The Cowboy Papi Takes Me Home, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Front Matter
1: Jules
2: Adriel
3: Jules
4: Adriel
5: Jules
6: Jules
7: Adriel
8: Jules
9: Adriel
10: Jules
11: Adriel
12: Jules
13: Adriel
14: Jules
15: Adriel
16: Jules
17: Jules
Related Books
Jacaranda Bay
About the Author
The Cowboy Papi Takes Me Home
Dirty Talking Cowboys
Cat Santos
www.CatSantosBooks.com/Newsletter
Copyright © 2024 Cat Santos.
First edition: March 2024
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced nor used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the writer except for use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, companies, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Chapter One
Jules
“I’m washing the sheets. Toss me your blanket,” my younger sister, Justine, asks after kicking open my door.
I tighten the blanket she’s asking for around my back and say, “No, thanks. It’s still good.”
How can I wash it when it still smells like him?
“You’ve had it wrapped around you the entire time you’ve been home. You’re acting like a child with a lovey, and it’s so gross. Trust me, it needs a wash,” she says, plopping herself next to me on my bed. “Yuck. There’s even a leaf on it.”
“It’s only been a week. I don’t need to wash it.” I turn away from her and reflexively sniff the corner.
Wrinkling her nose, she asks, “Did you just smell it?”
Deny. Deny. Deny.
“Of course not. Now let me enjoy my book before the family party in an hour. These friends are going to turn into lovers any chapter now.” Looking away, I flip the page.
I’m waiting for the familiar sound of my door closing after she leaves, but it doesn’t come. I can feel her weight shift on the other side of my childhood bed as she sits down.
Suddenly, she gasps and hits my butt through the woven blanket.
“I get it now. It all makes sense. I understand why you didn’t come home for Christmas last week, why you check your phone every hour, and why you keep sniffing that gross blanket. How did I miss it?”
I guess I wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought.
“Tell me about the guy,” she says triumphantly, as she props her hands behind her head and leans back.
In that position she looks exactly like me, but with long hair. We’re both 5’5” and have matching brown skin with red undertones. We blush on the tips of our ears and our hair is so dark it looks black, except for during the summer when it lightens up from swimming most days as kids. On this winter day, it looks as dark as charcoal.
My twin has always been able to sniff out my lies. During dinner every night, my whole family shared stories from the day. Anytime I’d share a story about a crush that I was trying to pass off as a friend, she’d always kick me under the table. While I blissfully kept my secrets from our parents, Justine always knew when to ask me the same questions alone in her room to get a completely different answer.
There’s no use denying my crush with her, even if I’m not totally sure it goes both ways. “Okay, I met a guy.”
She squeals, and we face each other while lying on our sides.
Curling her body into a cove of listening, she waits for me to open up. She’s always been good about inviting me to say more without saying a word.
“His name’s Adriel and he’s from the small town I moved to. He visits the library I work at every week like clockwork with his daughter Ana.”
“Single dad?” She asks with a raised eyebrow.
I flick away her young judgement with a shake of my head. “She’s ten going on thirty and so much like you.” I light up thinking of her at that age. They’re both precocious and most likely to spend saved money on books than anything else.
When Justine was ten, I just about graduated from my two-year community college and went to UCLA. I stayed home so I could keep helping at the family business between classes, and easily watch Justine on weekends when my parents were at the restaurant. I’d do anything to ease their load. They had businesses to run, but still made it back home every night for dinner. We all had to endure my parent’s hustle.
That struggle feels so far away.
Now, Justine is almost eighteen and graduating from high school in a few months to pursue her goals, while I’m thirty and barely getting to mine.
“How did it change from seeing him at the library to outside of it?” She asks with a self-satisfied smirk.
I'm going to spare her the details of how I mentally undressed him for months before I had the nerve to really talk to him.
“It was nothing at all, then suddenly it was everything. He signed up to volunteer with me at the library, and then it was Christmas and I saw him at a party.”
Rolling her eyes, I can see her writing off Adriel.
“I see. He’s the reason you stayed away from home during Christmas.”
I don’t know how to explain to her that I needed space from everything and everyone at home without making it sound like I needed space from her.
She means everything to me. Family is at the center of my life.
It’s my duty to come running whenever they call for help with the family restaurant, to take care of my younger sister, and to show up for family events. I’m always there.
The only problem is that when a dozen aunties, and twice as many cousins, live within an hour of each other, your weekends fill pretty quickly.
We’re always celebrating something. It’s always someone’s baptism, or it’s my aunt’s birthday, or someone’s promotion, or a young cousin’s receiving student of the month. As the oldest, I have to set an example. I have to sacrifice as much as our parents did to come to America from the Philippines. I have to put the family first. I’ve always been proud of it.
But, when I realized my sister has more plans for her future than I do, I knew something had to change. I’m an adult with one hobby, am afraid of my shadow, and just barely started living on my own.
I’m ready to reclaim my life and my choices. Ready to try at least. But how do I say all of that without making her think I abandoned her?
Lie. Lie. Lie.
“He’s not the reason I didn’t come home. As the newbie at work, I drew the short stick and had to work. That’s all. My coworker felt sorry for me and dragged me to her family party at night, and that’s when I hit it off with Adriel.”
“He already sounds better than your overbearing ex. I don’t know how you lasted for a year with that guy. Tell me more about Adriel.”
She’s right about my ex. During that entire year, I think I was more swept up in dating someone, than dating him. Loneliness blinded me from our obvious incompatibility. Only after I met Adriel, did I realize that dating should be much easier.
Everything I shared with Adriel boils down to one night of passion at a party. It felt sudden and amazing, and I want so much more, but in hindsight, it feels more like a fever dream. How could it possibly be as good as I remember?
“His name’s Adriel Santiago. His family runs the oldest ranch in the area, and we have a lot in common. Big families, hardworking, and book lovers. He’s the oldest too, so he has a lot of responsibility on their ranch.”
Shooting up, she exclaims, “Your boyfriend is a cowboy?”
I never thought of him as that. He’s a rancher, a farmer, a businessman, but I guess he is a cowboy, too. He’s got the boots and wide leather Stetson hat to lasso the title. But a title I’m hesitant to claim is boyfriend.
Even though that immediately unlocked a bunch of fantasies, I don’t want to share any of them with my little sister, so I just say, “We really hit it off that night.”
She sighs dreamily and says, “He sounds great. How are you supposed to see him if you’re coming back here all the time?”
“Sister’s first. I’ll just commute back here while mom and dad sell the family property in the Philippines for a few weeks. Don’t worry about me.”
“That’s such a burden, ate Jules.” She still adds the ate respectful title for older sister to my name. “You don’t want to drive here after work. It’s too much.”
I agree. It is too much. It’s adding hours of commuting every week back into my life, when I finally shortened my daily drive to minutes, but I’d never admit to it to my baby sister. I want to give her the stability I never got in high school. “It’s fine. It’ll be fun. We’ll have sleepovers and have the entire house to ourselves.”
“I could just stay with you,” Justine says quietly. “I haven’t seen your place since you moved in. We could go to the beach on the weekends. I’ll cook you food every night. It’d be so much fun.”
That would make it so much easier. I’m just as far from her school as this house is. But I don’t want to go against what our parents told us to do. “I think we should stick to the plan. This is best for
“Will you get to see him when you go back to work tomorrow?”
I honestly don’t know. We haven’t talked since I left. “Maybe.”
I share the excitement of the night, but keep the real magic to myself. I’m not ready to talk about it yet. It feels like if I put words to that unbelievable time over the holidays, that I might wake up from the dream of him. That I might lose my grip on the instant connection I would swear we both felt, and see signs of a one-night stand, instead.
Chapter Two
Adriel
Another morning, another moment to desperately check my text messages.
“Tonight was fun. I have to go home unexpectedly, but I’ll talk to you when I get back.” That was my last text from Jules.
I replied to her message with a basic smiley face emoji a week ago, but I’m feeling anything but happy. It hasn’t been that long since our magical night under the stars but considering that the last time we saw each other it was a different year, it feels heavy. Crossing the new year barrier after sharing a steamy Christmas night together adds an uneasy queasiness to my gut.
It’s been a while since I’ve dated, but being easy and not adding pressure is what you’re supposed to be to a woman you’re seriously interested in, right?
When she says something’s come up and that she needs to go home for a while, you give her all the space she needs.
Not texting her goes against every fiber of my being, but for now it’s my way of showing patience, understanding, and support. I’m sure that if I texted her as much as I thought about her, would be a dealbreaker for her. Bordering stalker territory.
Don’t be clingy. Play it cool. Don’t scare her off.
Like a fine wine, you’ve got to give any newfound relationship space to breathe.
What do I know, though?
I haven’t dated for ten years. I’ve raised a pre-teen daughter, mostly on my own since Ana’s mom left when she was born. Her mom wanted to travel, and I wasn’t going anywhere, so the writing was on the wall early on. As hard as it was to meet when I was young and have a baby so early in our relationship, I’m still thankful it brought Ana in my life. She visits when she’s in California, but she keeps her space. So far, it’s been working for us.
I’ll happily give Ana all my time and energy, and I haven’t wanted to ask for more from life. It already feels like I’ve received more than my fair share of blessings. We have a supportive family, that’s just this side of overbearing, and I love that I get to continue my family’s ranching legacy. The bounty on my table is overflowing. But now that I’ve been given more with Jules, I feel like a starved man.
I can’t help but feel like I should have showed up at her home the next day and made my intentions clear. Made sure she knew that that what we shared wasn’t a one-night stand, but the start of something much bigger.
If I did, maybe I’d be waking up next to her instead of alone in my bed long before dawn, like I always do.
Time to get on with it, then.
Waking up before the sunrise to do hard labor every morning is enough to make most people run towards another job. It might have been too much for my brothers, too, but not for me. I’d shrivel up behind a desk at an office job. I wouldn’t be me without grabbing a mound of fresh tilled earth every day.
Instead of a clock, I listen for the rooster’s call. Instead of a calendar, I have the changing seasons. Instead of overhead lighting, I need the sun’s kiss on my cheeks.
Who am I without this land?
I might have to figure out the answer to that soul-stirring question sooner than I like.
But not today. That’s future Adriel’s problem. Today, I’ve got a barn to prep for this end of winter chill coming.
I pull on my uniform of a flannel button up, jeans, boots, and a thick coat to keep the winter air at bay.
Taking the video monitor of a sleeping Ana, I head out the door. If Ana were awake, we’d go through our script of her saying that fifth graders don’t need baby monitors, and I’d follow up with, she could be an adult with kids, and I’d still worry about her. Since she’s never awake at four in the morning, we don’t have to run through our preteen battle for autonomy right now.
Instead, I lock the front door to our two-bedroom home and take the short walk to my parent’s hacienda style ranch home across a small herb garden.
Like every day, I enter the side of our kitchen wing and wake up with the scent of a fresh pot of coffee.
“Hi mamá,” I say to her shuffling shadow in front of the stove, as I lean over to microwave my breakfast burrito. I prop the video monitor humming with the soft sound of Ana’s snoring next to her, and she caresses her grainy image on the small screen.
“I can make you a better breakfast than that, mija.” She follows up with a quick suck of air between her teeth.
“It’s okay. I have little of an appetite this morning.” She knows it’s because of our talk from last night. Leaning against the kitchen island behind her, I say, “There’s got to be something else we can do.”
“Your dad and I tried everything we could to make the ranch profitable. We even expanded into hydroponic farming by hiring Dev a few years ago. It’s still not enough.” She paces as her words spill out. “Dev’s even expecting another baby soon. How can I possibly tell him we’re closing when the work he’s done is the only profitable area of our business? It’s never enough. Now you’re thirty-five and it’s your turn to take over, so we had to tell you.”
She’s as overwhelmed as I am. Still facing the coffee pot, she hasn’t looked me in the eyes since they told me last night.
I just wish I knew about our financial issues sooner, and not as a precursor to adding my name to the deed. It mustn’t have been easy for them to keep this close to their chests. They’re always the first to offer money to relatives in need, or to offer their home to a rotating list of family in between jobs. I know there’s a lot more on the line with our viability than just pride.
At least they told me now, and not after they already sold the land that’s been in our family for generations.
Still talking to her back, I say, “Before you sell it, give me the season. There’s got to be something we can do.”
“We’ll talk to the bank about it. I’m in no rush to throw away your legacy, but they need to see some profitability soon, or we’ll default on our loan. Plus, we’re hesitant to add your name to a failing business. It might be time to sell.” Wringing her hands, she drops the topic for now and busies herself by pouring me a fresh cup of coffee in a tumbler. “See you in a few hours.”
With a quick embrace, she goes back to bed with the video monitor, and I get to work.
Riding my horse before the sun comes up has always given me the answer before. I love the feeling of being up before everyone else and using that quiet time in the morning to figure out how I want to tackle the day. I can put my neatly curated task list of work for the day into boxes in my head, then corral them into place while I ride the perimeter of our 20-acre ranch.
Everything I need is here. My parents' home. Mine with Ana. My brother Javier’s handmade cabin, even though I barely see him. Barns. Fields. So much land on this hilly California coast. Everything’s lined up and in its own tidy multi-acre plot.
Then my parents break the news last night and it’s like someone shook up the completed puzzle I just finished.
This morning, nothing is where it’s supposed to be. It’s colder outside, the cattle have strayed, and the west fence was knocked over by the heavy winds last night. All the years I had meticulously planned are out of order.
The vision of celebrating Ana’s quinceañera under the seaside gazebo feels hazy. Generations of longstanding accounts for our cattle are in disarray. Tomorrow is as hazy as this overcast morning.
Today, no amount of early morning riding can clear away the anxiety that’s rolled in with the fog late last night.
While that burden will continue to weigh me down, I do have something to look forward to. This afternoon is the day I finally get to see Jules again after our one steamy night together. I signed up to volunteer with her before she left town, and seeing my calendar reminder for today’s meeting is enough to keep me going.
