on the drive, and it tore him in two. On the one hand, finding someone who was practically a stranger on the Internet like Casey had—with way too much help from his or her meddling but well-intentioned father—just wasn’t for him but neither was sitting out here on a desolate ranch and hoping a beautiful girl just fell from the sky.
Ever since Dad had gotten a wild hair about finding the brothers romance and set up online dating profiles for both Casey and Carey, they had been on edge. It had only taken a matter of weeks for someone to answer Dad’s ad for Casey but luckily, it seemed to work out. Carey wasn’t so sure lightning would strike twice so unless he wanted Dad to play matchmaker with strangers on cowboy dating sites, he’d better convince the old man that one wedding around here was enough for a while.
And with the cattle drive going on and the vacationing wannabe cowboys to look after, at least there wouldn’t be any chance to think about some girl showing up on the doorstep the way Miranda had, towing her kid sister, Gracie, with her. Speaking of Gracie…
“Where are you off to, kiddo?” Carey called out, spying thirteen-year-old Gracie riding her mare away from the group and toward a small cluster of cowboys from the Carson ranch.
“I can’t take it anymore, Carey! It’s only been a day and a half, and already those city people are driving me crazy!” She grabbed the sides of her head, managing to toss her hat back and letting it hang by its leather chord.
“If I remember correctly, weren’t you one of those city people not too long ago?” Carey teased, pointing out that Gracie had only been on the ranch a short time, and that this was her first cattle drive.
“But they’re loud and they’re rude! They keep wanting to know if we have Wi-Fi…this is a freakin’ cattle drive! What do they need with Wi-Fi, anyway? We’re on a cattle drive!” she cried. “Please give me a different job. I don’t care if it’s picking up the poop all the way to Missouri and back, please! Anything but hanging out with the city people!”
“I dunno, kid. That was the job Dad gave you, so it’s kind of out of my hands. Of course, that was before your sister knew we were getting her hitched and sending her home,” he said with a smile, referring to the surprise wedding they’d staged without her knowing. Miranda had thought she was out here for the cattle drive and to help look after the people who paid to join the ranchers on the trip, but they sprung it on her at the last minute that she and Casey were getting married and heading off to their honeymoon instead of driving oversized, smelly cattle. “I’ll check with him and see if you can help with the feeding, or something like that.”
“Thank you, Carey!” Gracie squealed, throwing her arms around his neck and giving him an awkward hug from where she still sat in the saddle. She gave a light tug to her reins and nudged her horse with the heel of her boot, leading it off in the direction of some of the other ranchers. Carey watched her go, wondering how he’d found himself in charge of taking care of a kid on this event. The things a best man will do for his twin, the groom, Carey thought as he shook his head and returned to his tasks.
“Hey, Carey,” Bernard Carson called out to his son. “we need you over here a second.” Carey strode toward his elderly father—some fifty years older than his first-born sons, thanks to marrying late in life himself—and smiled at the old man.
“Yeah, Dad? What’s up?” he asked, taking off his hat and wiping at his brow with the back of his hand, fanning himself with the hat for a moment before placing it back over his sweat-curled, shaggy brown hair.
“Well, with your brother gone for the rest of the drive, we’ll need to arrange for someone to drive the truck. I was hoping you could switch off every third day, so that no one person has to keep doing it. I didn’t mind making Casey do it so much because he’d been injured only last week, but I hate to stick someone in the cab of the truck too long and make them miss out, especially if they’re able-bodied enough to get to ride with the group. What do you think?”
“Sure, Dad, that sounds fair. I’ll be glad to take my turn, rather than stick some poor hired hand with having to do it for the whole time. Who else ya have so far?” Together, father and son poured over the notes on Bernard’s clipboard, crossing out some information, adding other names to the list. The sun beat down from overhead as they worked through their final plans, the ranchers and hired helpers moving the cattle into position around them.
Later in the day, when the group stopped to water the cattle and have a meal, Joseph had a chance to pull Carey aside. “I can’t believe Casey actually went through with it,” he started, stirring his fork absentmindedly around on his tin plate.
“Went through with what? Getting married? Why not? Miranda seems like a great girl. I mean, she’d have to be, not to run screaming away from the bunch of us.” He nudged his younger brother jokingly with his shoulder.
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean Miranda. She seems really incredible,” Joseph interrupted, realizing how his words could be taken. “I don’t know, the whole thing just seemed so weird. I mean, come on. Who meets a stranger on the Internet and gets married? It’s a little creepy, don’t you think?”
Carey looked out over the resting herd and the workers standing at ease in a wide formation around the group. He’d grown up with these very ranch hands, most of whom actually lived on the Carson Hill Ranch because of its distance from the nearest town. Carey and his five brothers had even gone to school on the ranch, along with a handful of other kids whose families lived on the 800,000-acre property year-round.
“Well, when you put it that way, it is kind of weird, I suppose, but how else was Casey supposed to find a wife?” he asked his younger brother. “This isn’t exactly a hotbed of social activity out where we are, and the days of placing a newspaper ad for a wife are kind of over.”
“Right. So, is that what you’re gonna do? Click a few buttons on a computer and order a wife instead? Maybe have her shipped overnight delivery?” Joseph teased. Carey knew his brother was only kidding, but that thought had bothered him, too. Now that his dad had successfully married off one of his sons with his crazy plan of creating dating profiles behind their backs and pretending to be the twins for the purposes of emailing back, it could mean he’d be on the warpath to repeat his success.
“No, I don’t think so. It sure worked out well enough for Casey, but what if he just got lucky? I just can’t see myself talking to some girl through a computer screen and thinking that means true love,” Carey conceded, going back to paying full attention to his dinner plate. “Guess I’ll have to go looking for a girl the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh, that’s nice. You mean the local whorehouse?” Joseph asked with a wide-eyed, innocent expression that hid the semi-cruel sense of humor underneath.
“You watch your mouth,” Carey cautioned in a sterner voice, shoving his brother painfully in the shoulder with both hands. Joseph must have forgotten that only days ago, two runaways had shown up on the ranch, having escaped from one of the worst offenders in the town. At that very moment, they were holed up in an outbuilding some 200 acres from the main house of Carson Hill, suffering through the pains of withdrawal.
“Oh, crap,” Joseph said, recognizing from Carey’s expression what he’d just implied. “I wasn’t thinking about them. You have to believe me, Carey, I was only kidding. I was just running my stupid mouth.”
“It’s okay, but you have to be more careful. What if that kind of talk got back to those poor girls? I’m not stupid and I’m not a completely inexperienced kid…I know some of these guys have already met with those girls once or twice before, if not more often. You can’t go talking about them like that,
