Hopeful Cowboy: A Mulbury Boys Novel (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance Book 1)

by Elana Johnson

  How’s Nate’s room coming? she asked.

  All ready for him, Michelle responded. I gave him the two bedrooms on the main floor, with the bathroom between them. Dylan moved to the basement with Josh. They were both glad to do it. Jill, Jess, and your sisters are working on a babysitting schedule for Connor now. We should have it ready by the time you arrive.

  Ginger’s stomach growled despite the greasy breakfast sandwich Nate had bought for her. And dinner? she texted.

  All set. Steak and baked potatoes. I even got Michelle to make her layered salad by telling her she had to bring a peace offering if she wanted to go over all the legalities with Nate tonight.

  Ginger smiled at her phone. Michelle Trent was the ranch’s lawyer, and she didn’t really like it when Ginger participated in the BOP’s program to help convicts get back on their feet and make a good transition from incarceration to real life.

  The poor man. How’s he holding up?

  Ginger didn’t need to look to her left to know. He’s dealing with a lot, she said. The song ended, and Ginger quickly added, Gotta go. Thanks, Em. You’re the best, before tucking her phone back into her pocket.

  By the time the services ended, they’d gone to the cemetery, and they’d eaten a lunch that was cold but supposed to be hot, Ginger was ready to get out of her skirt and on the road. Hope Eternal Ranch sat down the highway about fifteen minutes—maybe ten if there was no traffic and no cattle—and she’d been gone for almost twenty-four hours.

  She stood near the truck while Nate hugged everyone for what felt like the millionth time, coaching herself to be patient. She might be observant and quick to learn, but her impatience could really bring out the worst in her.

  She employed every ounce of kindness she had, and then distracted herself with her phone until Nate finally came over. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Thank you for waiting for me.” He opened the passenger door and helped Connor onto the bench seat.

  Ginger could hardly believe this man had broken the law and then gone to jail for any amount of time. She’d never met an inmate like him before, and she’d housed a couple dozen at Hope Eternal.

  The drive happened in silence, but because summer was almost upon them, it wasn’t dark when they arrived at the ranch. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath a moment later. “Here we are.” She pulled onto the dirt lane that led back off the highway. Around another bend, and the ranch spread before her. “Everything you see now is Hope Eternal land.”

  “Wow,” Nate said, and he genuinely sounded awed. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Well, we are here when the sun is hanging in the west,” she said, easing the truck to a stop. “But it’s a great view right now.” The golden sunlight spread across the land like honey, bathing everything in a yellow shine.

  “Do you raise cattle?”

  “No,” she said. “We have a few cows, of course, but mostly for milk. Dairy cows. We grow crops here that we sell to neighboring farms and ranches, and we have horses, chickens, goats, and pigs. And birds.” Boy, did they have a lot of birds at the ranch.

  Being so close to the water did that, and there were plenty of ponds and rivulets on the ranch too. “We do a variety of programs for people,” she said. “Horseback riding lessons and excursions. Bird-watching. Nature experiences. Hummingbird demonstrations. Monarch butterfly classes.”

  “Oh, so you’re more commercial.”

  “You could say that,” she said. “I run the ranch with five or six other women, and there’s definitely an aspect of ranching here. We have people to take care of the animals behind-the-scenes and all of that. I have cowboys who run my riding programs too, and we do a hog hunt four times a year in March and April. Last one was last weekend.”

  Nate nodded, his eyes scanning the landscape in front of him. She wondered what he was thinking, what he could see here that he hadn’t seen for so long. She didn’t ask.

  “I’d like to respectfully request not to be involved in the hunting,” he said quietly. “And to have something to do outside.”

  Ginger looked at him, another round of surprise moving through her. “You don’t like hunting?”

  “Not particularly.” He met her eyes, and Ginger couldn’t help leaning toward him, as if he possessed a powerful magnet and she had no other choice but to get closer to him. Her heart started screaming a warning, but it took her brain several long seconds to get the message.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, seeing as how our last hunt was last week, and you’re only obligated to be here for five months, I don’t think being involved in the hunt will even come up.” She released her foot on the brake and let the truck inch forward again. “And something outside…I’m sure we can do that.” She glanced down at Connor, who’d fallen asleep at some point during the drive.

  A smile touched her mouth, drying up when Nate said, “He’s cute, but I have no idea how to take care of him.”

  Ginger heard the apprehension in Nate’s voice, and she once again didn’t know what to do with it. “You did great today,” she said. “You held him when he needed you, and you helped him with his lunch, and you kept him right beside you.” In fact, watching Nate do all of those things had warmed Ginger toward him considerably.

  “Will you help me with him?” Nate asked.

  Ginger glanced at him, her eyebrows shooting up. “What?”

  “I saw you with him,” he said. “You’re great. You know exactly what to do.”

  She started shaking her head, but Nate continued anyway. “You showed up with chocolate, and you handed him a napkin before I even knew he needed one. You knew when to take him from me, and when to give him back, and you picked up his tie when I didn’t even see that he’d dropped it.”

  “Nate,” she said, but she stopped. Of course she was going to help him. Hadn’t she already decided to make this transition for him as easy as possible here?

  She had, and she knew it. Instead of answering, she eased around the corner and said, “There’s the homestead.”

  Nate finally took his eyes off her face, and Ginger felt the weight of them go. “Oh…wow,” he said again. “Look at that place.”

  Ginger looked at it, trying to see what Nate did. The homestead was really two houses connected together with a three-car garage in the middle. The garages had doors on both sides, so she could get to the road she was driving down now, or out onto the ranch in the opposite direction. When they were open and the sky shone through the gaps, it really was spectacular.

  But they were closed today, which only made the house seem much bigger than it was.

  “I live on the left side,” she said. “The West Wing, we call it. Like the White House.”

  “Alone?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I have three women that live there with me. We all work on the ranch. Emma, my assistant, is there. Jessica is my stable master. She lives there. And Jill is a ranch hand. She works in the behind-the-scenes stuff the most. She lives there as part of her room and board.”

  She passed through the front gate, where the fields ended and an unruly patch of grass barely passed for a front yard. “On the right is where the cowboys live. The Annex. You’ll live there with Connor. Emma put you on the main floor, where there’s only three bedrooms. A great guy named Spencer Rust lives in the other one. Downstairs, we have three more bedrooms and three more bathrooms, and the boys double up down there.”

  Nate said nothing, and Ginger really wanted to know what he was thinking. So she asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  “I get the whole bedroom to myself?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And Connor can have the other one. If you’d rather sleep in the same room, that’s fine. We weren’t sure—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Anything is fine, honestly.”

  She reached up to press the button to get the far left garage door to lift.

  “I lived in a dormitory with sixteen other men,” he said. “I can’t even remember what it feels lik
e to have an entire bedroom to myself.”

  Ginger had been told that before, and she hated that she hadn’t remembered. “Emma and the other girls have been working on a babysitting schedule for Connor. You’ll come over to our kitchen tonight, where she also has a feast waiting for us. Then I’ll take you to the men’s wing—what we call the East Annex. Or just the Annex.”

  She pulled into the garage, her heart thumping in a strange way. “And that’s it. You can’t come to the West Wing whenever you want. It’s off-limits to cowboys.”

  “I don’t know if you know much about me,” he said. “But I’m not a cowboy.”

  Ginger grinned at him, feeling a little out of control. Definitely tired, which probably spurred her to say, “You will be, Mister Mulbury. Trust me on that,” in a flirty tone. She didn’t add a giggle to the statement, thankfully, and quickly got out of the truck.

  As she busied herself with her luggage from last night and all the paperwork she’d been given at the FCI, she kicked herself for saying anything about Nate becoming a cowboy. She also couldn’t allow herself to flirt with him again. She needed him on the ranch; that was all. He didn’t get to know about her private life, and she’d had plenty of experience with keeping things professional between her and the cowboys. She could do it with him too.

  Nate had a waking-up Connor in his arms while he waited near the tailgate, and Ginger hurried to go up the steps in the garage that led into the utility room. An entire wall of cabinets greeted her, as did a washer and dryer and four boot racks.

  She passed everything, keeping her boots on, and went around the corner and into the kitchen. The scent of sizzling meat met her nose, and her taste buds perked right up.

  “There you are,” Emma said, turning from the oven where she’d just pulled out a tray of foil-wrapped potatoes. She stepped over to Ginger and hugged her. “Long day, right?”

  “Really long,” Ginger said, setting her folder on the counter and her bag next to the island. She indicated Nate behind her. “This is Nathaniel Mulbury, and his nephew Connor. He goes by Nate.” She smiled at Connor. “And you go by Connor, right bud?”

  The boy nodded as if she were asking a serious question, and she reached out and lovingly swiped the hair off his forehead. “He just woke up, so he’s a bit shy right now.” She stepped further into the kitchen. “This is Emma Clemson,” she said. “She’s my right hand and my left hand. If it looks like I know what I’m doing around here, it’s because of her.”

  Emma just smiled and shook her head, sending her dark curls cascading around her shoulders. “Not true.”

  “Come in, come in. Let’s get over to the table.” Ginger stepped that way, unsurprised to see Emma pick up her folder of important documents and move them to the file holder on the opposite counter, out of the way.

  “I’ll go grab the others,” Emma said. She picked up Ginger’s suitcase and took it with her, calling, “Jess, Michelle. They’re here.”

  Nate still hadn’t said anything, and he sat in a chair at the corner of the table. Connor stayed in his lap, and Ginger didn’t know what to do to break the tension. She reminded herself that the first night was always like this, that he just needed some time to adjust to a new way of living. One where he didn’t have to share a bathroom with dozens of other men.

  Ginger sat beside him and folded her hands in her lap. “Do you like steak?”

  He turned his head toward her as if in slow motion. “I haven’t had steak in years. But yeah.” He spoke slowly and nodded his head. “I think I used to like steak.”

  “Emma’s a really good cook.”

  “Do you cook, Ginger?”

  She really liked how he said her name, with all the tenderness of a really good man. She sighed and shook her head. “I mean, I can if I have to, but Emma’s here, so I don’t have to.” She gave him a smile, and for the first time, he returned it. He obviously had no idea what a smile transformed his face into, though he probably had at one point in the past.

  “All right,” Michelle said, her voice too brusque for their current conversation. She breezed into the room like a hurricane and took the chair on the other side of Nate. “Do you want to do the business first, or eat, and then talk afterward?”

  “I’m exhausted,” he said. “So let’s get this over with, and then I can go to bed after dinner.”

  Michelle’s gaze barely flicked toward Ginger, but she still caught the anxiety there. “Good plan. So this outlines the rules of Hope Eternal Ranch. You can go over it whenever. Ginger will talk to you about your assignment, probably in the morning.”

  “Or a day or two,” she said. “It’s Sunday tomorrow.”

  “Oh, right.” Michelle barely missed a beat. “We need you to sign this one for the Bureau of Prisons. The BOP really likes all their paperwork in line as soon as possible.” She held up a page and set it on the table in front of Nate.

  “What is it?” he asked, though he was already reaching for the pen.

  “It states that you understand that you work here. That you’ll get paid. That we’ll provide adequate housing for you and Connor.” She paused as she looked at the boy. “But you’ll have to pay for your own groceries, gas—a vehicle should you choose to purchase one.” She let another beat or two of silence pass, because most inmates usually had questions about their pay, their budget, or how they were supposed to pay for things.

  Nate said nothing.

  Michelle looked at Ginger and took another breath. “It says that you’ll have a parole officer visit at least once a month, unannounced, and that you’ll do daily check-ins with Ginger for the first week, whereupon they’ll move to weekly, and then peter out as time goes by.” She craned her neck to look at the paper. “Oh, and that you can’t leave the property for any reason.”

  “Ever?” He looked from the paper to Michelle and then Ginger. “How do I buy groceries if I can’t leave the ranch?”

  “There’s a delivery service,” Ginger said. “And you can go with someone else. If you want to leave the ranch by yourself, there is a form you fill out for your parole officer, and it’s up to him whether you can go or not.” She glanced at Michelle. “Right?” It had been several months since they’d had anyone from the prison system come to Hope Eternal.

  “Right.” Michelle picked up the pen. “Sound good?”

  “What choice do I have?” Nate asked, the first sign of attitude from him that Ginger had seen. He took the pen and signed with a few hills and valleys in ink that looked nothing like his name at all.

  “Great.” Michelle whisked the paper away and stood up. “Let’s eat.”

  “Yes,” Ginger said, her stomach quite upset with her dietary choices from that day. “I’m starving.”

  Nate once again said nothing, and Ginger wondered if staying silent was a lesson he’d learned behind bars that had allowed him to survive. She wanted to ask him, but she thought he’d probably had enough questions for one day.

  She reached over and patted his hand where it lay over Connor’s and said, “I’m glad you’re here, Nate.” She wasn’t sure if her tone revealed too much or not, so she quickly added, “You too, Connor,” and got up to go help Emma in the kitchen so she wouldn’t further embarrass herself.

  Chapter Five

  Nate wanted nothing more than to get his shoes off. He hadn’t worn such flat or stiff shoes in months. Probably years. And he’d been in these monstrosities all day long. He couldn’t believe he used to wear shoes like this to work every day, twelve hours a day, sometimes six days a week.

  He did not miss his old life, that was for sure. He realized now how stressed he’d been all the time, and it was no wonder that all of his relationships were in ruins.

  “This is your room,” Ginger said, bringing Nate out of the pain of his feet. He gazed at the bedroom, with the huge queen-sized bed all made up with a puffy blue comforter and more than one pillow. He marveled at that fact alone, not to mention how big it was. Cavernous almost.

 
“The closet is around the corner,” Ginger said, still speaking in that soft voice she’d adopted sometime after dinner. Nate had stayed in the kitchen in the West Wing, sipping coffee for as long as he could. When he’d caught Ginger’s eye, she seemed to get his telepathic message that he was done.

  Beyond done.

  “Can I take off these shoes?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  But before he could move, Ginger darted in front of him. “Nate, you don’t have to ask my permission to do anything.”

  He simply looked at her, the concept of making his own decisions somewhat foreign to him. Of course, he did remember that he’d once lived this way. It had just been so long. He nodded and stepped around the corner to enter the closet. It too was massive—at least two men could sleep in here—and he found a neat stack of jeans and another of T-shirts. A single sweatshirt hung from a hanger, as well as a heavier coat and three long-sleeved shirts.

  He took off his shoes and left them on the floor, turning and almost colliding with Ginger. “I got a few things,” she said. “According to the size chart. I kept the receipts, so if something doesn’t fit, let me know, and I’ll get the money back.”

  “Thanks,” Nate said, though the money wasn’t important to him. Ginger, however, got paid to have someone like him at her ranch, and she’d definitely want it back.

  “Maybe you can’t wear regular shirts,” she said, her eyes holding a question.

  Nate blinked, trying to figure out what she meant.

  “I just—I mean, your shoulders are so broad.” Instantly, a pink hue crept into her face, and she spun away from him. “Just let me know.” She strode away from him and into the bathroom. “The bathroom is here. It has a door straight into Connor’s room.”

  Nate wasn’t sure if he had shock running through him or warmth. Maybe both. He knew this day had felt like a year, and he couldn’t wait to lie down in that bed that looked made of clouds. He cast it a look before following Ginger, who’d taken Connor by the hand and was showing him the bed he could sleep in.