by Deb Kastner
“Yeah, but to what end?” Rowdy muttered as his eyebrows furrowed.
“What benefit could she possibly foresee?” Angelica asked, pressing further. “To me, the whole suggestion is a recipe for disaster.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Jo said, although the determined spark in her eyes said otherwise. “When you’ve finished your meal, go back to Frances’s ranch and read through the plans she left you. Maybe they will clue you in as to why she’s chosen you to complete this difficult task.”
In the next moment, Jo transformed from an attitude of serious concern to that of bubbly enthusiasm.
“Anyone up for some New York cheesecake?” she asked brightly. “Phoebe’s been working on them all morning. She’s actually from New York, did you know?”
Phoebe Hawkins was the local pastry chef who’d transplanted from New York City. She’d had a stellar national reputation, and had left everything to marry Chance, the café’s cook and Jo’s nephew. And she couldn’t have been happier.
At any other time, Angelica wouldn’t even have considered passing up one of Phoebe’s delectable treats, but right now her stomach was in knots and she was feeling a tad nauseated.
Rowdy’s eyes met hers and he gave her a nearly imperceptible nod.
“I think we’ll pass on dessert today,” Rowdy said, speaking for both of them. “It sounds like we have a lot to work out back at Granny Frances’s office, and I know we’re both anxious to see what’s what on this ranch rodeo and make some decisions on where to go from here.”
“Of course, dear. Just remember, that envelope Angelica’s holding is an important component of Frances’s last wishes. Don’t let her down.”
They got the message already. Angelica didn’t think Jo needed to keep rubbing it in.
Angelica collected Toby and locked him in his car seat, then followed Rowdy out to her SUV.
“I’ll take ignoring the guilt card for five hundred dollars, please,” she remarked the moment they were alone in the vehicle together. She couldn’t help feeling slightly snarky about it all.
“Jo did pour it on pretty thick,” he agreed, then fell silent.
The ride back to Granny’s ranch was made in the same uncomfortable quiet as the ride to the café had been—Rowdy staring out the window in brooding silence and Angelica driving with her jaw set and both hands clenched on the steering wheel, trying to breathe through her frustration.
When they reached the ranch, Angelica suggested she put Toby down for his afternoon nap while Rowdy went to the office to see if he could find the file Jo was talking about.
She sensed Rowdy’s hesitation well before he spoke.
“Would it be too much to ask for me to be the one who puts Toby down and for you to go find the file?”
Angelica was nearly as reluctant to revisit the past through the contents of Granny’s file as Rowdy was.
But she thought it might be better for them to face it together.
“Why don’t we both put Toby down and then go find the file?” she suggested gently.
What had Granny been thinking?
She’d been asking that question a lot since she’d returned to Serendipity, but instead of finding answers she kept running into more questions.
Not to mention confused feelings.
Thanks to Granny, she had gone from never, ever intending to see Rowdy again to working with him on a daily basis. And now, they were standing together in Toby’s nursery preparing the baby for his nap, making the area feel oddly intimate.
Rowdy’s large figure took up more than just area in the room. He took up emotional space, as well.
Angelica’s pulse was pounding as she changed Toby, and she knew by the way the baby’s feet and arms flapped that he was picking up on her discomfort. She took a deep breath and tried to calm the frantic beat of her heart.
Rowdy noticed Toby’s disquiet, as well.
“Does the little guy need a bottle or something before we lay him down in his crib?”
Angelica shook her head. “He just needs to be rocked for a minute.”
Rowdy came up behind her. He wasn’t quite touching her, but she could feel his warm presence as tangibly as if he’d put his arms around her and pulled her close to him.
“May I?” His voice was low and scratchy.
Rowdy picked up Toby and laid him against his broad shoulder, then sang a soft lullaby in a rich baritone while shuffling his cowboy boots around the room in an unchoreographed dance.
Angelica hadn’t even known Rowdy could sing, and it occurred to her only now that there were probably many things she didn’t know about the man Rowdy had become.
The boy she remembered was not the man who now stood before her—and not just physically, either.
Eight years of living had changed and molded him, just as it had done with her.
But as he bent over the crib to put the now-sleeping Toby to bed, lingering there for a moment with a tender, appreciative expression on his face, it wasn’t the past or the present Angelica was considering.
It was the future.
Or at least, the future that might have been if she hadn’t ruined everything. For one moment, she allowed herself to compare the differences.
Rowdy as her spouse and her soul mate.
Toby as their son.
But those things were not and could not ever be true.
She had to close the door on this way of thinking and all of the emotions such imaginings invoked, or she would drive herself crazy.
And she knew exactly how to close the door on the past and the future.
Permanently.
By opening the ranch rodeo file in Granny’s office cabinet.
* * *
Rowdy was literally dragging his booted feet as Ange lead him into Granny Frances’s office.
He had just experienced one of the most incredible, special moments of his life—getting to participate in an important ritual for baby Toby.
With the three of them taking up the majority of the room in the small nursery, which was furnished with only a crib and a changing table, sharing the space together felt intimate in a way he’d never before experienced.
The comparisons between what was and what could have been didn’t escape him.
But for possibly the first time since Ange had reentered his life, he didn’t run from those thoughts and emotions.
Toby was such a precious little soul, with so much life teeming from those almond-shaped blue eyes and the heart-capturing smile that only a Down baby could make.
When he’d commented on it, Ange had laughed and said that at Toby’s age it was only a reflex smile, but Rowdy still couldn’t help but believe the baby’s grin was just for him.
As for Toby’s mama—he wasn’t quite ready to confront all his feelings for Ange, much less contemplate what that might mean for them in the future.
Not that there would be a future of any kind for the three of them after they’d taken a look at the contents of Granny Frances’s file. Neither one of them even wanted to revisit the past, to think about ranch rodeos, never mind plan one. Rowdy, because of his injury, and Ange, who had jilted him because she couldn’t handle the thought of living with a man who might always be bound to a wheelchair.
She’d left without knowing he’d be able to walk again.
But then, he’d told her to leave.
There were too many bad memories.
Part of him just wanted to turn around and walk out without knowing what Granny Frances expected of him, but despite realizing how disruptive the file might be, he couldn’t walk away.
Would the contents change everything between him and Ange, when they would have to plan a saddle bronc riding event—especially with teenagers as the participants? With the thought that someone might be injured, just as Rowdy had been a
ll those years ago?
Rowdy hadn’t attended a ranch rodeo since his injury, but he knew there hadn’t been any accidents since. Even his had been a freak calamity that no one could have foreseen.
There was no reason to think this year would be different. And yet a cloud of doubt hovered over him, and he suspected it hung over Ange, as well.
By the end of today, it might not be him walking away from whatever tentative feelings were growing between them.
Ange might take Toby and run.
Upon first entering the office, Ange placed the baby monitor she’d taken with her from the nursery on the edge of the desk, so both of them would hear Toby when he woke from his nap.
After wrestling to open the rusty top drawer of the battered metal file cabinet, she immediately drew out a bright yellow accordion file folder stuffed with papers, some with bent corners sticking out of the top.
Granny Frances was many things, but organized wasn’t one of them, at least with her paperwork. She hated that part of owning a ranch and avoided it whenever she could.
Rowdy had visited Granny Frances in her office from time to time, and bills and receipts had always littered the desktop with no rhyme or reason that he could see, although Granny Frances had insisted that she had a system that worked for her.
The bills and receipts were gone now. Jo and Granny Frances’s lawyer must have been in here as part of settling the estate.
And yet they had left this one file.
“It’s the only thing in here,” Ange confirmed when he asked. She used two hands to move the awkwardly large file to the center of the desk.
She took a seat in Granny Frances’s office chair and he sat on the opposite side of the desk.
Their gazes locked as Ange removed the thick pile of papers and fanned them out across the desk.
Rowdy knew they were both thinking the same thing—the one and only ranch rodeo he’d ever participated in had been the beginning of the end of their relationship.
Ange cleared her throat and riffled through the pages. “Every youth whose family owns a ranch is a team leader. The kids whose parents work in the community or as ranch hands have all been assigned as seconds. From the look of it, we’re going to have at least twelve ranches participating, maybe more.”
“We? I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
“I know.” Her lips curled downward.
“Have you found a list of events yet?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s not anywhere on these first few pages. Let’s see.”
She continued to rifle through the papers and eventually pulled one from the center of the bunch. “Here it is—although this looks more like Granny was brainstorming than anything that was set in stone. There are doodles all over the page. It appears to be a mind map of sorts.”
“So, what have we got?”
He knew he was speaking through gritted teeth and he tried to relax his jaw, but the more he concentrated on relaxing, the more his muscles tightened. His fisted hands were grasping the edge of his chair in a death grip.
“The usual.” She was trying to keep her tone light and even, but he could hear her voice shaking and knew she was going to say those words before they ever crossed her lips.
“We’ve got stray gathering, trailer loading, paint branding, wild cow milking and mutton busting.” She paused. “That’s always a good one to get the crowd laughing.”
He didn’t buy her upbeat tone for a second.
“And?” he asked, his mouth dry and his voice coarse.
She dropped her gaze from his.
“And saddle bronc riding.”
There.
The words had been said and were now hanging in the air between them.
Saddle bronc riding.
The injury he’d sustained competing in that event was the reason he still walked with a limp to this day.
And it was likewise the reason Ange had ultimately chosen to run away from him before their wedding.
Granny Frances had used three words to communicate her wishes in the notes she had left for them.
But these three words weren’t anything like Granny Frances’s kind, if cryptic, notes.
They were pure poison, damaging Rowdy and Ange in a way no other words could do.
Saddle bronc riding.
Chapter Eight
Angelica’s heart nearly split in two as she watched the pain and agony that crossed over Rowdy’s expression before his face hardened.
He must be reliving his accident.
All of it.
She wouldn’t blame him if he stood up and flipped the desk over before stalking off in a rage, not that Rowdy would ever make such a display of fury.
He wasn’t that man.
But he should be angry.
As for Angelica, she had a big fat guilty stamped on her forehead in permanent black ink.
She waited for Rowdy to speak, but he didn’t. He just snapped the page from her grasp and gave it a long perusal, his hand running across the stubble on his jaw.
“We don’t have to keep the saddle bronc riding event,” she suggested gently. “We don’t have to be in charge of this rodeo at all.”
Rowdy hissed an audible breath through his teeth.
“Surely with Jo’s help we can find someone else to pull this together,” she continued. “Someone who doesn’t have the kind of history with it as we do. I don’t care what Jo said earlier. She would understand why we can’t do this.”
Rowdy remained silent and thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.
“Granny Frances wanted us to do it. And she knew at least as well as anyone did what kind of history she would be digging up with this request.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand where at least part of this scavenger hunt, or whatever you want to call it, is coming from.”
“Yeah?”
“Granny was the only one from my old life who I kept in touch with at all,” she explained. “And that was only near the end of the eight years I was gone, after I discovered I was pregnant with Toby. That was when I finally reached out to her. When I left Serendipity, I left everything and everyone behind, even Granny.”
He grunted in response, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.
“After I calmed down and realized what I’d done in running away from our wedding, my mindless fear disappeared and guilt readily took its place. Oh, Rowdy, I am so ashamed of my actions, especially the many ways I hurt you. I truly believed you were the love of my life and the man I wanted to marry. I shouldn’t have left the way I did. I should have treated our relationship—and you—with more respect.”
Rowdy visibly flinched, his face coloring with emotion.
“Do we have to dig all this up again?”
“Yes. I believe we do. It seems to me that all of this—” she made a grand gesture that spanned far beyond just the office and into the entirety of the ranch and beyond “—was done in order to force us to cooperate, to work out some of our issues.”
She waited for his response, her stomach queasy and her face so enflamed it must be at least as red as Rowdy’s.
He stood and stalked to the office door, and for a moment she thought he was leaving but then he turned back and walked in her direction. He planted his fists on the desktop and leaned toward her.
“Why would she do that?” His voice was a gravel-sounding mixture of confusion and anger. “Why force the issue?”
“Honestly, I think, at least for me, she was ripping off the bandage to allow my wounds to heal naturally. To heal my heart.”
He looked genuinely perplexed.
“Wounds? What wounds? From where I’m standing, you’re the one who did all the ripping.” He growled in frustration. “You walked out on me, remember?”
How co
uld she not?
It had been on her mind every day since the night it happened.
From the time she’d agreed to follow Granny’s missives that included spending time with Rowdy, she’d known this conversation was bound to happen. All of this—staying in Serendipity, discovering Granny’s intentions and God’s had led her here to this moment.
She wanted to flee from the office and avoid a confrontation, but that was her old self.
Her new self, with the Lord’s help, would seek to make amends for all of the pain and suffering she’d caused Rowdy, and seek closure for both of them so they could move on with their lives.
“I did walk out on you,” she admitted, folding her hands on the desk and tilting her head up until their gazes met. “Rode off, actually.”
That last part was her attempt to insert a note of dry humor into the conversation.
Epic fail.
“But I think we need to go back a little bit further than that,” Ange said.
Rowdy’s brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Granny never had a mean bone in her body, so it makes no sense that she would ask us to revisit the ranch rodeo and all the painful memories from it unless she truly felt we needed to begin there and move forward.”
Rowdy didn’t move a muscle, as if he’d turned to ice.
“If I don’t miss my guess, the saddle bronc riding is where she wanted us to start. We have to decide whether or not we want to keep the event in our lineup, which by default means we have to face up to what happened eight years ago. We need to talk about it. Perhaps try to find some kind of closure.”
She hitched a breath but it stuck in her throat. “Except there is no closure. Not for you. Not with your—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes and it took every ounce of her willpower not to let them go, knowing if she did she wouldn’t be able to keep from sobbing in earnest.
“My limp. You can say it, Ange. I’ve had eight years to get used to the idea. It hardly bothers me anymore, and I don’t mind talking about how I got the injury.”
“Does it still hurt?” Angelica pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down hard enough to taste the copper of her own blood. The pain distracted her from her shredding heart.
