Counting on Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series: Book 3) Read Free Page A

so obviously in pain, but pills? Booze? Drinking binges to the point that he had to go retrieve him in the middle of the night? Let alone the fact that Joseph had dragged Amy out in the middle of the night to take him home. Things just couldn’t continue like this.
    “I’ll have Emily bring you something to eat. It’s not good to take those on an empty stomach,” Carey said half-heartedly as he turned to go.
    “Carey, wait a second,” Joseph called quietly. “I’m sorry you guys had to bring me home last night. Really. I mean it. Please tell Amy I’m sorry. Please. I don’t want her to think the worst about me.” Whether it was a genuine apology or his pills were kicking in, Carey couldn’t tell, but he nodded and closed the door behind him.
    Downstairs, he stuck his head in the kitchen and asked one of the staff members to take Joseph some soup or something light. The three kitchen workers exchanged nervous glances before Emily, the head cook, said they would be glad to. Carey nodded his thanks and left, only to run into Bernard.
    “Son,” Bernard began. “where’s your brother? I thought you went to get him.”
    “He…he can’t come down yet, Dad,” Carey answered, grinding the toe of his boot in small circles in the floor, looking away from his father’s irritated expression. “He’s really doing bad, so I told him to stay in bed.”
    “You did what?” Bernard demanded. “I told that boy to get down here, and I expect him to appear!”
    Carey finally looked at his father, concerned for the first time. “Dad, I’m telling you, something’s wrong with him. I don’t know if it’s something the doctor didn’t catch, or if there’s some other kind of injury happening that’s not related at all to him getting thrown from that horse, or what. But he’s in real pain. I’ve seen pain, Dad, and I know you have, too. Guys get hurt on the ranch all the time, and this thing’s real.”
    Bernard pursed his lips into a straight line, squaring his shoulders and throwing his hands on his hips. “I don’t know what to believe, Carey. If you say he’s hurting, I want to believe you. I really do. But how bad can it be when he has the energy and the ability to haul himself into Hale and drink himself under the table?” Carey looked at his father in shock. “Yeah, the new owners called me. They’re worried about him, son. Joseph’s in there a little too often having a little too much to drink. You know you have a drinking problem when the town bartender calls your daddy about it.”
    Carey looked away, ashamed. “I don’t know, Dad. That seems to make sense but then I know I tried to haul him downstairs so he could face the music for having us woken up last night, and you’d have thought I ran him through with a pitch fork. It was bad. He screamed, and I’ve heard grown men scream in pain before. That was real.”
    The fight seemed to go out of Bernard at Carey’s words. “I want to believe him, son, and I want to get him help. But I just don’t know how much of this is from a six-month-old injury, and how much of it’s just him being scared to get too far away from a bottle, whether it’s a pill bottle or a bottle of booze.
    “I will say this much, he’s not to leave this ranch again. We have some serious figuring out to do, but I’m not having one of my sons turn into the town drunk. And if any of the workers on the ranch are giving him rides into town so he can bury his face in a beer glass, that man’ll be out of work before the end of the day. I mean it!” Bernard bellowed for the benefit of the few employees who were moving through the house.
    Carey put his arm around his dad’s shoulders and led him back to his office as the kitchen door swung open and several of the ranch hands came through, followed by Amanda with a tray for Joseph. She shot Carey a look, then look pointedly at Bernard, almost as though she was asking permission to take it upstairs. Carey nodded, then pressed