And Cowboy Makes Three

Chapter Two

Angelica settled cross-legged on the bench next to Rowdy and set her plate in her lap.

“It isn’t just the soda.” He gestured with his fork to incorporate all the food on his plate. “This is my favorite meal—barbecued pork ribs, fried okra and mashed potatoes in a thick brown gravy.”

“The meal was my suggestion, but I can’t take credit for the cooking. I can’t cook a thing. On my own, I subsist on deli chicken and pizza made from spaghetti sauce and cheese toasted on a slice of bread.”

It only now struck her, as she was going on and on about her usual diet—which Rowdy could probably not care less about—that she had unconsciously asked for Rowdy’s favorite meal when Jo had asked her what to pack for the picnic today.

Her breath hitched. All these years, and Rowdy’s favorites had still come to mind.

“This delicious meal is all straight from Cup O’ Jo’s. Chance cooked the food and Jo packed and decorated the picnic basket.”

“A baby theme? Clever.”

“It’s cute,” she agreed. “Will you please say grace for us before we start the meal?”

His fork clattered to his plate as he gaped at her in astonishment.

Angelica wasn’t surprised by his response. She had grown up a PK—a preacher’s kid. Back when she and Rowdy were dating, she was as rebellious as the day was long and wanted nothing to do with church.

Or God.

That had all changed the day she found out she was pregnant with Toby. Suddenly God was very real to her. How else could she explain the tiny human being fearfully and wonderfully formed within her womb?

When she’d told Josh, the father of her child, about their baby, he had scoffed at her, called her horrible names and insisted the child wasn’t his. When he walked out the door, he had walked out of her life. And good riddance to him.

Josh had known he was the only man in her life, the only man she had been with ever, because she had only given in to him after months of pressure. But he hadn’t wanted to accept the responsibility of fatherhood or the effects it would have on his freewheeling lifestyle. He didn’t want to be tied down with a family.

So he’d simply denied the truth and disappeared.

In a way, Angelica felt she deserved that rejection and in the long run God had been looking out for her. It was better for her and her baby not to have been permanently locked into what had never been a healthy relationship to begin with.

God alone had been her constant companion after Josh had left her. She had a few work acquaintances from the high-end hotel in which she was a white-gloved banquet server, but by throwing herself into Denver’s nightlife she’d never made any real connections, and she’d let those few friendships lapse when she’d started dating Josh.

Angelica pulled her thoughts from the past and focused her attention on Rowdy.

“I know what you’re probably thinking. Have I really changed, or am I just trying to unsettle you by asking you to say grace?”

His gaze widened and then his brow furrowed, a frown gathering on his lips. He put his plate aside.

“You said it, not me.”

Toby stirred and Ange set her uneaten food aside to scoop him into her arms. She shuffled through the diaper bag until she found a bottle of formula, giving it a good shake to make sure it was well mixed.

“Discovering I was pregnant with Toby changed my world,” she said, glancing up at Rowdy. “And I mean all of it. I realize I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my past. I’ve hurt people—”

Her gaze dropped to Rowdy’s hands. He was clenching the edge of the bench until his knuckles turned white.

She felt bad for him, but unlike with Josh, she had no fear of him losing his temper. Unless time had completely changed him, he wasn’t a man who would fly off the handle. He was self-controlled and even tempered, even with the woman who had broken his heart.

“Hurt you,” she finished, swallowing hard.

His muscles tightened until his shoulders visibly rippled with tension, and her own stress increased.

“Is this some kind of twelve-step program or something? You’re here because you have to make amends?”

“What? No. I’m here to pay respects to Granny, since I was having Toby on the day she passed away. That, and to settle the estate. I already know there is nothing I can do or say that would change how you think about me and what I did to you.”

Angelica knew her words alone would mean nothing to the man sitting next to her on the bench, the man she’d once loved with all her heart and who had once loved her. He had been prepared to commit his life to her.

He would never know how much she’d sacrificed, and all because she’d loved him.

Toby batted the bottle in her hand, reminding her that she had a hungry boy to feed.

“I’m sorry. There you go, sweetheart,” she murmured, pressing the bottle to Toby’s lips.

“He’s a noisy eater,” Rowdy observed, apparently deciding to keep their conversation at a casual level for the time being.

“He sometimes has trouble latching on and getting his lips where they need to be to get good suction.”

“Because he has Down syndrome?”

Ange nodded, but she wasn’t dismayed by the fact. Toby was just Toby, her son. “Every day is a new adventure with this little guy.”

“And your parents? How do they like their new grandson? They must be proud.”

“They don’t know about him yet,” she admitted, her heart clenching and heat rising to her face. “You probably know that they left the parish here in Serendipity for a small town in Wyoming shortly after I left town.

“My dad pretty much disowned me when I acted so awfully to you in such a public way, because in his mind my actions rubbed off on him. And I guess in a way he is right about that. I was the reason he took a new pastorate far away from Serendipity. I’ve tried reaching out to Mom, but she doesn’t dare cross him, not even for my sake.”

“So, you don’t see them then?”

“No. Not at all.”

He shook his head. “That’s a shame.”

“It is.” She shook her head. “It’s frustrating, but I take full responsibility for my own actions. I don’t like to see my family torn apart, but I can’t blame them for distancing themselves from me.”

She scoffed. “I thought I was so worldly, leaving Serendipity behind and going off on my own, but in truth, I was way out of my element from the day I got to Denver. A preacher’s kid from a small town? I had no idea what I was getting into and was practically swallowed alive. At first, I didn’t want to stay at all.

“But of course, there were even more reasons I couldn’t come home—er, back to Serendipity—when things in Denver didn’t turn out like I’d planned. Not after...well...”

His eyes snapped to hers. She held his gaze but then had to look away for a moment as guilt flooded through her.

With a deep breath, she returned her gaze to his.

“Obviously, I had no intention of seeing you today. But here we are.”

“Here we are,” he repeated. He narrowed his eyes on her. “So now what?”

* * *

Rowdy’s emotions were run ragged and frankly, he had had enough. It was all he could do not to bolt from the scene like a skittish lamb.

He lifted his bruised and battered heart to the Lord.

God, help me.

A short, concise prayer that said it all.

Ange had returned to Serendipity, no longer the pretty girl with a chip on her shoulder who he’d once known and loved, but a striking, mature woman—and a mother with a newborn baby who had seen her share of rough times.

She hadn’t said anything about Toby’s father, but Rowdy knew better than to make any assumptions.

Right now, he just hurt, a relentless ache that started in his heart and radiated through his limbs.

“The envelope,” Ange said, digging into her back pocket. “Maybe that will give us a clue.”

He raised his brows. “A clue to what?”

“What we’re supposed to be talking about. Jo slipped me an envelope when she handed me the—er—lariat. It’s from Granny and addressed to both of us. The first one only had my name on it.”

“There are more than one?”

Ange sniffed softly. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be wandering around in public if I’d had any choice in the matter.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, me neither, exactly. I only came to town to pay my respects and get the sale started on Granny’s ranch.”

“So, you are selling, then?”

Her gaze widened. “Of course. What on earth would I do with a sheep farm?”

“I’m an interested buyer, you know.”

She nodded. “I figured. But I also assumed I could take care of the estate and the paperwork without actually having to see you—” Her words skidded. “I mean, any potential buyers. Instead, I’m out and about at a packed town function. Which is exactly where I don’t want to be. Especially not making the kind of scene I ended up making. I absolutely didn’t have any intention of seeing you again.”

“So why are you here, then?”

“The letter in the first envelope had very specific instructions. It was addressed to me from Granny. Jo said that Granny would understand if I wanted to sell the ranch, but that she requested I follow the instructions in the envelope. Kind of like a last wish, I guess.”

“And that said...?”

“Picnic With Jo.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Wow. That’s about as vague as it gets. But Jo knew a lot more about what Granny was asking than you did. And she didn’t even hint about what you were walking into?”

“Not one word. She must have been busting up inside not being able to tell me anything.”

“So you didn’t know anything about the auction being today? Or, most especially, about buying me at auction before the event even got off the ground?”

“No, but Jo certainly did. And so, I think, did Granny. Before she passed on, she requested that I visit her on this particular weekend. I’m wondering if she wanted me to attend this auction all along, even if she’d still been here to come with me.”

“You think we’ve been set up?”

Ange frowned and nodded, looking none too pleased by the thought.

“But why?”

She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Granny wanted to make sure the sale of the ranch went smoothly.”

“That doesn’t feel like enough of an explanation. We didn’t have to meet at the auction to work out the details of our real estate transaction. And why go to all the trouble of the cryptic letter? Why not just spell it all out?” he asked.

Ange held up the second envelope, which Rowdy could now clearly see had both of their names scrawled on it.

“I have no idea. Here’s hoping this one will tell us exactly where we’re supposed to go from here.”

Toby worked the bottle from his mouth with a gurgle and Angelica shifted him to her shoulder.

She pushed the envelope in Rowdy’s direction. “I guess we won’t know until we open it. Why don’t you do the honors, since I’ve got my hands full?”

Rowdy plucked the envelope from her grasp and gingerly opened it, unfolding the single tri-folded sheet of typing paper. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to be any part of this, but Granny Frances, as she’d insisted he call her back when he was a teenage boy dating her granddaughter, had been a huge influence in his life. He couldn’t let her down now.

She was a stubborn woman who’d continued to manage her ranch for as long as possible, saying it gave her great joy to be with her animals and her pain wasn’t going to keep her down.

But eventually, it had become too hard even for one as strong and stoic as Granny Frances.

In her final weeks, when she’d gotten too sick to care for herself, much less her flock, on her own, a palliative care nurse had come to look out for Granny Frances and Rowdy had stepped in and done the ranch work for her.

In reality, at this point he was already running Granny Frances’s ranch as if it was his own. As long as another buyer with deep pockets didn’t sweep in, which wasn’t likely in a town as small as Serendipity, it was just a matter of signing the papers to make the land his legally as well as practically.

His gaze quickly took in the words on Granny’s missive and he shook his head.

If they were expecting answers, this letter didn’t contain them.

These words were, in fact, the exact opposite.

“Feed My Sheep.”

Three words in Granny Frances’s handwriting.

Three lousy words.

“Great,” Ange groaned. “Another cryptic note. What do you suppose this one means?”

Rowdy ran a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “It sounds like something out of the Holy Scriptures. You know, when Jesus was speaking to Peter and kept telling him to feed his sheep? You think this is some kind of secret message?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even certain Granny was lucid when she wrote this stuff down. Maybe what she really meant to convey didn’t quite translate to paper.”

Rowdy hoped that was the case, but he sincerely doubted it. Life was never that simple, and he’d been there during Granny Frances’s final days. She had been coherent until her very last moments, when she had given her soul up to Jesus.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Whatever this letter means, she knew what she was doing when she wrote it. I’m sorry you weren’t able to be there with her during her last moments, but I was, and I can tell you definitively that she was fully lucid all the way up to the end.”

His words weren’t quite the accusation they had been earlier. “The last word she breathed was Jesus. Her expression was so peaceful. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind her Savior was there waiting with open arms to welcome her into heaven.”

Tears sprang to Ange’s eyes and she dashed them back with her palm, while her face blotched with red and purple. Rowdy thought she might be having trouble holding herself together. She’d always been a private person and her struggle with grief was real, even if everything else she’d ever told him varied from the truth in some way.

And the worst part was, seeing her tears tore at him, ripping into his chest.

He didn’t know how he felt about her expressing her grief. When Ange had left Serendipity, it had been for good. She had not even come to visit Granny Frances.

Not once.

And though he now understood why she had missed Granny’s funeral, that didn’t make the whole situation any less confusing.

Here she was now, trying to make things right when it was too late for her to do so.

Too late for Granny Frances.

And too late for him.

For them.

He swallowed hard, but a smile lingered on his lips despite the fresh wave of grief.

He stammered quickly over his next sentence, returning the conversation to safer grounds.

“J-Jo appeared to know exactly what was going on,” he pointed out. “Maybe we should just toss the letter and ask her straight out. I’ll bet she has answers.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Ange assured him.

“Although how much she’ll divulge is another thing entirely. If she made a pact with Granny Frances, we are only going to learn what your granny wanted us to know.”

“That’s right. So I guess we have to play sleuth and see if we can figure it out on our own before we approach Jo on the matter.”

“Well, the first note was literal, right?” he asked, trying to make logic out of the cryptic words. “Picnic With Jo?”

“Up to a point, it was. Obviously, there was a lot Granny left out. Intentionally, I suspect.”

“So, what if this letter is the same? Maybe she really means you should feed her sheep.”

“Me? I don’t know the first thing about sheep.” Her gaze widened and for a moment, she gaped at him. “There aren’t any sheep at her ranch anymore, are there? She adored her sheep. I remember she used to lovingly refer to them as her woolies. She wouldn’t let them starve. I guess I just assumed that since Granny knew she had a terminal disease, she’d have all her affairs in order and sell her stock off before she passed.”

He bit on the inside of his cheek, wondering just how much he ought to tell her.

Any way he looked at it, Rowdy didn’t like where this was going. The way he saw it, and the only interpretation that made any sense, was that Granny Frances’s intention was for him to subtly introduce Ange to the ins and outs of ranch life, possibly hoping she’d decide to keep the land in the family.

But that was unfair, for so many reasons. For one thing, Ange was the furthest thing from a rancher ever, and she’d need a ton of help—assistance Granny Frances assumed would come from Rowdy.

And for another, though Granny Frances knew he had taken over her ranch out of love for her, she also had to have known he needed to expand if he was going to keep making a profit on his land.

They had never spoken about it, but joining their two ranches was the perfect answer to that dilemma. She would have had to have been blind not to recognize the hope he carried in his heart for the joining of the properties, and Granny Frances was as astute a woman as one could find anywhere.

“I’ve been taking care of her stock,” he admitted, his thoughts working frantically.

Ange looked mortified. “You don’t really think she wants you to teach me how to care for sheep, do you?”

He shrugged.

It crossed his mind that he could sabotage the plans to get Ange on board to keep the ranch, if that was what they were. After all, Ange deciding to do so was the exact opposite of what Rowdy wanted to happen.

But deep down, Rowdy knew he would never be so underhanded as to resort to anything as devious as that. It wasn’t in his nature. Nor would God be happy with that kind of thinking—much less acting.

Besides, as far as he knew, Ange still agreed with him about how Granny Frances’s estate should be handled—so there should be no conflict despite Granny Frances’s note suggesting that Ange needed to learn to feed the sheep.

No. Ange wanted to sell her ranch.

To him.

And he wanted to buy.

It was a win-win, putting enough money in her pocket to find a good place to live in the city and have some left over for Toby’s long-term care.

It wasn’t that he was afraid Ange would change her mind and decide to stick around. Ranch work was hard and dusty. If anything, Feed My Sheep would convince her that she should sell like nothing else might.

Even one day of herding sheep and mucking around in a smelly barn would be enough to send her running back to Denver faster than she could say “Giddyap.” He would put his last nickel on the fact that she didn’t even own a pair of mud boots.

And he had loved Granny Frances. That fact was cut-and-dried. If teaching Ange to feed Granny’s sheep would honor the deceased’s memory, then he would cowboy up and do it, even if every second in her presence was torture, plain and simple.

He just had to hold on to the knowledge that it wouldn’t last forever. Whatever the outcome of this game Granny Frances was playing with them, it would end eventually.

He would hold fast to the idea that Ange had indicated she wanted to sell him the ranch. The sooner he cooperated with this—whatever this was—the sooner she would leave and he could take full ownership of Granny Frances’s ranch and incorporate it into his own.

“You don’t think—” Ange started, and then her sentence dropped off and her face drained of color. “This is the second envelope. Jo didn’t say it was the last one. What if there are more letters after this one? More stuff she wants us to do, more riddles we have to figure out? Could this be some kind of outrageous scavenger hunt Granny is sending us on?”

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Rowdy shook his head voraciously as his thoughts denied the possibility.

“I don’t think we ought to keep speculating on this bit. We need to go find Jo and clear up the confusion,” he said. “There’s no question that I want to honor Granny Frances’s memory, but...”

“Exactly,” she said, even though he hadn’t finished his sentence. “Whatever needs doing, needs doing quickly. I absolutely cannot stick around after this weekend. My flight back to Denver leaves tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got to return to my job on Monday. It’s my first day back after my maternity leave. I’ll lose my position for sure if I don’t show up. My boss is a real stickler about stuff like that.”

“What do you do?”

“I work in a five-star hotel as part of the dining staff for large, catered events. I’m one of those white-gloved banquet servers you encounter when you go to large meetings at a hotel. We have a lot of major corporations that come through, as well as conventions that meet there.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Not really. It’s a lot of standing and people can get really snooty. But it pays the bills, and I can’t afford to be picky. I’m not going to have the money to pay anything if I don’t get back there on time. Oh, the joys of living from paycheck to paycheck.”

Rowdy didn’t know about that. He lived from season to season.

“How old is Toby?” Rowdy asked, as what Ange had said earlier suddenly clicked. She had indicated she’d missed Granny Frances’s funeral because she was in the hospital having Toby, but that was only three weeks ago.

“Three weeks,” Ange confirmed.

“Don’t you get maternity leave for twelve weeks?” He had no idea where he’d pulled that information from. A television show, maybe. But it sounded fair enough.

She scoffed softly. “In the best of all worlds. I’m allowed to take twelve weeks, but my checkbook can’t handle the money I’d lose. Now I have Toby to support. I can’t afford to take off a whole twelve weeks. Three was pushing it.”

Rowdy didn’t know if Granny Frances had left Ange any money in her will, but it occurred to him that if they could get this deal done with the real estate, that would give Ange something to ease her load.

“Let’s talk to Jo and see what we can do. The sooner, the better. It’s possible that we will be able to work out some of the details about me buying Granny Frances’s ranch, which would in turn save you the trouble of having to come back to Serendipity.”

Her face reddened. “Pushy, much?”

He scowled and shook his head. He was trying to be nice and she was taking it all the wrong way.

“That’s not what I meant. Am I mistaken? I thought that selling the ranch was what you wanted to do.”

She sighed. “It is. I just don’t like feeling as if you are corralling me out of town. You don’t have to be brash about it. I get the hint.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry. We’ll just have to set aside the whole Feed My Sheep thing and let Jo know that we aren’t going to continue. Surely, it can’t be so important that we have to drop our entire lives to pursue it.”

“Maybe not,” he admitted.

“Well, like I said, I have to be on a plane tomorrow afternoon anyway, so I can’t keep playing this peculiar game even if I wanted to.”

She smiled, but Rowdy could see the trouble she was having in curling her lips upward. “You’ll be happy to know that I’ll be out of your life tomorrow—and you’ll never have to see me again.”