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Ben nodded and nodded. “Where’d you put me?”
“Not anywhere you’d get sunburnt or hurt, I know that.” Beau grinned at his best friend, most of the melancholy melting clean away. “Ellie would never forgive me if I let you show up to your wedding in a cast or looking like Rudolph.”
Ben laughed, and it felt good for Beau to join his voice in with his friend’s. He didn’t ask if Beau had found a date to the wedding. If he had, he’d have texted Ben to say so. He didn’t ask if he’d be there to calm him down only minutes before the ceremony began. Of course he would be.
He didn’t ask if Beau would be okay once Ben had moved off the ranch to Ellie’s house in town. He wouldn’t be—neither of them would be. So many changes had entered their lives in the past year, and Beau had to remind himself daily that change was good. Change encouraged growth. Change could get a cowboy moving in the direction he was meant to be moving.
Simultaneously, Beau felt utterly suspended in time, unable to move forward or backward, left or right, up or down. Nothing.
“Let’s get goin’,” he said, mostly because he’d seen the concern enter Ben’s eyes just now. He didn’t want to answer any more questions, and he didn’t need another apology. Ben shouldn’t even have to apologize for meeting a great woman, falling in love with her, and getting married.
This weekend.
You can make it through one more wedding, he told himself. One more weekend. No big deal.
Maybe if he recited it enough, it would somehow be true.
“Come on, dogs,” he said to Ruby and Pepper. “Time to get to work.” His faithful pups trotted out with him, Bennett hot on their heels, and as Beau took a taste of the morning air, he decided his life wasn’t all bad just because he didn’t have a girlfriend.
Hours later, with hay seemingly clinging to every part of his body, Beau made his way back to the cabin on the end of the row. The biggest, nicest one, where the foreman lived. He had three bedrooms, a loft, and two baths in addition to a bigger living room, dining room, and kitchen. Oh, and a full deck off the back door. A real back lawn. A real front one too, which none of the other cowboys had.
The foreman’s cabin sat the furthest from the homestead and the closest to the administration building. It was shielded from the worst of the animal smells on the ranch, the loudest of the squabbling chickens, and all of the traffic that came to the ranch for riding lessons, equine therapy appointments, rodeo horses, and any other business on the ranch.
Beau had finished his paperwork quickly that morning, which meant he’d been working in the hay barn, tearing out the rotted and soft wood in the loft, for long enough to be starving, dirty, sweaty, and covered in what felt like hay splinters up and down his arms.
“Despite wearing a long-sleeved shirt,” he muttered. He headed toward his cabin, ready for a shower and something to eat. He checked his phone as his cowboy boots crunched over the immaculate gravel running in front of the row of cowboy cabins, and which separated the housing of men and women from the housing of horses, chickens, and even a few pigs.
Ducks, dogs, cats, and even calves sometimes. Three Rivers Ranch had it all.
Beau made the turn to go down the short sidewalk to his front steps, and he’d gained them all when he realized his front door stood open a few inches. He immediately slowed, though having someone come to the foreman’s cabin certainly wasn’t all that abnormal.
He’d had a nasty head cold a few months ago, and he’d conducted all his business from home, through texts, or not at all.
But today, he wasn’t expecting anyone until after lunch. He wanted to put a pizza in the oven, take a fast shower to scrub the hay shards from his skin, and prep for the interviews.
A visitor? Not on the agenda, and Beau’s irritation grew as he stepped lightly toward his door.
He used a couple of fingers to nudge the door open further, now annoyed that his air conditioning—which he had to pay for, thank you very much—had been leaking out and cooling the brutal Texas July.
His gaze immediately got drawn to the blonde woman standing in front of his grandfather clock. Pepper surely saw her too, as he darted inside to go greet their visitor. The black lab loved people as much as he loved tennis balls, sticks, and the blue Frisbee Beau threw for him every night. Well, every night the wind wasn’t howling behind the cabin. So most nights.
The woman didn’t turn from the clock—or perhaps the pictures on the credenza beside it—to greet Pepper, much to the canine’s displeasure. Beau wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at. He knew she shouldn’t be in his house, but he paused in the doorway to watch her for some reason.
She sure seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite be sure as she hadn’t faced him fully yet. Her long, blonde hair hung a few inches past her shoulders, and she wore her cowgirl hat inside. Blue jeans. A blue shirt that looked like she might have bought it from the men’s section at The Boot Barn. A pair of sturdy work boots.
Ruby, his collie, trotted over to the woman too, and as she stood a little taller than Pepper, and she definitely had more fluff, she brushed up against the woman’s hand. She sucked in a breath, looked down at the dog, and seemed to sway on her feet.
Or maybe the earth had moved.
Because Beau suddenly recognized her. With that slight tilt of her head toward him, as the woman looked down at the collie, he knew her.
Charlotte Wisenhouer.
He hadn’t seen her in forever—clearly. She’d grown all the way up, and he reminded himself he wasn’t a twenty-year-old anymore, flirting with anyone wearing a lipglossed smile and earrings.
And Charlotte had been off-limits for as long as he could remember anyway. Her older brother Mason was Beau’s age, and he’d warned Beau away from Charlotte years ago.
What in the world was she doing here now? Standing in his cabin, examining his grandfather clock with those stunning aquamarine eyes.
