Marie Ferrarella - Her Right-Hand Cowboy

She had reached the entrance and had almost made good her getaway when she felt a hand on her arm. Startled, she looked and saw that the hand belonged to a waitress she didn’t recognize.

The waitress, a girl who might have barely been out of high school, pressed the twenty she’d left on the counter into her hand. Ena looked at the waitress quizzically.

“Miss Joan told me to tell you that she never said anything about charging for the meal,” the waitress told her.

Ena looked down at the twenty. Damn that woman, always getting in the last word , she thought. Just like her father.

Out loud, she observed, “I guess she never said a lot of things.”

“Do you want me to tell her that?” the waitress asked.

Ena shook her head. “No, never mind. Here,” she said, trying to give the money to the waitress. “Consider this a tip.”

But the other woman kept her hand tightly closed. “Can’t,” the waitress protested. “I didn’t earn it and Miss Joan wouldn’t like me taking money like this for no reason.”

With that, the waitress turned on her heel and retreated back into the diner.

Ena sighed. Looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto , she thought. Ten years in Dallas had caused her to forget just how frustratingly set in her ways Miss Joan could be.

The next six months were going to be hell.

But that didn’t change the fact that Miss Joan’s step-grandson was right. If she walked away from the ranch, her father would have won their final battle. There was no way she was about to allow that to happen. She couldn’t bear it.

“Into the valley of death rode the six hundred,” Ena murmured under her breath, quoting Tennyson’s epic poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” She felt as if she were going through the motions of reliving the actual events depicted in the poem.

Except that she was determined to come out of this alive and victorious.

“Hey, boss,” Roy Bailey, one of the hands working on the Double E, called out into the stable. Mitch was inside working with an orphaned foal that was having a great deal of trouble taking his nourishment from the bottle that was being offered to it. “I think she’s back.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Mitch responded, raising his voice while keeping his attention on the foal. “Which she are you talking about?”

“He means Mr. Bruce’s daughter,” Wade answered, speaking up for the other ranch hand. “And from what I can see, she doesn’t look all that happy.”

“I’m guessing she’s had the terms of the will spelled out for her,” Mitch said. “Hey, Bailey, take over trying to feed this little guy,” he instructed the ranch hand, holding out the bottle to him.

Bailey looked rather reluctant, although the hired hand took the bottle from Mitch. “I’m not good with a bottle,” he protested.

“That’s not the way I hear it,” Mitch said with a laugh. “Just hold the bottle. With any luck, the foal will do the rest,” he told Bailey.

Rising to his feet, Mitch dusted off his hands. He stepped out of the stables just as Ena was making her way to the ranch house.

He cut her off before she had a chance to mount the steps leading to the porch. Bailey was right about Ena’s appearance, he thought.

Out loud, Mitch observed, “Well, you certainly don’t look very happy.”

Startled, she looked in his direction. Her expression hardened. “I’m not,” she told him.

“I take it that your dad’s lawyer told you the terms of the will?”

Mitch put it in the form of a question, but he already knew the answer. She wouldn’t have been frowning that way if she had been on the receiving end of news that she welcomed.

“Yes, he did,” Ena said grimly.

He looked at her for a long moment. “Is that scowl on your face because you’ve decided not to stay—or because you have?”

Diplomacy was obviously a lost art out here, Ena thought.

“That’s pretty blunt,” she observed. “You certainly don’t believe in beating around the bush, do you, Mitch?”

“Only when it’s fun,” he said. Then he sobered and added, “But no, not usually. And not, apparently, in this case.” His eyes searched her face, looking for a clue. “So, you haven’t told me. Are you staying?” he asked, phrasing his question in another form.

Her eyes narrowed. Was he being cute or was he just toying with her? “Do I have a choice in the matter?”

He spread his arms wide. “You could leave,” he reminded her.

“Right,” she said sarcastically. “And forfeit my birthright?” she asked, stunned that he would even suggest that.

“Is that important to you?” Mitch asked. He was curious to hear what her response to that would be.

“Honestly?” she asked. When Mitch nodded, she told him, “What’s important to me is not letting that old man win.”

There was that stubborn spirit of hers again, Mitch thought. “Despite whatever I might have alluded to earlier, I don’t really think it matters all that much to him one way or the other,” he told her, covertly observing her expression. “The old man is past the point of caring.”

“Well, I’m not and it does to me,” Ena informed him. “And I’ll be damned if he gets to ace me out of something that’s been in the family for three generations just because I had the audacity to be born a female and not his male heir.”

He, for one, thought that her having been born a female was a great boon to the world, and especially to him, but he wasn’t about to voice that sentiment to her, at least not right now. It would get him into a lot of hot water for a hell of a whole lot of reasons.

“Just so I’m clear on this, you’re going to stay on and run the ranch?” he asked, waiting for a confirmation from her.

Ena closed her eyes. The frustrated sigh came up from the bottom of her very toes. “It certainly looks that way,” she replied, opening her eyes again.

If he let himself, he could get lost in those eyes, Mitch thought. He always could.

“You’re going to need help,” he concluded.

“Ordinarily, I would take that as an insult,” she told him. She liked to think of herself as self-sufficient and independent, but she also knew her limitations. “But right now, I have to admit that you’re right. I’m going to need help. A lot of help. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know the first thing about running a ranch—” She saw him opening his mouth to say something and she got ahead of what she knew he was going to say. “And yes, I know I grew up here, but just because you grow up next to a bakery doesn’t mean you have the slightest idea how bread is made. Especially if the baker won’t let you into the kitchen.”

He looked impressed by the fact that she could admit that. “Best way I know how to get started is to just jump right into the thick of things and start working,” he told her. She was looking at him quizzically, so he explained, “There’s a foal in the stables whose mama died giving birth to him and he needs to be fed if he has any chance of surviving.”

The very abbreviated story unintentionally brought back painful memories for Ena. Her mother hadn’t died in childbirth, but her twin had. She could definitely relate to that foal on some level.

“Take me to him,” she told Mitch.

Mitch suppressed a smile. He’d been hoping for that sort of reaction from her.

“Right this way, Ms. O’Rourke,” he said politely, leading the way into the stable.

The foal was skittish when she came up to him. Ena was slightly uncomfortable as she glanced toward Mitch for guidance.