Let It Go by Mercy Celeste Read Free Book Online

with the painfully quiet Creed Dickson with night rapidly approaching. “Please don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian. Because right now, man, if you are, you are just shit out of luck.”
    Creed actually laughed, a quick, almost timid sound that had Eli looking at him again. Curiosity burning now for this person he thought he knew.
    “No, steak and potatoes is pretty much all it takes to make me happy.”
    Somehow those words made the hairs on the back of Eli’s neck tingle. Or maybe it was the way Creed looked at him for a moment before he remembered to close the blinds tight. “Well, good, because that and green beans are pretty much all I’ve got right now.”

Chapter 4
    Eli Mason in a pair of tight jeans and a pair of worn-out chaps ought to be declared illegal. Creed, on Kip, followed Eli on his borrowed ride out to the back pasture. The horses kicked up dust that Creed washed down with bottled water. It was hot. Fucking hot. And a two-mile ride out to the back pasture. There were six of them: Eli, Sawyer, three of Sawyer’s hands, and him. With two hundred Black Angus looking at them with suspicion at best, dry grass hanging from their mouths, as if they were trying to decide what the strange animals were up to.
    Ahead of all that was a truck loaded with sweet hay that Eli said would lure some of the cattle toward the east pasture that he’d planted with alfalfa earlier in the summer. The plan was to move the herd and separate out the calves destined for auction the following week all at the same time.
    Creed followed instructions from one of the cowboys from the neighboring ranch. Keep ’em moving. Don’t let the calves bolt. It was like in the ring, except not in the structured world of rodeo. “What do you mean you’ve never done this before?” Eli had shouted at him that morning. “What the hell? You win this event all the damned time and you’ve never done this for real? Are you fucking with me?”
    Creed didn’t have the stomach to tell the man he grew up in the Cheyenne suburbs and the closest he’d ever gotten to cattle was on the circuit. His dad ran the circuit from the day he could walk, but his mother preferred the quiet life not far from her job, the one that actually supported the family while his dad chased bulls around the country. Winning more often than not. Creed looked over to where Eli stood in the stirrups watching the cows in the middle of the herd as they neared the gate.
    The truck went through, followed by the lead cows, and then slowly the others, smelling the sweet, fresh grain, began to rush. “Let’s get that line moving,” Eli shouted to the two hands near him. They worked their way to the front to hurry the lead cows through before there could be trouble. Later when the gate was closed Sawyer and Eli rode back to check for stragglers while Creed and the three hands moved the calves into a separate section of pasture. There were twenty-nine all totaled. When Eli was satisfied that every cow was accounted for they rode together to check the water troughs in the pastures. And then as the sun was still high in the sky Creed collapsed in the still cool shade of the stable. His clothes were soaked through with sweat and dust turned to mud on his skin. He’d worn sunglasses and his beat-up hat and his eyes still stung from the sun.
    “Jesus, Creed, you’re a damned tenderfoot aren’t you? Big bad fucking Creed Dickson is a lightweight when it comes to real cowboy work.” Eli led the borrowed horse into the cool of the stable and started stripping him of saddle and blanket. Pausing, he took a moment to pull his own sweat-soaked shirt over his head. He tossed it along with his chaps across one of the stall rails.
    Creed turned his head. Freckles. The man was covered in freckles from the neck down. Creed did not need or want to know that. “It’s this fucking heat, you douche; it’s almost October. Why in the hell is it so damned hot? I can’t catch my breath.” Creed