How the Cowboy Was Won

by Lori Wilde

  “It . . . I . . .” Words escaped her. Her lips were empty. She had nothing to shoot with. How could she begin to put into words the magnitude of what had happened to her?

  “It’s Ranger, isn’t it?” Kaia guessed.

  Ember nodded, this time managing not to cry, but Kaia saw the shine in her eyes and handed her a tissue.

  “Well, that’s the best news ever. You already love him.”

  “This is . . . different.”

  Kaia took both of Ember’s hands into hers, gazed into her eyes. “Yes, yes, it is. What you are feeling is so much more than you possibly know right now.”

  Those damn tears were at her again. She pressed the tissue to her eyes, held her breath, willed herself not to cry.

  “Aww, see? You are moved. Not much moves you to tears, but having your best friend also be your soul mate? Sweetie, everyone wants that. You are one of the rare few who’ve found it.”

  “I don’t even believe in that soul mate stuff,” Ember protested.

  Kaia’s eyes were kind and nonjudgmental. “I didn’t either in the beginning, but now I know that it is so. This new love you feel for Ranger is on a whole other plane. You’ll see, you’ll see.”

  “How can I know he feels the same?”

  “Trust the humming. I know it sounds silly, and I know you hate letting go of control.” Kaia laughed. “I know it’s hard turning the reins over to the”—Kaia cupped her hands over her ears, smiled wider, and rolled her eyes heavenward—“hum. But it is so worth it.”

  “Listen to us. We’re talking like this is—”

  “Real?”

  Ember nodded.

  “It is. Love is real.”

  “But this humming—”

  “Don’t get caught up in the sound,” Kaia said. “Although I do know how difficult it is to ignore the hum when it vibrates throughout your entire body. The energy . . . well, I don’t have to explain it to you. You know.”

  “What do you mean? The sound is how I know. Know what?”

  “No.” Kaia rested a hand on Ember’s knee and peered up into her eyes. “The sound just confirms what you already know deep in your heart. Ranger is meant for you and you for him.”

  “He didn’t act interested. He just stood there, poker-faced, as if he felt nothing.”

  “Ranger is a scientist. If you think this humming thing is tough for you, imagine how he’s trying to explain it to himself.”

  “He heard the humming too? Does Ridge hear it?”

  “As far as I know, only we Alzate women are lucky enough to hear the humming. But our men? They feel it. They know, even when they’re afraid to know.”

  “But Ranger is interested in Dawn,” Ember said glumly.

  “His Kiwi research partner?”

  “Yes. You should see the two of them together. They are like peas in a pod.”

  Kaia scoffed. “She’s got nothing on you.”

  “Have you seen her? She’s a golden goddess with legs that won’t quit.”

  “And you’re a redheaded sprite with enough fire to ignite the whole Trans-Pecos.”

  “Goddess trumps sprite.”

  “Thirty plus years of friendship trumps the hell out of research partner.”

  Ember wrung her hands, frustrated with this new indecisive part of herself. “What should I do?”

  “Tell Ranger about the humming.” Kaia shrugged as if that was the easiest thing in the world.

  “What if he . . . what if he just wants to be friends?”

  “What if frogs had wings? They wouldn’t bump their butts when they hop. What ifs come from fear, and you know what Granny Blue says about fear.”

  “I’m scared, Ki.” Ember could barely hear her own whisper. Ingrid whimpered in her sleep, a low, soft baby sound. “I know you are used to me being the brave, bold one, but it’s all an act. Deep down, I’m scared as everyone else.”

  “What are you so afraid of?”

  “That this is going to change everything. I don’t know that I’m ready to change.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Kaia matched her whisper and took Ember’s hands in hers. Her palms were cool and dry. “Close your eyes and think about all the memories you’ve shared with Ranger.”

  The dominant, go-getter part of Ember’s personality wanted to resist. This was foreign and scary and she didn’t like being vulnerable. She snorted and shifted and muttered, “Fuck this,” but then she did as her sister asked. She closed her eyes and squeezed Kaia’s hand . . .

  Called up a memory of her and Ranger at four years old, making mud pies from sand and water in the backyard of the foreman’s house where she’d grown up. That image morphed into the two of them riding bikes down the country lane the year after he’d had heart surgery; her in a pink gingham blouse and cutoff blue jeans; Ranger in blue-and-red swim trunks, a gap in his smile where he was missing a front tooth, the scar at his chest fresh and dark pink. He challenged her to a race, and his face had bloomed into a proud smile when she’d bested him. She saw him propped up in bed on a pillow, his chest swathed in bandages, his face deathly pale in the recovery room after surgery. They played Parcheesi, and he called her on it when she let him win. She smelled the watermelon they’d eaten on the picnic table numerous times every summer and heard bottle rockets exploding on the Fourth of July, the smell of sulfur and gunpowder on their hands from lighting a match to the fireworks. She saw him at his stepmother Lucy’s funeral in a blue suit that was too small for him, the orange clip-on tie hanging askew. She heard “Wherever You Will Go” one of the biggest songs on the radio their junior year in high school and danced with him at the prom and went swimming with him at midnight at Balmorhea State Park instead of going with their classmates to an after-prom party. They’d held hands as they jumped feet-first into the water. They were sixteen in his first vehicle, a beat-up blue Ford ranch truck with two hundred thousand miles on the broken odometer. They were five and at her brother Archer’s sixth birthday party, blindfolded and playing pin the tail on the donkey. They were thirty at Ember’s wedding to Trey, Ranger as her man of honor, looking like a movie star in an ebony tuxedo, and his sad, I’m-losing-you smile.

  The images flittered through her head, moving like an elongated video of their lives, and now she was sitting with her baby sister by the cool pool in the desert where they’d grown up, talking about a brain hum that could tell you who you were destined to love.

  And in that moment Ember knew exactly what she had to do. She leaped up from her chair, mumbled, “I gotta go,” and went to find Ranger.

  Ember sped to the earthship house on the north side of the ranch as fast as she could drive without taking out a cow or some other random critter, her heart pounding like a Native American drum calling up rain.

  Fear was chalk in her mouth, but joy was a counterbalance, and she swung back and forth on the seesaw of doubt and certainty.

  Her pulse tapped out panicked beats, jumping around like a sugar monkey. What a risk! But what rewards! Treasures untold.

  If he reciprocated.

  OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.

  She pulled up in front of his endearingly oddball house. When he’d told her he was going to build a solar sustainable house, she thought him nuts. The design looked like a lump-monster pushing up from the earth, humped and skulking, lying in wait to devour unsuspecting visitors. As a real estate agent, she warned him against limiting his options for potential buyers to the few with his esthetics and ecological ideology.

  He reminded her that he couldn’t sell the house without his family’s permission anyway, and the earthship house really pissed off his father, and there was something satisfying about that. During the building of the earthship, Ember had tried her best to be encouraging because Ranger was her friend. Biting her tongue over the concrete floor and unattractive solar panels and walls made of ram-packed earth encased in recycled steel-belted radial rubber. But then as she’d watched the house change, spent days and weeks helping him design,
build, and decorate; working side by side to create a unique and earth-nurturing structure, something unexpected occurred.

  She began to like the place. It charmed her like a hobbit house, small and colorful. Ranger had taken trash and turned it into treasure. The house embraced the sun and the wind. And wasn’t that just like Ranger and her? She, the hot fire. He, the intelligent stir of air. They installed a solar cook box and a wind-powered generator. And with the long, glass windows that lined the front of the house, an indoor garden could be grown year-round. It was a slow lure, this labor of love, and by the time the house was finished, it no longer looked like a lump-monster to her, but the entrance into an enchanted world.

  This evening, the house was dark and silent. Ranger’s truck was not in the driveway.

  He wasn’t home.

  Of course not. The realization was a whack to her head. He was still at Chantilly’s.

  She pulled out her cell phone to text him, but she had no idea what to say. Stuffed the phone back into her purse. Did she go find him at Chantilly’s, surrounded by their gang? Or wait until later?

  No, she couldn’t wait. She’d drive herself crazy if she waited. She had to see him tonight. Impulsive yes, but Ranger was the one person who embraced her spontaneity. He wouldn’t mind. She fingered her lips, put the Infinity in gear, and drove the sixteen miles back to Cupid. It was seven-thirty when she rolled up to the bar and grill. Still plenty of daylight left.

  But Ranger’s truck was not there.

  If he’d been headed home, she would have passed him on the road, and she had not. Where was he? She wanted to jump out of the car and pace like first-time homebuyers waiting to hear if their offer had been accepted, desperate for any scrap of news.

  Zeke came strolling out of Chantilly’s, spied her sitting in her car, engine running, and wandered over. She rolled down the window.

  “You looking for Ranger?” he asked.

  “Why would you think that?”

  Zeke’s shrug was barely a hitch upward. “Why else would you be sitting out here with your engine running?”

  “I could be waiting for anyone.”

  “Are you?”

  Ember sighed. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He and Dawn headed up to the observatory over an hour ago. She wanted to show him her new office.” The way Zeke said “office” made it sound like that was not what Dawn intended on showing Ranger.

  “Thanks,” she said, put up her window, and took off, leaving Zeke standing in the parking lot shaking his head in the orange glow of encroaching twilight.

  Did she look as dazed and lost as she felt?

  It was almost dark by the time she got up the mountain to the McDonald Observatory. A stargazing party was in progress, and vehicles crammed the parking lot. Sure enough, Ranger’s truck was in the employee lot, parked next to Dawn’s lease car.

  She’d been to the observatory hundreds of times with Ranger, and most of the employees knew her. She skirted the tourists in line for the star party and went straight to the building where the faculty offices were located.

  One of the security guards, Heath Lumley—who, as it just so happened, she’d gotten a great deal on a house in Fort Davis for him and his wife the previous month—let her in without a visitor’s badge. They chatted a few minutes about how much he and his wife loved their new property.

  “It sure was nice of you, helping us get a second lien instead of having to buy private mortgage insurance. We know you didn’t have to go out of your way like you did,” Heath said. “The wife and me, we were new to house buying. Babes in the woods, but you didn’t let us get taken advantage of.”

  Well, of course not. She treated her clients as if they were family members, but right now, it was all she could do not to push Heath aside and go running down the hallway yelling out Ranger’s name.

  “Michele has started an herb garden in that little atrium in the center of the house and . . .” Heath went on and on, but truthfully, Ember stopped hearing him. It took all her restraint not to tap her foot and yell, Out of my way, dude. I have undying love to profess.

  Ember tilted her head, met Heath’s eyes, and tried to look interested. He was a nice man, earnest and genuine. He deserved her full attention, but she just didn’t have it to give right now. Slow your roll, child, she heard her mother’s voice in her head. Patience is a virtue.

  Yeah, yeah, whatever.

  “The basil is growing wild, but we must be doing something wrong with the cilantro.” Heath tapped his chest with an index finger. “It’s just not thriving.”

  Uh-huh, uh-huh.

  Impatience. Another of her qualities that Trey disapproved of even though he was ten times more impatient than she. Growing snappy and temperamental at the slightest obstacle.

  She knew better than to allow her impulsiveness to get the better of her, but she just couldn’t help it. She had to talk to Ranger now. She couldn’t wait one second longer. Not knowing if he felt the same way was uncomfortable. Like wearing too-tight clothes and getting soaked in the rain.

  It felt as if something . . . no wait, as if everything . . . needed to be peeled off and thrown away.

  “Excuse me, Heath, I would love to hear more about Michele’s garden, but I need to speak to Ranger about something important.”

  “Sure, sure.” Heath’s warm, forgiving smile made her feel like an asshole for cutting him off. “He’s in the lab at the end of the hall.”

  “Thank you, thank you.” Ember waved a grateful hand and exhaled forcefully.

  Heath went outside, off on his rounds, happily whistling “Our House.”

  Ember forced herself not to run. She was only yards away from Ranger now and the fieriest declaration of her life. I love you, my best friend.

  But how best to say it? Blurting, while definitely her style, seemed too sudden. How did one work around to such a monumental statement?

  I love you!

  Each step brought a fresh rush of blood to her head until her temple was pounding, pounding, pounding with pressure, exquisite in a painful way. The pulsing told her she was alive and the world was filled with exciting potential.

  The door to the laboratory was partially glass, and the rest shiny chrome. She went up on the balls of her feet to peek inside the windowed door, hesitant to simply rush in if he was in the middle of something important.

  She had, in all honesty, completely forgotten about Dawn.

  Until she saw Ranger and Dawn huddled together over an electron microscope, their heads almost touching. Probably studying a meteorite, she guessed. Ember had done that with him, in this very room, dozens of times.

  As she watched, Ranger slipped his arm around Dawn’s waist and guided her down onto a tall stool. Dawn tilted her face up to him. Ranger took off her safety glasses, set them on the counter and then settled his hands on the other woman’s shoulders. Pushed his own safety glasses up on his head.

  And then he stared deeply into Dawn’s eyes.

  Ember stopped breathing.

  Ranger lowered his head, closing in on Dawn’s face. The look in his eyes was faraway, unfocused. He cupped his palm at Dawn’s cheek, angled her head farther back.

  Dear Lord, no! Her beloved was about to kiss someone else!

  Ember could not watch.

  Sickened, her stomach bulleted into her throat, and she let out a little squeak, stumbled backward. Fell over her feet.

  Hit the floor.

  Immediately, she hopped up and sprinted for the exit as fast as she could run with a broken heart.

  Chapter 17

  “I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.”

  —Jane Austen, Emma

  “What was that?” Dawn asked as Ranger plucked a loose eyelash from her eye.

  “I don’t know.” He frowned and moved to peer out the door’s glass window. Saw a flash of red hair just as the exterior door at the end of the corridor slammed c
losed. Smelled cinnamon-and-anise perfume lingering in the air.

  Uh-oh.

  He put two and two together. Ember had been here, had peeked through the window, and had seen him bent over Dawn intent on retrieving the lash from her eye. Ember must have mistaken the gesture for intimacy. He knew it as surely as he knew his name was Ranger Thomas Lockhart.

  Dammit.

  It felt as if he was in a starship, far above earth, standing unsuspectingly on a trapdoor that had just unhinged and dropped him weightlessly into the abyss of deep space.

  “I think it was Ember,” he said.

  Dawn straightened on the stool. “Oh.”

  Should he go after Ember, track her down, explain what had been going on with Dawn? Should he come clean about everything and tell Ember exactly how much the kiss they’d shared on set today had rocked his world?

  Why was it so damn hard for him to express his feelings? Why had he shut down after the shoot? Withdrawn instead of taking Ember aside and confessing what that kiss had done to him? Why was he feeling crowded and quite honestly terrified of the thing he wanted most?

  Romantic love with his best friend.

  Maybe it was because his mother had taken off on him and his father hadn’t been very loving. Maybe it was because emotions scared the shit out of him. Or maybe it was just because he was a guy, and the feelings were so big he didn’t fully understand them.

  How could he express what he didn’t understand?

  What should he do? How should he play this? Should he go after her and risk making things worse? Or leave her be and act like he hadn’t known she’d been there?

  “Leave her be,” Dawn said, eerily reading his thoughts. “You wanted to make her jealous. Believe me, she’s jealous now or she has zero romantic feelings for you.”

  “Yes, but now it seems cruel. Before it was just a tease. This feels . . . wrong.” He paused. He knew Ember so well. She was proud. She would never let on how badly she was hurting, but if she’d seen him leaning over Dawn, it would have been so easy to misinterpret what had been going on. Was Ember having feelings for him? His heart leapt, full of hope.