into his pockets. Lifting his gaze to the sky, he slowed to take in the myriad of stars above him. The Big Dipper, his favorite, dominated with its three handle stars the brightest in the sky. Nights like this, he could tolerate stargazing. In another month, especially when January descended, the long walk across the yard from the only decent place to park his truck would be too frigid to linger long, but that was when the stars were the most brilliant.
Letting himself into the house, he eased the screen door shut. Quietly, he toed off his boots and shut off lights as he made his way to the master bedroom at the end of the house. His parents hadn’t insisted on getting their original room back. The arrangement was supposed to only have been for a few months, but three years later…
They stayed downstairs in his old bedroom and his brothers had moved into the other two bedrooms down there.
No one bothered Aaron and there was no noise coming from anywhere in the house. On the way, he stepped into the tiny office and grabbed his laptop from the cluttered desk. Ledgers threatened to spill to the floor, but he shoved them back with the edge of the computer and backed out.
A subdued energy swirled inside his gut. Changing into a T-shirt and shorts, he glanced at the computer. He should go to bed.
Sliding under the covers, he rolled them down and pulled the laptop close. It fired right up because he’d used it to balance accounts for the fall season before Lucas had called.
Without thinking too hard, he typed “Tinder” into the search bar. A few minutes of searching showed it wasn’t what he was looking for. Women from places like L.A., Orlando, or hell, even Minneapolis in his home state of Minnesota weren’t likely to prefer life in rural solitude. Would he invest all that time in the “getting to know” stage only to find out they weren’t in it for more than a good time?
What about long-term? A real relationship?
He shoved his hands through his hair.
What the hell was he thinking? Dating sites?
But didn’t old man Farley marry a lady he…uh, ordered? Aaron tried to remember the gossip. It’d been several years, but yes, the woman had been from Russia.
Weren’t they still married?
But were they happy? Mr. Farley might be, but was she?
No, this was stupid. Aaron shut the lid of the computer and stared at the wall. Shelves in the corner held various hats that he wore. The closet door was half open and his pants were spilling out. He’d have to ask his parents to help him catch up on laundry.
He was almost thirty and he’d have to ask his parents, who still lived with him, to help with laundry.
What lady was going to take the time to get to know him?
The screen was back up and lit. For an hour, he cruised various online dating sites, bypassing the uber sexy photos. He’d linger over the attractive headshots and wonder if the woman existed or if either the photo or information was fake.
This was pointless. If he could spark an online relationship, who was going to move to the middle of the country, to the middle of nowhere?
Where had Farley’s bride been from?
Was she happy? Were they happy?
He punched in “mail order” and his hand stayed over the “b” for bride. God, he couldn’t do it.
The lid was half closed again, when he paused. The quiet house with all the lights on and no place to park. Trina saying he came with more baggage than she did. Lucas passed out and brokenhearted in his empty home.
He flipped it open and entered “international brides.” What pulled up sank his stomach faster than a hunk of lead in a pool. He couldn’t, just couldn’t, do mail order. A man had his pride, and yes, he was lonely and scared to be a bachelor for life, but rather that than a miserable woman who felt she had no other options.
He deleted the search and entered “international dating.” A page full of dating sites from a mix of countries popped up.
What would it hurt just to take a look?