A Cowboy in Shepherd's Crossing

by Ruth Logan Herne

Zeke’s eyes rounded. “And I can be a big cowboy like my dad!” He dashed down the steps, climbed onto the hitching-post rail across the way and brandished a pretend lasso over his head with his good arm.

  By the time Corrie had the girls packed up, Jace was heading their way. “I’ll let you two go over plans.” Lizzie moved toward the equine barns west of the house. “You know where to find me if you need me.”

  Jace held up his watch. “Do we still have time to look things over before we meet the roofers?”

  “Ten minutes is all I need. Would you like to look at things here or at the table?”

  “Here’s fine.” He kicked off his boots at the door and settled alongside her on the couch.

  “Can you see the screen?”

  He inched closer... He’d been throwing straw. The scent of yellow straw and green hay clung to him.

  “Coffee.” Cookie came into the living room with to-go cups and set them on the coffee table. “I figured you might be needing some by roofer number two. And pretty sure your grandma doesn’t stock cowboy blend.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled up at him.

  Jace acknowledged Cookie’s statement with a wry look. “True enough. Thanks, Cookie.”

  The cook tipped one finger to his fishing hat. “No problem.”

  Focus on the computer. On your work. Ignore the hunky guy sitting right next to you.

  “The first floor.” She pointed out changes to him, updates that would bring some life back to the house. “I’ve moved your bedroom upstairs, and shifted your room to an office and this room to your sister’s room. If that’s all right with her.”

  He pulled out his phone and texted Justine right away. She answered with a quick thumbs-up emoji. “Done. That way I’m on the same floor as the girls.”

  “Exactly. Jace, what if this doesn’t all get worked out legally? What if their mother comes back and takes them or the county doesn’t let you have them?”

  “A serious question that deserves a serious answer.” He folded his hands in his lap and leaned forward. “It might take months to get things worked out. I expect the county will give us temporary permission to watch the girls when we ask, but in the meantime, I’m just figuring that the girls are visiting their uncle. And their uncle needs to have things ready for them.”

  “You don’t worry that the county might take them away?”

  He shook his head. “No, because for all of my grandmother’s bluster, her money speaks around here. You see the mess she’s made of things. But in their day the Hardaways helped a lot of people. If Gilda Hardaway claims these girls as her great-grandchildren, no one’s going to argue, especially when a simple DNA test will bear her out. And if she asks her long-lost grandson to take care of them, no one will blink an eye at that, either. What Gilda says, goes.”

  “And their mother?”

  He stared at her, confounded. “I don’t know her. I know she’s abandoned them once, and that Rosie and Harve Senior had concerns about her. I can’t predict the future.”

  She nodded.

  “But I can prepare for it the best I’m able. Either raising two precious little girls or putting up a new For Sale sign next spring.”

  “You don’t worry?”

  “Try not to,” he told her. “My parents didn’t believe in worrying. They believed God would provide. And that the rough roads of life built character. I always thought I took after them.” He slanted a rueful look her way. “Oops.”

  “Nature might get things started but nurture adds the finishing touches.” She flipped to the upstairs layout. “I don’t know where we girls would be without Corrie. She’s the only mother I’ve known. It didn’t matter that she didn’t birth us. It mattered that she loved us. And she’s been right there with us, every step of the way, even when the money ran out.”

  “Selfless love.”

  “Yes.”

  “I like that you’re going to put a full bath downstairs. It’ll make life easier with kids.”

  “And it could make prospective buyers happy.”

  He stood quickly. Was it her changes that caused that swift response? Or the thought of selling the family homestead? “Gotta grab that shower and hit the road.”

  “One more thing.” She flipped to the home’s exterior page, then held up the layout image for him to see.

  His expression changed. He sat right back down. Then he reached out one finger and traced the outline of the stone-rimmed garden beneath the bedroom windows. “You can do this?”

  His face was filled with love and longing and something indefinably sweet. “Yes.”

  “It’s perfect.” He indicated the picket fence separating the house from the road. “I should have kept that up better. I knew it. Then the weather bested me and I couldn’t make it a priority.”

  “Now you can. We don’t want the girls to get splinters.”

  “No, of course not. I—” He braced his hands together, then faced her. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  She started to shake her head, but she stopped when he laid one strong, calloused hand against her knee. “Don’t shrug it off. When that Realtor started on me to change this and do that and fix the other thing, all I heard was take apart your whole life, throw it away and buy plastic.”

  She half smiled, half winced. “Ouch.”

  “I couldn’t do it. It was like doing demo on our lives. But this.” He faced her directly. “This is beautiful. My parents would have loved this. Simple beauty.” He met her gaze and then, for long, drawn-out seconds, he kept meeting her gaze. As if wondering...

  She was wondering the same thing, but she was only here temporarily. She hadn’t come to take over the equine side of the ranch, like Lizzie had done. She wasn’t here to make her mark on western Idaho. She was here to claim the stake her late uncle offered. A share of an enterprise. Then someone would buy her out, she’d return to civilization and continue her quest for a nationally renowned cable TV show.

  She closed the laptop, stood and grabbed her coffee and her notebook bag. “I’ll be in the truck when you’re ready to go.”

  Her phone buzzed a text as she climbed into his truck a few minutes later. She opened it. Production company didn’t just like the mock episode, Ezra informed her. They LOVED it. Time crunch is a problem. Call me.

  So the production company loved it, but there was no getting around the time crunch. She was here for the coming year. Despite that, the news made her smile.

  “Good news?” Jace asked as he took the driver’s seat. He turned the key and thrust the truck into gear. It jerked, then stalled. He started it again, then scolded the engine. “Hang on until I get the first third of Mrs. Hardaway’s money, okay? I’m not draining the savings account to save your sorry hide.”

  “Nice news, yes,” she answered. She motioned to her car parked next to the three-stall garage. “I had no idea how expensive car repairs were until our family fell apart. Talk about a reality check. It’s like a thousand here, a thousand there.”

  “I’m good around a lot of things, but new engines aren’t one of them. Now, an old tractor like that one.” He pointed to the big green rig near the sheep barn. “That’s a tinker’s dream. One part comes off. The other one goes on. With some coaxing along the way. Not a circuit board in sight.”

  “You like working on vehicles?”

  “Winter work,” he told her. “Your uncle heated the far barn so that we can overhaul equipment all winter, get it all ready for spring.”

  “I cannot even imagine what it would take to heat a place that size for the whole winter.”

  “Do that again.”

  She frowned. “Do what again?”

  “The drawl.”

  She was tempted to go all Southern belle on him, but that would be stupid. And after having her last boyfriend walk out when he realized she was broke and in
debt, she wasn’t about to mess around.

  Her goals didn’t include life up north, so she refused the invitation to flirt. “I worked real hard to lose the drawl for mass-market appeal. The irony is that if I get my own TV show—” she faced him more squarely “—they’re probably going to want the drawl. So the joke’s on me.”

  He didn’t respond.

  He stared straight ahead while one finger tapped the steering wheel lightly.

  He might not think much of her goals, but she’d grown used to that with her father and she knew one thing for certain. No way was she going to live in the shadow of someone’s chronic disapproval ever again.

  Chapter Seven

  Jace’s spine went stiff when she mentioned television. “The magazine stuff wasn’t enough for you?”

  “It made a great stepping stone. But TV was always the dream.”

  Her words hit him like a dash of ice water on a mid-July day. “Everyone should have a dream.” He’d said the words, and mostly he believed them. But he’d been there before with a fame-loving woman and wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

  “Agreed.”

  He pulled into his grandmother’s yard. The first roofer’s truck had pulled in just ahead of him.

  He hopped out and shook the man’s hand, then introduced Melonie, and when they went up the steps, he let Melonie pick which side she’d go up...

  And he chose the other with the roofer squarely in between. He’d been left cold once. He understood women and their weird mix of feelings and the lure of dreams. He might get it...but he was never going to let it affect him again. No matter how enticing the drawl was.

  By the time they’d met with both roofers, it was lunchtime. Gilda met them by what had once been an ascending garden. Now it was a heap of towering weeds and thin trees trying to stake a claim in the hillside soil. She came forward with a purposeful stride, the four-pronged cane smacking the ground with each step. “Are you hungry?”

  He started to shake his head but Melonie replied first. “Starved. What’s the plan?”

  “I’ve got fresh bread and peanut butter and some of Sally Ann’s good jam. She works down at the Carrington Ranch and she makes the best jam around, though no one says a word of that to Millie Gruber. She’s a sensitive sort and folks worry about her feelings.” She peered over her glasses at them. “Let’s talk roofing.”

  Jace followed the two women, wondering what happened to the you-make-the-decisions-and-I’ll-sign-the-checks mentality.

  He didn’t want to eat in the wretched house.

  He didn’t want to eat with this old woman who cast out children, then grandchildren, as if they were unwanted commodities. But he couldn’t very well leave Melonie here, and she was already up the back steps.

  A cat yowled.

  He stopped dead, imagining cats on counters. On tables. Roaming around the sprawling house.

  But then the cat dashed out from beneath a huge yucca plant, over toward the old barn.

  The barn had a solid roof. He was just thinking how odd it was to reroof the empty barn and ignore the house when the door squeaked open. “Coming?”

  He faced Melonie.

  He wanted to back away. The combination of the broken house and broken lives was too much. How one thing affected the next and then the next until a twisted network of lies and half-truths knotted itself. He was just about to say no when she held out a hand.

  Just that.

  Her expression stayed calm, but her eyes and that hand said she understood.

  He moved forward when every fiber of his being wanted to go the other way, and when he climbed the four wide steps feeling grumpy and probably looking worse, she winked at him.

  Not flirting.

  Just...understanding.

  The wink broke the mood.

  If a formerly rich Kentucky girl could handle eating in the decaying mansion, he could, too.

  He followed her inside.

  “I forgot how to do fancy and nice a long time ago,” said Gilda as she moved about the room with more comfort than she displayed outside. “But a clean sheet’s as good as a tablecloth and the food’s fresh.”

  She’d spread a bright floral sheet over the table. Jars of fresh peanut butter and homemade jam were placed like centerpieces. A loaf of bread sat to their right, and a pitcher of tea stood to the left. “This is lovely, Gilda,” Melonie said.

  The old woman rolled her eyes, but acknowledged the antique rose-covered pitcher. “I got the tea recipe from your magazine. I’m not much for trying new things, least I didn’t used to be, but it looked good and tasted better. When I heard you were coming to town, and other things started falling apart, I realized maybe there’s a reason for the tea recipe. And the magazine. Your sister’s got a good heart,” she went on as she handed them knives for the peanut butter and jam. “She didn’t mind stopping by and sharing her ideas for getting things going. I didn’t think much of it initially, of course.”

  Jace was pretty sure that was accurate.

  “I like my own ideas in my own time...”

  Another spot-on self-assessment.

  “But when you don’t necessarily have much time left, you start listening better. When I heard the preacher’s words at Sean Fitzgerald’s memorial service, I thought to myself ‘Old woman! You’d best get going if you’re ever going to make a difference in the world.’ A good one, that is.” Her hand paused. Her face shadowed. And for a brief moment, Jace almost felt sorry for her.

  But not quite.

  “So you decided to start fixing things?” Melonie asked. And then she did the nicest thing. She’d spread peanut butter across her slice of bread—peanut butter that managed to fill the kitchen with a familiar nutty fragrance—and she handed it to him.

  He started to refuse it. “I can do my own, Melonie.” But he stopped when she gave him that look again. A look that pushed him to go along with the kind gesture. “Actually, thank you. That’s nice of you.”

  He spread jam onto the peanut butter, topped it with another slice of textured wheat bread, and when he took his first bite, the mix of flavors seemed like old times at his mother’s table, feasting on PB&J.

  “I didn’t used to like simple.” Gilda didn’t put peanut butter on her bread. Just jam. “I thought too much of myself to even think simple, and that’s the shame of it. I look back and shake a fist at myself, sayin’, ‘Gilda, what were you thinkin’?’ And yet I know exactly what I was thinkin’, being a woman who thought herself above others. That’s the devil’s own way of it,” she told them, almost scolding. “No matter how your life goes, or what wonders come your way, you don’t want to get caught in that kind of a cycle. It’s wrong, and while a part of me knew it then, I kept right on. Now, your mother...” She pointed her bread at Jace with an adamant expression on her face. “Ivy Middleton was one of the best women I’ve ever met, and I should have told her that more often but we were afraid of gettin’ up talk. Having folks figure things out. Because then you’d know things and the last thing she or your dad wanted was for you to be the talk of the town.”

  “So how exactly did they explain the sudden appearance of a one-year-old baby?” he asked point-blank. “Because if talk was what you wanted to avoid, handing over a baby in a small town probably wasn’t the best way to do it.”

  “There’s talk and then there’s talk,” she told him frankly. “She told folks that God had brought them the miracle they’d been praying for all along and folks loved her enough to let it go at that. Not being able to have children was a sorrow for so many, so when Justine came along six years later, that was quite the surprise and the joy, I’m sure.”

  He loved being Justine’s big brother. He’d loved helping his dad with her when Mom was working.

  “I’m not expecting you to love me, Jason.”

  He’d been about to eat the last
corner of the sandwich.

  He didn’t.

  “I don’t expect anything of the kind from anyone, but I have this vision,” she told him, then included Melonie in her look. “Of this house bein’ a home like it’s never been before. Like it’s never had a chance to be. With kids running up and down the hill. Playground stuff, too, like swings and slides and the stuff that childhood should be made of. Not stuffy gardens and fancy furniture like before, but a home. The way things should have been all along. I want to see it be that home before I die.” She coughed then. Not too loud and not too long, but enough for Jace to understand.

  “You wanted to discuss the roof,” he said, changing the subject.

  “I do not, I just figured it might be the only way to get you into the house and tell you my goals.” She nailed him with a look. “You looked ready to jump ship. I don’t have time or energy to chase you down, and there’s no one else I want to do this job, so if you’re having second thoughts, tell me now.”

  He sighed. Put his head in his hands for just a moment, then peered at her. “I was having second thoughts. But I gave my word, and a man’s word is his bond. I won’t let my reluctance mess this up. And I’ll do a great job. But I can’t just throw emotion away. I expect you know that.”

  “I do. Nor do I expect you to let bygones be bygones. It’s too much to ask, of course.”

  It wasn’t.

  It was exactly what his faith told him to do. What kind of person would he be to ignore that?

  “But I will be ever grateful for the help, Jason.”

  He wanted to correct her. He was named for his father, but everyone called him Jace. For as long as he could remember.

  But oddly it sounded right from her. He stood. “Thank you for lunch.”

  “Thank you for staying.”

  “It was delightful.” Melonie stood, too, but she reached over and hugged the old woman.

  Jace didn’t. He headed to the door. “I had another roofer appointment lined up for tomorrow, but I’m going to cancel it. Melonie and I both liked the second appointment today—”

  “Western Idaho Roofing.”