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Chapter One

Carey stared wistfully in the distance, watching as the truck containing the happy bride and groom left a trail of dust in its wake. As the couple sped off toward their honeymoon, he couldn’t help but feel out of sorts and alone in a way he’d never experienced. Of course, he was happy for his brother, Casey, and his new bride, Miranda, but Carey had never really been apart from his twin brother. Something told him this was only the beginning of how things were about to change, not only between the two brothers but also within the family as a whole.

They’d been a close-knit family for as long as Carey could remember, probably brought even closer from losing their mother at such a young age. For Casey and Carey, the oldest of the Carson boys, all the way down to the fifteen-year-old twins, Seamus and Jacob, with middle brothers, Joseph and Anders, in between, being a part of their ranching family meant they were always together, always looking out for each other, and working toward a common goal for the family.

But that was about to change. Shouts of, “You’re next, Carey Carson!” had sounded around him as he walked through the different patches of people working 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, especially with these guys around.”

“I know! I said I was sorry, I really am,” the younger brother continued, a look of guilt crossing his face.

“It’s all right. I know you didn’t mean anything. Just be more careful. Come on, let’s finish up. It looks like we’re ready to move out.” Carey and Joseph joined the line of ranchers and vacationers who brought their lunch dishes back to the rolling kitchen truck before heading back to their assigned positions within the drive. Although a modern cattle drive hardly even looked like what the cowboys of the Old West endured, what with retrofitted kitchens on wheels doing all the cooking, a medical truck providing support, and even an extra vehicle or two meeting the group at different points along the way in case anyone needed anything, Bernard did his best to keep some of that original spirit alive. That’s why every year, people paid good money to join the drive, “city people”, who spent a week or two with the group just to get away from their busy lives and smartphones for a little while. Helping move thirty or forty thousand cows from one state to another may not have been as glamorous as a trip to the Caribbean or a ski vacation but people still signed up, year after year, hoping to get away from it all and carve out just a small portion of peace and quiet while still being a part of something big.

This drive was no different. If Carey bothered to look hard enough, he could have started to pick out some of the differences among their guests, but who was he kidding? They were all the same, at least on the surface. They all had lives and jobs that didn’t involve ranching or working the land, and they all had money to burn to pretend like they wanted to live like this. He knew from experience that every one of them would be hopping on the plane in a few days, eager to get back to the land of modern plumbing and central heating. There wasn’t much point in learning anything more than their first names, and even that information was only useful for calling out to one of them if they were about to do something dumb.

Carey swung up in the saddle and steered his horse to the lead team, ready to swap out with anyone who might need a break for a little while. Leading was stressful, especially because the rest of society didn’t care too much for the old ways. Lead riders had to watch out for all kinds of dangers like speeding cars and eighteen-wheelers and alert the rest of the group, so there was no daydreaming up front.

“Hey, Jeff, I’ll come on up here for a while if anyone wants to take a rest along the sides of the pack,” Carey offered, coming up close to one of the professional drovers, who was hired every year just for the duration of events like this one.

“Yeah, right,” Jeff said with a pleasant laugh. “You just want to get away from those city people. You’re not fooling anyone with this ‘I’m here to help’ act you’re putting on!”

“I’m telling you, Jeff. I don’t know if I can take it anymore!” Carey laughed along quietly, looking around to make sure no one overheard them. “I’ve put up with these yahoos every year, and even after I think I’ve heard it all, somehow, the next crop has someone even worse. Remember that guy who brought his own gun on the trip and was mad when Dad made him leave it locked in the safe? Like we were going to need to deputize him and ride out with a posse against Black Bart to save Miss Polly from the train tracks, or something.” Jeff laughed at Carey’s description, slapping his thigh with his reins as he roared. “This time, we have two girls who have no business out here, one who’s scared of every little shadow and one who thinks all men were put on this planet for her to hate.”

“Oh, sounds like you’re already getting along great with the ladies, huh?” Jeff joked, pointing out that Carey’s twin had just gotten married, leaving plenty of room for him to find a girl of his own.

“Don’t start on me. I can already feel Dad breathing down my neck. Not that I would ever wish Casey or Miranda anything but the best but deep down, I was kind of hoping Dad would realize he should have stayed out of it if they didn’t patch things up like they did. Now that he’s tasted matchmaking success, it’s like I can feel his eyes on me, like he has a giant bull’s eye on my back for his Cupid’s arrow.”

“Yeah, I wish I had something helpful to say there, buddy, but I’m sure you’re right. He’s gonna be on you to get married next!” Jeff grinned as he spoke, obviously not anywhere near as sympathetic as his words should have been. They rode along in silence for a few more minutes, one smiling in triumph, the other hanging his head. “You know, there is one thing you can do. The only way to head off your dad’s ideas of romance is to beat him to the punch.”

“What do you mean?” Carey asked, hope coloring his voice.

“Well, find your own girl without his help. Maybe then he’ll leave you alone. Your only other option is to hope that Casey and Miranda start a family right away. Maybe having some grandkids running around the place will give your dad something to focus on rather than playing love triangle with your future all day.”

“That’s great. Fat lot of good you did in the hope department!” Carey called out as he rode away, mentally preparing himself to rejoin the group of city people who were helping out with various tasks along the route. He took a deep breath, released it, and painted a smile on his face, ready to face them.