Snowbound with the Cowboy Read online

  He hoped she would be just as delighted when she saw her cabin after her weekend in Butte, where she’d taken a cat and three of the dogs and was volunteering two days of veterinary services to the rescue group.

  Abby and Betty bustled around Tate’s kitchen, putting away the leftovers of the food they’d brought over for Sunday lunch while avoiding the litter of puppies scrambling around on the kitchen floor with the twins.

  “You certainly seem distracted, Tate.” Jess lifted a forkful of Betty’s blueberry pie. “Must be awfully quiet with Sara out of town. Have you heard from her?”

  “I wouldn’t expect to. But she did mention that she would be getting home late tonight, so she probably won’t even see the garage demo until tomorrow.”

  “I sure hope it was the right thing to do,” Betty fretted. “Just going ahead like that. What if Sara didn’t want that all cleared away?”

  Devlin laughed. “You didn’t see it, Grandma. The garage was completely destroyed. We made sure we saved anything that could be salvaged but there was very little, and the rest went into a Dumpster. Tate talked to Warren Branson first, anyhow. The property still belongs to him.”

  Betty’s mouth dropped open. “And how did that go? Millie and Warren have barely spoken to me in years.”

  “He didn’t want to talk to me, either.” Tate put down his coffee cup. “He hung up his phone when I called. So Jess and I went over yesterday morning and knocked on the door. We just explained we wanted to help Sara and make it a surprise, and I showed him some photos of the garage on my cell phone. I told him I would email him some photos of the job after it was done too. Once he understood it wouldn’t cost him anything, he was okay with the idea.”

  “We even got a mumbled thanks before he abruptly shut the door,” Jess added. “Not that we expected it. I think those folks will hold a grudge against the Langford family until the day they die.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Betty marveled as she joined them at the table with her coffee and slice of pie. “I’ve always felt bad about them losing their ranch. I don’t judge them for their feelings, but bitterness can eat away at a person and the only one it harms is himself. It’s a sad way to live.”

  The family lingered over more coffee and the guilty pleasure of another one of Betty’s extraordinary pies, then Abby looked at the clock and started rounding up the puppies and the twins.

  “We’ve got school tomorrow, girls—and evening barn chores in an hour. We’ve got to go. Help Uncle Tate put the puppies back in their pen, okay?”

  Sophie cuddled the white-and-gold puppy to her chest. “Can we keep this one? She’s my favorite.”

  “And these two are mine,” Bella announced. She sat cross-legged on the floor, with two puppies on her lap. “They’re so sweet. And they love me, Mama. See? They like to give kisses.”

  Abby’s eyes sheened with sudden tears as she bent down to pick up the other puppies and put them behind the gate barricading their bed in the storeroom. “That’s sweet, but they’re too young, and they would really miss their mother.”

  Betty leaned toward Tate. “Did you catch that? Jess and Abby have had the girls for over two years, and they’ve just started calling her Mama this past week. It means the world to her.”

  “And Jess?”

  “He’s still Uncle Jess, as far as they’re concerned—and I’m just Grandma Betty, even if it’s not technically correct. Maybe someday they’ll call Jess daddy. I hope so. Lindsay has no idea of who their father was.”

  He hadn’t known about the twins’ biological father. He’d been away for ten years on the rodeo circuit, with just random visits home. “Do you ever hear from her?”

  “Sadly, no. We tried to see her last year, but once she relinquished custody so Jess and Abby could adopt the twins, she wanted nothing to do with them. Though maybe it’s for the best. She’s still a very troubled girl.”

  Tate hadn’t seen Lindsay since they were kids, but he remembered hearing about his cousin’s behavior all too well. She’d run with a wild crowd, and had fallen into serious trouble with drugs that exacerbated her mental health issues. She’d ended up in more rehab facilities than anyone could count. Apparently the best thing she ever did for her little girls was to let them go to a loving home.

  “Okay, guys,” Abby announced. “Time for jackets. Our pickup is warming up, and Uncle Devlin has already gone outside.”

  Tate rounded up the last pup, and helped by walking Sophie out to Jess and Abby’s truck. The mysteries of the car-seat buckles and straps looked too daunting, so he stepped aside and let Abby take over.

  She gave him a playful nudge as he stepped back. “I promise it’s not as hard as it looks. Someday this will be you, Tate.”

  He laughed. “Probably not.”

  She looked over to where Jess was talking to Devlin and Betty, and lowered her voice. “Seriously, don’t let their teasing get to you. We all really like Sara and I can see real chemistry building between you.”

  “We’re just friends, Abby.”

  She tipped her head slightly in acknowledgment, a faint smile touching her lips. “These things should take a lot of time and only you will know—eventually—if she’s the right one. I’ll be praying on it, though, and you should too. Especially since you’ll be leaving Montana. You don’t want to look back in five years and wonder why you let her get away.”

  “Friends,” he said on a long sigh.

  But the twinkle in her eyes told him she didn’t believe him. Not one bit.

  He opened her truck door and shut it for her after she got in, then stepped back and watched them all drive away.

  Praying on it, she’d said.

  Maybe it would work for Abby and Betty and Pastor Bob.

  But he hadn’t had much luck with prayers when it truly mattered, so he was pretty sure God wouldn’t be concerned about him now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She’d gotten back to the cabin after midnight and gone straight to bed, too tired to do more than brush her teeth and set her alarm clock.

  Her hands ached from her death grip on the steering wheel. Her lower back ached after twelve spays and eight castrations at the shelter, plus a complicated compound fracture.

  With three surgeries tomorrow morning, she could only hope that ibuprofen would help.

  Light snow had started falling on her way home that turned to sleet, then freezing rain, making the last twenty miles slick and treacherous. The headlights had barely cut through the precipitation, leaving the road ahead a black tunnel with no highway markings visible on the asphalt.

  She’d prayed most of the way home.

  A text message chimed from her cell phone on the bedside table as she drifted off. Blearily patting the table, she found the phone and peered at the screen.

  I hear the roads are bad. Did you make it home OK?

  Despite her aching muscles and exhaustion, she smiled to herself, feeling a sense of reassurance and warmth flow through her at Tate’s concern.

  She had no doubt that he would’ve jumped into his four-wheel truck and come after her, if she’d ended up in a ditch twenty or thirty or forty miles away on some desolate road.

  Home safe ten min ago. Thanx

  She slid her finger over the screen to tap a simple smiley face, but with the awkward angle and darkness her fingertip slid downward and landed on a garish emoji of a dancing clown waving a banner that read SMILES!

  And of course it sent, a millisecond before she could catch it.

  Groaning, she flopped back on her pillow, her forearm draped over her eyes. He probably thought she was a complete idiot...and as the minutes ticked by without a response, she had no doubt.

  Sleep eluded her as she lay there, still feeling the vibration of the highway in her death grip on the steering wheel, still hearing the lash of the wind and sleet against the windows and t
he thump-thump-thump-thump of the windshield wipers on high.

  Her memories rolled back through the years, to the rhythm of those blades.

  In high school Tate had maintained a persona of being one of the wild, irresponsible boys. Parties. Fast cars. A magnet for the fast-and-flirty girls. An irreverent class clown. A boy who got in trouble and laughed it off.

  At least, that was the perception he’d fostered.

  Looking back, she could remember his air of bravado, yet he’d been nothing but kind to her when they’d dated those few months. Thoughtful. And he’d been so perceptive.

  He’d once found her distraught and crying, after her dad exploded over her B+ on an exam instead of an A, and Tate had comforted her, teased her a little, until he’d actually made her laugh.

  Despite her plan to shake up her parents by dating the wildest boy she knew, she’d fallen into the heady, overwhelming, emotional roller coaster of a teenager’s first love.

  But she’d felt guilty and ashamed too.

  And when she finally told him the truth—how she’d tried to use him to gain her parents’ attention, he’d walked away. It was exactly what she deserved. But it had also broken her heart.

  His teenage rebel act had been only a mask, she realized...like the one she’d worn in the face of her parents’ impossible expectations. But what she saw in Tate now was exactly what she’d glimpsed all those years ago.

  He was a good man, who could take in a menagerie of rescue animals—even a raucous parrot that blared show tunes from morning till night—without a word of complaint. He was a better, kinder man than anyone she’d ever met. And if she weren’t careful, she might start falling in love with him all over again.

  Or maybe she just hadn’t stopped.

  * * *

  Tate eased Blondie into a lope around the arena. Dropped her into a one-hundred-eighty-degree rollback, and brought her out of it and into the opposite direction on the correct lead. Smooth as silk.

  Some days, the uncertainty of his future gnawed at him—the possibility that someone else was out there, quietly waiting. Ready and able to bid far beyond what he could afford, and then his dream of taking over the rodeo company would disappear like a puff of smoke.

  There was nothing he could do about it. He just needed to bide his time, and hope that the outcome was right—whatever that was.

  But other days...

  He reached forward and stroked Blondie’s neck. Other days, it was just plain fun being back to training horses after a decade of riding broncs and racing from one rodeo venue to the next.

  This was a totally different approach to riding—gentle, slow progress—but it was what he’d done for his dad as a boy, and it offered a different kind of satisfaction than hearing the eight-second buzzer. And with all that—

  A text chimed into his phone. His pulse skipped a beat when he saw who it was from.

  Sara: I seem to be missing a garage. Should I call the sheriff?

  Tate: You were missing a garage the day it caught on fire.

  Sara: Guess I owe someone a lot of money...but would dinner do for starters? Or some stall cleaning?

  He laughed aloud, startling Blondie into a crowhop and nearly dropping his phone before he calmed her down.

  Tate: It was a team effort. Jess and Dev helped, as well.

  Sara: Then I owe you all dinner or a LOT of stall cleaning. Let’s figure out a time later.

  He smiled to himself as he pocketed his phone and eased Blondie into figure eights at a jog, then a lope.

  During his years as a championship bronc rider there had always been flocks of buckle bunnies following the rodeo circuit—fan girls eager to catch the competitors’ eyes, though he’d never been interested in one-night stands, and he’d traveled too much to ever find anything more meaningful.

  But seeing Sara again was a whole new dynamic.

  Come the first weekend in May, his life could change in an instant with the drop of an auctioneer’s gavel...though now he was no longer sure just what he wanted that future to hold.

  Pine Bend was where Sara had grown up and it was where she intended to stay, and with every day he was here, he was realizing just how much he cared for her.

  Was there a chance with her if he stayed? The only thing certain was that there’d be no chance at all if he left town and followed his dreams.

  He slowed Blondie to walk and guided her into a three-hundred-sixty-degree spin, then turned her toward the center of the arena, Abby’s advice still running through his thoughts.

  You don’t want to look back in five years and wonder why you let her get away.

  * * *

  Feeling a sense of satisfaction, Tate unsaddled his fifth ride of the day and put the young mare back into her stall. It had been a good day so far. Each of the training horses was showing steady progress, and by the time he finished riding the rest of them around six o’clock he’d be ready for a hot shower, quick supper and a couple hours in front of the fireplace with his latest Tom Clancy novel.

  Funny, how easily he’d settled into the routine here.

  He’d spent most of his adult life driving from one rodeo venue to the next—sometimes straight through the night to make the next town in time. Staying in an endless succession of hotel rooms that all looked the same. Eating truck-stop food that all tasted the same too. A fierce sense of competition had fueled his adrenaline and kept him moving, moving, moving. He’d never imagined that he could find equal satisfaction in life back on a ranch.

  He chuckled to himself as he led a buckskin gelding from a stall and cross-tied him. Yet here I am.

  Sara’s dogs began yipping and barking in the box stalls at the front of the barn. The tack room door opened and Sara appeared. “Hey, Tate. Can I do anything to help you—”

  A cat screeched and darted through the door ahead of her. She fell in a heap onto the concrete aisle. “Oooof!”

  “Are you okay?” Tate jogged over and knelt at her side as she woozily braced her hands on the floor and levered her shoulders off the cement. “Maybe you’d better just sit for a minute.”

  “Can’t believe I did this.” She touched a scrape on the side of her cheek and darted an embarrassed glance at him as she gathered her legs under herself and sat up. “Aunt Millie always told me to do the ‘barn cat shuffle’ if barn cats started winding around my ankles. I didn’t see that one in time.”

  “They’ve gotten me a time or two—especially if there are several.” She appeared alert and oriented and didn’t seem to be bleeding, thank goodness. “Does it hurt to move?”

  “No...the only thing hurt is my pride.”

  “Did you bump your head?” Tate brushed a swath of silky golden hair away from her face and gently lifted her chin with a fingertip to check her eyes for equal dilation. But then their eyes locked and he couldn’t look away. Such beautiful blue eyes, framed with those long, dark lashes...

  She dropped her gaze, a rosy blush blooming on her ivory cheekbones. “Really—I’m fine. Just clumsy and a perennial victim of cats everywhere. I think one of them sent out a memo years ago.”

  He helped her to her feet and steadied her with his hands on her shoulders, but his thoughts faded away as he looked down at her, entranced.

  They’d spent months together in high school, but had he ever really noticed the faint dusting of freckles over her nose? The elegant arch of her eyebrows? Had he ever truly appreciated her wry, self-deprecating sense of humor?

  A mesmerizing, expectant silence shimmered between them when she lifted her gaze to his, and he found himself lowering his mouth to hers for a long, sweet kiss that sent a wave of warmth straight to his chest.

  From somewhere in the distance he heard Theodore screech and launch into a rap song at the top of his lungs. Tate drew back. “I—I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have done that.”

 
She looked up at him with an expression of shock, her eyes wide and luminous. And then she smiled. “Just like old times, right?” she said lightly. “No worries.”

  No worries, maybe. But though he knew he’d just overstepped an unspoken boundary, he wanted to pull her back into his arms anyway. And never let her go.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sara stood back, her hands on her hips, and studied the newly opened space between the kitchen and dining room of the old house.

  Over the past few weeks she and Tate had grown closer, and she now counted the minutes until she finished at the clinic each day because they were often together. Trail rides. Hikes up into the foothills with their cameras and telephoto lenses. Stolen kisses under a blanket of stars.

  And then there were the projects at either her cabin or Tate’s place. But his reno project was more exciting by far. “I’ve been so eager to see this,” she said. “What do you think?”

  He draped an arm around her shoulders. “I think I owe you yet again. I was wavering about taking out that wall but this is so much brighter, and the view of the mountains from the kitchen is stunning. What do you think about an island?”

  “It’s your money, but my vote is a definite yes. Can you imagine meal prep there while being able to enjoy the view in every direction? You could make the far side a breakfast bar for extra seating—and an island would be a great place to set out a buffet line at holidays.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking, but it’s good to hear it from someone else who knows more than I do.” He gave her shoulders an extra little squeeze, and brushed a light kiss against her cheek. “Do you think your aunt and uncle would want to see the renovations when everything is done?”

  After the Langfords’ generous favor in razing the garage several weeks ago—at no cost—she’d thought Warren and Millie would soften, but the most she’d gotten out of them was just a gruff admission that it was good to have the job done.