Debra Clopton - Her Unexpected Cowboy

Being self-conscious about anything was at odds with his image of Lucy.

“Your grandmother came by this morning with her friends. They’re a great group.” She waved toward the counter loaded with pie and cookies. “I have all kinds of goodies in there left over if you and the guys want to take a break.”

That made him laugh. In the background the pounding grew steadily, and then something crashed and the boys’ whoops rang joyfully through the house. “As you can hear, I’m not doing anything, so if you mean there’s pie in there from Ms. Jo, then I’m all in.”

She’d started smiling when the boys started whooping. She was one gorgeous woman.

“There’s pie. And, by the way, I put in a good word for you.”

She headed into the kitchen and he followed. She wore another of those oversize shirts, hot pink today, and he began to think it was an artist quirk or something. The collar brushed her jaw and the sleeves covered half her hands, they were so long. And still, as dwarfed as she was in all that cloth, he remembered the feel of her in his arms that first day.

She might be small, but Lucy Calvert was all woman.

She turned suddenly and he almost ran over her. Automatically, he wrapped his arms around her, lifting her instead of mowing her down.

“Sorry about that.” He set her on her feet and she immediately put distance between them.

She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m so short it’s easy to miss me.”

“Hardly. No one would miss you.” His frank assessment of her appeal had her swinging away from him to reach for a pie. She lifted the cover, her shoulders stiff as she did so, and he realized she didn’t like him flirting with her. “I just wasn’t watching where I was going,” he added, trying to ease the tension that had sprung between them.

She’d started slicing pie with a vengeance. “Will you ask the boys what they’d like to drink with their pie, please?” she asked, as if he hadn’t spoken.

He stared at her back for a few minutes, confused by her reaction. “Sure,” he said, and went to get the guys.

What had just happened?

* * *

Lucy arrived at Sunrise Ranch with the pit of her stomach churning. She knew a lot about the ranch now, since working with Wes and Joseph. The teens had been fun to be around and had worked really hard. She’d been glad she hired them and got to watch their excitement over being destructive. And they’d been so polite doing it.

Even now the thought made her smile.

If it hadn’t been for their constant exuberance, she didn’t know what she’d have done when she’d found herself in Rowdy’s arms once more—one minute she’d been fine and the next his muscled arms had swept her off her feet and his heartbeat was tangoing with her own.

She’d overreacted. Panicked. She’d forgotten how wonderful it felt to be held by a man.

Forgotten the feel of another heart beating against hers.

What she hadn’t forgotten was how complete betrayal felt and that had driven her, shaken and babbling, out of his arms and across the room.

He probably thought she was crazy. Well, that made two of them.

Letting the excitement of meeting her neighbors take over, she parked beside the house like Ruby Ann had instructed her to do.

Kids were everywhere. There were several across the way in the arena riding horses, including Joseph and Wes. Three younger boys were taking turns trying to throw their ropes around the horns on a roping dummy in front of the barn. They stopped to watch as she got out of her truck and immediately, ropes dragging, they headed her way.

“You must be Lucy,” the smallest boy said, arms pumping from side to side as he raced to beat his buddies. His plump cheeks were pink and dampness suffused his face. Obviously he’d been outside for a while and his oversize wide-rimmed cowboy hat hadn’t completely shaded him from the sunlight.

“Yes, I am. How did you guess?”

“I heard Rowdy say you were kinda short. And you ain’t much taller than me.”

Ha! “True. I can’t deny that you are almost as tall as me.”

“I’m B.J., by the way. I’m the youngest one here, so I’m supposed to be short.”

The other two crowded close. Almost the same size, one had brown hair and brown eyes, and the other was blond haired with blue eyes. They looked around nine years old and were almost her height.

“I’m Sammy and this here is Caleb,” the brown-haired one said. “We heard you let Wes and Joseph knock down walls in your house. We been thinking it would be mighty fun to do. We’re pretty strong. Show her your muscles, Caleb.”

Immediately all arms cocked to show small bumps that would one day be muscles and truly did have some definition to them despite their young ages.

Vitality radiated from the three of them in their oversize hats, jeans, boots and B.J. with his leather vest. They could easily go on the cover of a greeting card.

“So how’s the roping going?”

“Good, you wanna come try?” B.J. asked, taking her hand in his damp, slightly sticky one. “It’s real fun. I ain’t got it all figured out, but Caleb here, he’s pretty good.”

“I am, too,” Sammy said, looking put out that B.J. hadn’t said so. “I might be the newest kid here, but I been working real hard and almost got Caleb caught.”

Lucy laughed at the competitiveness as she allowed B.J. to pull her across the gravel to the metal roping dummy. “I’ll try it. But I’m not promising much.”

Wes and Joseph rode up to the fence with a slightly younger kid with coal-black hair, blue eyes and a crooked grin. The skinny teen looked amazingly like a younger version of Elvis Presley, whose old movies she’d loved as a kid, watching with her mother. It was one good memory she had of time spent with her mother.

“You made it,” Wes called over the rail.

“Your house didn’t cave in yet, did it?” Joseph’s soft-spoken teasing made her smile. He had been so skeptical about taking a swing at the wall, but in the end he’d been a wall-knocking maniac just like Wes. It was easy to see Wes lived on the edge—much like she’d picture Rowdy at that age. But Joseph, he was a gentle soul.

“No, it’s still standing. At least when I left.”

“We want to help, too, please,” Sammy said, reiterating what B.J. had said earlier. “Wes was telling us about how you just told them to beat that wall to smithereens and we all want to take a whack at it.”

Everyone started talking at once, and Lucy found herself in the midst of a huge discussion on why the younger boys should get the chance to come knock out her walls.

“Whoa, guys.” She called a time-out with her hands. “I have no problem with more help. We’ll set it up with Rowdy. How does that sound?”

It wasn’t long before Rowdy rode up on a horse with a couple of other men—one was an older cowboy with snow-white hair introduced as Pepper, the horse foreman, and the other was Chet, the Sunrise Ranch top hand. She’d learned from Nana’s visit that Rowdy was the cattle-operation manager and quarter horse trainer. It was easy to see that Rowdy was a hands-on kind of cowboy, dusty from whatever he’d been doing out there on his horse. Lucy’s fingers itched with the desire to paint him and his friends as they’d looked riding in from the open range.

She’d been struck by the Old West look of Rowdy in his chaps and spurs. And those deep blue, dangerous eyes as they glinted in the sunlight.

Chet and Pepper led their horses into the barn and he dismounted.

“I see the boys are making you feel at home.”

“Very. They’re a great bunch.”

They all began talking at once and she loved it. Their excitement was contagious.

“What are y’all practicing for?” she asked them.