Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Cowboy

“I guess maybe,” Sully acknowledged with a careless shrug. “But I’ll get over it.” He said it more to convince his great-uncle than himself.

“I’m sure you will,” Seamus told him with the confidence of a man who had seen and lived through a great deal in his lifetime. “But in the meantime, maybe you need a little extra help.”

“Extra help?” Sully repeated, not sure what his great-uncle was telling him.

His guess was that the man was going to suggest possibly a temporary closer acquaintance with Johnnie Walker.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Seamus nodded and said, “A change of scenery.”

Sully didn’t see how that could help and dismissed the suggestion. “I’m not sure if a vacation—”

Seamus continued as if Sully hadn’t said anything. “What do you think about Texas?”

“Texas?” Sully echoed. He’d never been to that state, nor did he have any desire to change that. “I don’t really think anything about Texas,” he began but just like before, he got no further.

“I have this old friend who runs a diner in Forever, Texas. She’s also got this small horse ranch,” Seamus told him. “I’m sure if I contact her, Miss Joan’ll let you stay there.”

Sully looked at his great-uncle, bemused. Everyone knew that the man could be a bit eccentric.

“You call your old friend Miss Joan?” Sully questioned.

Seamus saw nothing unusual about that. “Everyone does,” he said. “All I have to do is pick up a phone and call her—”

“That’s okay, really,” Sully replied, cutting his great-uncle off. He began to rise. “I don’t need a change of scenery.”

Seamus caught his wrist. For a man in his seventies, he had an exceptionally strong grip. Sully sank back down.

“Yes,” Seamus insisted with emphasis, “you do. And as I seem to recall, wide-open spaces don’t intimidate you. You ride, don’t you?”

The old man’s memory was as sharp as Uncle Andrew’s. And, like all his uncles, he also had all the answers before he asked the questions, so there was no point in pretending that he didn’t know his way around a horse, Sully thought. He did. Riding tended to relax him. That went all the way back to his childhood and summers spent with his father, enjoying wide-open spaces.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Good,” Seamus pronounced. “Nothing left to do but pack your bag.”

Sully eyed the older man uncertainly. Seamus was assuming a lot here.

“But you haven’t even called your friend yet,” he pointed out.

Seamus leaned in closer to him.

“The good thing about old friends, Sully,” Seamus said in a low, confidential voice, “is that you know their answer even before you ask the question. Another good thing is that you can always count on them for a favor.” As he sat back, the older man’s smile widened. “Now, stop arguing with me, boy, and pack your bag.”

Miss Joan knew the minute that Sully Cavanaugh walked into her establishment.

She wasn’t looking toward the diner’s entrance at the time, but she saw the suddenly dazed expressions of utter admiration on her waitresses’ faces. The two young women, Mandy and Beth, appeared to have been suddenly struck speechless.

Mandy recovered first. Sighing deeply, the dark-haired young woman murmured, “That is one tall, cool drink of water.” Sheer appreciation rang in her voice.

“There’ll be no sipping from that glass,” Miss Joan informed both the young women sternly. “He’s the great-nephew of a friend of mine.”

“I’ll say he’s great,” Beth pronounced with enthusiasm.

Miss Joan frowned and waved the two young women toward their work areas. “You two have tables to bus,” Miss Joan reminded the mesmerized duo. “I suggest that you get to them before the piles get too large.”

As a police detective, Sully was used to walking into unfamiliar places, his every footstep carefully observed, with only seconds for him to assess whether or not his life was in jeopardy. This situation wasn’t that serious, but he was still aware of the fact that he was being closely scrutinized.

Probably because he was a stranger, Sully guessed. From what he’d gathered from his great-uncle, Forever was, for the most part, a small, tightly knit community.

The thin older woman at the counter made him think of an eagle, dissecting his every step as he drew closer to her. She was trim, narrow shouldered and a redhead, most likely a natural one once, but given her age, he guessed that she sought out a little artificial help to maintain the deep red color.

She’d been beautiful once, he thought. And he could see that back in the day, she had definitely been the type who had caught his great-uncle’s eye.

“Excuse me,” Sully said, clearing his throat.

The redheaded woman looked at him, and then at his hat.

Belatedly, he remembered to take off the black Stetson that his great-uncle had gifted him with when he’d left Aurora, bound for Forever. He wasn’t accustomed to wearing a hat, but the sun outside made it almost a necessity.

Running the brim along his fingers, he said, “I’m looking for Miss Joan.”

Miss Joan stopped wiping down the small counter space directly in front of her. Leaning slightly forward on the hand that was against the counter, she informed him, “You found her.”

Sully put out his hand. “I’m Sully Cavanaugh. I think that my great-uncle called you to say that I was coming out.”

Miss Joan glanced down at the offered hand but waited a beat before finally shaking it.

“No, he said he was sending you out for your own good,” she corrected. “He said something about you needing a place to regroup.”

Sully was accustomed to being a private person and waiting before offering any information beyond the bare minimum. This woman already seemed to know more about him than he was happy about.

“I don’t know about that—”

“He did,” Miss Joan continued, cutting him off. Hazel-green eyes slowly slid over the length of his torso, making no secret of the fact that she was assessing what she saw. “You look a lot like Seamus,” she told him. “Back when he was young and good-looking,” she added. “I imagine he’s rather old, craggy and fat by now.” Her voice rose slightly at the end of her statement, a silent invitation to be contradicted.

“He’s still pretty trim,” Sully told her. “And I think he sees himself as wise, not craggy.”

“But he is old,” Miss Joan said, noticing that the young man before her hadn’t said anything to contradict that.

“Old?” Sully corrected that impression now. “Not so you’d notice.”

Miss Joan waved a hand at his words. “You’re his family. You have to say that.”

Rather than protest, Sully took out his cell phone. He pressed the app where he kept family photographs and found the one he’d taken of his great-uncle earlier in the year.

He held it up for her to view. “Judge for yourself, Miss Joan.”

Rather than taking the phone from him, she took hold of Sully’s hand to steady it. Miss Joan peered intently at the photograph he had pulled up.

She pursed her lips and asked suspiciously, “When was this taken?”

Sully thought for a moment. “Around the first of the year.”

Her eyes narrowed, looking at him like a seasoned interrogator. “ This year?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My, my,” she murmured under her breath, releasing his hand. “If I wasn’t already spoken for, I might think about looking Seamus up again, see if some of that old magic was still there.”

Sully slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Old magic?” he echoed.

Although Sully had always considered himself to be pretty open-minded, it was hard picturing someone his great-uncle’s age having anything that even remotely resembled a love life.