Wild Trail (Clean Slate Ranch #1)(20)

“I’m surprised no one’s ever had a heart attack from that sound. Jesus. How long have you been up?”

Miles shrugged. “A few hours. Couldn’t sleep.”

Wes’s bladder gave a kick, but Derrick had already claimed the bathroom, so he walked to the window. They faced east, and the sun was up past the distant mountains, so it wasn’t super early. A few ranch hands in cowboy hats and boots were walking around, doing whatever it was they did on the ranch. No one who could have been Mack. Even if his face was hidden, Wes knew that ass.

He finally got a turn to piss when Derrick was in the shower. Sharing one bathroom with four people wasn’t something he’d done since first moving to Los Angeles and landing a spot in a tiny two-bedroom apartment. He’d slept on a bunk bed there, too, with a fellow aspiring actor who talked in his sleep. Wes had quickly invested in earplugs.

Sharing a bathroom had also taught him the fine art of getting in and out fast, including brushing his teeth while showering, which Wes did as soon as Derrick vacated. Miles was still on his bunk reading when Wes was dressed and ready for the day.

“If you guys want to head down, I’ll meet you at breakfast,” Conrad said, looking up from his phone.

Wes put a hand on his hip. “Setting up a booty call with Sophie?”

Conrad’s guilty expression made Wes laugh.

“Works for me, I’m starving,” Derrick said. “Come on.”

Miles put his book down, and the three of them left the room. The scents of cooked bacon and coffee tantalized Wes’s senses on the walk downstairs to the first floor. In the dining room, the sideboard behind the long dining table was covered with platters of cooked bacon, biscuits, a pot of sausage gravy, home fries and fresh fruit.

“Damn,” Wes said. “The food alone is going to be worth the price of admission.”

“You aren’t kidding,” Derrick said.

The Reynolds family was already seated and eating, and by the time their trio got plates and sat down, the dude-bros had arrived. The Chamberlains followed a minute later, and eventually everyone except Sophie and Conrad was eating and chatting.

Almost everybody.

Miles kept his head down and picked at the biscuit he’d covered in some kind of red jam, tearing it apart more than eating. Wes leaned over, pitched his voice low, and asked, “You feeling okay?”

“Not really hungry,” Miles replied. “Never been much of a breakfast person.”

Made sense. At home, Wes had never paid any particular attention to Miles’s eating habits. Wes was a food person no matter the meal or time of day, so he dug into his own heaped plate. Everything was delicious, just like last night’s barbecue.

“You should at least taste the sausage gravy,” Wes said. “It’s supergood.”

Miles reached over and speared a piece of gravy-covered sausage off Wes’s plate, then popped it into his mouth. “You’re right, it’s really good. Not too spicy, right amount of salt.”

Sophie and Conrad joined them about fifteen minutes later, and it took all of Wes’s self-control not to make a lewd comment. As they got their food, though, his curiosity rose. Conrad didn’t have the self-satisfied smirk of a guy who’d just gotten lucky; Sophie looked excited, but in an “I’ve got a secret” way, not an “I worked in a quickie with my fiancé” way.

Excited-Sophie-with-a-secret made Wes nervous.

After he finished, Wes put his plate and coffee mug in the required bus bin, then wandered out to the front porch. The morning air was still relatively cool, but the sun would scorch the earth in a few hours and raise the temperatures. He watched the open doors of the barn for any sign of Mack, but saw only a few of the other cowboys go in and out.

A blue shirt and brown hat flashed in his periphery, and Wes shifted his attention to the main house. Mack descended the steps of the front porch, a tablet in hand, all frowny-face about something. Wes loved Mack’s frowny-face. It made him look dangerous, like a growly-bear cowboy who’d ride him hard and put him away wet.

Wes’s dick took interest, and as if he’d read his mind, Mack looked up from his tablet. Right into Wes’s eyes. His belly swooped in a funny way. Mack’s frown deepened in a way that made Wes feel like he was the reason for Mack’s bad mood. Mack broke eye contact, then stalked toward the barn.

Weird.

“Okay, so don’t be mad,” Sophie said behind him.

No good conversation ever starts like that.

Wes turned in a slow pivot, only to find Sophie beaming at him, Conrad and Derrick looking way too neutral, and Miles frowning at the porch. “What did you do?” Wes asked.

“This morning before breakfast, I signed us all up for an overnight camping trip,” she replied. “They offer them Monday, Wednesday and Friday night for anyone interested.”

He vaguely remembered reading about that on the website and—“Hold up, camping trip? As in, sleeping on the ground in a tent?”

“Exactly. How cool does that sound?”

“Are you nuts?” Wes pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. “Are you feverish? Have you met me?”

Sophie knocked his hand away. “You’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be the one who gets eaten by a mountain lion.”

“Not if you don’t wander off,” Conrad said, visibly holding back laughter.