After the Sunset Read Free Page A

“Oh, the drag racing,” I chuckled.
    “It ain’t funny. They could get themselves killed doin’ that.”
    “On the tractors,” I said, trying really hard not to sound patronizing. “Yes, I’m sure they could.”
    He thrust his hand at me to shake. “Call me when you’re makin’ the lasagna again.”
    “Yessir, Sheriff, I sure will,” I promised, taking the offered hand in mine.
    He gave me a smile before I turned to get in my car.
    “Stef.”
    I looked back at him over my shoulder, opening the door.
    “Call me if you’re makin’ the pot roast too.”
    “Oh, okay,” I teased him. “I didn’t realize you had favorites.”
    “Damn right,” he told me before he suddenly froze. “You ain’t makin’ any of those tonight, are ya?”
    “No, sir, I’m not.”
    He grunted before he got in the mammoth car.
    It was actually really nice that the man had favorites. Before I began my life with Rand, my culinary skills were basic at best. But the restaurants in Winston were both barbeque places, and while they were good, sometimes variety was nice, so one of us had to learn to cook, and of the two of us I had more time. He really enjoyed it when I slaved away in the kitchen for him; why, I had no idea, but the look on his face when he came in the house and found me in the kitchen was enough to melt me through the floor. He really enjoyed the hell out of me being domestic.
    I watched as the sheriff moved his SUV, honking as he drove away. The deputies both followed suit, and when I was headed for home, I had time to think about the transformation my life had gone through in just a short amount of time.
     
     
    T WO years ago, Rand Holloway and I had gone from enemies to lovers in sizzling style over the course of his sister Charlotte Holloway’s four-day wedding blowout. The bride, my best friend in the world, had asked, ordered, commanded me to be her man of honor, and because she needed her brother there as well… Rand and I were forced to share space. It was a recipe for disaster, as he and I could barely manage to be civil for any extended period of time.
    Rand and I had never been anything but a horror to each other, but that weekend the reasoning for ten years of guerilla warfare had become clear. Rand liked me, had always liked me, and in fact it was actually way more than that. He was sort of crazy about me. But putting an out and proud gay man together with a cattle rancher from Texas had been a tough idea for him to come to grips with. Once he had, though, once he had figured out the truth about himself, what he needed and what he wanted, he had been ready to let me know.
    The path to true love had not been an easy one. While Rand and I were navigating the change from enemies to friends to lovers, my ex-boss, Knox Bishop, had been trying to kill me and frame me for fraud and embezzlement. It had been a very interesting week of my life and one that had, in the end, prompted my move across the country to live on a cattle ranch. And though I loved the man desperately, the transition was anything but easy.
    Rand was a cowboy, and I was a city boy used to having access to all the things a metropolis had to offer twenty-four hours a day. Not that I didn’t love the ranch or the man who owned it, but there had to be a happy medium, and I ended up making all the changes while Rand’s life stayed pretty much the same. And while I understood that there was no other way for that to work—his ranch was the unchangeable, unmovable piece in the equation—even though logically I did get it, I ended up angry nonetheless.
    I took my frustration out on Rand until I realized that the person I was really mad at was me. I was trying to live my old life and my new one all at the same time, and it wasn’t working for anyone.
    What was nice was that I even had the opportunity to try out what didn’t end up working in the first place. I had been able to make the transition from Chicago to Lubbock because I was hired by