Declan remembered. They used to call him Swagger Pete because he had the biggest balls they’d ever seen on a pig. As he brought a tray of steaks out of Jaime’s kitchen, he noticed Cole looked uneasy and Booker…well, he was checked out. It couldn’t be clearer he wanted to be anywhere but here. “I remember you laid out on the ground. Couldn’t stay on him more than a second.”
“But he loved Declan.” Cole set his beer bottle on the table. “He’d have carried you to Canada and back if you’d wanted.”
“Well, sure, I was the reigning champ.” Declan set the platter down and used the tongs to set each steak on the hot grill. “Animals respect the alpha dog.”
Jaime’s eyes lit up. “Uh huh. You didn’t look so alpha after old Bessie knocked you into the mud.”
“I was drunk.” Declan turned his back on them so they wouldn’t see his grin.
“You were twelve,” Jaime said. “You were sober as a nun.”
Everyone laughed. Well, except Booker. After Kurt had gotten them into hockey, sure, they’d become focused and disciplined, but nothing had tamed their wild natures. Competing against each other riding steers, pigs, and mustangs in their own version of a rodeo was tame compared to the extreme challenges they’d thrown down for each other.
“Whatever happened to Doug?” Cole asked.
A lot of their friends had fallen away over the years. Either their parents didn’t let them hang around with such reckless kids or they weren’t as good at hockey. Doug had stuck it out until he’d broken his arm.
“He moved to Seattle.” Cole tipped back his beer. “He’s a forest ranger.”
“Not surprised he’d go hide in the woods.” Declan flipped a steak. “We scarred him for life.”
“How were we supposed to know there was horse shit in there?” Jaime asked.
In the moment of silence, Declan turned to look at the others. All of them but Booker burst out laughing at the same time. To their credit, they’d all jumped out of the second story window of the barn to see if they could fly, too. It wasn’t their fault Doug happened to land in manure. How could they have known the hands had shoveled it into the hay pile?
“Never laughed so hard in my life when his head popped up with hay sticking to the shit smeared all over his face,” Jaime said.
Even Booker cracked a grin at that one, but he brought the beer to his mouth to cover it.
Jaime reached for the chips in the middle of the table. “Hey, man. You’re kicking ass as an agent. How the hell did you get Todd Beckett to sign with you?”
Booker shrugged. “I’m good at what I do.” He’d been the golden kid. Blessed with good looks, confidence, family support, and money, he’d sailed through life. Well, until that night, obviously.
“Fuckin’ overachiever.” Laughing, Jaime shook his head. “I mean, how many kids from Calamity go to Yale? Right out of the box, not even six months after graduation, you got Derrell Johnson. You were twenty-two years old.”
“He liked my hustle.” Booker sounded detached.
Though Declan hated that his old friend had thrown up walls, he couldn’t blame him.
“And you, man.” Jaime tipped his chin toward Cole. “Livin’ the dream. You might be the man to break Kurt’s records.”
They hadn’t seen each other in ten years, not since that terrible night, so Declan suspected reminiscing before having a conversation about what happened wasn’t going to work. It would take time to mend the broken relationships.
He didn’t know why Jaime wasn’t picking up on the mood, though. In the past, when the guys had gotten together it was loud, everyone ragging on each other. Tonight, it was subdued. Polite.
Declan steered the conversation in a different direction. “You’ve turned this place around.” Back when they were kids, the Broken Arrow was a dude ranch. Though they’d barely made ends meet, Jaime’s parents had worked their assess off to keep it going.
Which was the whole reason that night had happened in the first place.
“Yeah, it was rough there for a while.” Jaime sat back, a pile of chips in his hand. “I tried a lot of things. Obviously, a dude ranch wasn’t going to cut it. First, we bought a bunch of tiny houses and tried to rent them out, but the upkeep was too much. Between repairs and all the bullshit from the guests who expected a five-star resort, it took too much time away from our bread and butter.”
Declan wished he knew what the other two were thinking. He couldn’t read them at all. “What turned it around?”
“You remember my brother was all about the rodeo, right?” Jaime looked at the guys. “Yeah, so, while I was doing all this research, trying to see what other ranches did to make money, Elliott was training on a couple of our broncs. I came across an article about some guy in Montana making big money selling bull semen. Eight grand a straw. Think about it. All we needed to do was sell ten of them and…damn, we’d finally be in the black. All our troubles would go away.”
“That’s how you turned this place around?” Cole suppressed a laugh. “Bull spooge?” Ten years ago, he’d been the life of every party. With his A-list actor dad gone so much, he’d grown up alone in a mansion, raised by nannies.
Declan had kept up with him over the years—hard not to when he was the hottest hockey player in the NHL. And he was just as wild now as he’d been when they were kids.
Except Declan hadn’t seen any of that personality on this visit.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Jaime said. “But we’re livin’ large now. It took a while to get us in a stable position. At first, we didn’t have the best stock. But we put almost all the money back into the business until we were able to buy some top-quality sires. Now, we’re doing great, and the timing couldn’t be better.”
“Timing?” Cole asked.
“To own the team.”
Cole, the bad boy of hockey, the easiest going one of any of them, hardened. “You realize Kurt’s dead, right?”
“Yeah, of course. I just…” Color spilled into Jaime’s features, and he glanced down at his hands. He sat there quietly for a moment, and then in a whirl of motion, he pushed the bowl of chips away. “This whole thing is so fucked up. Of course, I’m sad Kurt’s gone, but he wanted to do something here, and I…fuck, man, I want it, too.” His voice had gone tight, and he stopped talking. Looked like he was tangled up in emotion.
“I don’t want my share of the team,” Cole said quietly.
“You don’t have to decide now.” Jaime grew agitated. “We have time.”
“Don’t need it.” Cole hunched a shoulder. “I’m twenty-eight, I’m in the best shape of my life…I’m not giving up hockey to own the Renegades.”
“I get that,” Jaime said. “I’d feel the same, but you might change your mind a few years from now when you’re ready to retire. We can ask Harrison, see if he can find a way to word it so we can hold it open for you guys.”
Cole shook his head. “I can’t think like that.”
Declan understood. He wouldn’t want to jinx his future with thoughts of how it might end.