Lily’s Cowboys

Chapter 1-2

“Caleb, you do something with him! I’ve had it,” Ethan called out as he slammed his hat on his head and headed out the door. “I’ll be back in two weeks.”

Caleb just gritted his teeth as he slammed his own hat on his head and headed for the back door. He had enough to do without babysitting his goddamn brother. Allen had made his own bed, and nothing he or Ethan did seemed to help.

“Maggie, can you see if you can get Allen to open the door long enough to bring him some decent food and maybe talk him into getting a bath? I’ve got to head to the western pasture to take care of a fencing issue. I won’t be home for a couple of days, maybe more. I’ll be staying at the old line shack in case you need me,” Caleb asked before turning and walking away.

Maggie stood staring at the retreating figure of Caleb. Shaking her head, she went into the kitchen and made a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich for Allen. The boys were going to be the death of her. She was seventy-two years old and couldn’t keep up with them anymore, especially since Allen came back home to live on the ranch.

Moving slowly through the living room to the downstairs guest bedroom Allen had taken over on his return, she carefully balanced the tray on her hip. Knocking softly, she opened the door to a darkened room when she received no reply. Frowning, she sniffed and shook her head.

The room stank of male body odor and stale whiskey. She moved carefully over to the small table in front of the window and set the tray down. Pulling back the curtains to let some light into the room, she jumped when a loud voice yelled out.

“Goddammit. Shut the f*****g curtains. If I had wanted them open, I would have opened the damn things. Get the f**k out of my room,” a harsh voice demanded.

Putting her hands on her aged hips, Maggie glared at the disheveled figure in the bed. Bare from the waist up, with a six-month growth of uncut beard covering his chin and dark curly hair covering his chest, Allen Cunnings was a scary figure.

At over six foot two he could be intimidating anyway. It was hard to tell this was the same handsome young man all the girls in town drooled over for years. His normally neatly trimmed light brown hair hung down past his shoulders and was matted from not having been washed or combed in God knew how long.

He still had the muscled chest from years of hard work, but he had lost a lot of weight and was too thin. Allen ignored Maggie’s glare, rolling over to feel along the floor next to the bed. He grunted when his fingers wrapped around the top of a partial bottle of whiskey. He dragged it up and pulled the cork.

“Boy, it’s eight o’clock in the morning. Don’t you think that is a little early to be hitting the bottle? And you need a bath. You stink and so does this room. How do you stand it?”

“Just close the damn curtains and get out, Maggie. I’m a grown man and can do what I want,” Allen growled. “Tell Ethan I need some more whiskey.”

“Ethan is gone for the next two weeks at an auction in Texas,” Maggie said as she moved to pick up some dirty clothes off the floor.

“Well, tell Caleb I need more, then,” Allen demanded with a snarl.

“Caleb is gone to the western pasture and won’t be back for several days.”

“Will you just drop my damn clothes? I don’t need a nursemaid. You go get me some more whiskey,” Allen said, turning to take a deep swig out of the almost empty bottle.

Maggie dropped the clothes in frustration and glared at Allen; shaking her finger at him, she had finally had enough. “You don’t need a nursemaid, remember? Get your own damn whiskey. I am through putting up with you and your brothers’ bad tempers. You don’t need a housekeeper; you need an angel who could put up with all the crap you boys have been giving everyone. I came to help out, but this is beyond me. I’m going to town and not coming back without a new housekeeper who can put up with all you boys’ shit.”

Maggie Cunnings had a spitfire of a temper when roused, and she was tired of putting up with all the clusterfucks her nephews had dished out. She had been coming back and forth to the ranch for the past two years, helping out between housekeepers. So far, the boys had driven off six housekeepers in the last six months, two of them men!

No one could put up with all the stuff the boys dished out. They weren’t mean. No, they were just angry, confused, and ornery. None of them knew how to overcome what life had dished out to them.

Ethan was the oldest at thirty-three. He was trying to take on the responsibility of everyone. He had taken over the reins of the ranch when their parents had been killed in an airplane crash almost ten years before. He did all the bookkeeping, buying, and investments that made the ranch so profitable, as well as trying to be a ranch hand when needed. He was burning the candle at both ends and now felt responsible for what had happened to Allen.

Caleb bottled everything up, never letting anyone get too close to him. He spent as much time out on the range as he could. He made sure everything outside the house ran smoothly because he didn’t know how to deal with what was happening inside it. He felt just as responsible for Allen being in the shape he was, believing he could have prevented what happened somehow. At thirty, he had always been the one to hold things in and not show much emotion. The problem was, it ate at the inside of him.

Allen, on the other hand, was angry at the world. He had taken off at twenty and joined the military against his older brothers’ wishes, wanting to get away from the ranch. At twenty-eight, he had spent the last eight years traveling and fighting all over the world.

Eight months ago the boys’ world crashed down around them when it was reported Allen was missing in action in South America. When he was finally rescued, he had been beaten and tortured. At first, it was unclear if he would even make it. Both his legs had been broken, and he was covered in cuts and bruises. The jungle climate had been perfect for infection to set in, and when he had been transported to the closest military hospital, it had been touch and go for the next week.

The military doctors had reset his legs, and he was healing slowly. He no longer needed the wheelchair. Ethan and Caleb had brought him home six months ago, and he hadn’t left the room they had set up for him since, preferring to hide in the dark with his whiskey.

Ethan and Caleb had tried at first to get him to go to physical therapy, only to have every therapist in a four-state region refuse to come back to the ranch, no matter how much they offered to pay them. As the pressure of everything going on increased, one housekeeper after another began leaving as the boys’ tempers escalated to a breaking point.

They could hardly stand being together in the same room. Maggie had stepped in again two months ago, but even she was at her wit’s end. The boys needed a miracle, and she needed to find it. Standing in the kitchen, she put on her coat and picked up her purse.

“Please, Lord, if you are listening, my boys need an angel, one with a lot of patience. If you can find one you can share, I’d be mighty appreciative. I know I don’t talk to you as often as I should, but the boys need someone to love and who can love them. Please, if you can find the time, please send my boys an angel to love.”

Sighing, she closed the door just as she heard a bottle crashing against a wall and a loud curse. Pulling her gloves on to ward off the cold Wyoming winter, she walked out to the truck and drove to town on a mission.