A Cowboy in Shepherd's Crossing

by Ruth Logan Herne

  “I’ll say.” The uppermost roof was done and the side wing was being retooled by a crew of four. “It’s amazing how a good roof finishes the look of a place, isn’t it?”

  “In this case, it couldn’t hurt,” the foreman told him. “I’ve got two guys who can help you with demolition inside if you want. I can spare them for two days once this job is done. That would save them from a lull no one wants or can afford.”

  “Are they solid workers?”

  “Wouldn’t offer them if they weren’t. Those of us sticking around for the long haul know how important it is to have good help. Frankly, I’m amazed that the old lady is tackling this.” His expression appeared more disparaging than amazed. “It’s kind of scary but cool, all at once. I mean, what’s the point?”

  Funny.

  Jace didn’t have a whole lot of respect for his biological grandmother, but hearing someone else call her “the old lady” bothered him. “She’s my grandmother, Art. And no matter how eccentric she may be, she’s hired us to do a job and deserves respect.”

  The foreman looked from Jace to the house and back. “You’re messing with me, right? Because I knew your parents. Remember?”

  “My parents adopted me. Gilda is my biological grandmother.”

  “Well, that’s one for the local news, isn’t it?” Art folded his arms and braced his legs. “You never knew?”

  “Nope.”

  “In a town that’s not known for keeping the lid on anything, folks sure managed to do a good job keeping quiet on this.” Art didn’t hide his surprise. “Any more surprises up your sleeve, Jace?”

  “Two, but nothing you’d believe so we’ll leave that for another day. Let’s see what you’ve got.” Art showed him around the buildings. They decided to wait on new gutters until painting was done, and just as Jace was about to head back to his place, Gilda came out the front door wearing another simple cotton dress, the kind with a little white collar and a cinched waist. It was a dress that seemed to come from a long-gone era. “Why are you still here?” He moved forward, concerned because the noise level couldn’t be good for an elderly person.

  “I had a few things to attend to, and five cats to feed,” she told him. She indicated her worn car. “But now I’m ready to go over to Pine Ridge. I’m going to show Corrie how to put up sour cherry jam. It’s not something they did in Kentucky, I guess.”

  “I love sour cherry jam,” he said. He wasn’t sure why an old-fashioned jam kind of connected him to her, but it did. “It’s always been a favorite of mine.”

  “I gave your mother my recipe a long, long time ago,” Gilda told him as she moved toward her car. “She liked learning things and she especially liked learning things about you. Knowing you loved jam and bread from the time you were just a little tyke made her feel like she’d been part of that first year, and that’s a good feeling for any mother.”

  “Except mine.” He put the words out there and let them hang. Art had gone back to work and Gilda paused, her hand on the car door, her eyes down.

  “Barbara loved you,” she said finally. “As much as she could love anyone, Jason, and I don’t know if that’s because we failed her or she failed us, and when you get to this age you realize it doesn’t really matter and never did. What I do know is that if God offers the chance and time to fix it, you jump on board and do what you can. She didn’t have to have you, you know. The law had opened up choices and she could have ended the whole thing and no one would have been the wiser.”

  Jace stood stock-still as her implication came clear.

  “Especially when Lionel shrugged his shoulders and walked off.”

  The thought of a father turning away from a child was incomprehensible to Jace and the very opposite of how he was raised. “He didn’t want me.”

  “He didn’t want much of anything except to be respected but then he had a hard time doing anything respectable so that became a problem.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. “He wasn’t a terrible person, but he wasn’t a strong person, and when your grandfather offered him money to go away, he took it. I’m not saying it was a bad thing to do, but it broke Barbara’s heart, thinking he could be bought. She took her college money out of the funds we set up for her and decided she didn’t have one drop of interest in being a mother... And that’s when I thought of Ivy and Jason.” She sighed softly, gazing out, then brought her eyes back to his. “They wanted a baby so badly and thirty years ago there weren’t all these specialized clinics to help folks who couldn’t have children, so year after year they waited. Hoping. Praying. They’d put in for adoption but babies were scarce.” She winced. “When Barbara decided she wanted her freedom, placing you with Ivy and Jason seemed like the right thing to do. I had exactly what they wanted.” She said those words softly. So softly.

  But Jace heard the truth behind the words. “A dark-skinned baby that wouldn’t fit the Hardaway image.”

  She turned toward him with a look of anguish. Not just everyday sorrow, but true grief. “You always fit my image, Jason. From the very first day. But I will confess that I married a man who wasn’t the kindest or best or a believer in anything other than himself and money, so in that way you’re correct. You didn’t fit that Hardaway image. But don’t you ever think for one solitary moment that you didn’t fit mine. Because you did.”

  She opened the car door, climbed in and pulled it shut behind her. Then she backed out, leaving him to consider what she’d said.

  Easy words now. To pretend she’d cared, that she’d loved him. That she’d gone the distance for him, but the former opulence of the grand old house said that appearances had been important, at least back then.

  He moved to the classic barn, climbed up to the loft for a better view and paused.

  Idyllic beauty rolled along fields tipping away from the house. From the ground, two decades of growth obscured the view of the land that made up the Hardaway acreage. From here, the rolling fields opened wide with opportunity. Gilda must have rented some of the land out, a smart move. Two mammoth hay fields stretched across the valley. A series of broad paddocks meant for cattle linked far pastures to the nearest barn, but there were twin barns forming an L at the far end of the second paddock. From here he could see the gravel drive, hidden from the road by long years of brush growth, where trailers must have pulled in to load market calves.

  The place must have thrived in its day.

  A tiny seed of what-if stirred inside him.

  Could this place be brought back to life? Could the ranch be restarted?

  Does it matter? It’s not yours to speculate on.

  It wasn’t, thought Jace as he snapped a series of pictures with his phone, but he wasn’t a fool. He’d sat at Grandpa Middleton’s feet when the old man talked about Middleton land. Middleton horses. The Middleton Ranch, gone before Jace was born, but something to aspire to. A few bad years had put the ranch on the market a long time ago, and Jace understood the truth in that. A farming enterprise could sustain some ups and downs, but too many bad years spelled disaster.

  But this—

  This spread must have been unbelievable in its day, and still Gilda had let the whole thing go to wrack and ruin once her husband died.

  A call from the pediatrician’s office interrupted his musings. And when he explained why he needed both girls to be seen and evaluated, the nurse offered him an appointment in four days.

  He gripped the phone tight. “Four days? You can’t get them in sooner?”

  “Are they ill, sir?”

  “No, they’re fine.”

  “No fever, no injury, nothing out of sorts?”

  “Well, if you can conclude that a possible hearing loss isn’t out of sorts, then no. I guess not.” He sounded snippy. He felt snippy, as if this should be taken much more seriously by the medical community.

  She moved the appointment up a day and apol
ogized, which made him feel like a jerk. “Mr. Middleton, we’ve got to get the records transferred from the clinic so we can see what the twins have had in the way of immunizations and care. To be able to properly assess what’s going on, we need to do physicals and bring them up to date in our practice. It’s not that Mountain View Pediatrics doesn’t share your concern, but we’d be remiss to jump the gun before we have all the facts, and because you’ve got twins, I need to block out sufficient time for each baby.”

  He hated that it made perfect sense, and when she gave him a twelve-thirty Thursday appointment time, he realized someone would be missing their lunch break because he’d thrown a mini-fit. “Actually, go back to the Friday date,” he told her. “You’re right, I’m new at this and more than a little nervous. And let me add that I hate admitting that,” he finished.

  “If you’re sure?”

  “Yes. Friday at nine thirty is fine.”

  He pocketed the phone before he climbed down the loft ladder, then pulled it back out when he reached the ground floor and hit Rosie’s number on speed dial. “How are the girls doing?”

  She laughed. “So well! Miss Ava has taken a few more steps today, but mostly is crawling and trying to make her way to off-limits places like the stove and the bathroom, while Annie is quite content to amuse herself and watch her sister’s antics from a distance.”

  “How can they be so different?” he asked as he moved to his truck. “They’re genetically identical. This makes no sense.”

  “The body may appear the same, but the soul is unique, is it not?”

  He hadn’t thought of that. It made perfect sense. “Well, of course they couldn’t have the same soul.”

  “Exactly the truth, which is why science can only do so much. For the rest, we trust in God.”

  “Thank you, Rosie. I’m heading back to my place to work on the bathroom. Call me if you need me.”

  “Of course.”

  He drove back to his parents’ house—his house now, his and Justine’s—quickly. There was a lot to do in the next week because once they began interior demolition on Gilda’s house, he’d be tied there for several months. Even working with a crew of one or two, he wouldn’t be setting any speed records, and how would the folks at Pine Ridge hold up if Gilda became a regular visitor?

  He cringed but decided to cross that bridge when he came to it. He spotted Melonie’s car as he crested the hill a few minutes later. His pulse jumped.

  He tamped it right back down. She’d made her position clear, but the moment he spotted her sitting in the shade of the catalpa trees, wearing that ridiculously big hat and tapping away on her laptop, his heart leaped again.

  She looked up. Smiled. And when she did, something stirred inside him, an urge to keep right on inspiring those smiles. He crossed the yard as she stood. “Were you able to set something up for the girls?” she asked right off.

  His heart thwarted his lame attempts to tamp it down the moment she asked the question. While their job at Hardaway Ranch was huge, nothing mattered more than those babies’ well-being. “Friday morning.”

  “That’s the soonest they could see them?” She looked as surprised as he’d felt, but when he explained the nurse’s reasoning, she nodded. “That makes sense,” she agreed when he was done. Then she indicated the laptop. “I think I’ve grown too accustomed to instant gratification and quick-moving programs. I have to say that’s one of the perks of being up here in the country. Things aren’t moving at a breakneck pace.”

  She turned away to get the laptop. “You found Kentucky to be fast-paced?” The South wasn’t exactly known for moving quickly.

  She burst out laughing and turned back.

  So pretty, with her hair pulled off to one side, just enough to hide that scar. So bright and engaging. A great smile. The inviting laugh. And skin so soft...so touchable...

  He reached a hand to her cheek.

  Yes, he’d promised himself to steer clear, but there was no keeping clear of this woman. Her warmth and joy urged him closer, even when common sense scolded him to keep away. “Melonie.” He didn’t mean for his voice to go all deep and husky. But it did, the moment he felt the warmth of her skin beneath his hand.

  She didn’t move. She gazed up at him with a softer smile now, but a look that offered permission. Permission he couldn’t refuse.

  He kissed her. He kissed her long and slow. And she kissed him right back. He held her close, her head tucked against his big, old cowboy-beatin’ heart. “I know we’re not supposed to do this.”

  “So why do you suppose we keep right on doing it?” she whispered, but there was amusement in her tone. “Because I’m not going to pretend I don’t like it, Jace.”

  He smiled, his cheek pressed against her hair. “I’d say we like to tempt fate, but we don’t.”

  She shook her head, agreeing.

  “Or maybe it’s that we’re thrown together and proximity is the guiding factor.”

  “I’ve been in proximity to a lot of men over the years, and I can’t remember anything remotely like this.” She leaned her head back and caught his gaze, which got her kissed again.

  “Then maybe it’s just meant to be, Melonie. Maybe we’d be downright foolish to fight it.”

  He felt her smile against the thin cotton of his shirt. “Now, that’s a solid pick-up line.”

  “Or a solemn pledge,” he whispered. But then he stepped back firmly. “However, we’ve got work to do, and I need to read up on kids’ hearing disorders later, so what’ve you got for me? And I promise not to shoot it down too quickly.”

  She picked up the laptop and set it onto her lap as he settled onto the bench beside her. She showed him a photo of the front of Gilda’s house. “We’ll keep this the same except for adding this eight-foot window unit here. It’s a shame to have a view like that and not exploit it from the house.”

  He’d noticed that, too. “So we add on this window bay. For both stories?” he asked, surprised, and she nodded.

  “It will balance the lines of the house and that way whoever has the master bedroom on the second floor can share the view that we’ll have in the living room.”

  “It’s beautiful. And functional,” he added.

  “Function first, but there’s nothing wrong with dolling it up,” she told him. She was looking down and when she did, she pushed the hank of hair from her left shoulder, revealing the scar.

  He reached up gently. Then ran his finger along the inverted C of the mark.

  She turned sharply, and there was no missing the deer-in-the-headlights look she gave him. “Stop that.”

  He dropped his hand but not his attention. “What happened?”

  She huffed a breath, went back to the computer and ignored his question.

  Jace Middleton didn’t hold well with being ignored. “Tell me.” He left the words hanging for a few seconds before he whispered, “Please.”

  She stared down.

  Her jaw went tight, and for just a moment she resembled her uncle when he’d had about enough of people’s nonsense. But then she breathed in and out. She lifted the shoulder closest to him in a half shrug. “I went a few rounds with a very big horse when I was eight years old. The horse won.”

  He leaned forward to catch her eye. “I’m so sorry.” The thought of a small child being injured by a huge horse wasn’t something he’d ever had to worry about. Now he would.

  She looked the other way.

  “Hey, don’t do that.” He reached around and turned her gently. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

  “Yet, you did.”

  “Yes.” He waited for her to turn. She didn’t. “I asked Lizzie and she said it wasn’t her story to tell.”

  “Old news, Jace. I’d prefer to talk about the future, not the past.”

  If sadness had a name, it was written in her
eyes. Her expression. He recognized that emotion in her face right now, and he longed to make it disappear. “We don’t have to say any more about it. Not now. Not ever. But if you ever want to talk, Melonie?” He stroked her cheek, staying clear of the scar. “I’m here.”

  For just a moment he thought she might give in. Open up.

  She didn’t. Gazing down, she went to the next page of her prospective designs. “I appreciate the offer.”

  Give her space. Give her time. Give yourself time to feel your way through all of this.

  “When is your sister coming in?”

  It was a good change of subject. He’d had some time to get used to this strange turn of events. Justine would be coming face-to-face with the babies and the reality that he wasn’t biologically related to her. “Friday night. Then she catches a flight back on Sunday afternoon.”

  “Well, let’s get cracking here. If you can have the girls over here, then Justine has time to absorb all of this without the entire Fitzgerald clan hovering around.”

  “It is a whole lot busier and noisier than it used to be,” he teased, but it was the simple truth. Since Lizzie and Corrie had come to town, the ranch had courted visitors of all kinds, held a beautiful memorial service for Sean Fitzgerald and stirred up emotions in a place that most thought was dead.

  Shepherd’s Crossing wasn’t dead.

  Sleeping, maybe, but the Fitzgerald women didn’t seem too keen on letting things lay low or stay quiet and he was beginning to think they were just what the town needed.

  Chapter Twelve

  The paint crew arrived at Jace’s house at dawn Thursday morning. They had the house and trim done just in time for a local service to install gleaming white gutters, but when Melonie asked about moving the girls into the house, Jace put her off.

  “I’m going to wait until Justine heads back to Seattle,” he told her Friday morning as he and Corrie fed the girls.

  “Why?” she asked as she sipped her coffee. If she stayed on this side of the wall, maybe the longing to jump in and feed those babies—care for those little girls and their handsome guardian—could be kept in submission.