Meeting Her Match

“Okay,” redheaded Esther Mae Wilcox was saying. “We made a list of all the single cowboys.” She paused, as if waiting on an imaginary drumroll. “There’s still some great pickin’s out there. You needn’t worry you’re getting the runt of the litter.”

That did it! Sheri bolted up from the table so fast it shook. “You have all had your fun,” she said. “But for the last time, lay off. I am more than capable of finding my own cowboy. If and when I’m interested in finding him—”

“Well, we never said you couldn’t find a cowboy,” Esther Mae interrupted. “You just can’t seem to find the right cowboy. You know, the one…”

DEBRA CLOPTON

was a 2004 Golden Heart Award finalist in the inspirational category. She makes her home in Texas with her family.

Meeting Her Match

Debra Clopton

Says the Lord, “You will seek me and find me

when you seek me with all your heart.”

—Jeremiah 29:13

This book is dedicated with much affection and

admiration to Mitzi Poole Bridges.

Without your encouragement

I might have given up…thank you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Says the Lord, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

—Jeremiah 29:13

Sheri Marsh stared in wide-eyed amazement at the three women around the table with her at Sam’s Diner. They were her official nightmare come a-calling.

Oh yes, it was true. These deceptively innocent-looking little old ladies were the infamous “Matchmaking Posse” of Mule Hollow. And they’d just informed Sheri that they had a plan to wipe her woes away. Whether she wanted them to or not!

“Okay,” Esther Mae Wilcox was saying, her hands held out in front of her as if she were about to deliver the biggest punch line of all time. “So, are you ready? Here’s the plan.” She paused, as if waiting for an imaginary drumroll. “Me and Norma Sue made up a list last night. And Sheri, you are just going to love it!”

Well, Sheri thought, looking at the bright side, at least the truth was on the table now—no more hints, no more hemming and hawing. The posse had come clean. They’d admitted what she’d already deduced was going on behind her back.

They were setting her up!

Tamping down her escalating temper, Sheri leveled her gaze at each of the women at the table.

First she zeroed in on Esther Mae. The woman was like Lucille Ball and her sidekick, Ethel, rolled into one.

Then Sheri shot her gaze to Esther Mae’s partner in mayhem, Norma Sue Jenkins. She had a very full figure and the willpower of a steamroller. Sheri could just see herself looking like a flattened Gumby after Norma Sue got through plowing over her with her matchmaking notion.

Last but not least, Sheri settled her gaze on Adela Ledbetter, a wisp of a woman who balanced the other two out with her serenity and godly wisdom. Okay, she usually balanced them out. At the moment, to Sheri’s dismay, she wasn’t balancing anything with that soft smile and twinkling eyes! Nope, Sheri could tell that obviously Adela had more important personal things on her mind, like the cute-as-a-wrinkled-raisin Sam, owner of the only diner in the rustic town of Mule Hollow, Texas.

Yep, Adela was just sitting there letting Sam place a steaming cup of coffee in front of her, in the special china cup that Sam used only for Adela. It was no secret that there was romance in the air between the spry proprietor and the truly special lady. In fact, nobody seemed to understand what was keeping them from taking the trip to the wedding altar. Plus, unlike the way they’d latched on to Sheri, her cohorts didn’t seem in any hurry to tie Adela and Sam up in a neat little match-made-in-Mule-Hollow-heaven package. And as far as Sheri was concerned Adela and Sam needed some help. At the pace they were going they’d be batting eyes at each other forever. They’d never experience wedding bliss unless someone stepped up and lit a fire beneath them.

Sheri bit her lip. Was it too much to ask that the focus be taken off her single status and applied to Adela?

Lastly, Sheri glared at her best friend, Lacy, who was sitting on a stool at the counter and had spun to face them. She was just as intent as the senior posse on trying to find Sheri a husband. Her mischievous grin and laughing eyes proved it as she met Sheri’s glare.

“What we did,” Norma Sue continued, drawing the words out as if she were about to make a major proclamation, “was make a list of all the single cowboys. Then we listed all their truly wonderful attributes. Let me tell you, Sheri, there’s still some great pickin’s out there. You need not be worried that you’ll get the runt of the litter.”

“That’s right,” Esther Mae broke in. “After all, love is a very idiosyncratic view—”

“A what?” Norma Sue exclaimed.

The previously full-figured Esther Mae threw her recently achieved size-twelve shoulders back and looked down her nose at Norma Sue. “I-di-o-syn-cratic,” she said slowly, as if pronouncing it to a child.

“It means subjective.” She smiled proudly, ignoring Norma Sue’s frown. “I’m learning new words out of the Reader’s Digest. It’s supposed to keep my mind alert, so y’all get ready. I’m gonna be bustin’ them out on occasion. You know, when the opportunity arises.”

Sheri joined everyone in staring openmouthed at Esther Mae. It was a known fact that Esther Mae couldn’t get the words she already knew into the right context. Where she’d go with bigger, better words was anybody’s guess.

“I think that’s a grand idea,” Lacy said at last, breaking the silence. “You learn them first then teach us.”

“Are you crazy?” Norma Sue asked incredulously, finally finding her voice. “Esther Mae—”

Esther Mae harrumphed. “Now you just hush, Norma Sue Jenkins. Just because I get a word tangled up here and there is no call to get in a tizzy.”

Sheri wanted to laugh, but she didn’t dare call attention to herself. At least for the moment they weren’t focusing on her and the list of local eligible bachelors.

“That’s right, ladies,” Adela chimed in, reeling her friends back in. “Nobody’s crazy. Now back to the topic at hand…. Sheri, I’m sure that you know love is a lasting connection that God orchestrates between a man and a woman. We’re simply nudging people in the right direction. No one can actually understand the mystery that binds couples together except the two people themselves.”

Well so much for being out of the hot seat, Sheri thought drily.

“True, that brings us back to our list.” Norma Sue slapped Sheri on the back and smiled her mile-wide smile. “The best thing for a broken heart is to get back in the saddle, and so we think we’ve got the field narrowed down for you. I have to tell you that it hasn’t been an easy job. You know as well as we do that there’s not just any man out there who can keep up with you, Sheri Marsh.”

Lacy grinned. “I think most of the guys are scared of you.”

Esther Mae halted her forkful of apple pie midair. “That’s probably right. I asked Simon Putts about takin’ you out on a date—you all should have seen his face. He went pastier than Norma Sue’s dumplings.”

That did it! Sheri bolted up from the table so fast it shook. She couldn’t take Esther Mae asking somebody on a date for her. And Simon Putts of all people? Why, the name fit him like a glove. “Okay, listen up,” she said. “You all have had your fun, but for the last time lay off me. I am more than capable of finding my own cowboy. If and when I’m interested in finding him—”

“Well, we never said you couldn’t find a cowboy,” Esther Mae interrupted. “You just can’t seem to find the right cowboy. You know, the one. We know your heart was broken—”

It was Sheri’s turn to interrupt, frustrated beyond words. “Okay, okay. Yes, my heart is hurting because of J.P. I hope you’re all satisfied that I’m admitting it.” She was steadily backing toward the door, feeling as if a noose was tightening around her neck. She needed her freedom. “And since my heart was broken, that should make you realize I’m not, and I repeat once more, I am not looking for the one. I’m not looking for anything. Goodness, y’all, I’m kinda confused right now.” There, she’d admitted more than she wanted, and they were still looking at her as though she was the next star of their runaway hit, How to Marry Off a Girl in Ten Days Whether She Wants to Or Not!

Just in the nick of time she bumped into the door.

“What’s your hurry, Sheri? You don’t have a pedicure for another hour,” Lucy said.

Sheri glared at her soon-to-be former best friend Lacy, pushed the swinging door open and spun through it. Lacy’s chuckles followed her out to the sidewalk.

They were out of control! Really. This was just not right. Happy single people ought to have the right to walk the streets of Mule Hollow just like everyone else. That’s right, without the worry that they were going to be unduly set upon by the matchmaking posse. Somebody should do something about it. People could get hurt…like her!

Why, it just wasn’t right for them to think that everyone in Mule Hollow was their own special puppet, to be led here and there as they saw fit. Sheri marched down the sidewalk indignantly. How would they like it if the tables were turned on them? They wouldn’t like it one bit if a person manipulated them! Oh, no, they wouldn’t. It would serve them all right if someone pretended to fall in love because of their scheming. Just when the posse began to pat each other on the back they would find out the joke was on them.

That’s it!

Sheri stopped dead in her tracks. Her anger dissipated as she thought about what just flashed through her thoughts.

It was a brilliant plan.

A way-past-time-for-it kind of plan.

But it seemed deceitful. The thought dimmed her initial pleasure. Then again, she told herself, this was a lesson the ladies needed to learn. And it seemed that they would only learn it through something as drastic as her budding plan…since they certainly weren’t hearing what she had to say.

It was true. Sheri stood in the center of Mule Hollow’s Main Street, gazing down the colorfully painted buildings lining both sides of the street. She had to admit…there hadn’t been a shake-up like this could be since Lacy came to town and painted the two-story beauty salon flamingo-pink, then followed it by talking everyone into painting the rest of town all colors of the rainbow.

It had been the lonesome town’s single cowboys who’d been shook up on that day. But this, this plan would shake up the matchmaking posse so they would leave her alone and quit plotting the demise of her single status.

Getting back in the saddle was how Norma Sue had put it. Well, for a girl who’d loved being in the saddle until J.P. threw her off, she was struggling on new terrain here and they weren’t helping.

She’d tried to beg off, hadn’t she? She tried asking them nicely and she’d tried demanding them to leave it be. But nooo, that little group of happy do-gooders just closed their ears as though she’d said nothing and gone on with their plans.

It was past time for talking, Sheri realized. It was time for action, and she was all over that like a bee to a honeycomb. It would be a much-needed distraction for her while providing a greatly-needed service for the small group of happy singles of Mule Hollow.

All she had to do now was find exactly the right man for the job.

That’s right. She needed a man, and not just any man. She needed a man with as little desire for marriage as she had. She thought about her idea for a moment, letting it settle in and get comfortable. She would do this.

She certainly would.

She would find the perfect man to help with her little charade—a man whose name was not Simon Putts. No, this would be a man the ladies could picture Sheri with. He must be a man who valued his freedom and his freedom of choice with as much regard as she did.

All she needed to do now was figure out which of the cowboys in Mule Hollow would fit that specification. The two of them could teach the posse that when it came to running her life, Sheri was the one in control.

And she wasn’t giving that up for anyone.

Ever.

Pace Gentry watched the scenery pass as he drove the last leg of the trip from Idaho to Texas. He’d crossed the border a couple of hours back and should have been feeling his mood brighten. After all, the long drive would come to an end within the hour. But it wasn’t that simple. The end of the drive would also mark the end of the only life he’d ever known. The only life he’d ever wanted. And with that in mind, his mood had slipped lower with each passing mile.

Until a short few months ago when he’d realized God had different plans for him, he’d been about as content with his life as a man could be. He lived a simple life, for the most part alone but free on some of the most beautiful, untouched land God ever created. But that part of his life was done.

He blamed his surly mood on the fact that he was road weary. But he knew that wasn’t it.

He’d signed on for this new life. He’d trusted the Lord to lead the way, to open doors that would put him where he was supposed to be. But in order to live life on God’s terms he’d had to give up a simple life that hadn’t ever required him to step too far out of his comfort zone.

That was about to change.

And truth be told, that made him uneasy.

Sheri changed into her running clothes the moment she got home from work. She needed a run in the worst way. More than the run, she needed to vent.

“Boy, did she ever need to vent,” she mumbled, yanking the lace of her running shoe into a tight bow, then attacking the other one just as violently.

If she’d thought walking out of Sam’s was going to deter the posse, she’d been oh so wrong. Those ladies were nothing if not tenacious. That’s right, they’d just followed her down to the salon she and Lacy owned and spent the rest of the afternoon badgering her. It had taken everything she had to ward them off. Did they care that she was elbow-deep in pedicure water and didn’t have time to be dealing with them?

Nope, they could have cared less. They were truly out of control. Rolling downhill and picking up speed in their attempt to manipulate her life.

They’d continued to ignore her every word of protest. Oh, it was enough to make a girl pull her hair out! Sheri yanked the shoelace instead, then stomped her foot for good measure. Couldn’t they understand that just because her former boyfriend, J.P., had fallen in love with someone else, that didn’t mean her heart had gotten stomped in the process? She was just fine.

Really, it wasn’t a lie.

Well, not exactly. Yes, it hurt, much more than she wanted to admit. But Sheri wasn’t about to throw fuel on that little secret fire.

No. They didn’t need to know that for the first time in her life she’d thought she might be in love. Might being the operative word.

At first she told herself her heart was just aching because her pride had taken a kick in the gut. After all, she’d dared to open up to J.P. more than anyone before him. She’d even been on the verge of telling him she might be open to the idea of marriage. Might be, even almost on the verge of, was a major, major breakthrough for her. In all of her twenty-six years, she’d never before thought she’d make such an almost commitment. J.P. understood her feelings completely. They’d both had their reasons to shy away from commitment.

Poor J.P.

It wasn’t as if he’d been planning to fall in love, either. He’d been blindsided by it just as much as she’d been.

Still, it had happened. Everyone who’d been at that wedding reception saw that love at first sight had struck him like a bolt of lightning. Only it wasn’t with Sheri.

Sheri still felt slightly light-headed thinking about it. They’d been attending a wedding reception together, and she’d asked J.P. to get her a cup of punch. Just an innocent cup of punch. He’d been his sweet self, strutting off toward the punch bowl. Bam! Just like that, it had happened.

Love at the punch bowl.

Bizarre but true. Tara, the bride’s friend from Houston, had come up for the wedding and was serving punch. When Tara and J.P. locked eyes with each other, that was it. They were goners.

“Goners for sure,” Applegate Thornton had put it.

It was old news now. Really, really old news. It had been two months ago that the bolt of lightning had struck. However, their wedding had been yesterday, and instead of closing the book on Poor Little Jilted Sheri, it had only amplified the matchmaking posse’s pity party for her. Actually, the entire town still felt sorry for her. Why, old Applegate and Stanley Orr were even giving her the sorrowful eye this morning.

Mule Hollow’s resident grumpy old men, Applegate and Stanley, played checkers at the table by the front window of Sam’s diner most mornings and lately some afternoons. When they looked at her as if she was some poor pathetic soul, it was almost more than she could take.

What was wrong with being a single gal, a happy single gal, thank you very much? Why were married women and old men convinced that marriage was the only way to happiness? She’d lived through more than her share of marriages with her parents. Nine, to be exact, and none of them had led to happiness.

As her mother was always saying, “Some people just aren’t good at being tied down.” How many times had Sheri heard that phrase? It was so true. Before J.P., she’d always grown bored and moved on after a few months. Sheri recognized that she was like her parents. This sudden ache in her heart only meant that she’d foolishly thought she might want more. That she’d changed, that her past didn’t matter… She’d prayed about it a few times even though she hadn’t expected an answer. She’d realized early on in her life that God spoke to some and she wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t let it get to her before, but lately that, too, was starting to bother her more and more.

As her footsteps pounded on the gravel road, Sheri felt as if she could burst with frustration. There had been times over the last two months jogging down this road that she had wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She’d actually done it a couple of times—almost scared the cows to death. Still, there had been a certain freedom in letting loose.

As she rounded the bend in the road her mind locked on the matchmaking posse’s unwanted plans for her life. Now, she thought with a grunt, might be a really good time to feel some of that freedom.

She opened her mouth to let a holler rip—and thankfully, spotted the truck before she screamed and embarrassed herself.

She slowed her pace. The dusty truck was parked off the road between the ancient roping pen and the shack that had always reminded her of something the first settlers had built when they’d come to the West. She slowed more, her gaze locking on the cowboy standing at the tailgate. She was more than glad she hadn’t screamed. By the looks of this cowboy, if she’d startled him he’d probably have come running, guns ablaze. Of course, on closer inspection he wasn’t wearing a holster, but that didn’t take anything away from the impression he made.

She squinted but didn’t recognize him. She headed his way. It never hurt to keep tabs on who was out here in the boonies of Mule Hollow.

He was unloading gear from the back of his truck, which was odd given that this was an access road to the interior of Lacy and her husband Clint’s ranch. Lacy hadn’t mentioned to her that anyone was moving in.

Actually relieved to have something new to take her mind off her own dilemma, Sheri jogged up the drive.

“So, how’s it going, cowboy?” she called before she reached him. “Looks like you’re moving in.” She came to a halt a few feet behind him and placed her hands on her hips, awaiting a reply. None came.

Instead, as if he hadn’t heard her, he reached for a coil of rope that lay on the tailgate beside a duffel bag and saddle. He slid the rope to his shoulder, then finally turned toward her.

If she’d been wearing four-inch heels, she’d have fallen straight off them. The man was gorgeous! The rugged, black-haired cowboy cocked his head toward her and met her startled gaze straight on with eyes the color of a stormy night sky.

Oh, my, my, my, looking at this handsome stranger confirmed what she’d known all her life. What she was trying to get the posse to realize about her.

She was not marriage material.

And that was not with a capital N.

Honestly, if all it took was one look into some stranger’s eyes to remind her of the main reason she didn’t make commitments—then there ya go. It was a done deal.

As her mom always said, “Some people just aren’t good at being tied down”—but it wasn’t only the echo of her mom.

Sheri just liked dating. There, her secret was out.

This was exactly the reminder she needed that the matchmakers were on a mission that would ultimately fail. And why she shouldn’t feel bummed about it because really she enjoyed dating. She absolutely loved this. There simply wasn’t anything as exciting as the initial spark of interest between a man and a woman. Like now, it was breathtaking. Then again, Sheri realized suddenly that the cowboy seemed to be breathing just fine.

Sheri reined in her runaway exhilaration and put her feet back on the ground. Her reaction to this handsome stranger had been so strong that it took a second to see that he didn’t appear to have been bitten by the same bug.

Drat.

Instead, his steel-gray eyes skimmed over her with disdain—as if he were looking at the latest order of pesticide.

Sheri’s eyes widened as he adjusted the rope on his shoulder, then without uttering a word slung the saddle to his back and strode away.

Sheri realized suddenly that a little caution mighta been in order.

She hadn’t lived in the city in a while, and obviously her guard was down. His cold look yanked her straight out of her imaginings and slam-dunked her right back into reality. She was standing in the middle of nowhere, alone, with a man who looked as though he could stare down a wildcat and never blink.

Who was she kidding? He looked as though he could shoot it, skin it and eat it for supper. Raw!

At last, she reacted like a smart woman and took a step back. But that dismissive glance…it bothered her. Sheri had come a long way from being the once shy little girl who expected to be ignored, so this just didn’t sit well with her.

Oh yeah, baby. Danger or no danger, Sheri Marsh refused to be ignored by anybody, anywhere, anytime. She could excuse a guy for almost anything, even for falling in love with someone else, but she would not excuse a guy for ignoring her. Her hard-won “I’m here, I matter” personality demanded more.