The thought of letting anyone in sent her heart into a panicked flutter. She’d sunk into a deep despair when she’d discovered Derek’s deceitful lies, but that had been over five years ago.
Maybe it was time for her to move on. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried, though. She’d dated plenty of guys. She’d just never been able to open up enough to trust any of them. She always pushed them away before things got serious.
In any event, it would be great to have some company this week in the house, and if Cash were hot and heavy with some new girl, then she’d just step aside and let them have their privacy.
She put the last of the T-shirts away and headed to the kitchen. She needed to get to work at Happy Trails where she was a trail guide and horse riding instructor. As usual, her mom had stocked the fridge with the basics, and she pulled out some bread and tuna, quickly making a sandwich.
She didn’t want to be late for work. She loved her job even though her parents had frowned on it, not seeing the sense of mucking stalls when she had a business degree. But Tessa loved animals—especially horses—and everything that went into them. Even mucking stalls. Someday she would have her own business, but for now she was getting good experience while she saved up money.
“You heading off to work?” The words startled Tessa. The knife slipped out of her hand and clattered on the floor.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” It was a mystery to her how he even managed to do that with his six foot six frame and bulky wide muscular body. You’d think you could hear him coming a mile away, but she should have remembered that he was notorious for appearing without a sound.
He leaned against the door frame, an easy grin spreading on his face. He loved sneaking up on people. “Sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry at all.” But she was smiling, and they laughed together as they always had as kids.
She stuffed the sandwich in a Ziploc bag. “Yeah, I gotta be to work in fifteen minutes. What’s the weather going to be?”
Cash glanced out the window. He’d always been able to predict the weather better than any weatherman she knew. Tessa had gotten used to asking him and taking what he said as gospel. It came in handy to know when rain was rolling in, especially when you were leading a family of six around on horseback.
“Going to be clear as a bell for a few days. Hot and humid.”
Hot and humid was good for trail riding as far as Tessa was concerned. She loved the way the musky barn smell hung in the still air when it was hot and humid. And now that it was late August, there would be precious few hot and humid days left.
“Perfect. What are you doing today?”
Cash pushed off from the doorframe and headed to the front door with Tessa following.
“I’m going over to the ranch. Gotta mend a few fences and make sure the animals are okay.”
They were standing at the front door now looking out through the screen, his eyes drifting over to her small house at the edge of the property. “You want me to check on the hardwood floors and make sure everything’s okay at your place?”
Tessa followed his gaze. “That’d be great. Thanks.” She was lucky to have a friend that looked out for her and in Sweetrock, she had quite a few. They all looked out for each other here.
She felt reluctant to leave. Normally, she raced to work. She loved it there, but for some reason she wanted this moment standing here in the doorway with Cash to last.
What was up with that?
It was probably just the feeling of being in her parents’ home where she’d been happiest. Where she’d had a family surrounding her.
“I better get going. Are you going to the Bull tonight?” Tessa referenced The Bull Sheep Bar where they’d been hanging out since they were old enough to drink. Most nights Tessa could walk in and find someone she knew there, but on a few scheduled nights, their regular group of friends always met for drinks and dancing.
Cash grabbed his cowboy hat up from the back of the couch, picking it up by the top and plopping it onto his head. “You know it.”
“Great.” She gave him a playful punch on the arm, which was more like punching a brick wall than soft flesh and then headed out the door at a trot. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she half turned and started walking backward for a few steps. “I’ll see you there tonight, then.”
Then she turned and trotted to her car. Her heart was light with happiness. She was heading to a job she loved and would end the day over drinks with friends.
What could be better than that? But nestled inside that feeling of happiness was a flicker of a shadow. A strange sense of foreboding. And for a second she had the feeling that something more than the hardwood floors in her little house was about to change.
3
Cash rubbed his arm as he watched Tessa jump into her pickup truck and drive off, a cloud of dust hovering above the driveway in her wake. He could get used to watching her drive off in the morning.
What in the world was he thinking?
Better not go down that road. He didn’t want to get too used to the thought of seeing her drive off in the morning. This was a temporary situation.
At least they wouldn’t be coming back home tonight and sitting down to a dinner like an old married couple. Did he want that? He’d never wanted to settle down before. In fact, he’d avoided it. But lately, his heart had been telling him otherwise. Maybe that’s what happened when you got old...but heck, he was only twenty-eight.
Grandpa would laugh at Cash thinking he was too young to settle down. He’d married his childhood sweetheart straight out of high school. Then again, that hadn’t worked out so good for him. Grandma had gotten bored with the same guy she’d known since she’d been a kid and found greener pastures with a rodeo rider.
So much for childhood sweethearts and true love.
He wasn’t about to make the same mistake Grandpa had made. Maybe he should take Nick’s advice and spend more time scoping out the women at the Bull. Not women he’d grown up with, new ones. He never had trouble getting women interested in what he had to offer. The problem was that lately he wasn’t interested in them.
His gaze drifted over the field toward his own ranch. He had work to do, and there was no sense in standing here thinking. Woolgathering didn’t get you anywhere, as his grandfather would have surely reminded him.
He locked up the house and checked on the floor job at Tessa’s before driving his Jeep the short distance to his family ranch. A few trucks were in the driveway and the front door was open, revealing cloth-covered furniture and workmen in masks. He poked his head in, looking around enough to satisfy himself that they were preparing the house for the floor refinishing and not stealing the family silver then headed to the barn.
The welcome whinny of horses greeted him and he stood in the doorway for a second, inhaling the fresh smell of hay and manure. He loved that smell.
He went to the gray Appaloosa, Stardust, and ran his hand down her nose. Soft and warm. The appreciative look in her brown eyes touched his heart.
“Hey, girl. Now if only I could find a woman that appreciated my touch like you do.”
The horse nodded and stretched her head further out of the stall for more attention.
He moved to the next horse, Astor, a beautiful sorrel with a white blaze and lavished the same attention on him. Down the row he went, making sure to greet all five horses as he did each and every day. Just like his grandfather before him, horses were just as important to Cash as people were. And once you had good ones in your stable, you treated them like gold.
He was happy to see the horses and barn were safe. Not that he’d expected any trouble. Sweetrock was a small town with little crime to speak of. For the most part, people respected each other’s property, but he didn’t like being so far away even though he was staying less than a mile down the road.
After he fed and watered the animals, he saddled up Hangover, a black gelding, and rode out to the western edge of the property. The f
ences out here were old and in need of mending. He wanted to take a look so he could write up an estimate of what he would need for supplies to fix them.
After checking a few more spots, he returned to check on the chickens in the henhouse behind the barn. They’d had chickens since he was a little boy and, while his father thought they were a nuisance, his mother insisted on keeping them and not just for the eggs. She loved them as pets. The darn things got treated better than some people he knew, and they wouldn’t dream of eating one. Nope, every Campbell chicken got to live a charmed life with the best accommodations and care.
Right now, a couple of them were getting ready to lay fertile eggs, and his mother had put them in a special area away from the other hens. He’d promised he’d keep an eye on them. His mom wanted to send the eggs to school so the kids could watch them hatch. The family had been doing that since Cash was a kid himself. For the most part, the hens laid eggs in the spring, but Henrietta usually produced some in the fall, too. Fall was actually an ideal time for hatching eggs since it would be springtime with warmer weather once the baby chicks were ready to go outside.
Ducking into the small wooden structure, he squatted down to address a brown hen who looked at him with beady black eyes.
“Hey, Henrietta. You got any eggs today?”
“Squawk!”
“Well, darned if you do.”
Cash made sure everything was okay and then left her alone, his lips curling up as he made his way out of the stuffy, smelly structure. Soon those eggs would hatch into fuzzy yellow chicks. But just before that he’d fix up a special brooder box with a heat light and bedding and take them to the elementary school so the kids could see them hatch. He loved the looks of excitement on the children’s faces. For some, it was the only taste of farm life they got.
Cash took a deep breath of clean, fresh air. He was one of the lucky ones. As a kid, he’d seen fuzzy chicks, baby horses, goats, and even cows. Living on the ranch was a good life. That’s why he’d come back after college instead of gallivanting around the world like his brothers. He had everything he needed right here in Sweetrock.
Well, almost everything.
Tessa’s spirits were high when she pulled into the parking lot at Happy Trails. As Cash had predicted, the blue sky was unmarred by clouds and the air was already growing heavy with humidity.
She loved this time of the morning before all the customers started coming when it was still and quiet with only the songs of the birds in the air.
Inside the barn, Thomas, a striped ginger cat, glared at her from his perch on a hay bale. She reached out to pet his soft fur, and his golden eyes squinted at her in disdain. You’d think the cat would’ve been happy. He got a free roof over his head and three meals a day, but he always seemed to be mad about something. He definitely needed to work on his social skills.
Tessa greeted each horse by name and then got busy organizing the tack, saddles, and brooms. Things became hectic once the day was in full swing, and it was always smart to put things in order in the morning.
She was intent on her task when tiny feet stampeding down the middle of the barn pulled her out of her thoughts.
“Uncle Nick’s getting Nacho back!”
Tessa turned to see seven-year-old Amy whirling by in a flurry of pink and purple.
Her mother, Rena, was not far behind. “Amy, I thought I told you not to run off like that.” Rena rolled her eyes at Tessa, and the two women smiled at each other. They were long-time friends. In fact, Rena was Tessa’s buddy Nick’s younger sister.
Nick and Rena had inherited The Chuckwagon, one of Sweetrock’s mainstay restaurants, when their parents had died within months of each other. Unfortunately, it had fallen on hard times, and Nick had had to sell off most of the family assets just to keep it running. That had left him with no place to keep his beloved horse, Nacho. The caring spirit in Sweetrock wasn’t limited to Tessa’s close circle of friends and Nick was able to make a deal with Happy Trails where they would feed and board the horse in return for being able to use him on the trail rides. Once Nick had the money, he could buy him back. Apparently, Nick now had the money. That warmed Tessa’s heart.
“So things are going good at the restaurant?” Tessa wiped her hands on her jeans as she came out to greet Rena.
She felt a flush of pride knowing that she had played a small part in bringing the restaurant back to its former glory. Well, if you considered persuading her college roommate to come to town ‘a small part’. Sam had made a lot of changes that had turned the restaurant around, but more than that she’d captured Nick’s heart.
Tessa had known from the first minute she’d seen Sam with Nick together that they were meant for each other. It had taken a little finagling to get them to see it themselves, but now the two chefs were happy as peach pie and making the restaurant thrive.
“It’s going great. Booked solid every night.” Rena’s smile held a trace of the same sad envy that Tessa felt.
Tessa knew Rena was happy for her brother and Sam, but sad for herself in the same way that Tessa was sad for herself. They had similar stories. Rena’s ex-husband had been a first class jerk—an abusive monster—and when Rena had finally broken free her heart had been as damaged as Tessa’s. Rena was one of the few people who understood how hard it was for Tessa to consider letting anyone in ever again.
Rena continued. “Everything is running like clockwork and I finally feel like I’m able to contribute to it, too, but most of it’s due to Sam’s changes and the new menu items. Oh, and awesome cooking, of course.”
“Of course. And Sam and Nick?” Tessa raised a brow. She figured things hadn’t changed in the two days since she’d seen them but had to ask anyway.
Rena rolled her eyes. “Nauseatingly in love.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve seen them together. At least they’ve toned down the public displays of affection.”
“No kidding. It was getting embarrassing.”
“I’m deliriously happy for them...”
“Me, too.” Rena’s eyes shone, and she didn’t have to say more. Tessa knew exactly how she felt. “I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get to that level.”
“I know what you mean. It’s not like I haven’t dated other guys since Derek. But it’s just not the same. I just don’t feel anything.”
Rena studied her. “Maybe you’re just not letting yourself feel anything.”
Was she purposely pushing guys away? Now that she thought about it, any time a relationship got serious, she came up with an excuse to break up. Was that her way of protecting her own heart?
“That may be it. But still, I just don’t know if I can trust anyone. When you get hurt like that, it’s hard to trust,” she said.
Rena glanced at Amy, a spark of love lighting her face. “Oh I know, but sometimes trusting is worth it.”
“Good Lord, you two are whining like a bunch of old ladies.” The voice came from the next stall over.
Was someone else in here?
Tessa hadn’t heard anyone else come in, and she exchanged a look with Rena before peeking over the shoulder-high wall to find Beulah Grady on the other side.
Beulah was one of Sweetrock’s oldest residents and the hostess at The Chuckwagon. She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, but there she was dressed in riding gear and fixing to throw a saddle on a small palimino.
“Do you need help with that?” Tessa offered.
“Help? No. Why, I was saddling horses before you were even born.” She heaved the saddle and, to Tessa’s surprise, it landed perfectly on the horses back. She watched as Beulah moved around the horse, cinching and straightening.
Beulah looked over at them with sparkling eyes, her wrinkled face puckering. “Now what are you ladies going on about?”
“Nothing, really. We’re just cautious about getting into a relationship is all,” Rena said.
“Huh. Well, you gals ain’t getting any younger, and that little girl of
yours needs a proper daddy. Not that jackwad that fathered her. What are you waiting for anyway?”
“The right guy?” Tessa ventured.
Beulah waved her hand in the air. “Posh. You can’t find him if you don’t try some on for size. You think I didn’t get my heart broken a million times before I met Duke?”
Tessa didn’t know what to say. Beulah was about a hundred years old, and it was hard to think of the wrinkled old lady with the tight brown bun on the top of her head as having had any type of romantic relationships. But then Tessa remembered the old pictures that decorated almost every inch of wall space at The Chuckwagon. Some of those showed Beulah as a rodeo rider in the 1950s. She had been quite a beauty in her day.
“Yeah, but you’re tough and resilient,” Rena said to Beulah.
“You just think I am because that’s what I want people to think.” Beulah tapped her chest with her index finger. “But my heart is just as fragile as anyone else’s.”
“I don’t know, Beulah. I think you were the one breaking the hearts, not the other way around,” Tessa said.
Beulah laughed and winked. “Well, mostly it was that way. But you girls got to get over it. Finding that special person that you love is what life’s all about. Look at Nick and Sam. Don’t you want that kind of happiness for yourself?”
Tessa thought she did, but not if that happiness came with the heartbreak she’d already experienced.
Beulah swung up into the saddle with an ease that belied her age. Once seated, she peered down at them. “You know, girls, when you fall off a horse, sometimes you just got to get back in the saddle.”
And then she flicked the reins and walked off.
As she watched Beulah leave, Tessa wondered maybe if the old lady had a point. She did want the happiness Nick and Sam had but wasn’t sure she was brave enough to open herself up to it.
But being on the ranch with Cash that morning had changed something inside her. She’d gotten a little glimpse of what it might be like to have someone there. Someone to say good-bye to in the morning. Someone who would be waiting for her at night.
Too Close For Comfort (Sweetrock Cowboy Romance Book 2) Page 2
