A Total-E-Bound Publication
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Miles to Go
ISBN #978-0-85715-574-0
©Copyright Bailey Bradford 2011
Cover Art by PoshGosh ©Copyright June 2011
Edited by Claire Siemaszkiewicz
Total-E-Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2011 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.
Warning: This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has been rated Total-e-burning.
Love in Xxchange
MILES TO GO
Bailey Bradford
Dedication
To the wonderful crew at the playroom, who cheered on Max and Bo.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Nike Just Do It!: Nike Inc.
Raid: SC Johnson Corp.
Stetson: Stetson
Google: Google Inc.
MILES TO GO
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Prologue
Maybe one day he’d get used to seeing his boss and Rory looking so happy and mushy in love, but Max Jenkins kind of hoped he didn’t. If any two people had ever been made for each other, it was Chance and Rory, and now with the addition of Annabelle to the household, both men almost glowed with joy. Well, Rory did, really, and it made the young man look even more angelic than he usually did.
It was something to see, especially for someone like Max, who’d never really seen what a happy, loving relationship could be like. His own parents had been…they’d just been a mess, was the nicest way Max could think to put it. Having grown up with that example, he’d pretty much decided he was meant to spend his life alone. Seeing Rory and Chance together, though, sometimes made him question that choice. Then he’d remember he had the blood of two insane, hate-filled, mean bastards running through his veins. That immediately killed off any hope he had of finding someone to grow old…older…with.
Not that forty-three was old, exactly, but damned if Max didn’t feel ancient when he wasn’t working and had too much time on his hands. Nights in the bunkhouse could just be hell, and often they made Max wish he was a drinking man, or prone to some other sort of self-medicating. Anything to shut off the thoughts and doubts and fears and loneliness that pressed down on him and threatened to smother him in the quiet hours before he could slip out the door and distract himself with work.
Max was confident in his work, and he knew his thick Southern accent could give some people the impression he wasn’t too bright, or that he was laid back all of the time. Those people were the ones who weren’t particularly bright, making judgments based on
something as easily changed as an accent, and Max wasn’t in any hurry to correct their thinking. In his opinion, if a person were ignorant enough to make such a snap judgement about him, that person wasn’t worth the effort it’d take to set them straight.
Besides which, sometimes it suited him to be so easily categorised and dismissed. At least someone thought they had him figured out—Max was too confused about too many things when it came to himself. He wasn’t sure he would ever puzzle them all out, or if he even wanted to. Sometimes it was just so much easier to float along in the comfortable MILES TO GO
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confusion zone—it’s what he knew, and if he could only be sure in his uncertainty about himself, well, that was still something.
Maybe even enough. Introspection—ha! Max bet a lot of people would fall over in
shock if they found out he knew a big, fancy word like that—just wasn’t his thing. That would involve examining his past, and he didn’t really want to do that. Any time the past threatened to suck him down and swallow him whole, Max would find a way to occupy his mind.
Usually that involved a lot of reading, sometimes crossword puzzles. He tried that damned Sudoku and decided he’d rather just take a bullet to the head than wrangle numbers around. It pissed Max off to no end that he couldn’t ever complete even one of those godawful puzzles, not without looking at the answers in the back, anyway, and what was the point of that?
“Crap, gonna be another one of those nights,” Max muttered, tossing his hat on the couch. It bounced onto the floor, and he thought about picking it up then shrugged. It wasn’t like anyone else lived here in the bunkhouse with him.
Later, he’d figure that was the exact thought that jinxed him.
MILES TO GO
Bailey Bradford
7
Chapter One
Evenings in the bunkhouse should have been peaceful, but Max kind of hated them.
Too much time alone since he was the only employee here at the Galloway Ranch. Well, technically Rory was the other hand, but since he and the boss had hooked up and got all moon-eyed over each other, Rory had packed up and moved into the big house.
Which left Max alone most evenings unless he was invited over for dinner with Rory, Chance, and Rory’s sister Annabelle. Almost every evening one of those three checked in with him to see if he
