by Deb Kastner
And after that, it wouldn’t be long before she ran away, just as she’d done on the night of their wedding rehearsal.
But this time, Rowdy would anticipate her move. He didn’t know what the future held for them, but one thing he did know—
He wasn’t going to let her skip out of his life again.
Chapter Nine
Early on the third day of July, with Toby comfortably sleeping in his stroller a few feet away, Angelica directed Rowdy as he guided his empty horse trailer into the correct position inside Serendipity’s town arena. He parked it close to one wall, since trailer loading was an event that didn’t require as much moving space as some of the others.
The goal was for the cowboy or cowgirl two-person teams to get their horses into and out of the trailer in the fastest time. The trick was, the horses provided were barely started and mostly unfamiliar with being loaded into the big trailer.
Many contestants got inventive when the horses balked, as they inevitably did, and the event was always a true crowd-pleaser.
The whole ranch rodeo carried with it much laughter and amusement. And there were no trophies or monetary awards for the winners. The ranch hands entertained the audience only for their pleasure and attempted to win events merely for yearly bragging rights.
But none of this felt fun to Angelica.
For a moment, she mentally shook her fist at Granny for putting her in this situation. Angelica knew that what Granny had done, she had done out of love for her and Rowdy, but her plan had backfired. Granny was no longer around, and Angelica was left with the fallout.
She ached. So deeply and profoundly that nothing could come close to matching it, with the possible exception of the night she’d ridden away from Serendipity on a horse that was supposed to be her bridal transportation.
She and Rowdy had worked up a planned list of events from Granny’s notes, and now they were setting everything up in the arena for the next day.
After parking the trailer, they moved on to create a “branding” station—paint buckets filled with blue, green and red paints. On a nearby table were branding irons specific to each competing ranch.
“Do you think we’ve got enough paint, or should we stop by Emerson’s Hardware and grab some extra to keep on standby?” she asked.
“Yes,” Rowdy said, his mind clearly elsewhere—probably revisiting the past.
“Yes, we have enough paint, or yes, we need more?”
“What?” he asked, his gaze fixing on hers. One side of his lips crept up in a half-smile. “Yes, I think we have enough paint,” he said.
He was silent for a full minute as they marked chalk lines the teens would have to keep their cows within as they attempted to “brand” them.
Then he turned to her, swiping off his black cowboy hat and exposing his thick blond curls.
“So that event is ready. And I’ve corralled the sheep from your ranch that we’ll need for the mutton busting.” Angelica’s stomach fluttered when she realized the verbal slip he’d made, calling the ranch hers and not Granny’s.
Well, it was Granny’s ranch, whatever he said, and someday soon it would be his. So much had happened between her and Rowdy that it was getting harder and harder to remember that.
“Let’s take a break before we set up the rest of the events. We won’t be bringing in any of the stock until tomorrow morning. I’ll help you load a few sheep into your trailer for the mutton busting. I’m picking up a couple of wild cows, Nick McKenna has offered some of his cattle for the herding and branding events and his brother Jax and his wife are bringing in some saddle broncs.”
She watched his face as he talked about the saddle broncs, noting the momentary glimpse of agony that flashed through his eyes.
“We can still remove saddle bronc riding from the program,” she said, as she’d mentioned several times previously.
She wasn’t sure she could handle the event. She couldn’t imagine how Rowdy, who’d sustained a permanent injury from it that changed his whole life, would deal with it.
He met her gaze squarely.
“No.” His voice was firm and unwavering. “Saddle bronc riding has been a treasured part of Serendipity’s ranch rodeo for as long as I can remember. It’s a big draw, not to mention the most adrenaline-fueled event.”
“I should think so, since the rest of the events are meant to be more humorous than skilled.”
His lips quirked. “Well, it does take some level of skill to milk a wild cow.”
She couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Tomorrow, we’ll need to do a sound check on the system Frank and Jo Spencer will be using to officiate,” he said.
He stroked a hand across his jaw, as he often did when he was thinking, leaving multicolored finger streaks of chalk across his cheek.
Angelica couldn’t help it. She put a palm over her mouth and giggled.
His eyebrows rose. “Something funny?”
“War paint?”
His gaze was blank for a moment before he realized she was talking about his face.
Laughing, he used the corner of his shirt to wipe the color away.
“Thank you for pointing that out to me. You could have just left me walking around town like that all day.”
The mood had lightened so much Angelica wanted to burst out into a song of praise to God, but because she couldn’t carry a tune to save her life, she prayed a silent thank-You instead.
Ever since coming back to Serendipity, she’d been on a roller coaster of ups and downs with Rowdy.
She much preferred the ups.
Because she still cared for Rowdy.
Knowing her feelings would show in her eyes, she quickly turned away, making a big deal of picking up Toby as if she’d heard him cry.
Her son was still sound asleep and hadn’t made a peep. He was just an excuse for Angelica to keep her attention focused anywhere but at Rowdy.
After all that had happened between them, she hadn’t considered that latent feelings for him might ramp up as suddenly and intensely as they had.
Of course, she would always care for him. She had once been ready to tie her life to his in marriage, as youthful and immature as that love might have been.
But this—these emotions were a whole other thing. In just a little over one short month, she had gotten to know Rowdy in ways she couldn’t even have imagined in her youth.
She understood and truly appreciated the hard work that had turned him from a lanky boy to a well-muscled and weathered cowboy.
And most of all, she finally got the honor and integrity that made Rowdy rise far above all of the other men she’d ever known.
She would never share these newfound revelations with him. It was awkward enough to be around him, sometimes even painful, without blabbing out her emotional discovery.
Besides, he expected her to leave. To fulfill Granny’s last wishes and then head on back to Denver, selling Granny’s ranch to him.
And up until now, that’s just what she’d intended to do. Or maybe she’d just blinded herself as to what was really going on in her heart.
“Is everything okay over there? How’s Toby?” Rowdy called.
Heat flamed to her face and she kept her head bowed, carefully hiding it from Rowdy’s gaze.
“I thought I heard something, but it’s nothing.”
Except it wasn’t nothing.
Because what she’d heard was the call of her heart.
* * *
On the morning of the Fourth of July, Rowdy arrived at the public arena early to deliver the wild cows. He’d helped Ange load the sheep onto her trailer earlier, but she hadn’t yet arrived and he was glad for a quiet moment to compose himself.
When the subject of the ranch rodeo had first come up at Cup O’ Jo’s, Rowdy had tried his best not to react.
<
br /> In truth, every nerve ending in his body had snapped to life. Even the words ranch rodeo made him internally cringe as fear rumbled through his gut.
He’d avoided attending the annual ranch rodeo since the year he’d been injured, but if anyone had noticed, they’d been kind enough not to mention it.
But for some reason, he hadn’t wanted Ange to know that the saddle bronc riding hadn’t just injured his knee but had crushed his self-confidence, as well.
Pride, he supposed.
He’d been telling the truth when he’d told Ange that she hadn’t forced him into the competition that fateful day. He wasn’t a wrangler and he’d never started a horse in his life, but he could ride as well as the next cowboy, and anyway, it was a ranch rodeo. There were no rules about spurring and raking. All he had to do was somehow manage to stay in the saddle for eight seconds, any way he could.
How hard could that be?
As it turned out, he’d remained in the saddle for longer than eight seconds—or at least his foot had. His boot had caught in the stirrup and he couldn’t get it loose. After the horse bashed his knee into the wall, causing him to lose his precarious balance, he’d been dragged along on the ground until he’d nearly passed out from the pain.
As far as he knew, his accident was the only major incident that had ever happened at the annual event, before or since, and it had been a freak accident that would never be repeated, so he shouldn’t be worried. But this year it was teenagers competing in the games.
Nearly all of them had grown up doing a semblance of the kind of skills they’d be demonstrating today, but he couldn’t help the hoof-in-the-gut feeling that came at odd intervals and caught him off guard every time.
He didn’t want Ange to see him this way. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this, lacking the courage to face up to his fears. He’d better cowboy up, and quickly, because Ange’s SUV and trailer were just now pulling into the arena.
He waved her over to where he was opening the tops of the paint buckets and stirring each color with a paint stick.
She placed Toby nearby, still strapped into his car seat, close enough to keep an eye on him but well away from the paint fumes.
“The teens are going to have a blast with this,” she said, and then paused and observed him closely.
“Yeah. It’ll be great fun,” he agreed in a ridiculously and patently unbelievable tone that didn’t belong to him at all. His voice hadn’t been that high and squeaky since his own adolescence.
She put her hand on his forearm. Their gazes met and locked, her liquid blue eyes drawing him in. His heart pounded and his lungs forgot they were supposed to function on their own.
“Are you going to be okay?” she whispered. “Really?”
He wasn’t even close to okay, except it had nothing to do with the ranch rodeo or saddle bronc riding and everything to do with the woman before him.
The empathy in her gaze nearly undid him, but there was something else in her eyes, and that was what caused his pulse to launch into the stratosphere.
It was more than her feeling sorry for him, more than the awful way they’d cast blame back and forth about something that was nobody’s fault, or even all of the crazy mistakes they’d made between them.
She cared for him—as a woman cared for a man. He could see it. Feel the warmth emanating from her heart. And somewhere in this crazy storm of emotions stampeding through him, he realized that he cared for her, too.
Everything around them faded into the background, and all he could see was Ange, in all of her vibrant, colorful beauty, both inside and out.
Nothing else mattered besides the two of them, the man and the woman they had become.
Here.
Now.
The products of everything that had gone before, yes, but also with the potential of what was to come.
He framed her face with his palms and tipped her chin up with the pad of his thumb.
Then he paused, needing to be completely sure. If he was misreading the signals, if his heart was getting ahead of his head, the result could be disastrous.
“Rowdy.” She said his name in her rich dark chocolate alto.
It was all the encouragement he needed, and he removed his hat and tossed it onto the ground. He brushed a long strand of her straight blond hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear, all without losing eye contact with her.
Slowly, his mouth came down on hers, starting with just the gentlest brush of his lips over hers before he kissed her in earnest.
Her lips were as soft and sweet as he remembered, but she had changed since the last time they had kissed, and so their kiss had changed, as well.
Different.
Mature.
Better.
Even though he’d been trying his hardest to keep them at bay, he recognized the emotions he was feeling—that they were sharing.
Rowdy closed his eyes and deepened the kiss, shoving his thoughts aside to make room for his heart to take over.
Chapter Ten
Ange ran her palms up Rowdy’s chest and over his shoulders before locking her arms around his neck and pulling him closer.
He’d changed a lot from when they were young. He carried so much more strength and confidence in his frame. And while their kiss felt familiar, it was equally as foreign, and she desperately wanted to explore all that was new.
With Rowdy, she had always felt loved and cherished, but now she had a new appreciation for what was happening between them.
Something fresh.
Something wonderful.
And, perhaps, something that would last this time.
Even after he brushed one last kiss over her lips, he didn’t let her go.
Their connection was magnetic as he tucked her close to his chest. She laid a hand over his heart, finding both comfort and exhilaration in how fast it pounded and how quickly his breath was coming.
“Ange,” he murmured into her hair, his voice tender. “I don’t—”
Whatever he’d been going to say was cut off by a bubbly laugh coming from the announcer’s booth.
With the microphone on.
“Do you still think Frances made a mistake?” Jo asked with a throaty cackle. Her laugh reverberated through the thankfully still-empty arena. “Seems to me she knew exactly what she was doing.”
Angelica expected Rowdy to immediately drop his hands from her waist and step away. When he didn’t, Angelica took it upon herself to twist out of his arms.
As usual, she hadn’t thought her action all the way through to its logical conclusion.
The moment she’d stepped into Rowdy’s embrace, all she could do was follow her feelings and never mind her brain telling her to pump the brakes.
Now her emotions had left Rowdy exposed to ridicule. Angelica had no doubt Jo would razz the both of them. She had set herself up as some sort of errant matchmaker, and that was bad enough.
But what if someone else had come in and seen them kissing—one of the local ranchers or the teenagers who’d be competing in the day’s events?
Was it a mistake to have followed her heart?
Her gaze tried to capture Rowdy’s. Would he engage with Jo and her teasing, or shut her out with some inane explanation that she hadn’t actually seen what she’d thought she saw?
He did neither.
He had already turned away and was opening the trailer door to lead the two wild cows to their pens.
As if their kiss had never happened.
Angelica could take a hint.
She could follow his lead.
“Where’s Frank?” she called as she picked up Toby, still covered and in his car seat. She made a show of walking around and blatantly surveying the colored chalk lines that would be used in rounding up strays.
“Draggin’ his fee
t and bellowin’ up a fuss, as usual, the old goat. He’ll get here when he gets here.”
As the teenage competitors and the wranglers from the ranches they represented started arriving and unloading their horses and equipment, Angelica continued her last-minute check of the arena.
Anything to keep her mind off what had happened between her and Rowdy.
Had he just been caught up in the moment, or had he felt the same familiar-yet-different spark that she had?
She ended up at the pen holding the sheep she and Rowdy had brought from her ranch. Rowdy liked to tease her about it, but she recognized many of them now, and they each had a name. Every one of her sheep was an individual to her, not just part of a collective.
If saddle bronc riding was the most high-adrenaline, super-exciting event in the lineup, then mutton busting was the cutest, with the younger members of ranching families wearing hard helmets and getting plopped on top of a sheep to hold on for as long as they could.
Every one of those children would earn bragging rights today. They were the future of ranching.
However, this year, a new event might surpass even mutton busting for the cuteness factor. If the mutton busters were the future of ranching, then the Baby Cowboy was the future’s future.
Angelica couldn’t wait for Rowdy to see Toby’s costume, but she was trying to keep it a secret until the actual unveiling happened.
She’d spent a lot of time planning and executing Toby’s outfit, and he was absolutely adorable, if she did say so herself.
Which she did, even if she was totally biased.
First, she’d visited the tiny clothing section of Emerson’s Hardware and cobbled together an outfit from what she was able to purchase and what she had on hand.
She’d never learned how to sew, so she thought the fact that she’d cut here and sewn there was pretty impressive, and she was proud of herself. Even if Toby didn’t win the contest, he was and always would be number one in her heart.
As the stadium filled, Angelica looked around for Rowdy and found him leaning against the back side of one of the bronc riding chutes, his forearms on the fence and one boot propped on the bottom rung.
