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

by Elana Johnson

  “Thank you for forgiving me.”

  “Thank you for forgiving me,” she repeated. “We’ll go as soon as Spencer gets back.”

  “Where is he?”

  “You’re never going to believe this,” she said. “But he met a woman at the beach yesterday, and they went to breakfast.”

  Nate laughed, and the sound was glorious and wonderful, and Nate wanted to laugh this freely every day for the rest of his life. “Sounds like Spencer.”

  “Right?” Ginger nodded toward the chair she’d been sitting in. “I was just getting my payroll done.”

  “Go finish it,” Nate said. “I’ll go sit with Connor.” He pressed his lips to her temple, and Ginger stepped over to the chair and picked up her tablet. Nate stepped out into the sun and said, “Connor, show me how you float on your back.”

  Later that night, after they’d packed and loaded Ginger’s truck, after they’d driven back to Hope Eternal Ranch, after Nate had been out to the stables to see the horses he’d left behind, he picked up his cowboy hat and said, “Come on, Connor. We’re eatin’ next door tonight.”

  Somehow, everyone else had left the Annex without him and Connor, so Nate took the little boy’s hand and led him out the back door, across the deck, and down the stairs to the grass. “What did you and Ginger do while I was gone?”

  “I got to sleep in Spencer’s room,” Connor said, though Nate already knew that. He’d spent some time this afternoon gathering all the little boy things from Spencer’s bedroom and thanking the man profusely.

  “Yep,” Nate said. “And what else?”

  “One time, Jack took me on the four-wheeler.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yep.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “Dad, Emma made grilled peanut butter sandwiches.” Connor danced in front of Nate, his face animated with wide eyes. “Can you believe it? They were so good, and maybe she’ll make them again.”

  “Maybe I can ask her how she did it, and then I can make them.” He wasn’t sure how to make the two pieces of bread stick together if the peanut butter melted, but Emma would tell him.

  “But you have to use the right kind of bread,” Connor said.

  Nate smiled at his drama. “Yeah? What kind of bread is that?”

  “It’s the blue bag bread.”

  “Oh, the blue bag bread.” They climbed the steps to the back porch of the West Wing, and Nate reached over the top of Connor’s head to knock on the door before they went inside. With the door open, Nate couldn’t hear anything, and that immediately alerted him that something wasn’t right inside.

  His heartbeat stuttered, but he kept moving. Connor skipped ahead of him, clearly not concerned by the silence inside. But Nate was. He’d never been to the West Wing where there weren’t at least two women talking and laughing. Never.

  He rounded the corner to enter the kitchen, and he took in the group of people all standing together across the room, facing him. “Welcome home!” they shouted as a single unit, and Nate stalled.

  He couldn’t stop smiling, especially as Emma went over the pizza on the counter, the macaroni salad—“Your favorite,” she said—and the giant chocolate-frosted cake.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you all.”

  Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see him, and while that was somewhat difficult for Nate to believe, he’d never known any of the men or women here at Hope Eternal to be fake. He enjoyed dinner, with all of the chatter and laughter he’d come to expect from the West Wing.

  “Let’s go, Connor,” Spencer said, and Nate lifted his head from the conversation he’d been having with Jack and Jessica. “I’m gonna take him back. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” Nate said. “You sure?”

  “We’re both tired, huh, bud?” Spencer grinned down at Connor.

  “Can Ursula come?”

  “If you can get her to come, she can come.” Spencer glanced down the table to where Ginger sat, Ursula at her feet. In the end, Connor couldn’t convince the dog to come with him, and Ginger promised to bring her over later so she could sleep with Connor.

  Spencer and Connor left, and the party broke up in little pieces after that. Nate felt like he could sleep for a year, but he didn’t want to leave without kissing Ginger. Now that he knew he loved her, he wanted to be at her side all the time.

  “Go,” Emma finally said, and Ginger tossed down the wash rag she’d been using to wipe the counter. She met Nate’s eyes, and he started for the back door. Behind him, Ursula barked, and then she came out of the house with Ginger.

  “Walk with me?” Nate asked, reaching for Ginger’s hand. She slipped her fingers between his, and Nate sighed. “Thanks for that dinner.”

  “Oh, that was Emma.”

  “I know, but you let her.”

  “Did you hate it?” She looked at him with a bit of apprehension in her expression.

  “No,” he said. “You thought I’d hate it?”

  “You don’t really like crowds.”

  “No, I don’t.” He gazed up into the clear, night sky. He loved how dark it was out here, and how the stars seemed to be caught in this wide, black net. “But I like the people here, and I could eat that cake every day of my life.”

  “Emma is a genius with butter and flour,” Ginger said.

  Nate sighed, relaxing more and more the farther from the homestead they walked. He took her down the road where they’d shared their first kiss, the silence between him and Ginger so soothing.

  “I’m so glad to be back,” he said. “I really am sorry I left. I’m sorry I involved Nick. I’m—”

  “Nate, you don’t owe me any apologies,” Ginger said.

  Nate nodded. “Sometimes the apologies aren’t for the person receiving them,” he said. “So can I just finish them?”

  “All right.”

  “I’m sorry I asked you to take care of Connor. You’re amazing for doing it, but it wasn’t fair.” He pressed his teeth together, making his jaw jut out. “I’m sorry I put you through all of this, and I’m hopeful that once the six months are up, that you’ll consider hiring me on full-time here.”

  “This is what you want? I thought you were going to go live in Ward’s house in White Lake.”

  “I belong here,” he said simply. “And if you’ll have me, I’d love to stay.”

  “I’d love for you to stay,” she said. “And Nate, we should probably talk about you know, what we said earlier.”

  “Which part?”

  “Oh, come on.” Ginger rolled her eyes by the light of the moon, and Nate’s heart softened toward her again.

  “You mean the part where I said I was in love with you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That part.”

  “You think I was lying?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m just wondering what you think the next step for us is.”

  Nate had been thinking about Ginger nonstop since he’d been pushed to the ground and re-arrested in front of her. For weeks now. Weeks.

  “Well, I think most people get married,” he said, watching her closely.

  She nodded, and he didn’t detect any apprehension in her. “And that’s something you want to do?”

  Nate let a smile spread across his face. “With you, Ginger, it’s exactly what I want to do.” He leaned down and kissed her, feeling her melt right into him, and for once, his reality was much better than what he’d imagined from the inside of his prison cell.

  The days, weeks, and then a few months passed. Nate enjoyed working around the ranch as much now as he had the very first time he’d entered the stables.

  Connor turned five one week and started kindergarten the next. Nate, still in the reentry program, couldn’t go pick him up alone, so he and Ginger made the drive together. They talked about everything, from Ginger’s favorite horse on the ranch to whether she wanted children or not.

  Both she and Nate did, but he hadn’t asked her to marry him yet. He didn’t
want to get married as an inmate, and he still had two months left of his six-month sentence in the Residential Reentry Program. But he couldn’t go ring shopping by himself, and he didn’t want Ginger along for that ride.

  Spencer had offered to go with him, and Nick had actually taken him to the mall and said, “Let’s get her a ring today,” one day near Thanksgiving. But Nate wasn’t in the right mental state, and for some reason, he wanted to take Connor and have the two of them pick out the ring for Ginger together.

  He still got the mail most days for the ranch, that walk out to the mailbox one of his favorites.

  Just after Thanksgiving, he opened the mailbox and pulled out a very large, white envelope. His heart fell to his boot tips and rebounded back to its rightful place in his chest. He flipped the envelope over and saw the seal from Lawrence’s law firm.

  All the other mail forgotten, Nate focused only on the envelope. It had his name on it, and he ripped it open, his mouth beyond dry. He pulled out the sheaf of paperwork and started reading the cover letter, which had been printed on ultra-soft paper that almost reminded Nate of cotton.

  Congratulations Nate and Connor! the letter began.

  Tears burned behind his eyes as he continued to read that his adoption of Connor had been approved by the state of Texas, and they had a hearing to attend in two and a half weeks, just before Christmas.

  He hurried to put everything back in the envelope, his excitement multiplying exponentially as his fingers shook. He left the rest of the mail, and he didn’t even know if he’d closed the mailbox as he jogged back to the homestead.

  Ginger wasn’t there, and Nate pulled out his phone and called her. “Hey,” he said when she answered. “So I’m going to need Tuesday, December twentieth off.”

  “What?” Ginger asked.

  “You’ll need to clear your calendar too,” he said.

  “Nate, is that your release date?”

  “No,” he said, and he couldn’t imagine what that kind of relief and joy would feel like. Right now, he felt like he was flying on clouds, and he chuckled as he said. “It’s the hearing date Connor and I have to finalize the adoption.”

  “You’re kidding,” Ginger said, the words mostly air.

  “I’m not,” Nate said, letting his laughter out. “And I want you there. Connor will want you there.”

  “I’ll be there,” Ginger said. “Of course I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you,” Nate said. “Is Connor with Nick in the stables?”

  “He’s with Nick, but they’re out in the fields,” Ginger said. “I can call him.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Nate said. “I’ll tell him when I see him this afternoon.” Connor always came to help with the riding lessons in the afternoon, and he and Nate spent the afternoons and evenings together, sometimes working and sometimes just going back at the Annex.

  “We should go celebrate tonight,” Ginger said.

  “Sweetheart, I can’t eat more Chinese food.” He made sure his voice carried a tease, but he was being dead serious.

  Ginger pealed out a string of laughter that made Nate’s heart happy, and then she asked, “What about a nice, juicy steak?”

  “Oh, now you’re talking my language.”

  “Pick me up at six?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I can ask Nick to babysit Connor so we can go alone.” Nate had plenty of opportunities to see Ginger alone, and he exploited them as much as possible. The woman had lips he sure did like to kiss, and she didn’t seem to mind when he took her hand and hurried her around to the back of the barn so he could do so.

  “This is about the two of you,” Ginger said. “He should come.”

  “Good point.”

  “All right,” she said. “See you tonight.”

  “Love you,” he said.

  “Love you too, my hopeful cowboy.”

  Nate ended the call and tipped his head back to look up into the sky. “Thank you,” he murmured, not sure if he was talking to God or to his brother. His hope grew and grew, and he hoped he could be the kind of father Connor deserved. He hoped he could be a good husband for Ginger. He hoped he would always be full of hope and dreams, and that he could work hard enough to make them come true.

  “First, the adoption,” he said. “Then my release. Then—get a ring on Ginger’s finger.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The weeks until Connor’s adoption hearing flew by, as December was a very busy time around ranches in Texas. It was birthing season, and most of Ginger’s cowboys went to neighboring cattle ranches to help with all of that, and that left Hope Eternal shorthanded.

  Ginger worked from sunup to sundown—and beyond, as the sun set a bit earlier than usual in the winter.

  Nate didn’t go anywhere, and together, they kept the ranch going, and Ginger couldn’t wait until February or March. Of course, then there was something new to be done around the ranch.

  The morning she needed to be ready to accompany Nate and Connor to court, she fed the horses with Emma, who rarely came out onto the ranch. But dire circumstances required everyone with even one good leg and one good arm to help out.

  Emma didn’t hate working around the ranch, but she much preferred observing it from behind the safety of the windowpane. Not only that, but Emma really couldn’t handle the heat. Thankfully, this close to Christmas, the sun’s heat wasn’t really an issue. At least not yet.

  Ginger moved steadily down the right side of the stable while Emma fell rapidly behind on the left side. The ranch housed and cared for over seventy horses, and Ginger had never fed them all by herself.

  That morning, she very nearly did, though Emma helped, and Nate worked in the next aisle over. Ginger didn’t often get a chance to just bend and empty yesterday’s buckets, get new ones, check on every animal. She thought she needed to take a shift in these stables more often, but overseeing the ranch required almost all of her energy.

  After a few hours of checking, feeding, and watering, an alarm went off on her phone.

  “Time to go,” Emma said, straightening and stretching her back. “I can finish.”

  “There’s just three left,” Ginger said, silencing the alarm.

  “I can do it.” Emma flashed her a smile and stepped over to give Ginger a hug. “I hope it goes well today. Call me as soon as it’s done.”

  “I will.” Ginger clung to her best friend, so glad she’d been able to convince Emma to come out to Hope Eternal all those years ago. She did like living off the beaten path too, so it hadn’t really taken all that much convincing.

  Emma nodded after she stepped back, and Ginger headed for the rectangle of bright light that signaled the doorway. Her nerves weren’t cut out for court hearings, she knew that. She’d only been to the one, but it had taken a miracle to get herself dressed that morning. If Connor hadn’t been there, looking at Ginger with those wide, hopeful eyes, she might not have gone.

  She honestly didn’t know.

  But she was going to go today, and she looked left as soon as she exited the stable. Only a moment later, Nate came out, peeling his gloves from his hands. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready to go get changed,” she said. “Where’s Connor?”

  “He should be at the Annex,” Nate said. “I told him to stay in bed when he woke up. We put Pop-tarts and his dinosaurs on the bedside table last night.”

  Ginger grinned as Nate reached her. He bent down and kissed her, smelling like horses and oats and leather. She loved the sight of him, the smell of him, the taste of him.

  “Mm,” he said, pulling away. “Come on. He’s probably been awake for about fifteen minutes.”

  “I guess you’ll know by how many crumbs he has in the bed.”

  Nate groaned. “This was a bad idea.”

  “But we got the horses fed,” Ginger said as they started back toward the house. “Emma will finish, and she’ll get the chickens taken care of too.”

  “We should stop and get her one of those bundt cak
es she likes.”

  “She’d like that,” Ginger said, impressed that Nate remembered Emma liked the miniature bundt cakes from a shop that didn’t make anything else. “She really doesn’t like working on the ranch.”

  “We’ll get her two then,” he said. “Because she had to help so we could go to court.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it tight, a clear indication of his nerves.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Ginger said. “It’s all approved.”

  “I’ve never been to an adoption hearing,” Nate said.

  “Neither have I, and neither has Connor. It’ll be okay.” Ginger had to keep telling herself that as they separated to go to their respective parts of the house to get ready. Twenty minutes later, Ginger hurried down the steps and into the garage. Nate and Connor waited in her truck, both of them wearing dark suits, complete with a white shirt and matching striped tie in blue, maroon, and gold.

  “Wow,” Ginger said, sliding behind the wheel. “You two match.”

  “Daddy bought us the same suit,” Connor said. “But mine is small.”

  “It sure is.” Ginger grinned at the little boy, whose blond hair had been buzzed into a respectable cut only a few days ago. He’d sat in the kitchen in the West Wing while Jess used the clippers and then the scissors to get his hair just right. She’d then cut Nate’s hair too, and they both looked clean-cut and respectable.

  Ginger drove them to the county courthouse, where they went through the metal detectors and then into the elevator to go to the fourth floor, where the courtrooms were for family court. There was nowhere to sit on the fourth floor, and Nate paced toward the window and back several times before Ginger took his hand in hers and forced him to stand still.

  Some people already milled about, and more kept coming and coming. Ginger realized in that moment that this was not going to be a private hearing, and she wondered if the judge would know Nate wasn’t quite out of prison yet. Her stomach jiggled and dropped, but she said nothing. He was already keyed up, and she didn’t need to add to it.