Healing the Cowboy's Heart

by Ruth Logan Herne

  “I have no trouble seeing the sensibility at all,” Lizzie assured her, but she was grinning as she spoke. “You going out with a totally hot Western cowboy that just happened to wander into your life at the most unexpected time.” She winked at Melonie purposely. “The two of us see that as quite sensible, actually.”

  “Because you happened to come north and find your one-true-loves,” Char rolled her eyes as she exaggerated the words. “Doesn’t mean I will. I’m doing fine on my own. As always.”

  Melonie laughed as five-year-old Zeke shot down the stairs, sporting his daddy’s cowboy look in miniature. He slid to a stop in front of Lizzie, but only because she braced him with her hands so he wouldn’t barrel into her. “Dad says I’m ready to go.” He raised a hand and ticked off five cute little fingers. “I used the bathroom and brushed my teeth—all of them,” he stressed to Lizzie because he wasn’t a fan of sticking the toothbrush all the way into his mouth to reach the back teeth. “And I washed my hands and sang the silly song so they’re like the most-clean hands ever!” He extended his little hands toward Lizzie and she made a show of examining them as the crunch of tires on gravel announced Isaiah’s arrival. Char glanced at her watch—5:45. Right on time.

  For a split second she wished she’d insisted on going with her sisters. Why was she doing this? Going to the rodeo with a charismatic single cowboy whose family seemed entrenched in drama?

  “You’ll have a wonderful time.” Lizzie shoulder nudged her as Liam and J.J. scrambled out of the SUV. Isaiah followed at a more relaxed pace. “If nothing else this gets you away from work and out in public, where folks can see you’re not the monster Braden Hirsch makes you out to be.”

  “Wow. Thanks.”

  Lizzie grinned. “You’re welcome. And if your mind is on anything other than rodeo and cowboys with a date like that—” she aimed an approving look toward Isaiah “—then you’ve got more problems than a fun sisterly talk can solve, darlin’. I’m just sayin’.”

  “It’s not a date.”

  Melonie coughed to cover her snort.

  Lizzie pretended innocence. “Of course it isn’t. It’s just a pair of old friends who have known each other for a week, getting together to catch up on things.”

  “Char!” Liam spotted her through the door and raced in, then stopped, embarrassed. “Oops. Sorry. I should have knocked, huh?”

  “That would have been nice.” Isaiah was at the door.

  J.J. was beside him, and with Liam framed in front, they were the image of a possibility she’d never expected and couldn’t have.

  Are you that stubborn that you refuse to open your eyes to new possibilities? So he’s got a grumpy mother. And his godfather doesn’t like you and thinks you’re incompetent. Does that really matter?

  Liam grabbed hold of her and embraced her with a hug that felt good. Really good. So maybe all the other stuff didn’t matter like she thought. She’d been surrounded by discord all her life, and she came out all right.

  J.J. came in and took her free hand. “I’m so glad you’re coming with us!”

  “For realsies?” Char asked and J.J. burst out laughing.

  “Total realsies! I need your advice in the most sincere, professional way,” she went on. “I saw a horse online. It’s a grand jumper and I’ve got enough money saved to afford it, but Isaiah says he wants you to look at him before any decisions are made.”

  “You said that?” She faced Isaiah over Liam. “An experienced horseman like you wants my opinion?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t raise or breed jumpers. I know what I know.” He held her gaze for a little too long, making her heart beat a little faster. A little stronger. “And what I don’t know. But I’m not afraid to learn a lesson or two, Doctor.” He smiled then, and that smile drew her closer. “If you come to see this horse with us, J.J. will know what to look for. How to examine a jumper for the best optimum outcome. Of course you’d be along for educational purposes only.” He grinned when Lizzie made a doubtful noise.

  Char ignored his flirting and addressed J.J. “You said he looks amazing? How do you know this?”

  “They posted videos on the ranch site. He’s broad and strong and a whole lot of horse, Char, but when he moves...” The girl took a deep breath. “It’s like the wind.”

  Char knew exactly what she meant. “That smooth?”

  “As if made for jumping. And made for me.”

  Char raised her eyes to Isaiah’s.

  He watched her with the kids. Then he brought his eyes up and wasn’t watching the kids. Just her.

  She swallowed hard.

  He noticed and that brought heat to her cheeks. “We’ll compare notes tomorrow, J.J. I promise.” He pointed to the country-motif clock on the wall. “Right now we need to go if we’re going to grab food.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Great.” He opened the screen door, then held it open for the rest of them.

  She let Liam hustle through, then J.J., and when her turn came, Isaiah was there. Right there. Holding the door and smiling at her.

  Her heart fluttered.

  In her world of stoicism, fluttering hearts were not allowed, but it seemed today, tonight, she had no choice. And when he opened the car door for her, then closed it with gentle care, her heart did that silly thing again.

  And it didn’t just feel wonderful...it felt right.

  * * *

  Liam took one look at down-in-the-dirt realities of calf-roping, burst into tears and cried inconsolably for a quarter hour once they had him off the bleachers and outside the arena ninety minutes later.

  J.J. and Char wisely gave Isaiah some space with the boy. Isaiah sat on a sturdy bench and whispered words of comfort as Liam tried to gain control of his emotions, but one thing was clear. Liam couldn’t handle the rigors of the rodeo and they wouldn’t be going back onto the bleachers tonight.

  Char approached once Liam had gained some control. “So, guys, how about giving the new girl in town a tour of the area?”

  “There’s not all that much to see,” J.J. remarked, then clapped a hand over her mouth as she realized what Char was trying to do. “But it would be good for you to get to know places, right?” She hurried the words, trying to cover her tracks. “Since you’ll be traveling all over to fix animals.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Char winked when J.J. sent her a rueful look.

  Liam swallowed hard. When he turned his face toward Isaiah, it was like seeing Andrew’s face, years ago. So much of his father in the boy, and yet he seemed to have gotten Isaiah’s soft heart. “I don’t want to ruin everything for everybody,” he whispered. “We can go back in, Uncle Isaiah. I’m okay.”

  Trying to be brave. Trying to fit in. Isaiah knew that scenario too well to be fooled. “Well, I’m not big on having those little guys dragged through the dirt, either,” he told Liam.

  The boy’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re not? Didn’t you and Grandpa used to rope calves? When you were little?”

  “Not much call when you’ve got gates and crushes to corral them,” Isaiah explained. “But if you’re on a huge spread of land, or running thousands of head of cattle grazing public lands, you might have to rope them to brand them. It makes it much harder to steal them if they’re marked.”

  Liam focused in on that tidbit of information. “People steal cows?”

  Isaiah made a face. “Some folks would rather steal things than work for them, so branding can be an important way to identify your herd. We graze on our own land, so we don’t have a reason to do that at Dancing Meadows or at Grandpa’s.”

  “Because our calves are all fenced in, with their mamas.”

  “And Grandpa wouldn’t like it,” added Isaiah. “He doesn’t want the spirit of the animal wounded by the greed of man, so he doesn’t brand. We never did.” Isaiah set the boy onto the ground and stood,
then grasped his hand. “Let’s head out and show Char around while we’ve got Grandpa keeping an eye on things at our place, okay?” He lifted his gaze to Char. “Unless you’d rather stay with your sisters?”

  “I would much prefer a personal tour, thank you very much.” She didn’t take a moment to think about it, and her quick answer made J.J. smile. “I have to admit I wanted to dash across the arena and let those calves run free myself, so Liam and I are on the same page.”

  “Really?” Liam shifted his attention to Char. “You wanted to save them, too?”

  “Every last one,” Char admitted. “Blame my Eastern schooling or my Southern delicacy, but either way, you and I are in full agreement, my friend. Let’s take a tour.”

  The rodeo crowd roared approval at something right then and Liam shrank against Isaiah’s leg. “Okay.”

  The boy hurried into the back seat of the truck as if he couldn’t get away fast enough. When they pulled away, Isaiah glanced Char’s way. Was she disappointed? Relieved? Wishing she was anyplace else about now?

  She met his gaze, sent a look of sympathy toward the boy in the back seat, then winked at Isaiah.

  Kind. Caring. But strong, too, a strength he’d witnessed several times in just a few days. And he was pretty sure she was being totally honest when she said she wanted to save those calves from being roped and tied.

  They drove north until they got to the turn-off for Shepherd’s Crossing. “So, this is our little town,” he explained, but there wasn’t a whole lot to say about a half-empty town, was there? He drove slowly, still heading north. “It’s fallen on some hard times.”

  “But doesn’t the church look wonderful with its new coat of paint, Uncle Isaiah?” J.J. pointed out the bright white church nestled against a stand of evergreens. “Like a postcard. A whole group of people got together and painted it two weeks ago,” she explained to Char. “We need a new pastor and the church needed some work. Who wants to be a pastor in a splotchy old church?”

  “And someone is looking at buying these three storefronts on Main Street and using them for offices,” added Isaiah. “That would bring some people into town.”

  “They asked my sister’s advice,” noted Char. “She had a meeting with whoever it is, and if you knew Melonie, you’d know that no sweet town is going to escape the makeover talents of one of Kentucky’s finest interior designers. She got a cable deal to do a renovation show set up here, so she’s totally psyched.”

  “TV? Seriously?” J.J. sat forward. “Our town is going to be on television?”

  “They’re going to start with the big Hardaway Ranch project that she and Jace will be working on all summer,” Char told him, “but they’ve already lined up two early fall projects and they need ten episodes filmed and edited and ready to go by next June, so Jace is working on the renovation at Gilda Hardaway’s house and Melonie is hunting up business.”

  Isaiah caught J.J.’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Before you ask, J.J., no, we do not want to be renovated, nor do we have any desire to be on TV.”

  J.J. laughed. “Dad would have said the same thing. He wasn’t big on people getting all up in one another’s business. But I love seeing how things get done on some of those shows, Isaiah. And I’m pretty good with power tools.”

  “True. And I’m grateful for the help,” he admitted. “There’s always something getting broken on a ranch.”

  “Are we driving all the way up to the reservation to see people?” asked Liam.

  Isaiah shook his head. “Too late in the day for that, kiddo. Another time, okay?”

  “How far is it?” asked Char. “And how big is it?”

  A question asked by many and still an understandable bone of contention among the Native Americans. “Big by white standards,” he told her. “Confining by Nimiipuu standards. The reservation is 750,000 acres.”

  “Three-quarters of a million acres,” she repeated softly. “That’s huge, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Uh-oh.” Liam pretended fear.

  “She’s gone and done it now,” whispered J.J., intentionally loud enough to be heard up front.

  “Our tribal lands were once seventeen million acres.” Isaiah waved a hand as he turned toward McCall.

  “For how many people?” she wondered, and when he frowned, she put a hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to insult you, Isaiah. But that’s a lot of land left fallow if it never got settled.”

  “And that’s the great divide,” he told her as he pulled into a parking spot along East Lake Street. “Settlers pushed west, claiming what wasn’t theirs because a new government told them they could. The Native culture didn’t divide land—” he began, but Char interrupted him quickly.

  “Sure it did,” Char interrupted him quickly. “The tribes all had their areas, and some got along and some didn’t, and the ones that didn’t fought to defend their territories.”

  Isaiah parked the car and turned her way, but first checked the kids’ reactions in the back seat. They’d been raised on this history, knowing and understanding the sacrifices that had gone before them. He couldn’t let them be minimized. Not by Char or anyone else.

  J.J.’s eyes had gone wide. Liam looked from one to the other, waiting for the implosion, an implosion that shouldn’t happen because they’d come out for a nice evening together.

  Char put her hand up to pause him. “I’m not negating the impact of the loss of tribal lands,” she said gently. “Or the horror that followed in the Nez Percé War and how the people were sent into the Deep South afterward. The sorrows of war and the bad decisions of power-hungry people sicken me,” she said frankly.

  “I sense the word but coming,” said Isaiah. “And for us, there is no but, Char. Lives were irrevocably changed not just then.” He glanced into the back seat. “But forever. There were no options when Chief Joseph and the remaining people were captured. The tribe was gathered and herded south like animals, then kept prisoner there. Children perished. Old ones died on the trek with no one to bury them. Women wept and once-strong men felt helpless. It was a time of horrors, so the gift of a morsel of land that was already ours wasn’t much of a gift,” he said frankly. “And the reason our ancestors survived—” he motioned to J.J. and Liam when he stressed the pronoun “—was simple. We adopted the faith. We became Christians. It didn’t make us one with the white neighbors back then, but it made us acceptable eventually. And in the end it spared our lives.”

  His words touched her. He saw it in her gaze, then heard it in her voice. “My maternal ancestors crossed the ocean in 1635,” she replied. “They were repressed people who wanted the freedom to worship as they chose. The thought of this land must have been such a fear and an opportunity to begin again... My Irish side dealt with repeated invasions by Vikings, Normans and a host of others over centuries. Eventually the cultures merged, becoming stronger by taking the best of both worlds. And looking at those two—” she hooked a thumb toward the back seat “—I’d say you’ve already done that in so many ways. I’m not negating the sacrifices of history or the need to preserve heritage.” She kept her voice soft, but she wasn’t about to back down; he saw that clearly enough. “But assimilating into new circumstances is part of the adaptation that keeps us alive, isn’t it? Life science 101. That which will not adapt will most likely perish.”

  “Science can simplify the definition of the process,” he told her. “The human heart doesn’t find it quite so easy.”

  “Yet that might be what strengthens us,” she replied. “We bear up under the most difficult circumstances and adjust as needed. Our hearts and souls give us that advantage over all the other creatures. I think we’re wise to use it.” She reached for the door handle as she changed the subject. “I haven’t been up to McCall yet. I’ve gotten as far as Young Eagle’s place but never drove past it. What a nice town.”

  “Isaiah thinks it’s too big,” not
ed J.J. as she climbed out of the back seat. “But I love coming up here. Or going to Boise. Seeing the shops and the people.”

  “You like a splash of city mixed in. Me, too. But I love being in the country most of all,” Char admitted. “Do you guys get to Boise often?”

  J.J. shook her head, but then took Isaiah’s hand in a gesture of unity. “No, but I can do that when I’m older. I do want to see things. Try things.” She squeezed Isaiah’s hand lightly. “But then I want to be home, too. Running horses and fixing things. And if I have a jumper to work with, that puts everything else on hold.”

  J.J. had a solid outlook on things, even without parents to guide her. Why did he feel the need to look backward so often? Why did he worry about offending some and protecting others? When it came to business, he was crisp and clear because he saw the bottom line and he not only expected respect...he gave it.

  But he hadn’t always stood his ground with family and friends. Did the old guilt weigh that heavily? Did it affect so much?

  It did and he was just now realizing it.

  Liam scrambled out of the car. “I know where we’re going, and, Char, you’re going to love it so much!” He seized her hand and she went along with him, laughing. J.J. smiled, watching them, then hurried ahead to join them.

  They formed a picture, the three of them, with Char in the middle. She was chattering about something, making both kids laugh and his heart loosened to see it. She engaged them. She engaged him. And she wasn’t afraid to challenge him. He liked that. And when he noticed a younger cowboy quietly checking her out as she walked by, he had to fight the urge to cross the street and knock the guy over. Trouble was, he was doing exactly the same thing.

  During the work days she wore loose-fitting jeans and T-shirts.