Stars & Stripes

Ty brushed past Zane, a hand on Zane’s lower back as he did so. He tipped his hat to Annie and stepped out into the hall. “I’m too sober for this conversation,” he said, and turned with the clear intention of making a quick escape. But Zane saw it coming, and caught Ty by the waistband of his jeans.



“Oh no, you don’t.”



Ty swiped at Zane’s hand, trying to free himself. Zane and Annie both laughed as Ty turned in a complete circle, grunting as he finally managed to make Zane let go of his jeans. He straightened his shirt again and squared his shoulders, as if he could salvage some dignity.



Annie grinned as the line moved and she took a few steps away. “Looks like you got out of singing for your ride.”



Ty cursed under his breath, blushing even in the garish neon light.



Zane chuckled. “She’s right. I think you paid for your ride, doll.”



“You know, you’d probably get laid more often if you didn’t call me a whore so much.”



“Stop your bitching,” Zane said. He waved a hand toward the end of the hall. “I’ll buy you a fresh beer.”



Ty grumbled and made his way down the hall toward the chaotic bar room. Zane turned to follow.



Annie called out from behind him. “You gave yourself away, you know. To everyone in the bar.”



Zane stopped in place and turned to stare at her. “What? How?”



Annie grinned and nodded toward Ty. “He’s wearing your Stetson.”



Zane had a hard time keeping his eyes off Ty, and the lingering scent of Old Spice on his clothes and skin helped to combat any urge to drink that cropped up as the night carried on. Ty made it so very easy for him to stay on the straight and narrow.



By midnight, the place had calmed. No one was dancing, and though plenty of people were still drinking and eating, it was an older crowd. Ty and Zane sat at a table, talking with the others about everything from how they had met on their first assignment to theories of what was going on at the ranch.



“I still think it’s drugs,” Cody said as he sipped at his last beer.



“A valid theory,” Ty said. “What about rustlers? Does that even happen?”



Joe nodded. “It does, but not much, and not around here. There’s just nowhere to take the livestock and no way to get it there after you’ve rustled it.”



“Rustled?” Cody asked.



“It’s a thing.”



“If you say so.”



Ty smiled, and Zane chuckled at them. Joe and Cody were two of Harrison’s best hands. They’d been around since high school, and they were the only two of the dozen ranch hands who’d been invited to meet Ty who had actually come.



Annie slid back onto her stool, carrying a new bucket of beers. Marissa and Jill had called it an early night, both claiming they had to be at work in the morning. Marissa worked with Annie at her veterinary practice, and since Annie rarely saw Zane, Marissa had drawn the short end of the stick. Annie would get to call in hung over for work the next morning, while Marissa opened up.



Ty reached for another beer as Annie told them about her practice and her tentative plans for helping the sanctuary. He opened the bottle on the edge of the table, then stuffed the cap into his pocket. “So, did you want to be a vet, or was that something you got steered toward for the benefit of the ranch?”



Annie blinked. “Wow. You are good.”



“Ty was briefly trained as a profiler,” Zane told them. “I hate it.” They all laughed at him.



“Just a lucky guess,” Ty told Annie, modest as ever when it came to his more impressive skills.



“Mother thought it would be good to have a veterinarian in the family. Turns out she was right, and I do love it, so . . . I didn’t fight it. Not like Z did.”



Ty glanced at Zane, his smile softening. He wasn’t drunk, but he was just buzzed enough to be sweet and affectionate without being self-conscious. “Zane is a fighter.”



Zane rewarded him with a fond smile.



Ty threw back the last gulp of his beer and set the empty bottle on the table in front of him. A shadow fell across their table, and Zane started at the sight of four men standing behind Ty.



“You’re Garrett, right?” one of them said, voice hard and almost slurring.



“That’s right.”



The man looked at the back of Ty’s head. Ty was looking down at the table, face expressionless and shoulders relaxed. If being approached from behind was making him nervous, he wasn’t showing it. But Zane knew he was looking down so he could see with his peripheral vision and be ready if anything happened.



“That makes you the queer, huh?” The man reached out and poked Ty in the arm.



“Hey!” Annie shouted. Mark put a hand on her shoulder to calm her.



Ty remained seated, but he looked up to meet Zane’s eyes. He still appeared calm, which was shocking, because Zane was roiling with anger. Thinking these men were coming at him hadn’t bothered him, but to see them go at Ty was too much.



Ty lifted his broken arm, his fingers raised toward Zane in a calming gesture.



“I’m talking to you, faggot,” the man sneered as he poked Ty harder.



Ty reached for his new beer. “Yeah, I heard you.” He took a drink and met Zane’s eyes again. Zane wanted to bash the man’s skull open; he had no idea why his usually short-tempered partner hadn’t already done so.



“Why don’t you just go away, Stuart? We’re not looking for trouble tonight,” Mark said, as unruffled as Ty. Zane attributed it to their Marine training. It wasn’t easy to prod a seasoned Marine into a bar fight.



Stuart laughed, and his buddies all chuckled. “We ain’t looking for trouble. We just come over here to meet the queer.”



Ty stroked his chin, looking thoughtful as he gazed at the wall above Zane’s head. What was he waiting for? Zane wanted to see him beat the pulp out of these assholes. He knew Ty could do it, even with one arm in a cast.



Stuart shoved Ty again, hard enough to tip him and his stool sideways. Ty managed to save his beer and avoid whacking his broken arm on anything, but the stool fell out from under him and clattered to the ground.



The noise of the bar faded as the patrons noticed what was going on. The people at the table adjacent to them got up and moved away.



Ty turned to look at Stuart, straightening to his full height. He was taller and wider than any of the four men heckling him, and they all seemed a little surprised at his size and stature. One man took a step back.



Stuart puffed out his chest and sneered at Ty. “You gonna fight me, faggot?”



Ty looked him up and down, then glanced at the men behind him. He shook his head. “Not until you make it a fair fight. Go get more friends. I’ll wait.”



People around them laughed nervously. Ty hooked his foot on the bar stool and popped it back up. Then he righted it and sat down again, putting his back to them.



“He thinks he’s fucking funny. Funny ain’t gonna help you here, boy.”



When it didn’t appear that Ty was going to do anything but ignore them and let himself be shoved around, Zane pushed his stool back and stood. Stuart and the other three turned to face him, crooked smiles on their faces.



Ty slid off his stool and stepped between them, putting a hand on Zane’s chest and shaking his head. “Not worth it, Zane,” he whispered.



“Ty—”



“Leave it,” Ty hissed.



Zane looked into his lover’s eyes, and then at the men trying to pick a fight. He’d been lured right into it: poked and prodded with words and insults until he was ready to throw the first punch in front of a saloon full of witnesses.



Ty patted his chest, waiting until he was sure Zane was calm before turning around to face Stuart and his posse. He raised both hands. “You gentlemen done?”



“Why, you got somewhere to be?”



“Yeah, we do,” Annie said. She got off her stool and tugged at Mark’s arm. “We’re leaving.”



The others moved away from the table, giving them a wide berth. But Ty and Zane were hemmed in, unable to step away unless the men moved or they went through them.



“What’s the matter, Garrett? You such a big man you got to hide behind your sissy boyfriend?”



“I can’t wait until he shows you what ‘sissy’ means in his vocabulary,” Zane growled.



Ty glanced over his shoulder, silently asking Zane what they should do. They could go through these four men with little effort.



“All right, break it up over here!” a man shouted as he stormed over from the bar. He was carrying a shotgun and waving his beefy hand as if shooing a pack of dogs off his lawn.



Stuart raised his hand, giving the proprietor an insolent smile. “No problems here, Bobby. We’s just making friends.”



They backed away, staring at Ty and Zane with smirks that made Zane want to shoot each of them in the face. It was a good thing Ty had remained calm enough for both of them, or Zane would have been on his way to a jail cell somewhere.



As soon as the door swung shut on the last man, Zane put a hand on each of Ty’s shoulders and squeezed hard. “Thanks,” he whispered.



Ty nodded and looked over his shoulder, his jaw set in a hard line, his hazel eyes flashing green. He was not as calm as he had seemed when facing the other men.



Annie skirted around the table. “Are y’all okay?” She looked just as angry as Zane felt.



“Fine,” Zane said through gritted teeth. “If stupidity was the worst thing we dealt with every day, we’d be golden.”



Ty was still staring at the doorway, jaw set. Annie put her hand on his arm. “Ty?”



He glanced at her and nodded, then looked back at the door. “Who were they? They work on a ranch close by?”



“Yeah, they’re hands over at the Cactus Creek Ranch,” Joe answered.



Ty nodded. “Word usually travel that fast around here?”



“Depends,” Cody said. “Big news can, but not usually. They must have been talking to someone who works on the C and G.”



Ty glanced at Zane and nodded, but Zane wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He put his arm around Ty instead of commenting on it. “Can’t believe you didn’t knock him on his ass,” he said as they filed out of the building into the pleasant night air.



“Would have been rude,” Ty said, and he sounded serious. Mark laughed, but Zane felt like he wasn’t quite getting the joke.



Mark helped Annie into the cab of Zane’s truck. Zane hung back with Ty, holding his hand to keep him there. “I’m sorry about—”



“Zane, don’t.” Ty looked around the parking lot and then at Zane. “Don’t apologize for shit you have no control over.”



Zane stared at him, enjoying the feeling of his racing heart and the butterflies in his stomach as he realized, all over again, just how much he loved the man in front of him.



Ty smiled. “Do I get to ride in the back of the truck?” he asked, a little too eager.



Zane laughed and glanced over as Cody and Joe climbed into the bed of the truck. They were making a mess of it, just drunk enough to be clumsy and not care. Joe tumbled over the edge into the bed and laughed. All they could see was one boot sticking up in the air.



Zane grinned. “Yeah, go ahead.”



Ty gave him an impulsive kiss and headed for the tailgate. Zane pulled himself into the driver’s side in time to watch Ty climb over the tailgate and plop himself down next to Cody. The man held his fist up, and Ty touched his knuckles to Cody’s as he settled in.



Zane shook his head, still smiling. How in the hell did Ty worm his way into a little niche wherever he went? It was amazing. By the time they were on the road home, Zane could hear Cody and Joe teaching Ty how to perform a proper yee-haw.



Annie and Mark were laughing, and soon Zane joined them. It was a clear, free sound—the kind of laugh he was only just recently remembering he could have.



“Zane,” Annie said with a hand on his shoulder. “Go find a state that allows it, and marry that man.”



Chapter 7



Harrison Garrett wasn’t doing any hard labor as he strolled through the barns. His body wasn’t up to it yet. But he loved the smell of the barns: the hay and the leather, the horses and the wood. It brought him peace in a world that had gone crazy. Men were trying to kill him, lions and tigers lived next door, his wife was on the warpath, and his son had brought home a man he loved.



When he reached the far end of the stalls, he stumbled across Ty and Zane just outside the barn door. Ty was perched on a hitching post as he watched Zane rope the horn of a saddle set on a fence rail ten feet away.



Zane tossed the rope, landing it around the saddle horn time and time again. He was trying to teach Ty the proper technique, but Ty wasn’t watching his hands or his posture, or even the rope as it sailed through the air. He was watching Zane’s face.



“You ready to give it a try?” Zane asked, unaware that they had an audience.



“No, show me one more time.”



Zane gave him a tolerant sigh and nodded. Harrison snorted, luckily not loud enough to draw their attention. This Ty Grady had Zane wrapped around his finger. It was almost sweet. And Harrison had rarely seen a man who could go toe to toe with Beverly and come out alive, much less on top and smiling. The more he saw of the man who’d caught his son’s heart, the more he liked him. And the more he saw of his son, the more he realized how close they’d come to losing Zane altogether. Even before his wife had passed, Zane had been a cold and rather distant man. He’d been so much like Beverly. Now, though, there was warmth in Zane that Harrison had never thought he’d see.