Big Chance Cowboy

by Teri Anne Stanley

  From the corner of his eye, he caught his sister’s smirk. He glared at her.

  “Here’s the deal,” Emma said. “Lizzie can’t keep him at her parents’ house because he’s a little more dog than they can handle.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “We don’t have a fence, and he’s still mostly puppy. He needs somewhere he can get some exercise. I can’t keep him.”

  “Take it to a shelter,” Adam told her.

  “Not an option,” Lizzie said, shaking her head.

  “He’d be killed before we got out of the parking lot,” Emma added. “Neither the county nor the city has the funding to run a no-kill shelter.”

  A memory came to him then, of Lizzie marching through the halls of Big Chance County High School, carrying a clipboard to collect signatures for some cause or other. “Why don’t you work your student council magic and get a new one built?”

  She lowered her chin and scowled at him from under her eyebrows. “Even if I had that kind of pull, it’s not going to solve my problem today.”

  “I can’t help you.” He wouldn’t back down, either.

  “I’m going to find him a new home. I’ll post something online tonight, but could he possibly stay with you for a while?” Lizzie asked. “I’ll come out and take care of him as much as I can, and maybe…” She bit her lip. “Maybe you could teach him some basic obedience? That would sure make it easier to find someone to adopt him.”

  “I don’t think so,” Adam told her, trying hard to ignore the fact that the woman whose memory had warmed many cold desert nights was standing inches away, more enticing than she had been in his exceptionally vivid dreams, and volunteering to visit him—well, visit his property—on a regular basis.

  She sighed—a tad too dramatically—and said, “If you won’t keep him, I’m going to have to take him to the shelter. My mother threatened to poison him if he chewed up anything else in the house. And then when he tried to get romantic with Ms. Lucy’s leg in the middle of Mom’s Fourth of July party planning meeting, the camel’s back broke.”

  Adam caught himself before he actually smiled. He remembered Lizzie’s mother with her perfectly arranged blond hair and always tidy PTA president appearance, giving him a polite but cold smile when he picked up his sister at their house. And Lucy Chance. That sourpuss had been old as dirt when he’d left town. How could she possibly still be alive?

  “I’ll pay for his kibble and clean up after him,” she assured him. “Whatever you want.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and her lips parted—to offer what?—but she closed her mouth, much to his disappointment. Not that he’d take her up on anything—hadn’t Emma said she was engaged or something?—but the recluse gig was boring sometimes. He could use some new fantasy material.

  Both women tilted their heads, and he could practically hear the “Pretty please with sugar on top?” that Emma had always tried to use on him as a kid. And then, Lizzie and those open, trusting eyes transported him back to the swing in her side yard all those years ago, looking down at the girl who was way too good for him, begging him to spend the last few hours before he left town with her. But this time, she was asking him to take care of her dog, and he was the last soul on earth she should want to get care from.

  Damn it. Emma knew why he didn’t want a dog, and she was being manipulative. Well, he wouldn’t be yanked around like that.

  “I’m really involved with getting this place back in shape,” he pointed out. Knowing he should have stopped with no, he went on, “There’s no way I can give a dog the attention it needs and do all this work.” He gestured at the disaster around them.

  Sensing weakness, Emma came in for the kill. “Lizzie already said she’d come out to feed and walk him. She just needs somewhere to keep him until he’s got a new home.”

  “I’d really appreciate it,” Lizzie said with her refined twang. “I felt so sorry for the poor guy, starvin’ to death there on the side of the highway, and—” She cut herself off. “Anyway, I really would appreciate it. I’ll make sure he’s no bother. If it gets too bad, I’ll…I’ll call animal control myself.”

  Lizzie’s eyes echoed her experience with disappointments, and he hated that at least one of them was his own fault, but like that long-ago summer night, he knew he had her best interests at heart. He had no business working with dogs, and seeing her here every day, knowing he couldn’t take another taste of those long-ago kisses, would be torture.

  If he’d ever had the upper hand in this situation, he’d lost it when he’d given that dog its first command, but he wouldn’t surrender easily.

  “I can’t train it.”

  But once again, Emma had an answer. “What if Lizzie trains him, and you just tell her how? That shouldn’t take you away from your incredible Rehab Addict activities.” She glanced around the property with a critical eye for his lack of progress.

  “I can do that,” Lizzie said, a little too quickly. “I’m working for my dad, but I’ve got a really flexible schedule.”

  He exhaled and looked around at the ranch. His sanctuary. Could he deal with Lizzie and her peppy energy out here all the time?

  He’d hurt her feelings back when they were younger. Turning away from her had been the right thing to do at the time.

  But that was then. Now she just wanted him to teach her to train her dog.

  “I bet Granddad would come out here and teach her,” Emma threatened.

  He shot her a glare. Granddad would come here and criticize and find fault before wandering into the bushes, looking for the refrigerator. There was a reason Adam suffered through visits in town, a reason that included keeping Granddad the hell away from the ranch.

  Emma’s mouth tipped up in a smile. She had him.

  Fine. “Nothing fancy. You learn ‘sit,’ ‘stay,’ ‘come,’ and ‘don’t eat shit you’re not supposed to.’”

  “Oh, thank you,” Lizzie breathed, and he felt a little rush of…something. Something light and unfamiliar.

  “Seven tomorrow morning. I spent ten years getting out of bed before dawn to take care of dogs. I’m not doing that again.”

  “I’ll be here at six thirty.”

  “You can feed the dog and get it out of the kennel when you get here.” He pointed at the barn where Granddad had built a series of indoor-outdoor enclosures. “Put the food on the porch for now. I’ll find something raccoon-proof before I go to bed.”

  “Okay.”

  The stupid dog rested its head on his foot.

  Damn it. No. He wasn’t going to like the damned thing. He was only keeping it from the pound.

  As he stood on the porch, holding the leash and watching his sister and the girl he couldn’t forget drive away, he tried not to notice that he hadn’t had anything close to a panic attack the whole time he’d been talking to Lizzie. As a matter of fact, the anxiety that had tried to take him down when he first saw the dog had left before it got a toehold.

  * * *

  “That was…interesting.” It was all Lizzie could think of to say when she and Emma were in the car and on the road back to civilization.

  “I thought it went pretty well,” Emma told her.

  “You did?” Lizzie thought Adam seemed about as happy to see her as he’d be to see the IRS.

  “Considering what a grump he can be, he was practically like that teapot lady from Beauty and the Beast.”

  The round little teapot lady was hardly who Lizzie thought of in reference to Adam. It was hard to believe, but Adam—who had been cowboy sexy in high school with his rare but wicked smiles and hooded gaze—had become a mash-up of the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and the Men’s Fitness Cover Guy of the Year.

  He’d traded that slouchy cowboy thing he’d had going on for military straight, badass, and simmering danger. His short, dark-brown hair made her fingers itch with the need to touch. But he’d
nailed Lizzie with a narrow blue-eyed stare that confused her because it held both hunger and rejection.

  Well, she’d been there, done that, and was home in Big Chance for a new start, not a rerun. She was no longer a simpering teenager with a huge crush on her best friend’s older brother; she was a professional woman with ambitions and self-respect. She’d spend time around him working with the dog, but she didn’t have to let him twist her in knots.

  “Seriously,” Emma continued, “he’s in better shape than a lot of guys who deployed.” She hesitated, a faraway sadness making a brief appearance before she refocused on the road. Lizzie suspected she was thinking of her late husband. “War messes people up.” Emma waved her hand as though to brush the statement away.

  “That really sucks.” Lizzie didn’t know what else to say. She’d read enough to know that PTSD, if that was Adam’s issue, affected everyone differently. “Is he getting help?”

  Emma gave a short laugh. “If he was, he wouldn’t tell me about it. He won’t admit there’s anything wrong, even though he can’t be in town for longer than ten minutes without sweating through his clothes. He almost never leaves the ranch. And did you see the bags under his eyes? I don’t think he sleeps, either.” There went that dismissive hand wave again. “I’m probably just hypersensitive.”

  “Because of Todd?”

  Emma nodded. “He shouldn’t have enlisted at all, but his daddy and granddad both served in the army, and he idolized Adam. Then I…I told him I thought he should do it. It wasn’t a good thing. He came back all kinds of messed up, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until it was too late. I should have stopped him.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Emma shook her head and ran a finger under a very shiny eye to keep her mascara from running but then jerked that hand back to the steering wheel. “Oh shit!” An old white pickup shot out of a gravel cross street and swung right in front of their car. With a squeal of brakes, Emma yanked the wheel and honked the horn. The truck sped away, leaving them stopped in the middle of the road in a cloud of dust.

  Panting, Emma gripped the steering wheel, staring after the disappearing vehicle. “You okay?”

  “I think so.” Lizzie’s heartbeat said otherwise.

  Emma took a deep breath as she released the brakes and cautiously accelerated.

  “I guess I forgot how everyone drives out in the country.”

  Emma harrumphed. “They’re not usually crazy like that, not coming out of Mill Creek Road. It’s too torn up and full of potholes.”

  “Is that old farm that Mitch Babcock’s family owned still out here? Back in the day, no one lived there, but it had a creek and a couple of big fields. I mean…of course the land is still there, unless it got sucked into another dimension.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure the land didn’t get hoovered up by aliens. The property still runs up against the back of our ranch. But something happened to the Babcocks a year or so after we graduated. Someone put a No Trespassing sign at the farm, and the next day, the Babcocks’ house in town went up for sale.”

  “No kidding.” Lizzie hadn’t heard any of this from her parents. “Do you know why?”

  Emma shrugged. “Someone said Mitch’s dad got caught embezzling money and they had to sell all their stuff before they left town.”

  “Huh.” Lizzie looked back over her shoulder, where the turnoff disappeared into the dust. “Remember how, in high school, kids went out there to…do things?”

  “Things?” Emma shot Lizzie a sideways glance.

  “Well, I never did,” she said primly. She would have. Especially if she’d been able to convince a certain Adam Collins to take her out there with him, but she’d never gotten an opportunity. He wasn’t exactly friends with Mitch, though, so he probably wouldn’t have taken her if he’d wanted to.

  Emma laughed. “Todd and I may have gone a couple of times, but I don’t think anyone goes out there now. At least not like we did in high school.”

  “What, kids don’t sneak out to party anymore?”

  “Ha. I don’t think they sneak, and I don’t think they go out. They just do stupid stuff at home.”

  “Lazy bums.”

  “Right?” Emma grinned.

  “When I was little, my dad used to drive by there and tell me all about how my great-something or other grandfather discovered gold in that creek. I don’t think anyone lived there even then. Obviously, someone’s still going out there. I wonder who owns it now?” An idea began to take shape in Lizzie’s mind, and she reached for her bag. Earlier this morning, her father had given her a few folders from the real estate office of properties he wanted her to look into. She’d only glanced at them before shoving them in her bag—she’d been distracted by a certain large dog. But now, she remembered seeing something about a property out here. She flipped through the top folder until she landed on a sticky note that said Make sell sheet for 9873 Wild Wager Road. “Oh.” Now she recognized the address.

  “What’s wrong?”

  9873 Wild Wager was where she and Emma had just seen Adam. Why wouldn’t Emma have mentioned a plan to sell the ranch? Would Adam sell it without talking to his sister about it? Could he? “Uh, nothing,” she finally said, flipping through some more pages. “Just something I forgot to ask Dad about earlier.”

  Lizzie changed the subject then, asking about the Chance cousins, because she’d heard that Joe Chance, who had been their class president, was now the mayor.

  While Emma filled her in on years of gossip, Lizzie closed the folder. She’d find out who was officially listing the property and why Emma didn’t seem to know anything about it.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m so glad you listened to reason and got rid of that horrible dog,” Mom said as she dumped artificial sweetener into her coffee. “You’re going to be so much happier without that responsibility. Now you can focus on living up to your potential.”

  “No pressure,” Lizzie muttered.

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just glad to be home,” she said more loudly and hugged her mom.

  “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

  They did seem to appreciate her help, and that made Lizzie feel good. She looked forward to making them both proud of her. Nothing to distract her except the small matter of a large dog who’d cried as she’d driven away from him yesterday and the cranky cowboy holding his leash.

  “Is Dad up yet?” she asked. “I wanted to go over some of these notes with him.”

  “Here I am.” Dad shuffled into the kitchen in his ancient terry cloth robe, the one Lizzie had bought him at least fifteen Christmases ago. It seemed bigger than it used to.

  He leaned over Lizzie’s shoulder to peer at the open folder, then turned to pour himself a cup of coffee. “That’s the old Collins place. What about it?”

  “Put that down.” Mom opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of water, and placed it in front of Dad, taking his coffee. “You know you can’t drink coffee on treatment days. It’ll make you sicker than a flea after getting dipped.”

  “I’ll get sick anyway,” he groused, then asked Lizzie, “Why are you looking at that?”

  “I’m going out there this morning, and I wanted to know who called you about listing it.”

  “Why do you have to go there?” he asked.

  “Adam Collins is keeping D-Day for now.”

  Mom harrumphed but didn’t comment.

  “Since I’ll see Adam, I thought I’d find out what price he hopes to get.” And why it was being sold, not that it was any of her business.

  “Too bad that stream from the Mill Creek farm doesn’t run through the Collins place,” Dad commented. “That would make it a lot more valuable.”

  “For cattle?” Lizzie asked. “I know there are about fifty acres, but I’m not sure much of that’s good
for grazing, if you’re thinking someone might want to lease it.”

  “Exactly,” Dad said. “The creek is unreliable anyway, which is why my great-grandfather gave up his gold claim upstream and moved to town, back in the day.”

  “That, and there wasn’t any gold,” Mom added.

  Lizzie thought again of the discussion she’d had yesterday with Emma, when that truck had come out of Mill Creek Road. Was the creek still running there, even occasionally? Was it still a place kids might like to swim and catch tadpoles? She shoved the idea flickering in the back of her mind deeper for the moment. There was an inaugural dog training session to get through first.

  “I guess I should take a look around so I can make suggestions about what work needs to be done out on the Collins place before it’s listed.” Dad didn’t sound too enthusiastic, but Lizzie took hope from the fact that he was at least still acknowledging he had a business to run.

  “I’ll take lots of pictures,” Lizzie assured him.

  He opened his mouth to protest, but Mom shoved a piece of toast in with a wink at Lizzie.

  “I tell you what, Dad. I’ll take notes and photos of everything I think you should see and even stuff I think you don’t, and then if you feel better, you can go out with me later in the week.”

  “We’ll see.” He shrugged. “Depends on how much life this treatment sucks out of me.”

  As fear bloomed in her chest, she forced herself to hold her smile. “Great. It’s almost a date.” She figured that was as close to a commitment as she’d get right now. She slung her bag over her shoulder, the weight of her camera and notebook banging against her hip. Grabbing her coffee and car keys, she moved toward the back door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Will you be here for dinner?” Mom asked before she completely escaped. “We won’t be back from the clinic in time for lunch, but I’m making liver and onions tonight.”

  “Oh. Gee. I’ll have to let you know. I might have a…thing. An appointment.” She didn’t look back to see Mom giving her the “I know you’re lying” face and instead made a beeline for her SUV.