Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“Where the hell is your hat?” he said suddenly.
I pointed over at Juju.
“Why does that demon horse of yours—” But he stopped talking and then said, “Tell me you guys all ate before doing whatever the hell this was.”
“Nope,” Mac said. “Nobody ate.”
Rand looked like he was ready to spit nails.
“I built time into the schedule, so we’re fine,” Mac soothed him. “But we need to eat now and get on the road or we ain’t makin’ it before dark.”
Rand was doing the breathing Stef had taught him so no one got shot. I was thinking it was lucky he loved Stef, or he probably would have started with me.
I was surprised when Zach came over from eating with Rand and the others and took a seat beside me under the trees. His scrutiny was unnerving because he looked so much like our mother, and I still missed her. He had her big brown eyes; too bad he had his own mouth.
“You lost a shitload of weight, Glenn. You sick?”
“You know I’m not,” I answered tightly.
It was a sore subject.
Being born a Holloway normally meant, genetically, that you were going to be big. My father was, Rand was, and so was my uncle Tyler and my uncle James, the man who raised Rand. Zach was bigger than me, but nowhere near Rand’s size. I was the smallest. Zach and I were both slighter, slimmer, built more like folks on my mother’s side of the family, having received her more delicate bone structure, the high cheekbones, and the tan skin. I was thrilled to look more like her, the Navajo side, than my father, but I had also wanted to be big, with all the hard, heavy muscle. Genetics were tricky, though; it was all just a roll of the dice.
On the ranch, working my body hard every day, helped by the occasional shot of steroids to get bigger, stronger, I had been like hewn oak, all carved and toned. But two years of the restaurant, running my ass off every day, the work more cardio than anything else, plus running with Juju at night, along with being completely off drugs—I couldn’t very well demand it of my team and do it myself—I went from bulked up to the physique of a swimmer. I was healthy now, but of course, all Zach saw was how much I’d slimmed down.
He rubbed the back of his knuckles over my beard, and then, before I could pull away, jabbed at my mustache with his finger. “And what’s with all this hair on your face?”
Holloway men were usually clean-shaven, so the facial hair I’d let grow in—though the beard was barely that—was just another way to distinguish myself from them. “I’m busy,” I said defensively, hating that he’d even brought it up.
“How busy can a restaurant be?”
I didn’t take the bait since the comment was just plain ignorant.
“It was a joke!” he crowed, whacking me hard on the back. “For fuck’s sake, Glenn, not everything is meant to be taken so seriously.”
My back hurt a little because he was stronger than he gave himself credit for, but I didn’t want to fight. “How’re you doing on the Red? You still like it?”
And he was off, telling me about the newborn calves, and the horses he’d helped break and how good they looked, and how one of the Red’s bulls was just sold for some ungodly amount of money.
“It’s hard to be away, but this drive will settle Rand up with JD McNamara for grazing the cattle. It’s a short trip, and since we’ll have regular folks with us—”
“How many, exactly?”
“Thirty, I think… But anyway, the cattle have been grazing on McNamara’s dude ranch because Rand wanted to keep ’em separate from the regular herd.”
I was bored already. “And?”
“Well, since we couldn’t afford to take that many men off the Red this time of year, Rand reached out to McNamara to see if his men could drive the cattle down, and Rand would pay their wages.”
“Sure.”
“But McNamara said he’d send his men for free, but he needed Rand to take his guests with him to drive the cattle to the Red because his herd that he was driving back and forth, he sold last year because the price for beef was so high.”
“Lemme get this straight,” I said, understanding the breadth of the horror only at that moment. “Not only is Rand taking regular folks with him on this drive, but also, he has to supervise wranglers who aren’t his.”
“That’s correct.”
I looked at him, and he snorted out a laugh.
“For shit’s sake, Zach, we’ll be lucky to live.”
He was laughing then, and I joined in.
After a moment, he said, “At least it’ll break things up.”
“What things?” I asked, honestly not knowing what he meant.
“Doing the same ole shit, of course,” he replied, squinting at me. “Man, you are a prickly piece of crap.”