He got up and tucked a sketch pad under his arm. When he reached the boys’ bunkhouse he sat down on the steps and took a pencil from his pocket. Intent on watching him, she didn’t even feel Cade’s presence until he was only a few feet from her.
“Benjy talked to me and even smiled,” she said.
“He usually doesn’t take to people that fast so you must be special.” Cade settled into the rocking chair. “I guess the girls are writing letters?”
“Supposed to be. If my dad was still alive, I’d write one to him.”
“Justin and I still write a letter to Mama on Sunday afternoon. I thought it was a good practice for the kids to learn to write letters,” he explained.
“Do you really think foster parents will read the letters?”
He patted her on the arm. “It’s not only for the one getting the letter. It’s for the one writing it.”
“Want a glass of iced tea, lemonade, or a soda?” she asked, amazed that her voice wasn’t high and squeaky. His every touch made her pulse race.
“No, I’m good but thank you. I was going to check on Skip and the guys and saw you sitting out here with Benjy.”
“He seems eager to sketch the new donkey. When are you going to let the kids go see him?”
“Soon as Levi says it’s time. We’re having pizza delivered tonight for supper. Sunday is usually Mavis’s day off, but when the kids are here, she insists on working until after Sunday dinner.”
“How about next week the girls and I take over the kitchen for Sunday supper. Faith and Alice are happy there, but I’d like for Gabby and Sasha to get in a little bit of teamwork with them,” she said.
“That would be great,” Cade said. “I should be going.” He pushed up out of the chair. “See y’all later.”
She leaned forward so she could watch him until he disappeared into the boys’ cabin. She’d learned to read people by their body language and their walk. Slumped shoulders meant that they were shy and unsure of themselves. Cade Maguire’s swagger said that he was bold and confident in his place in the world.
A man’s man. Her father was back in her head again. The kind of feller who wouldn’t even look down at his boots if he was walkin’ across a pasture.
“Okay, Daddy, I hear you,” she said.
She pushed up out of the chair and went inside the cabin, got out a piece of paper and a pen, and took it to her room. If this letter-writing thing was for the author as much as for the reader, then maybe she’d give it a try.
Letters were nearly extinct in this day of texts, emails, and Twitter, and she couldn’t remember the last time that she’d handwritten anything other than a grocery list. With pillows propped against the headboard in her bedroom, she leaned back and began her letter:
Dear Daddy,
I don’t know what to write or how to begin. I got everything sold and taken care of just like you told me to do. Selling your land was hard and I’m still angry at the doctors for charging so much and then not curing you. I’d thought we’d have years and years together, that you would live to enjoy your grandchildren. My life plan includes two children, one when I’m forty-one and the second at forty-three. They will never know you except through my memories and that’s not enough for me so I’m angry.
They say that grief comes in stages. The first is denial. I went through that when you called me to say that you needed help. Surely God wouldn’t give a man as strong as you such a horrible disease. I have to admit that I lost all my faith and it was only through your patience and love that I found it again these past three years.
I’ve taken a temporary job on a ranch that lasts until my interview with the bank where I worked before in Dallas. You’d love it here and you’d be such a good influence on these poor kids. They are starving for love and a sense of belonging and I only hope that I can dig deep into all the things you taught me and help them discover themselves and confidence. It would be a lot better if you were here with me.
She stopped and shook her aching hand. Writing in complete sentences was so much harder than typing on a keyboard. After staring at the wall for several minutes she picked up the pen again, but when she put it to the paper she wasn’t sure she wanted to write anymore. Maybe that was enough for one Sunday. A memory flashed through her mind—when she was a little girl and bedtime rolled around, she used to remember one more thing she had to tell her dad. It happened so often that he nicknamed her the one-more-thing girl for a whole year.
Picking up the pen, she started to write again.
One more thing, Daddy—Cade Maguire and his brother own this ranch and their best friend, Levi, is the foreman. You’d say that they are all good men and you’d like them. Daddy, I’m drawn to Cade and it’s not a good thing. He’s a rancher. I’m a businesswoman with my plans written in stone. I’ve known cowboys my whole life and none of them ever made my heart race, but he does. Is it just a physical attraction or is the universe telling me that life does not offer guarantees and to ditch my plan and live for today? I don’t know but I sure wish you were here to talk to me about it. Until next Sunday, I love you, Daddy.
She folded the letter and put it into an envelope. It didn’t need a stamp or to go to the ranch house for someone to mail the next day. Heaven didn’t have a post office box.
Alice came in with her letter and asked, “Who do I give this to?”
“Put it in an envelope, seal it, and take it to Mavis. They’ve got all of your addresses. You might put your name in the upper left-hand corner. Ever written a letter before?”
“No,” Alice answered. “Not one that was goin’ to be mailed but we did write one in school last year to one of the kids who got cancer. Our teacher took them all to him in the hospital. He never did come back to school but the teacher said he was in ’mission.”
Retta wished that she and her dad had written long letters or even simple post cards to each other through the years instead of depending on phone calls and emails. Then she’d have something to hold in her hands and to read over and over again. Cade didn’t realize what a precious gift he was giving his mother.
Sasha came to the door, and the very expression on her face said that there was trouble brewing. Retta slid off the bed and hurried to the living room where Gabby and Faith were squared off. Hands were knotted into fists and a machete couldn’t have cut through the tension.
“We got a problem here, ladies?” Retta stepped between them.
“Tattletale,” Faith hissed at Sasha.
“Sasha didn’t say a word.” Gabby’s voice raised an octave and she spouted off some rapid-fire Spanish. “Perra estúpida. Esta provocó para que no yellin’ a Sasha.”
“One demerit for calling Faith stupid and another one for calling her a bitch.” Retta went to the whiteboard and wrote Gabby’s name, then added two black checks behind it. She’d figured that Faith would have ten before the other girls even got one, but it was Gabby with her quick temper that had gotten her into trouble. “Now what’s this all about?”
They all four started talking at once and Retta couldn’t understand any of them. Finally, she whistled shrilly, and silence filled the room. “Faith, you go first,” she said.
She pointed at Gabby. “She wanted to put her clothes in with mine to wash and I said no.”
Retta glanced at Gabby.
She shrugged. “We have to save water where I live. We all do laundry together and it don’t matter if my stuff is in with another girl’s. And what she said about me was worse than what I called her.”
“You can put my stuff in with yours,” Alice said. “I just want to get all this laundry done so we can go outside. Just tell me what to do and I’ll even help fold everything.”
“Sasha?” Retta asked.
The girl threw up both palms. “I don’t care how we do laundry. At our house, it’s all piled in together. We got our sheets done but now we’ve got to do our clothes. None of us has got much, since we only been here a few days.”
Retta
looked at the tiny piles in the floor of the small area of the kitchen where the washer and dryer were located. “Looks to me like y’all got a choice. Either put all your white things together and then your dark things in another load and get done so you can go outside or be here until supper time or beyond. It’s your choice, but you have to do it without yelling bad words or calling anyone names. And you Faith.” She wrote Faith’s name on the board and added a check behind it. “You get one demerit for calling Sasha a tattletale. Learn to get along or else you’ll be cleaning a lot this next five weeks to work off those bad marks. If you ever want to beat those boys at anything you’d better learn to work as a team.”
She turned around and walked to the front door. “If there’s going to be blood, take it outside or else you’ll be cleaning it up on your hands and knees.”
“Had a little problem, did you?” Cade was back, but this time he was on the swing.
“How did you know?”
“I been sittin’ here for a little while. Heard the Spanish and it didn’t sound like she was telling her that she loved her. I’d love a cold Coke if there’s any left in the refrigerator,” he said.
“Comin’ right up and you’re right. She got two black marks behind her name for what she said. She’ll be more careful, now that she knows I understand her language.” Retta grinned.
“Thanks and seemed like you settled it in a hurry and that part about the boys was pretty good.” He smiled back at her.
“Little competition might make them decide to work as a team.” She glanced at the girls, who were busy resorting clothing, grabbed a couple of cold Cokes from the refrigerator, and left them to their laundry.
When she went back to the porch, Gussie was curled up in her chair. Cade quickly picked the cat up and put her on his lap.
“She’s between litters right now and spends more time up around the house. When she has kittens in the barn, she tends to stay out there most of the time.” He took one of the Cokes from her hands. “Did you have cats on your farm?”
“Oh, yes.” Retta sat down in the rocking chair and took a long drink from the can. “Daddy got such a kick out of watching kittens play or the goats or the new lambs.”
“So you had livestock as well as crops?”
“Had a bit of everything,” she answered. “Daddy said it took that to make a living, and then in the end he lost it all.”
“But he enjoyed it all when he was healthy, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.” She’d been so angry that it had taken every bit of the money from the farm, the house, and even her car that she’d forgotten to think about what that had bought him—a lifetime of doing what he wanted and loving every minute of it. He couldn’t take a bit of what he’d accumulated with him so it had been worth it.
“And your mother? Did she like the country life?”
“She loved it. They had something pretty special. Daddy never even considered dating another woman after she was killed in a drunk driving accident on the way home from the grocery store.” Another thing that she could be thankful for—she’d never had to endure a stepmother.
“The kids who come here don’t have that, Retta,” he said softly. “Not a one of this group has two parents in the home unless they’re being fostered. Benjy has neither. He lives with his ailing grandmother. Two of yours have a single mother. Two of the boys are in foster care and the other one lives with an aunt.”
“What do you expect to accomplish with this camp?” she asked.
“Teamwork, maybe a little responsibility and to learn to make good decisions on their own but to be accountable for the bad ones and learn from them.”
She thought about what he’d said. The black marks on the whiteboard would stand because both of those girls had to be accountable and they were learning all of the other things he’d mentioned with nothing more than dirty laundry.
Gussie hopped from Cade’s lap over to hers and butted her nose against Retta’s hand. She got the message loud and clear and began to rub the cat’s ears. “Are you going to get along with the new donkey as well as you do with Beau?”
“She’s already looked him over and the jury is out on that one.” Cade chuckled.
“Maybe you shouldn’t name him until she’s passed judgment.” She stopped rubbing and the cat nudged her hand again.
“She’s got a little more than a month. If she don’t like him by then, they’ll have to agree to keep away from each other. Levi is pretty taken with the critter.”
“Awww, her feelings are hurt that he’d put another animal before her and she’s been so good to take care of Hopalong and the turtle,” Retta teased.
“Life is complicated.” Cade finished off his Coke and set the can beside his chair. “I probably shouldn’t take that inside to the trash. See y’all at supper and before I forget, I told Levi, Justin, and Skip that you were taking over Sunday night supper. They wanted to know if you’d do Sunday dinner and let the boys have Sunday supper. That way Mavis could have the whole day off.”
“No problem. What about breakfast?”
Cade slapped his leg. “I hadn’t thought of that. We can have cold cereal that morning or maybe the ladies could make muffins on Saturday and set them aside.”
“We’ll need to be in the kitchen on Sunday morning to get things ready for dinner, so we’ll take on breakfast too. I make some mean pancakes and I’ve been known to fry bacon one time without burning it,” she said.
“Fantastic!” He nodded. “Well, that’s settled and I’ve still got a couple of hours’ worth of work in the office to do. I’d rather plow forty acres in an open tractor as spend an hour looking at a computer.”
“And I’m right the opposite. I love book work and accounting.”
He pushed up out of the chair and her breath caught in her chest. Tall, dark, and handsome came to mind right along with sexy, sweet, and kind. “They say opposites attract. Think there’s any truth in that?”
“Maybe.” She nodded.
“See you at supper then or maybe in the barn before then if you go with the girls to see the new stray.” He tipped his cowboy hat toward her and was gone before she could say anything.
Yep, I could really like this feller. Her father was back in her head. He loves kids, cats, and he goes to church on Sunday.
“So could I, Daddy, but…”
There are too many buts in the world. She remembered him saying even before she heard his voice.
“I know, Daddy, but life is complicated.”
I never have liked that word. He’d said that many times before also. Life is what you make it, and if you listen to your heart, it’s a simple thing, not a complicated one.
Chapter Eleven
Cade hated paperwork. He stared at the notes Levi and Justin had taken through the week, data that needed to be put into the computer. But he couldn’t keep his mind on any of it, and besides all that, he needed to install a brand-new program, which would require hours of reading directions. Finally, he got up and went to the window to stare out toward the barn. Benjy and Ivan were on their way across the pasture and Ivan was telling Benjy something using all kinds of hand gestures.
If he and Julie had gotten married, he could have had a son by now. He wanted children, lots of them, but he also wanted a wife who’d be content on the ranch.
“Then why am I drawn to women who don’t want any part of it?” he asked out loud.
No answers came crashing through the window, so he went back to the computer and got back to work. When he finished it was four-thirty and the pizza would be there at five o’clock. Timing was perfect. He had time to catch his breath before eight hungry kids arrived.
Justin rapped on the office door and opened it a crack. “You about done in here?”
“Just finished.”
He came on into the office and slumped down into a wingback chair. “How’s the head?”
“Fine. I did pop a couple of pills a while ago but it was from the computer stuff, n
ot the ball game,” he admitted.
“How’s the infatuation with Retta? You’ve been droppin’ by there more than you did with the other bunkhouse mamas.”
“I’m not going there with you again. I told you that I can take care of myself,” Cade said, gruffly.
“Not tryin’ to start a fight. I like Retta and she’s probably the best bunkhouse mother we’ve had for the girls. But I know you, brother, and you are attracted to that woman.”
“I’ve been attracted to lots of women since Julie and you haven’t meddled in that.” Cade picked up a pencil from his desk and flipped it back and forth through his fingers.
“Like I said before, there’s a difference between barroom bunnies and Retta, and I’m goin’ to look out for you whether you like it or not. A poor old cowboy’s heart, no matter how big and bold and mean he is, can’t take two breaks like what you went through with Julie. But if this would turn out to be something real and get you movin’ on, I’d be the first one to shake your hand.”
Levi came into the office without knocking. “Hey, Skip and the guys are in the livin’ room. Benjy has a new drawing to give to us and he’s waitin’ on you both to get there. And heads-up, it looks like Kirk is a little jealous of Benjy.”
“Already knew that.” Cade stood up at the same time Justin did.
They’d made it out of the office when the girls all trooped into the house, their faces aglow with excitement.
Alice left the others behind and went straight to where Benjy was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Whatcha got there, Benjy? Can I see it?”
He held up a picture of Alice standing on third base.
She clamped a hand over her mouth and squealed through her fingers. “That is so good. Can I have it?”
He ripped it out of his sketchbook and handed it to her. “I like to draw animals better. Do you like it, Cade?”
“I love it. When you draw the donkey, we’ll have it framed and put it on the dining room wall with the others.”
Cowboy Bold Page 10
