The kings cowboy, p.1
The King's Cowboy, page 1
The King’s Cowboy
Cowboy Princes #3
Madeline Ash
The King’s Cowboy
Copyright ©2021 Madeline Ash
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Dominic Brown
ISBN-13: 978-0-6485809-8-0
Series Order
While The King’s Cowboy can be read as a standalone, this series contains a significant overarching royal plot, so I recommend starting with Her Cowboy King!
* * *
Her Cowboy King #1
Her Cowboy Prince #2
The King’s Cowboy #3
For Dominic
I’ll never belong anywhere else
Contents
Content Note
Before
Prologue
Now
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
After
Epilogue
Cowboy Princes
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Also by Madeline Ash
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Content Note
Please be aware that this story contains descriptions of anxiety, past violence/trauma, and references to past homophobia experienced by a main character.
Before
Anxiety ruined Tomas Jaroka.
Nothing new there.
He woke in a sweat, convinced he wasn’t going to survive breakfast let alone moving across the world with his brothers. It had all happened so fast. The sudden deaths of his uncles and cousin. The reality of his father’s poor health. The plan for Tommy and his brothers to fulfil the duty that had landed at their feet like a ball with nowhere else to roll.
The small kingdom of Kiraly was eager to meet them, speculating about the new royal family, calling them the Lost Princes. That nationwide interest shot Tommy’s nerves through the rafters, and Mark and Kris both knew it. Mark had already tried to talk him out of the whole thing, but Tommy had lied through his teeth and sworn he’d cope.
He was going with them.
He sat up—and alarm greeted him at the sight of his packed bags. God, he was really going with them.
I’m really leaving Jonah.
Within minutes, he burst out of the homestead to visit his neighbor. He shouldn’t have put it off yesterday. His palms juddered down the sides of his shirt as he crossed the south field. The early sun cupped his jaw, and the crisp morning air filled his lungs a little too fast.
It was the second-worst day of his life.
Jumping the dividing fence, his foot caught on strung wire and he stumbled. He’d never stumbled over Jonah’s fence. He’d jumped it since he’d been tall enough—and climbed it before then. When Jonah had moved next door as a boy, his sweet, huggable heart had been inexplicably drawn to Tommy—who’d been quiet and reserved, even at five. Their fast friendship had held firm in the twenty years since.
Tommy stopped. He couldn’t do this.
Couldn’t tell Jonah how he felt.
Couldn’t end their friendship when Jonah was forced to admit he didn’t feel the same.
Yet Tommy couldn’t keep pretending. This wasn’t friendship; it was unrequited affection, and it’d been cutting him apart for years. Pretending to be platonic felt like holding a polite dinner conversation while ripping into his leg with a steak knife just out of sight.
“Enough of this,” he muttered, and hounded himself across several acres of hay field, past the barn with the baler and tractors, and up the gravel track to the house that Jonah had bought from his parents when they’d left town.
Tommy’s heels thudded against the wooden front steps and porch, and before he could talk himself out of it, he hauled open the door and let himself in. The entrance opened directly into the living room, but he moved into the hallway beyond, with its various adjoining rooms, and waited for a sign of life to poke its head out of the bedroom.
“Jonah,” he called.
There was a moment of silence. Then bare-heeled footsteps sounded from the end of the hall where it opened into the kitchen and dining area. Christ. Nerves shoved his stomach against his spine; fear seized the muscles lining his throat. The sensations were familiar from all the times he’d almost confessed his feelings over the past few years.
No backing out this time.
Except—
A young man appeared at the end of the hall. Lean, coquettish, wearing nothing but blue jeans and fluffy, blow-dried hair.
Not Jonah.
The sight lodged brutally in Tommy’s chest.
“Hey,” the man said with a curious smile. He gestured with a piece of toast, at home, casual, as if he had breakfast here every morning. “Jonah’s just in the shower.”
In the shower.
Because this man’s scent is all over him.
Because they’ve been fucking.
Because Jonah doesn’t feel the same.
Winded, Tommy stepped back, raising an apologetic hand. “Bad timing.”
Panic twisted in his gut. He could hardly try again later. The private plane was just hours away. Bad timing was all he had.
The man said, “You can just wait here,” a second before a bang came from behind the closed bathroom door on Tommy’s right. There was the thudding of a short sprint, the rattling of a loose handle, and the door flew open. Jonah shoved his head out to look at the stranger, his dark hair wet and dripping onto his bare shoulders. The shower was still running—he hadn’t stopped to grab a towel.
Mortification lit the base of Tommy’s neck as a darker heat shook loose lower inside him.
“Was that—” Jonah cut off as his gaze landed on Tommy. He flushed, pulled his shoulders back behind the door, and then squinted as he tried to focus. “Tommy.” Something about his abashed pink cheeks and scrunched eyes was unbearably gorgeous, and it was a small mercy Jonah wasn’t wearing his glasses or he’d have seen the appreciation running wild over Tommy’s face. “I didn’t know you’d be over.”
Tommy took a step back. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Oh no, you haven’t,” Jonah said and then winced.
“This is Tommy?” The man at the end of the hall shifted in interest.
Jonah whipped his head around, hair flinging droplets onto Tommy’s arm, and said urgently, “Please don’t.”
The stranger raised a shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen.
Jonah turned back around and forced a smile, his laugh lines carving deep. Jesus, those lines. Like cheek-deep parentheses, turning his mouth into an aside, a moment of clarification, when really, Tommy’s stumbling heart knew it contained the entirety of everything worth knowing.
Jonah said, “I’ll be out in a second, okay?”
Only a fool would admit romantic feelings with Jonah’s lover in the house. Yet Tommy couldn’t leave without shattering their lives with a completely different truth.
“Don’t rush on my account,” he answered and practically hurled himself out the door.
On the porch, he tasted metal when he belatedly noticed the guy’s backpacker travel bag dumped to one side. Faultless timing, Tommy. Ten out of fucking ten.
With his blood pounding like an aggrieved fist against a wall, he took the steps and focused on the gate at the end of the long driveway. There and back. He’d do a lap while he waited—he had no chance of standing still.
He knew how Jonah hooked up. Sage Haven didn’t exactly have a thriving gay community, so tourists were Jonah’s only hope at connection. The men would stay for a night, a weekend at most, and then move on. Jonah had once confided that when the right man finally came along, they’d share their first kiss and first orgasm on different days.
“Maybe a date or two in between,” he’d said to Tommy with a crinkle-eyed smile. “I can dream, right?”
Right, except Tommy had done nothing but dream. Too aware that his confession would end their friendship—things would be too awkward after that, too painful—he’d kept it secret just to keep Jonah in his life.
Now he had no choice. His royal duties wouldn’t tolerate the distraction of long-distance yearning. He wouldn’t have the resources to pretend at friendship, not anymore. Not when it meant fighting something that felt like the formation of the universe between his lungs—all while Jonah just carried on.
He had to end this.
With a hand pressed to his chest—as if that would keep him intact—Tommy strode, unblinking, toward the gate. It was the horizon. It was slow, steady breathing. It was the count of ten. There and back. Just once. There and back.
Then he’d tell Jonah he was leaving for good.
“Tommy!”
His pulse spiked at Jonah’s clear voice and the front door banging shut.
“Tommy, wait!”
No. Jesus, I can’t do this.
“Honestly, Tom, wait for me, will you?”
Jaw tight, Tommy halted at the desperate edge in Jonah’s voice and turned as Jonah jogged down the front steps on bare feet, his hands working to close the buttons of his jeans. A damp shirt was plastered to his chest, covering slender shoulders that were deceptively good at heavy lifting and abs trained to share the load, while the scoop neck revealed the narrow wings of his collarbones. Add shower-damp hair and lips swollen from another man’s kisses, and pain pinched in Tommy’s chest. He memorized every detail, possessive of these last moments no matter how they ached.
“That was awkward.” Jonah sounded off as he stopped in front of him. His smile, usually as bright as a suncatcher, was strained. “Sorry.”
Tommy gave a nod, but when the world around him tipped with it, he latched onto a grounding technique for panic attacks. Count down from five using the senses, starting with things he could see—go.
Jonah. The brown warmth of his eyes framed by lashes long and thick and dark. His tanned skin. His angular jawline that played right into the hands of masculine beauty ideals, and the concern breaking into a frown on his lips.
Four things he could touch. That curl of soil-dark hair slipping around Jonah’s ear and the drip of water on the lens of his black-framed glasses. The now fully wet shirt that Tommy imagined adjusting, unsticking from his friend’s chest to set the shoulder seams right. And Jonah’s hand, steady and safe, sliding into his pocket as his stance shifted.
“You okay?” Jonah asked, his head tilting.
Three things he could hear. His own pulse thumping in his ears. The echo of that man saying, Jonah’s just in the shower, offhand, and yet so intimate it hurt. And the swan song of Jonah’s voice. The last time he might ever hear it.
“Tommy?”
This wasn’t helping.
Two things he could smell. Sweet shampoo and spring grass.
One taste. Regret.
“Tommy.” Jonah’s brows kinked in earnest. “Seriously. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” His mouth was dry. I don’t want to do this. “Everything.”
Jonah caught his shoulder and let it go just as quickly. “You can tell me.”
Tommy’s throat closed. Can I?
If only Jonah wasn’t good all the way down. Kind and honest and pure. A loud world hushed to its simplest arrangement. Jonah had the wings of an angel—and no idea how they made Tommy’s heart fly.
And Tommy had lied to him about everything that mattered.
“Is it about Charlie? He’s alright, you know?” Jonah gestured back toward the house. Then an idea seemed to strike him. “You should come in and have toast with us!”
Right. That explained why Tommy had woken with the sense that breakfast wanted him dead. “You’re kidding.”
Jonah looked like he wasn’t quite sure. His gaze lowered to the gravel underfoot. “He’s hitching out of town this morning. He was at the bar until close last night, so we just—”
“Sure.” Tommy held up a hand. Please, God, let his raised brows look embarrassed, not wounded. “I don’t need the details.”
Jonah paused. Then he grimaced around another smile. “You didn’t knock.”
“I never knock.”
A flicker at the window betrayed Jonah’s one-nighter was watching on. “Maybe start?”
Tommy’s embarrassment hid behind denial. “It’s not going to be a problem again.”
“What does that mean?” Puzzled, Jonah narrowed his eyes. “You all right?”
Tommy shoved his trembling hands in his back pockets. “I have to tell you something.”
Jonah scanned his face with a frown. “You’re worked up.”
Because I’m losing you.
On the actual worst day of Tommy’s life, he’d watched Jonah die.
Tommy had believed so completely that he’d lost Jonah, the trauma of it had dropped an anchor deep enough inside him that he remembered it happening. The grief. The reality of surviving without him. The irreparable rift it had caused in the arc of his life. He’d thought he’d never again ride with Jonah in the back hills or help him bale hay; never catch his laugh or unwind in his silence or feel steadied by his constancy.
But Jonah had survived their attack. And all those losses had lingered on the sidelines until today.
“We’re leaving,” Tommy pushed out on a dry whisper.
Jonah didn’t ask him to define we—the pronoun was an unwitting side-effect of Tommy being an identical triplet. “Leaving what?”
“Sage Haven.” Stress slicked Tommy’s hands. He’d hardly left this small town in Montana since returning from college almost four years ago. “We’re going to Europe.”
Jonah blinked at him. “You’re what?”
“We’re going to Europe.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t—” Jonah gave a small laugh. It was the kind of laugh that preceded understanding but was first in line to get the joke. “What are you talking about, you goose?”
“We’re going to Europe. Classic instance of saying exactly what I mean.”
Smile slipping, Jonah swallowed. “Don’t get sarcastic. You’re not making any sense.”
Tommy ran a hand over his aching chest. “Yes. I am.”
For a few seconds, Jonah just stared. Then he shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“This was never supposed to happen.” They hadn’t planned on ever setting foot in that place. He and his brothers were never supposed to matter. “But we’re going overseas, leaving in a few hours.”
Jonah stepped away abruptly. He collected several drips from his neck with a confused swipe of his hand. “But that—how long will you be gone?”
Pain locked inside Tommy. He forced the word out. “Indefinitely.”
“Indefinite . . .” Jonah stilled with the kind of frown that hinted at panic. He held Tommy’s gaze. “Remind me what that means again.”
“Without a fixed end point.”
“Stop it.” A tremor entered Jonah’s voice.
Tommy rolled his lips together, fighting a swell of alarm.
“Explain this properly,” Jonah said, pointing a finger at the ground, “because I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“We have family over there.” The words stuck in Tommy’s throat. Something pressed against his breastbone from within, solid like a shoulder, hot like a slick, bloody death. “They died. The whole family, all together.” The balcony they’d been dining on had collapsed in an architectural tragedy. “And we’re moving over there to take their place.”
“No.” Jonah’s voice rose. “I don’t believe you. You boys would never leave the ranch. You’d never leave—”
“We have to,” Tommy cut him off, quiet and frantic as his body purged the truth in a clammy sweat. “We have to leave because we’re royalty. My uncle was the king of a small country called Kiraly. He died in an accident with the others, and now we’re the only living heirs to the throne. Our last name isn’t actually Jacobs. It’s Jaroka. Look it up—it’s real, and they’re dead, and that means Mark’s going to be king.”
Jonah stared.
Tommy couldn’t feel anything from his battering heart down.
“Um.” Jonah’s face had turned red. “It sounded like you just tried to tell me that you’re a prince.”
The air thinned in Tommy’s lungs. His hands shook in his pockets.
“No.” Distress was in the hand Jonah plunged into his hair—in the half-step he took toward Tommy. “You’re not allowed to go quiet. Not now.”
“I—I’m sorry I never told you.”
