Peggy Moreland - Marry Me, Cowboy

But Cody just shrugged. “Maybe you’d better explain, Harley.”

Harley fought back the anger and heaved a deep breath. “I was loading feed on my truck when this little girl here,” he said, gesturing to the child who still sat on his tailgate, “limped by crying. Since there wasn’t anyone around to help her—” he paused long enough to shoot a damning look at the woman who continued to eye him accusingly “—I perched her up there on my tailgate to pull a sticker out of her foot. Before I knew what hit me, this boy here jumped me from the back. I’d no more than pulled him off when this crazy woman jumped me from behind, screaming for the boy to grab his sister and run.”

Cody listened, pursing his lips thoughtfully. The woman, to Harley’s immense pleasure, had paled and was already racing to the back of his pickup. Murmuring softly, she cupped a hand to the little girl’s cheek, thumbed away a lingering tear, then tenderly tipped up her foot.

“It’s okay now, Mama,” the child said cheerfully. “That nice man pulled the sticker out.”

At the tag “nice man,” the woman’s gaze shot to Harley. He drew a great deal of satisfaction in pushing a broad smile across his face as hers turned a deeper shade of red. She let her daughter’s foot down slowly, then picked the child up and shifted her to one hip. She motioned her son to her side. “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” she said, trying valiantly to keep her chin up and her pride in place. “It seems there’s been a mistake.”

Cody looked at her askance. “You don’t want me to arrest him, then?” he asked innocently.

The woman frowned at the laughter in Cody’s eyes. “No. That won’t be necessary.”

She shifted her gaze reluctantly to Harley’s. “Thank you for helping Stephie.” He watched as she struggled to form the apology they both knew was his due. “And I—I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.” He could see that the words had left a sour taste on her tongue, because once she’d offered them, her lips puckered up like she’d taken a bite of an unripened persimmon. She spun around and marched away, still balancing the girl on her hip and holding the boy cinched tight to her side.

Standing alongside Cody, Harley watched the three of them as they crossed the street to a minivan parked in front of Carter’s Mercantile.

“Well,” he said, releasing a pent-up breath, “so much for the role of Good Samaritan.”

Cody chuckled and slapped his old friend on the back. “Helluva way to greet your new neighbors.”

Harley cocked his head to look at Cody in puzzlement. “Neighbors?” he repeated stupidly. “What new neighbors?”

Cody nodded at the woman loading her kids into her van. “That, my friend, is the new resident of the old Beacham place.”

Harley scowled, sure that Cody was pulling his leg. “You know damn good and well that J. C. Vickers leases that place and has ever since Miss Harriet passed on.” Harley knew this better than anyone because he’d been trying to sublease the land surrounding the house from J.C. for more than five years. But J.C. was a stubborn old cuss, and even though he didn’t use the land, he refused to sublease it to Harley. Said he liked his privacy and didn’t want a bunch of bawling cows disturbing his peace and quiet.

Cody nodded sagely, trying hard not to grin. “He did until a couple of weeks ago when Mary Claire Reynolds, Miss Harriet’s niece, gave him notice to pack up and move out.” He chuckled, obviously delighted with the stricken look on Harley’s face. He knew his townspeople’s business as well as he knew his own, and he knew how badly Harley wanted that land.

“You might pay her a visit later on,” Cody suggested, thoughtfully pulling at his chin. “I hear she’s a divorcée from Houston. She might be a bit more reasonable than J.C. was about leasing you that land. Probably would have more use for the money than she would for the pastures.” With a chuckle he slapped his friend on the back. “But you leave those kids of hers alone, you hear? I’d hate to haul you in on kidnapping charges.”

He strode off laughing, leaving Harley standing on the sidewalk in front of the feed store looking as sick as a dog who’d just lost a fight with a skunk.

“You did the right thing, Jimmy,” Mary Claire said as she leaned across the console to give her son a comforting pat on the knee. “You were just trying to protect your little sister. And you did a good job of it, I might add.”

At the praise, Jimmy’s chest swelled with pride. He cut a teasing grin at his mother. “You didn’t do so bad yourself.”

Mary Claire shuddered, remembering the weight and strength of the man who’d held her pinned to the ground. “He was big, wasn’t he?” she asked weakly.

“Bigger than a grizzly bear and twice as mean,” Jimmy confirmed, unaware of the shiver that chased down his mother’s spine,

“I thought he was nice,” Stephie piped in from the back seat.

Mary Claire glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror. Nice? Not so that Mary Claire had noticed. She was sure she’d be sporting a bruise where her backside had hit the sidewalk when he’d tossed her over his head. But it wouldn’t do to frighten her daughter. She wanted her to feel safe in their new home in Temptation. She smiled weakly at Stephie’s refleetion while she struggled to think of something favorable to say about the man. “It was kind of him to take the sticker out of your foot,” she finally said.

“Wouldn’t have had the darn thing if she’d kept her shoes on like I told her,” Jimmy muttered.

Stephie swelled up in a pout. “Mama said she always ran barefoot when she played here in the summers and that it felt good to feel grass under her feet. I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

“Key word is grass,” Jimmy returned dryly. “There wasn’t nothin’ but weeds and stickers on that playground.”

When Stephie would have continued the argument, Mary Claire interceded. “That’s enough, you two.” She strained to peer through the windshield against the glare of the sun. “Why don’t y’all help me watch for Aunt Harriet’s house?”

“What’s it look like?” Jimmy asked, already scanning ahead.

“A big two-story white house set back from the road with a little white picket fence running around it.”

“Is that it?” Jimmy asked, pointing ahead.

Mary Claire slowed and pulled to the shoulder. From the road, the house her son pointed to was barely visible through the snarl of twisted oaks and thick cedars that grew wild around it. If Jimmy hadn’t spotted it, Mary Claire knew she would have driven right past without even noticing.

But there it was, her aunt Harriet’s house, sitting behind the huge live oak with a trunk so thick that as a child she hadn’t been able to wrap her arms around it. She’d spent summers climbing that tree, playing hide-and-seek with her cousins and chasing fireflies at night around the two-story frame farmhouse shadowed by the tree’s massive branches.

“I believe it is,” she said, her voice almost a whisper as her mind slowly registered the changes. When Aunt Harriet and Uncle Bert had been alive, the trees had been carefully pruned and the lawn carpeted with green saint augustine grass. The beds surrounding the wraparound front porch had been filled with a profusion of flowers and shrubs, her aunt Harriet’s pride and joy. The place was nothing at all like it looked now.

Mary Claire made the turn onto the drive, emotion clotting in her throat, wondering what Aunt Harriet would say if she saw her home now and feeling guilty that she hadn’t taken a more active role in managing her inheritance—the inheritance that had enabled her to make the move from Houston.