Marie Ferrarella - Her Right-Hand Cowboy

“So you kept it going while pushing me away—and what did it get you in the end, Old Man? You’re gone, and the ranch is still here. At least for now,” she said ironically. “But not for long. Just until I can get someone to take it off my hands. And then I’ll finally be done with it, and you, once and for all,” Ena concluded under her breath.

She was stalling. She supposed she was putting off dealing with that oppressive wave of memories that threatened to wash over her the moment she walked through the front door and into the house.

But she knew that she couldn’t put it off indefinitely.

Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and took another tentative step toward the house. And then another until she reached the steps leading up to the wraparound veranda. The place, she recalled, where her mother and father used to like to sit and rock at the end of the day.

As she came to the second step, Ena heard that old familiar creak beneath her foot.

Her father never had gotten around to fixing that. She could remember her mother asking him to see to it and her father promising to “get to it when I have the time.”

“Obviously you never found the time to fix that that, either, did you, Old Man?” she said, addressing the man who was no longer there.

“Is that a Dallas thing? Talking to yourself?” a deep male voice behind her asked.

In the half second that it took Ena to swing around to see who had crept up so silently behind her, she managed to compose herself and not look as if the tall, handsome, dark-haired cowboy behind her had launched her heart into double time.

“Is sneaking up behind people something you picked up while working here?” Ena countered, annoyed.

Her father had had that habit, materializing behind her when she least expected it, usually to interrogate her about where she had been or where she intended on going. And no matter what she answered, her father always sounded as if he disapproved and was criticizing her.

The cowboy, however, sounded contrite. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I wasn’t making enough noise for you.” He then coughed and cleared his throat. “Is that loud enough?” he asked her with an easy grin.

Ena pressed her lips together and glared at him without answering.

The cowboy nodded. “I take it from that look on your face that you don’t remember me,” he said.

Ena narrowed her clear blue eyes as she focused on the cowboy, who must have towered over her by at least a good twelve inches. There was something vaguely familiar about his rugged face with its high, almost gaunt cheekbones, but after the restless night she had spent and then the long trip back, she was not in the mood to play guessing games with someone who was apparently one of her father’s ranch hands.

“Should I?” she asked coldly.

Mitch Parnell winced. “Ouch, I guess that puts me in my place,” he acknowledged. He pushed back his worn Stetson and took off his right glove, extending his hand out to her. “Welcome home, Ena.”

The deep smile and familiar tone nudged forward more memories from her past. Her eyes slowly swept over the dusty, rangy cowboy. It couldn’t be—

Could it?

“Mitch?” she asked uncertainly. But even as she said his name, part of her thought she was making a mistake.

Until he smiled.

Really smiled.

Even as a teenager, Mitch Parnell had always had the kind of smile that the moment it appeared, it could completely light up the area. She and Mitch had gone to high school together, and for a week or two, she had even fancied herself in love with him—or as in love as a seventeen-year-old unhappy, lost girl desperately searching for acceptance could be.

Her mother had died the year before and communication between her father and her had gone from bad to worse. It felt as if the only times Bruce O’Rourke spoke to her, he was either lashing out at her or yelling at her. Hurting, she had been desperate to find a small haven, some sort of a retreat from the cold world where she could pretend she was loved and cared for.

But at seventeen, she had been awkward and not exactly skilled in womanly wiles. Consequently, she just assumed that Mitch had missed all her signals. It even felt as if he had dodged all her outright romantic gestures. In any event, she wound up withdrawing even further into herself, biding her time until she finally graduated high school and could flee the site of her unhappiness.

At the time, Mitch had just been someone she’d gone to school with. If anything, he had been a further reminder of her failure to make a connection with someone. She didn’t associate him with her father’s ranch. Had he come to work here after he had graduated high school? The few conversations they’d had back then, he had never mentioned anything about wanting to work on a ranch. Seeing him here was a surprise.

It occurred to her that she knew next to nothing about the good-looking guy she had briefly thought of as her salvation.

“Mitch?” she repeated, still looking at him, confused.

Pleasure brought an even wider smile to his lips. “So you do remember me.” There was satisfaction evident in his voice.

Ena fervently hoped that he merely thought of her as someone he’d gone to school with and not as the girl who had made an unsuccessful play for him. This was already awkward enough as it was.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I work here,” Mitch answered. His tone was neither boastful nor solicitous. He was merely stating a fact. “As a matter of fact, your dad made me foreman of the Double E almost three years ago.”

Ena stared at him, trying to comprehend what Mitch was telling her. When she’d left, her father only hired men to work on the ranch who he’d either known for years or who came highly recommended by men he had known for years. Apparently, some things had changed in the last ten years.

“Where’s Rusty?” she asked, referring to the big barrel-chested man who had been her father’s foreman for as long as she could remember.

The smile on Mitch’s lips faded, giving way to a somber expression. “Rusty died.”

She stared at Mitch in disbelief. “When?” she finally asked.

This was almost more than she could process. Rusty Hayes had been the man who had taught her how to ride a horse. When she was really young, she remembered wishing that Rusty was her real father and not the man who periodically growled at her and even growled at her mother on occasion. Rusty had been even-tempered. Her father couldn’t have been accused of that.

“Three years ago,” Mitch told her. There was sympathy in his eyes. “You didn’t know,” he guessed.

“There’s a lot I didn’t know,” Ena bit off. “My father and I didn’t exactly stay in touch,” she added angrily, trying to process this latest blow.

Mitch continued to look at her sympathetically. “So I gather.” She was still standing on the top step of the veranda. He decided that maybe she needed a gentle nudge. “Would you like to go in?” he asked.

The question seemed to snap her out of the deep funk she had slipped into. Ena pulled her shoulders back as if she were gearing up for battle. “I lived here for eighteen years. I don’t need your invitation to go in if that’s what I want to do,” she informed him.

Mitch raised his hands up in mute surrender. “Didn’t mean to imply that you did,” he told her, apologizing without saying the actual words. The next moment, he saw her turning on her heel. She walked down the three steps, away from the porch. “Are you leaving?” he asked her in surprise.

“Are you trying to keep tabs on me?” she demanded.

To Ena’s surprise, rather than answer her, Mitch began to laugh. Heartily.