Her Cowboy Boss

by Patricia Johns

  Sitting next to her in church was proof that bringing her to his personal escape wasn’t a good idea. Avery was the source of a lot of his knotted emotions, and having her with him wasn’t going to help matters...except that he knew her time here was short, and he wanted to make the most of it. It was selfish, and he knew it. He should be letting her discuss her situation with Mr. Harmon...

  “So do you want to come for the ride?” Hank asked. “I know you wanted to talk to Mr. Harmon.”

  “I’m not procrastinating,” she said quietly. “I’m just...” She sighed. “I’m hoping a good moment will present itself. If not, I’ll have to force it. If you think you need to tell him...”

  “No.” Hank sighed. “That’s between you and the boss. I’m not a part of it. I just want to make sure you do tell him.”

  “It’s why I came. But he’s just been to his wife’s grave, and...”

  The timing was bad. Hank could see that, too.

  “If you don’t want me to come—”

  “No, it’s not that—” And it wasn’t. He wanted her to come along too badly—that was the problem. This was dangerous territory. “Sure. Let’s ride. Give the family some time today.”

  This would be a goodbye—something to remember on long, lonely nights checking on herds. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like this for a woman. He wasn’t deluding himself into thinking that this was anything more than a friendship fraught with inappropriate attraction, but he’d have time enough to purge her from his system once she was gone.

  They got into the truck and Hank pulled out onto the dirt road that headed back toward the highway.

  “A love like that is inspiring,” Avery said, rolling down her window to let the air blow her hair away from her face.

  Inspiring...in a way. It was also daunting, and frustratingly out of reach.

  “Their marriage is part of the reason I don’t want to get married again,” Hank confessed.

  “Why?” She shot him an odd look. “I thought you said they were happy.”

  “They were,” he agreed. “Really happy. They were the kind of couple everyone wanted to be like. They thoroughly enjoyed each other. They laughed at each other’s jokes, finished each other’s sentences. Even the things that annoyed them about each other turned into endearing qualities. I remember him telling me that she could never buy him a gift that he’d like. A lot of guys would find that irritating, opening gifts year after year that never hit the mark, but not him. He thought it was kind of sweet because she’d try so hard to find just the right thing. The fact that she failed at it made him all the more protective of her feelings.”

  “He loved her,” Avery said.

  “They had a great life,” he agreed. “But unattainable to everyday Joes like me.”

  “How do you know?” she countered.

  “I was raised a good country boy,” Hank said. “You’re supposed to be able to reap what you sow. If you put in carrot seeds, you get carrots. If you put in flower seeds, you get flowers. Well, I put in a lot of hard work, dedication. I didn’t flirt with other women, and I did everything I could think of to make my wife happy. When you put a woman first in your life, you’re supposed to see that reflected in the relationship. But it didn’t work like that. She still wasn’t happy. I put down seeds and nothing came up.”

  He could remember taking her out for dinner near the end, and they’d just sat there in the restaurant and stared at each other. They had nothing to say. They made small talk, and he couldn’t wait to pay the bill and get out of there. What was so wrong with them that they couldn’t even shoot the breeze? Whatever Mr. Harmon had with his wife—that sparkle they shared—had eluded him and Vickie from the start.

  “She wasn’t the right one for you,” Avery said.

  “That’s for sure,” he said. “But I was raised by people who said that romance and butterflies only took a couple so far, and after that it came down to hard work. I thought if I only worked hard enough, it would succeed.”

  When he’d confided in his dad how things were going with Vickie, he’d told him that the honeymoon was over. It was time to roll up his sleeves.

  “That sounds wise to me,” she replied.

  “My dad even told me that when he married Mom, it wasn’t because he thought she was the prettiest girl or because she made him feel like a bull in the spring. He married her for other reasons.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “She was practical, good with money, loyal and grew the heartiest garden he’d ever seen.”

  And Hank’s mother did grow a fantastic garden. Her cucumbers outproduced anyone else’s, and her gourds were the size of watermelons.

  “That’s it?” Avery asked with a low laugh. “Not quite what a woman wants to hear...”

  “Well, they also were the only two single people in the church they attended, and they both wanted to get married and start a family. Her father said that if my dad married my mom, he’d give them a down payment for his garage in town. So that factored in, too.”

  His parents’ story was far from romantic, and it wasn’t one that they tended to tell too often. They’d been hardworking people who got married, had five children and just kept on working hard.

  “Are they happy?” Avery asked dubiously. “Is your mom okay with that?”

  “Yes. That’s the thing.” Hank slowed for a turn. “With that kind of start, you’d think they’d have been divorced in five years, but they stuck with it. They never were the lovey-dovey kind of couple in public, but they had each other’s backs. No matter what. And over the years, they grew to truly love and respect each other.”

  “So...it kind of worked out,” Avery concluded.

  “You could say so,” Hank agreed. “They’re now in Florida together where my father is collecting stamps and my mother is trying to figure out how to bake bread in their Airstream. So if my parents, with a marriage so practical it was almost painful, could stay together quite contentedly because they put in the hard work, then why couldn’t I make my marriage with Vickie go the distance?”

  Hank slowed to turn again, this time down the road that lead to Harmon Ranch. He knew the route like the back of his hand, and his truck almost drove it by itself. Some grazing cattle looked up, slowly chewing, tufts of grass sticking out the sides of their mouths.

  “Do you miss Vickie?” Avery asked after a few beats of silence.

  It wasn’t that he was still heartbroken over Vickie—he was gun-shy. She’d shown him his shortcomings and his weaknesses.

  “No...” Hank shook his head, and he slowed to drive around a pothole in the gravel road, then sped up as he passed it. “It’s been five years, and I honestly don’t miss her, exactly, but I did wonder for a long time where I went wrong... My parents’ marriage advice didn’t do the trick—hard work didn’t make up the difference like it had for them. And they certainly hadn’t started out with any great spark of magic.”

  “So what did Carla and Louis have?” Avery twisted in her seat to look at him, and he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “That’s the question. I don’t even know. They had physical attraction, some chemistry...but you give it enough years and that will wane, too.” He shrugged. “I do think they had something special, but how do you quantify that? How do you know if you’ve found it?”

  “So you don’t like the risk,” she concluded.

  “Bingo.” He shot her a grin. “I’ve been divorced once, and I don’t think I could survive it a second time. There is no formula that makes for a happy marriage that I can see.”

  “You need a formula?”

  “Yup.”

  And maybe he did at this point. He’d tried trusting good intentions, he’d even married the mother of his child. When a man did everything right and his marriage stil
l failed, he knew better than to try again. Maybe he was the one who was missing something—some vital ingredient that made a woman want to stick around.

  Avery laughed softly. “You’re an interesting man, Hank.”

  “That’s why I tend to keep my mouth shut and just ride,” Hank said. “No explanations needed that way.”

  Except that he had wanted to explain...he wanted Avery to understand, and he wasn’t even sure why. He’d made his peace with being single a few years ago, but there was a small part of him that still longed for something more. He just didn’t trust that he’d get it.

  Times were different now. People didn’t get married for practical purposes—they wanted the real thing, and if they missed the mark, they tried again. In an eventual parting of the ways, someone got trampled and left behind.

  “Is it okay to be content?” Hank asked. “Is it okay to be with someone and think, This isn’t so bad?”

  “That’s not what I want,” Avery replied. “I want love and passion, romance that grows over time. I want the real thing.”

  “Yeah, I get it.” He took the last turn onto the ranch property. He didn’t blame her, but he didn’t want that, either. Not again. “Sometimes, contentedness is as good as it gets.”

  It had been for his parents, and it was the same for him and Vickie. It was better to just stay single and not inflict himself for the long-term onto anyone else. He pulled up to a stop in front of the bunkhouse.

  “So you coming to ride?” he asked.

  She regarded him for a moment, and he wondered what she thought of him.

  “Alright,” she said at last. “Just let me get changed.”

  He couldn’t help the smile that came to his lips. It would never work—they were both pretty clear on that—but he wanted some time with her, anyway.

  Chapter Eleven

  Avery sat astride the chestnut mare and brushed her hands down her jean-clad thighs. They’d packed a quick lunch from the kitchen, then went to the barn to saddle up. Her mount, Pickles, stood in the center of the paddock. From her vantage point, she could see down some rolling hills with grazing cattle. Blocks of field and pasture lay side by side, patched together by lines of barbed wire fence. The blue sky sparkled with sunlight, faint wisps of cloud floating high overhead, and on the breeze she could hear the twitter of birdsong and the far-off growl of a tractor’s engine.

  “Coming?” Hank called. He was at the paddock gate, mounted on a dappled stallion that pranced impatiently.

  “Let’s go, Pickles,” Avery said, and gave the horse a little kick in the sides. Pickles took one step forward, then stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Hank chuckled.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “Pickles, let go!”

  “Let her know who’s boss,” Hank said.

  “How, exactly?” she asked incredulously. “She isn’t buying it!”

  Hank made a clicking sound with his mouth and Pickles trotted obediently toward him. Obviously Hank was boss around here, and Avery was perfectly fine with that. As long as Pickles listened to someone.

  Her horse stopped at Hank’s side and he shot her a grin. “You going to be okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she replied. “It’s just nice to be out of the kitchen.”

  Hank led the way, swinging the gate closed after them. They went down a gravel road, horse hooves clopping at a soothing pace.

  “So you don’t like cooking at all?” Hank asked, glancing over at her.

  “I cook for necessity,” she replied. Here at Harmon ranch, she was cooking for a chance to tell her father who she was...if her mother hadn’t been wrong. “Why—do you like cooking?”

  “Yeah. Not for thirty-five men, mind you.” He adjusted his hat on his head. “I make a particularly good cream soup, though.”

  Avery couldn’t help the smile the came to her mouth. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly.” He arched an eyebrow.

  “How come you never told me this before?”

  “I thought I’d made it clear that I knew my way around a kitchen.”

  And perhaps he had, but still...

  He grinned. “I also make a chocolate cheesecake that would curl your toes.”

  She smiled at that mental image and she had no doubt he was telling the truth.

  “Any chance you’d cook for me?” she asked.

  “If there’s time.”

  His words knocked the flirtatious sizzle from the air. He was right—she wasn’t sticking around. This was a very temporary situation, and the flower shop was waiting for her back in Salina, filled with the memories of her mother and her childhood. She looked forward to stocking it with flowers again, to putting out the clapboard with her mother’s carefully painted welcome sign. Her mother had worked too hard to build that business for Avery to sell it to a stranger... It needed to stay in the family. The shop was all she had left of her mom...and yet she’d been forgetting that lately when she and Hank were together. She felt a flood of guilt.

  “So what did you think of Chris?” Hank asked.

  “The fact that he has red hair, you mean,” she said. He didn’t answer, and she sighed. “I’d hate to be wrong.”

  Hank led the way north and they cut into a field of lush grass. He kicked his gelding’s sides and sped up into a trot. Pickles followed without any prompting from Avery and she gasped, leaning forward to regain her balance. The bouncing was slightly more intimidating, but when she let her hips move with the rhythm of her horse, she found her comfort again.

  “Not bad,” Hank said, shooting her a grin.

  “I really can’t put this off any longer. Hank, could you set up a meeting between me and Louis tomorrow? I’m going to talk to him, whether the moment seems right or not.”

  “Yeah, I could do that,” he said. “You ready?”

  “I’ll have to be,” she replied. “If I’m opening Mom’s store next Monday, I have a lot of work to get done before that. I’ll need to head back.”

  Hank’s expression softened. “You sure you want to go?”

  “Of course.” It was the plan all along, wasn’t it? Whatever this was they were enjoying here in Hope, it couldn’t last. “I’m sorry that I’m not a long-term solution for a cook, but you’ll all be happier with someone else in the kitchen, I’m sure.”

  “Let’s just enjoy today,” he said. “And I’ll set something up with Louis for tomorrow morning.”

  “What will you do for a cook?” she asked.

  “Someone will apply. I’ve been asking around.”

  That stung just a little, although it shouldn’t. She’d told him she wouldn’t be here long, but for some reason she didn’t like to think about being so easily replaced.

  “I’m sorry, you know,” she said.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “For coming under false pretenses and all that. I’ve set you back on finding someone permanent.”

  “Mr. Harmon will understand, you can trust me on that.” But his eyes were sad. “Ready to gallop?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer; he bent over his horse and urged him forward into a full gallop. Avery watched him sprint ahead for a moment before Pickles followed suit, and Avery’s breath caught in her throat as she was launched forward. She hunched low over Pickles’s back—the only way to actually stay in the saddle—and forced herself to breathe.

  At first, all she could feel was panic, but then she realized that the bumping had stopped when Pickles reached her stride, and she was filled with elation. She’d never ridden a galloping horse before, and she knew she’d have to do this again.

  Hank reined in ahead of her, and Pickles slowed, too. He looked back at her with a grin.

  “That was amazing!” She laughed. “And a first.”

 
“That’s right—” he grimaced “—sorry, I’d forgotten... I shouldn’t have—”

  “The only way to learn,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

  “You hungry yet?” he asked.

  “My stomach is back there.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder.

  She earned a laugh for that one, and he met her gaze with an easy smile. Out here it felt different—freer, farther away from all the pressures. And the way Hank caught her eye...it sent her mind into the wrong direction. She hoped her shortness of breath would be attributed to the ride.

  “See those trees?” Hank pointed ahead to a copse. “We can eat there in the shade.”

  The trees were surrounded by a wave of pink wildflowers, and their scent surfed the breeze toward them. They rode over to the shade and Hank dismounted. Avery looked down at the ground, and then considered her options.

  “Need a hand?” He came up beside Pickles and took the reins.

  Avery took her foot out of the stirrup, but her legs felt like jelly. Her muscles weren’t used to this. But she got her leg over and she felt Hank’s strong grip on her waist as she came down. Her feet hit the ground and she heaved a sigh of relief. When she turned, Hank stepped back a respectful distance, but his gaze warmed, and he smiled.

  “We’ll let them graze,” Hank said.

  While Hank saw to the horses, Avery admired a clump of wildflowers. They were lovely and fragile—the kind of blossom that wouldn’t survive a truck ride to a flower shop. The most beautiful flowers were like that—too fragile to be enjoyed anywhere else but their natural habitat. Like this—whatever it was she was doing with Hank. It required this land, this air, this ranch... She was going home soon, and he would stay here.

  Her stomach rumbled as they sauntered over to the shade. They sank down into the grass, and Hank opened the lunch bag. There were two sandwiches, some muffins, some apple slices and a few carrots.

  “The carrots are for the horses,” he said, and as if on cue, the horses came over to. “They know I’m good for it.”