My Cowboy Freedom Read online

  Titles by Z. A. Maxfield

  My Cowboy Heart

  My Heartache Cowboy

  My Cowboy Homecoming

  My Cowboy Promises

  My Cowboy Freedom

  My Cowboy Freedom

  Z. A. Maxfield

  INTERMIX

  New York

  INTERMIX

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Z. A. Maxfield

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN: 9780451487933

  First Edition: November 2016

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Titles by Z. A. Maxfield

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: Sky

  Chapter 2: Sky

  Chapter 3: Rock

  Chapter 4: Sky

  Chapter 5: Sky

  Chapter 6: Rock

  Chapter 7: Sky

  Chapter 8: Sky

  Chapter 9: Rock

  Chapter 10: Sky

  Chapter 11: Sky

  Chapter 12: Rock

  Chapter 13: Sky

  Chapter 14: Rock

  Chapter 15: Sky

  Chapter 16: Rock

  Chapter 17: Sky

  Chapter 18: Rock

  Chapter 19: Sky

  Chapter 20: Rock

  Chapter 21: Sky

  Chapter 22: Rock

  Chapter 23: Sky

  Chapter 24: Rock

  Chapter 25: Sky

  Chapter 26: Rock

  Chapter 27: Sky

  Chapter 28: Rock

  Chapter 29: Sky

  Chapter 30: Rock

  Chapter 31: Sky

  Chapter 32: Rock

  Chapter 33: Sky

  Chapter 34: Rock

  Chapter 35: Sky

  Chapter 36: Rock

  Chapter 37: Sky

  Chapter 38: Sky

  Epilogue: Sky

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Sky

  I had nothing. They gave me some thrift-store rejects to wear: an old Hawaiian shirt, a faded pair of navy sweat pants, and canvas shoes. I put them on and memorized what I needed to do to contact my parole officer. There were lots of details I couldn’t hear over the rapid-fire beating of my heart. Lots of details I’d probably never remember, even if I’d heard.

  But they gave me a handbook too.

  The guards walked me that last hundred yards or so, and then I was free.

  Free.

  My heart didn’t believe it but my body wanted to test that freedom—to run, to jump, to scream and wave my hands. To do something utterly fucked up just to prove to myself that I could. My breath came in short, sharp gasps, so loud in my ears I almost didn’t hear when someone called my name.

  “Brody?” An older Latina with dyed purple hair that fell in corkscrew curls to her shoulders leaned against the door panel of a minivan. She wore a black velour tracksuit with a sparkly gemstone zipper and was regarding me thoughtfully, as if she was sizing me up for a job. “You the one they call Gorrión?”

  “Yeah?” It came out like a question on my part because folks called me that inside. Sparrow. Not the best nickname, I know. At least I didn’t get it from the unforgivable crime of “singing.”

  I didn’t know the woman. She said my name like the hacks, and suddenly, it seemed like prison was reaching out for me, trying to pull me back inside.

  “Well, c’mon.” She called to me again. “You’ve got to meet with your parole officer, right?”

  “Yeah.” I eyed her.

  “I got you some clothes.” She handed me a sack. “Better than those. You want ’em?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced down at my eye-watering shirt. “Thanks.”

  She nodded toward the minivan. “You can change in the car. If I’m going to take you all the way to that ranch after, we gotta get started now.”

  “Wait.” I was confused. “You’re—”

  “’Nando said to take you wherever you need to go. Parole office and then that ranch, the Rocking C. Anywhere else?”

  “You’re taking me all the way out there?” Of course ’Nando had gotten me a ride. Even in prison, he had the juice to get about anything he wanted. “To the Rocking C?”

  “’Nando says that’s where you gotta be.” She shrugged. “So that’s where I gotta take you.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” She got in on the driver’s side. I had no choice but to walk around to the passenger side and get in. There were two kids in the back—a little girl who looked to be about six years old, seated in a booster, and a baby, strapped into one of those buckets with a handle. Bottles and toys littered the backseat, and the floor was piled with diaper bags and baby things.

  “My grandkids.” She covered the little girl’s eyes with her hands while I changed pants.

  After I got dressed in the plaid shirt and jeans she’d brought, tucked and belted neatly, I grabbed for the seat belt and strapped myself in. Then she pulled out into traffic. I turned around and peeked at the kids. They stared at me, curious and cautious. Given the woman was running errands for Hernando Reyes-Ortiz, I doubted I was the first scary stranger they’d had in their car.

  “Folks call me Sky.” I made an effort to smile at the woman and those kids in the backseat but I was faking and everyone knew it. “What do they call you?”

  “I’m Yesenia,” the little girl said primly. She was missing those teeth, the ones that get loose right around the time you discover Santa Clause isn’t real. “My grandfather is El Cuervo. He can beat you up. He can beat anybody up.”

  That must mean . . . Christ. I turned to the woman. “Senora Reyes-Ortiz?”

  “That’s me.” She shot me a look of such loathing, I felt faint.

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” I stared straight ahead.

  “So, let’s see it.” She glanced over. I didn’t know what she meant, and it must have shown on my face. She rolled her eyes. “The Crow. ’Nando told me that tattoo is the best he ever did.”

  With shaking fingers, I unbuttoned my cuff and held out my forearm, where Hernando Reyes-Ortiz—El Cuervo—had marked me. It was a big, stylized black tat. The image of a large crow softened at one edge—black ink dissolving into a hundred crows in flight winding up my arm. Old timers who were in a position to know said it was ’Nando’s masterpiece.

  She stared at it for a long time. “You’re not the first man I’ve picked up in this place, and you won’t be the last.” The implication being she was ’Nando’s old lady, and I was old news.

&
nbsp; “I know.”

  I’d said my good-byes to ’Nando inside, before they moved me to Huntsville to get me ready for release.

  Between me and ’Nando, everything was pretty straightforward. He liked getting his dick sucked, and I liked staying alive. It was pretty basic, even if we’d learned to love and respect each other over the years. ’Nando never forced me either. Not once. I’d seen my options, and I’d taken the best one.

  That last contact between us, that single brutal clench, with Nando’s hand over my mouth while he made me come so hard I bit the meat of his hand bloody to keep from screaming, will live in my memory forever.

  The fist bump later, for show. The handshake, him dragging his pinky along mine, the last connection between us as solid as our blood and our bones.

  A surprisingly painful good-bye.

  “Now you fly,” he’d said. His eyes were the color of old, black coffee—and just as bitter, except sometimes, when he thought I couldn’t see him watching me. “Never come back here, pajarillo.”

  Then he’d lifted his hand, pointed his finger at the center of my forehead, and mimicked pulling a trigger. Bang.

  I was dead to him now. There would be no protection if I ever came back. His way of saying vaya con Dios.

  Good-bye forever.

  I couldn’t begin to untangle my emotions as ’Nando’s wife, two of his grandchildren, and I made our way through mid-afternoon traffic.

  Happiness so powerful I felt stoned.

  Fear I thought would crush me.

  Anxiety, anger, gratitude, loneliness, despair, isolation, trepidation.

  Regret.

  I’d used ’Nando—let him use me—but he wasn’t free, and I’d known that.

  It wasn’t my worst offense by far. Maybe I regretted that it didn’t bother me more.

  My reluctant chauffeur drove me to my parole office. She waited in the car while I filled out paperwork and made assurances I was on the straight and narrow. Then we drove out to the Hill Country, where I had work and a place to stay waiting for me. We stopped once at a filling station. I waited in the van with the baby while she took the little girl to the bathroom. We stopped again on the highway, when the baby couldn’t be consoled, and I waited in the van with the girl, while her grandmother changed her in the back. When we got to the Rocking C, she let me out. I figured she’d just drive off, but she got out and came around to open the hatch in the back.

  “Here,” she handed me a paper bag, which held clothes similar to the ones she’d given me to wear earlier. She wasn’t gracious about it. She didn’t even look at me.

  “He had boys like you before he went to prison, and he’s already got another one inside. You know he does.”

  “Probably.” I had no illusions, but I didn’t need any. I thought she probably did need them. I couldn’t give them back to her.

  Her dark gaze slid over me. She dug a fat envelope from under her shirt and held it up for me to see. My name was written on it in ’Nando’s careful, loopy hand. “You ain’t shit. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.” When I reached out for it, she snatched it back.

  Instead of saying anything, I held my hand out. After some more taunting, she gave me the envelope. It was real thick, and I knew what was in it. Cash. Probably more than she wanted to part with, but not more than she could afford to give up.

  I didn’t open it in front of her.

  She spat at my feet. Then she got into her minivan and peeled out, leaving me beneath the ranch’s old-fashioned wrought-iron arch: Welcome to the Rocking C.

  Chapter 2

  Sky

  A moment of bone-melting fear came over me. What if Sterling Chandler changed his mind? What if he took one look at me and decided I wasn’t Rocking C material? What if he’d made the job offer, but he’d never expected me to take him up on it?

  Maybe he didn’t even remember making the offer in the first place!

  But wait. I had the letter. There was no chance he could take it back without flat-out going back on his word, and if nothing else, Chandler was a man of his word.

  So this was more like my first day of school, except back then my dad had been right beside me.

  Be sure your friends are right on the inside and not just on the outside.

  Right. But how did you know? My stepdad looked great from the outside; he hid his evil so well I didn’t realize it was there until it was too late. And Ma still didn’t believe me.

  Dad’s words had given me something to think about when sizing people up—whether I was deciding which group to hang with in school, or seeing my stepfather’s true nature. They’d given me something to think about when I made the wrong call.

  In prison, survival could come down to reading the constantly shifting moods of caged men. I wasn’t the brightest guy, and I wasn’t the strongest. I took my Dad’s words seriously there, where, like a desperate remora, I needed to find the best shark.

  More than once, ’Nando had made the difference between life and death for me. I’d picked him because his bull-like shoulders and massive, muscled frame hid a tender, complex heart.

  And together we’d made something happen on the inside—we’d become better men.

  We’d helped others live better lives.

  And now I missed him like a vital part of me was gone.

  Dad would probably have had advice about that too.

  Have a little faith.

  I squared my shoulders and started walking.

  The distance to the ranch house was about a quarter mile from the arch. That’s how I remembered it when I pictured the spread in my mind. The Rocking C was immense. Of course, the last time I saw the place I was only a kid, and distance is relative, so I arrived sooner than I was ready to face the folks inside.

  I could not afford to mess this up. I had an opportunity to get my life back. My dignity.

  No going back now.

  I knocked.

  “Hello?” A short, curvy woman answered. She felt awfully familiar to me. She looked like the lady who cooked for the cowboys back when my dad worked at the Rocking C. I thought her name might be Elena. She eyed me with curiosity, just shy of suspicion. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Skyler Brody. Mr. Chandler offered me a job, and I—”

  “Mr. Chandler’s not here.”

  “Then I should probably talk to the foreman. Where can I find him?”

  “Mr. Chandler and the foreman are both in Denton delivering stock. They won’t be back until late.”

  “But I have this letter, see?” As I pulled the job offer from the outside pocket on my duffel my heart hammered. The paper looked as damp and wrinkled as I did. “Mr. Chandler offered me a job, and I came all this way—”

  “He’s not here.” She started to close the door in my face. I panicked and put my hand on the door frame.

  “Wait.” I couldn’t face trying to find a place to sleep until Chandler came back. “I have nowhere else to go.”

  A huge man—bigger than ’Nando, even—came up behind her. He seemed as tall as the doorway itself, all muscle, and young, with thick, brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles, and a pair of the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.

  Wow.

  Oh, wow.

  Elena glanced up at him with fondness. Then she frowned back at me. She really, really didn’t seem to like the looks of me.

  “You know this guy?” she asked the giant. “He don’t look much like a ranch hand to me.”

  “Aren’t you Elena?” At that point I was inspired by desperation. “Do you still make doughnuts on Christmas morning? The kind with a cinnamon-sugar coating that gets your hands all sticky?”

  She squinted at me. “How’d you know that?”

  “I’m Skyler Brody. My dad worked here. Mike Brody? I couldn’t have been more than five or
so when we left, but I still remember those doughnuts.”

  “Oh . . .” Her face registered real sorrow. “I was sorry when he passed.”

  She didn’t try to close the door again.

  “He was a good man.”

  “He was.” I agreed. “The best.”

  What else had she heard about? My mother’s disastrous second marriage? Had she heard about me? I could see by her narrowed eyes she had. I hurried her away from the topic of family. “Maybe there’s something needs doing while the boss is on the road? I can help out with most anything.”

  She hesitated.

  “I’ve got this, Madrina.” Okay, so she was the giant’s godmother. A big, yellow dog wearing a blue service vest peeked out from behind his leg. “It’s okay, since he has a letter offering him work. I’ll look it over, and if it seems legit, I’ll take him out to the bunkhouse and get him settled in. Introduce him to Tad and the guys.”

  “Thank you.” I sagged with relief and tipped my soggy gimme cap to Elena. “Later, ma’am.”

  “This way.” I followed him and his dog out to one of those little mini trucks, curious how he’d fit his big frame inside it. The dog jumped into the bed, but before I could get in, he held his hand out. “Can I see the letter the boss sent you?”

  I gave it to him. He took a few minutes to read it over—longer than I’d have thought he’d need—but then he folded it up with a nod.

  “Looks in order.” He lifted his massive hand to his neck to give it a rub. “I don’t know what Mr. Chandler’s hiring you to do, is all.”

  “Anything. I can be pretty useful. Just point me to anything, and tell me what you want done.”

  “Boss fired a couple of hands this week.” He frowned. “Or they quit. Depends on who you ask, I guess.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so when he gave a jerk of his chin, I just got into that little truck. He got in beside me and the whole deal shifted with his weight.

  “Damn thing gets smaller after it rains, I swear.” He started up the engine. “So. You new to this part of Texas?”

  “I ain’t been here in a long time.” I glanced back and found a pair of warm brown eyes giving me the once-over. “Nice dog.”