by Liz Isaacson
Maybe it’ll be Stephen Willis, she thought. Her lunch date that day. She tried to look interested as she watched the red, white, and blue balloon take shape, but she had no idea if she’d pulled it off.
Nick didn’t say anything, and Oakley couldn’t think of anything either. Surely he could feel that she just wasn’t that into him. He wasn’t that into her either.
She’d been around the dating block several times, and she knew the game. Men were interested in her, because she was pretty and petite. She’d won enough money in car racing to live comfortably for the rest of her life—and they knew it. They recognized her from somewhere, even if they didn’t know where until she told them.
“It’s really incredible,” Nick said, glancing at her.
“Yeah,” she said. “You said that already.”
“Did I?” He straightened and looked at her, taking in the cola in her hand. “It’s barely six.”
“Yeah,” she said, yawning. “I don’t get up this early very often.”
“How can you drink that so early in the morning?”
“It’s like coffee,” she said, nodding around to plenty of other people who had drinks in their hand. “It’s just not hot.”
Nick smiled, and Oakley turned back to the balloon she had no interest in. “Do you want to go do the demo?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, though she wanted to find somewhere to get something good to eat. Then she should probably get on a treadmill somewhere, and then she could go back to bed. She didn’t have to be to the dealership until four, and she’d definitely need a nap before she had to close tonight.
Nick took her hand again, and Oakley glanced at him, a tight smile on her face. They went to the demo about how the hot air fills the balloon, and then one about what the baskets were made of.
Oakley put in an hour, and then she said, “I have to get going, Nick. I’ve got a thing this morning before I have to go to work.”
“Sure,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “This was fun.”
“Was it?” Oakley asked, unsure if he was kidding or not. She faced him, catching the surprise on his face.
“Yeah,” he said. “Did you—did you not have fun?”
Oakley hated this part of dating. She actually preferred it when the men could feel things weren’t right, and they just stopped calling and texting.
“It was okay,” Oakley said, exhaling and then taking another breath.
Before she could say things weren’t working for her, Nick asked, “What about dinner tomorrow night?”
“Oh, uh,” Oakley glanced around, seeing a plethora of cowboy hats. This town seemed to have more than any other. She caught sight of a cowboy she hadn’t seen in a while, and she seized onto an idea. “Ranger,” she said.
The man looked around, obviously trying to find her. She lifted her hand, and he lifted his as a slightly confused look crossed his face.
To her relief, he took the few steps to join her and Nick. “Hey, Oakley.” He glanced at Nick. “Did you two enjoy the festival?”
“Yeah,” Nick said, sliding his hand into hers. Oakley slipped into her mask, the smile plastic and fake. Ranger saw the hand-holding, and he hadn’t smiled yet.
“I haven’t seen you at church in a while,” Oakley said. “Are things really busy on the ranch?”
“Always,” Ranger said, his blue eyes sending her pulse crashing against her ribs. She hadn’t seen who he was with, but no one seemed to be waiting for him. “We harvest on a rotation from July to October.”
“Wow,” Nick said.
“I’m Ranger Glover,” Ranger said, extending his hand toward Nick.
“Oh,” Oakley said with a light laugh. “Sorry. Nick, this is Ranger Glover, a friend of mine from church. Ranger, this is Nick Ryan, my….”
Nick shook Ranger’s hand, saying, “Boyfriend.”
“No,” Oakley said, heat rising through her chest. She stared at him, surprise filling her from top to bottom.
“Nice to meet you,” Ranger said.
“No?” Nick asked, facing her.
“I’ll let you guys figure it out.” Ranger took a couple of steps backward, and Oakley wanted to beg him to stay.
“Oakley,” Nick said, and she sighed as she looked at him.
“I’m not your girlfriend,” she said, gently removing her hand from his. “You’re not my boyfriend.”
“I thought we were getting along great.”
“That’s because we don’t say anything to each other.”
He gaped at her. “I don’t….”
“I have a date with another man for lunch,” Oakley said, taking a step away from him. “I never said we were exclusive.” She purposely didn’t date just one person, and she was pretty up-front about that.
Nick shook his head, anger sparking in his eyes. “So it’s a no to dinner tomorrow night.”
“It’s a no,” she said.
He nodded, turned, and left. Just like that.
Oakley’s adrenaline buzzed through her body, and she looked around for a way to release it. Sometimes she really missed the thrill of driving two hundred miles an hour. She missed strapping into the race car. She missed putting on the helmet, and the scent of hot rubber tires on even hotter asphalt.
“Are you okay?” someone asked, a light touch on her shoulder.
Fire raced through her blood as Oakley turned back to Ranger.
“Yeah,” she said with a scoff. She waved toward where Nick had departed. “Yeah, that was….” She met Ranger’s eyes again, the zinging and ringing of adrenaline and heat only increasing as she looked into those beautiful eyes. “So weird, right?” She laughed, glad when Ranger Glover did too.
Tingles ran across her shoulders and down her arms just from the sound of his deep laugh, and Oakley looked at the handsome cowboy in front of her. Really looked. She’d seen Ranger before, of course. She’d talked to him. But there was something different about him this morning.
Or maybe there was something different about her this morning. Maybe she was seeing him for the first time.
“Ranger,” a man called, and both Oakley and Ranger turned that way. Another tall cowboy and a pretty woman—Samantha Benton, the mechanic—looked toward Ranger.
“Have a good day, ma’am.” Ranger tipped his hat at her and walked away, and his departure was so different than Nick’s had been.
Oakley didn’t want Ranger to walk away from her, and she had half a mind to call him back over and ask him if was seeing anyone. He was too far away now, and Oakley settled for watching him for a few minutes until she lost sight of him.
“Stalker,” she muttered to herself, and she finally headed to the parking lot. She did have another date to get ready for, though she suddenly wasn’t as excited to go on it.
Thinking quickly, she tapped out a message to Vanessa, her assistant manager at the dealership. Hey, have we sold anything to Ranger Glover? If so, do we have a number for him?
Oakley wasn’t dating exclusively, and the reason was because she’d not met someone in Three Rivers she wanted to commit to. She had a distinct feeling that had changed ten minutes ago, with a pair of blue eyes and a deep laugh that had ignited something inside Oakley that had died the day she’d retired from racing.
Not Ranger, Vanessa said. His cousin Bear. Here’s his number.
Oakley didn’t need Bear Glover’s number, but it was one step closer to Ranger.
Chapter Twenty
Ranger sat behind the wheel of the big rig, the guttural grumbling of the engine vibrating through his whole body. He loved driving the semi to market day, though his stomach twisted and knotted as he opened the door and dropped to the ground.
“Load ‘em up,” he called to his brothers and cousins, and they started packing the calves into the truck. He’d drive them two hours to the weigh station, where they’d know how much they’d made that year.
Everything depended on market day.
Ranger thought of the bank
accounts for the ranch and for himself personally. He went over everything with Ward at least once a week, and their money situation was healthy. More than healthy. They could lose all their cows for a few years—or maybe a decade or two—and still keep the ranch operational.
Shiloh Ridge hardly spent any money, because of that darn family motto that had Ranger still tinkering with the trucks when they broke down. Then, Uncle Stone had bought the failing ranch to the southwest for dirt cheap, found oil on it, and sold it for more money than any family should have in their lifetime.
Ranger and his siblings, as well as Bear and all of his, had plenty of money from that. Still, he wanted to be fiscally responsible. It was more than a want; it was a seething need that existed in his soul.
Not only that, but Ranger loved nothing more than working from the back of a horse, checking cattle, rotating pastures, and living off the land.
He took a deep breath of the clear September morning, glad the temperature had cooled the last couple of days. It wouldn’t stay that way; it was just a cold snap coming through. They still had fields to harvest and prep for winter, and Bear had ordered all the pest control and fertilization from Payne’s Pest-free a couple of days ago.
He walked away from the rear of the truck, the sounds of cattle lowing, a few metallic bangs as hooves hit the sides of the truck, and men calling brought him so much joy. Ranger closed his eyes and just listened, enjoying the scent of dust in the air and the smell of manure, men, and sunshine accompanying that.
He and Ward were going to San Luis that day in the single semi the ranch owned. Ranger had ordered ten more from a cattle transport company out of Amarillo, and they should be here soon. He just couldn’t remember what time he’d booked them.
He hadn’t found the email yet when he heard the growling of the engines. Turning, he started for the end of the cattle chutes, where four more cowboys waited on horseback with a whole heap of cattle.
They’d had a healthy birthing season last year, with over five hundred new cows on the ranch. They’d lost a few in the tornado, but with plenty of good grass all summer long, the cattle they had left should fetch them quite a bit of money.
He waved both arms to Cactus, who leapt from his horse and started directing the semis into position. They only had four chutes along the front of the corral, and the one at the back where Ranger was, but they should have these cows loaded up and on the road within the hour.
With things moving forward as they should, Ranger looked at his phone again. He hated that it had become something he didn’t want to check when it notified him. At the same time, he read the text he’d gotten a few days ago over and over. It was the first thing he looked at in the morning, and the last thing he read before going to bed.
“You’ve got to answer her,” he muttered to himself. He just didn’t know how.
He swiped with his thumb, his frown appearing as he tapped on the text from Oakley. I wanted to talk to you about something, she’d said. Might you be free for lunch one day?
“Might I?” he asked.
In all honesty, Ranger was free for lunch any dang day he wanted to be. He didn’t even have to check with anyone. But Ranger hadn’t answered, because the one person he had checked with hadn’t given him the green light quite yet.
“What is it, Lord?” he asked, tipping his head back and looking up into the sky. It was far too bright for him to do that for long, and he closed his eyes as they began to sting. “Why can’t I just say yes?”
He knew why, and he didn’t need the Lord to tell him.
It was because Oakley wasn’t his speed. She was fast where he was slow. Which made sense, because she’d driven a race car for a living. She loved life on the high adrenaline side, and Ranger wanted a slow day in the saddle and then an evening on the porch with his guitar and a glass of lemonade.
She dated multiple men at once, and Ranger hadn’t been out with a woman in any sort of romantic way in three years.
It was the dating non-exclusively that Ranger really didn’t like. He didn’t want to be her lunch date, only for her to dine with another man that evening.
He hadn’t exactly been cold to her lately—he’d spoken to her at the hot air balloon festival last month. She’d looked like she needed a reason to stop talking to whoever she was with, and when Ranger had seen the guy’s face when Oakley didn’t call him her boyfriend, he’d felt an immediate sympathy for him.
More than sympathy—humiliation. Bishop and Bear had helped him identify that emotion, and Ranger didn’t want to be humiliated by the gorgeous brunette who ran the dealership. He already only went to town for church and to buy the vehicles they needed, and he didn’t want to lose that.
Not only that, but something Bear had said had struck Ranger as the pure truth. You don’t deserve to be humiliated by this woman. By anyone.
Ranger worked hard around the ranch. He poured his blood, sweat, and tears into Shiloh Ridge, and he was happy to do it.
He showered and cleaned up and went to church as often as his circumstances would allow, and the only reason Oakley hadn’t seen him there was because she wasn’t looking. He hadn’t missed a Sunday all summer, even if he had sat in the back row so not many people saw him.
He’d just decided to admire Oakley from afar when her text had come in.
He looked at it again, once again debating whether he should tell Bear about the text. He’d be in the truck with Ward for a while, and his brother was his best friend and closest confidante after Bear.
Sighing, he shoved his phone in his pocket, determined not to answer until he had an answer for her. Right now, he didn’t.
He also needed an answer from Jeremiah Walker about the horses he’d gone to see last week, and he needed Wade Rhinehart to call him back about coming to help during harvest time. The two ranches often swapped time during heavy work seasons, and Ranger had volunteered a crew of six men to go help the Rhinehart’s put up their hay, if he and his men would come to Shiloh Ridge.
Wade had said yes, but they were still working out dates. Mother Nature and God determined that, and no rancher wanted to take their hay in before it was ready.
“Ho, there,” Bear called, and Ranger turned toward his cousin. He rode up on a pretty paint horse Bear had been using for a couple of years. Bertha was a beautiful horse who never startled and seemed to know exactly what to do without instructions.
Ranger reached up and stroked her neck as Bear dismounted. He handed the reins to Ranger and said, “How many are you taking?”
“There’s four hundred and ninety-eight,” Ranger said, watching his cousin move over to the fence around the corral. Bear was everything Ranger had always wanted to be, and they got along so well. He’d been dating Sammy for five months now, and they seemed to be getting along mighty fine too.
Bishop had started asking if he should be looking to switch places with Bear, but Bear had never confirmed anything. He’d clammed right up, in fact, and Ranger had seen this tactic with the man before.
He stepped next to him and threw the reins over the top of the fence, though Bertha wouldn’t try to wander off. Horses did like grass, though, and Bertha wasn’t immune to the sweet call of a new pasture. Ranger watched the other cowboys load the trailers, one standing right on the ramp and counting the cattle as they went by to make sure they followed the proper livestock transportation guidelines.
“Eleven trucks,” Ranger said. “I’m hoping we’ll be near a quarter of a million with the weight we’ve got.”
“That would be amazing,” Bear said, glancing at him. “You don’t seem happy about it.”
“I am,” Ranger said, brightening his voice.
Bear turned fully toward him, his blue eyes too bright to look directly into.
“I’m not talking about it,” Ranger said. “I’m fine, and I’m hopeful about the cattle weight. The end.”
“Is it ranch-related?”
“No—sort of,” Ranger said, finally meeting Bear’s eye
. “You and Sammy…she’s going to come live up here?”
Bear’s jaw jumped as he pressed his teeth together. “We haven’t talked about serious stuff like that,” he said.
“No?” Ranger asked, surprised by that. “I—okay.”
Several seconds passed with just the sounds of loading and cattle, the whisper of a breeze in the air, and Ranger’s own breathing going in and out. It was a good life, here on the ranch. A very good life, and he was grateful for it.
“I need to,” Bear finally said. “I just…I’m a little hesitant.”
“Why? You guys get along so great.”
“I don’t see her as much, for one,” Bear said. “And talking about kids and marriage and where we’ll live feels like an in-person conversation.” He glanced at Ranger again, his eyebrows up. “And one we have alone.”
“Yeah, school starting has put you on separate tracks again.” Ranger stepped up onto the bottom rung and leaned out to push an errant cow away from the fence. “Bear, go to town and take her lunch one day. Talk to her about it. You obviously want to.”
“Yeah,” Bear said, and that was all.
“I need her to come look at that stupid truck again, too,” Ranger said. “I can get her up here.”
“Yeah,” Bear said again.
“We need to replace that truck,” Ranger said, eyeing Bear to judge his reaction. “It’s been a lemon from the start.”
“They both have,” Bear said, sighing. He took a deep breath and stepped away. He went around Ranger and took the reins for his horse. “Start looking into, Ranger. No sense in wasting time and money on lemons.”
“Unless we’re going to get some of my mother’s lemon curd out of it,” Ranger said with a smile. In moments like this, he missed his mother’s cooking something fierce, and he stood still while Bear chuckled and let the emotion wash over him.
“That’s the truth,” Bear said. “But if you called Zona, she’d make the curd for you.”
“I want those sugary waffles and raspberries with it,” Ranger said.
“Nothing is ever enough for you, is it?” Bear teased. He swung into the saddle, a grin on his face. The two of them held one another’s gaze, both smiling. Bear sobered first, as he usually did. He hadn’t gone full grizzly in a long, long time though. At least five months, and Ranger knew who that achievement really belonged to.
