Her Lone Cowboy

Ethan frowned. “There’s probably more to it than him disliking people, although I understand he pretty much keeps to himself.”

She turned to look at her brother fully. “Do you know him?”

“Not really. When he first came here, he was in the office to pay the property taxes and find out the exact location of the property lines on his place. I got the impression he wanted to know what his boundaries are to keep people out—although he didn’t actually say that.”

“What did he say?”

“Not a lot, as I recall,” Ethan admitted. “Haven’t seen much of him since.” Ethan worked in the county assessor’s office, but was really a jack-of-all-trades for the county, handling many tasks. “The only person who knows him is Don Parkey, the vet. He takes care of Ransom’s animals and hauls those broken-down drug horses out there.”

Laney stared at him. “Drug horses?”

“People find them all the time out in the desert, used, abused and abandoned by drug smugglers. They take them to Don, who patches them up the best he can and then takes them to Ransom’s place to recover. The county pays him a small fee to take them in and try to get them rehabilitated.”

Laney frowned. “I noticed there were some sad-looking horses in his pasture. One of them has a brand-new filly.” She was pleased that she’d remembered the correct gender.

“Maybe he likes people okay, but he likes animals better. He seems like the kind of guy who takes care of things, tries to fix them. I guess once the horses are rehabilitated, they’ll be sold to people who want riding horses. I doubt they’d be any good as cutting horses.”

Maybe what Ethan said about her neighbor being a fixer-upper was true, Laney thought. After all, the old Camacho place, which everyone called the CR Ranch, had been pretty run-down when he’d bought it and she could see evidence of the repairs he’d made. Now she was learning that he was taking in stray, abused horses. Given the state of his old truck, she was certain he wasn’t receiving much compensation from the county for their care. That kind of thing simply wasn’t in the budget.

What puzzled her was that, in her mind, none of this squared with his wish to be left alone.

“He was a soldier, you know,” Ethan continued. “Injured in Afghanistan. Don told me that’s why he limps like he does. I guess it was pretty bad.” He gave her the big-brother look. “Maybe you could be a little more understanding.”

“I’ve done my part,” she insisted, then told Ethan about their first meeting and their second.

“Hmm, that should soften him up. Nobody makes a chocolate cake as good as you do.”

She smirked at him. “Thank you. And before you ask, there’s none left. I gave Ransom the whole cake.”

“Aaagh!” Ethan reached back and pretended to be pulling a knife from his back. She giggled.

Ethan stopped his silly pantomiming and gave her a close look, his dark eyes examining her.

“What?” she asked.

“Sam’s four years old.”

“I know how old my son is.”

“So when do you think you’ll start dating again?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Where did that question come from? We were talking about Ransom and... You’re not thinking I’d be interested in Caleb Ransom, are you?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Laney thought about her encounters with him. “I don’t think so.”

“Give it some consideration.”

Laney answered with a swift glance of annoyance, but Ethan’s steady gaze held hers and she looked away. Color stained her cheeks.

“Not every man is like James Carson,” he said gently.

“What’s James got to do with this?”

“Only that not everyone is like him, selfish and egotistical. Could be that you’re letting your experience with that jerk color your view of Ransom.”

Her mouth dropped open again. “How did this get to be my fault?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know how to act around people anymore, been alone too long. He’s got no one around here. No family or friends.”

“So far, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want friends.”

“Well, Laney, I’d think you’d understand better than anybody that what people say they want and what they really want are two different things,” Ethan pointed out.

“Like James,” Laney whispered, her gaze going automatically to Sam, who had mastered the art of turning his bike without falling off. Her ex-husband had said he’d wanted to be a father and then run off when it was about to happen. She knew she didn’t need to say it out loud. The entire family—and everyone else in Sweetsilver—knew what had happened. She hadn’t realized how it had affected her interaction with every new man she met in even the most casual way.

“Maybe you could cut Ransom some slack, Laney.” Ethan gave her the big-brother look again and she wrinkled her nose at him.

“Dad,” Shane yelled, riding up and turning his bike with a show-off skid on the gravel. “Sam can ride good now. Can we go out on the road?”

“Sure, as long as we’re with you.” Standing, he pulled Laney to her feet.

“You could have asked me if it was all right, you know,” Laney said in annoyance.

“Why? You would’ve simply told them no.”

She gave a disgusted click of her tongue and he laughed, throwing his arm around her shoulders and giving her a sideways hug. When he dropped his arm, Laney hooked hers with his and they walked side by side.

“You’re so smug and irritating,” she said with a long-suffering sigh.

“Part of my big brother charm.”

They walked down her drive and onto the road, watching the boys as they wheeled along. It pleased her to see that Shane and Logan had slowed their pace to accommodate their smaller cousin.

“You’ve been a pretty good big brother,” she admitted. “Considering I was dumped on you when you were only nine.”

“Mom said I had to be nice to you and I figured I could do it for a few days until your mother came back. By the time we realized your mom wasn’t coming back, it was a habit.”

Laney smiled, knowing there was more to the story than that.

She barely remembered her mother who had dropped her on her older sister, Laney’s aunt Vivian, when Laney was only seven. Her life up until then had been chaotic, lacking any kind of routine or stability.

Lauraine Reynolds had promised she’d be back in a few days but she’d never returned. Laney recalled how scared she had been and how Vivian and Frank Crown had welcomed her, saying they’d always wanted a daughter.

And Ethan had been great. He hadn’t seemed to mind her tagging along with him until she made friends of her own.

When the family had learned a few months later that Lauraine had died from some kind of massive infection while working as a card dealer in Las Vegas, Vivian and Frank had adopted Laney. She would be forever grateful. At seven, she hadn’t really understood the finality of death and asked Vivian and Frank if she could keep the name Reynolds in case her mother ever came looking for her.

“You’re not like her, you know,” Ethan said.

“Who?” Laney glanced up at him.

“Your mother. You would never abandon your child or put him at risk, but it’s okay to let him take some reasonable risks.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know about that. He’s only four.”

“What if you let him risk life and limb by coming over to our house tonight? We’ll probably watch a movie and play a wild and crazy game of Candyland.”

Laney laughed and agreed to the plan as they continued their ambling walk down the road.

After a few more steps Ethan cleared his throat. “Laney, there’s something I need to warn you about.”

“Uh-oh.” She looked over, concerned. “What is it?”

“Mom bought a tree.”

Horrified, she stared at him. “No! They actually let her back into the nursery?”

“No, she ordered it online. Dad didn’t know anything about it until he came in and found it growing in a huge pot in the living room.”

“What kind of tree is it?”

“Banana.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Apparently it’s the only kind she hasn’t killed yet. It’s even got tiny little green bananas on it.” He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart.

“The poor thing,” Laney said in a mournful tone. “It has no idea what it’s in for.”

“A slow and agonizing death from too much love, overwatering, overfertilizing.”

Laney flung out her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t understand how someone who’s so kind and generous can be the angel of death to any plant she comes into contact with.”

“It’s a mystery,” he agreed sadly.

They continued walking as they contemplated the problem. Vivian Reynolds Crown had never successfully grown a garden, a bush, a tree, or so much as a philodendron, but she never gave up trying, and many lush, living things had been sacrificed on the altar of her horticultural ambitions.

“Well,” Laney finally said with a sigh, “at least it will keep her busy and involved for a while.”

“Yeah, and we’ll hear about every drooping leaf and dead stalk.”

Laney slipped her arm through Ethan’s and gave him a squeeze. “It’s the burden we must bear for being her children.”

Ethan gave a miserable nod and they followed their sons up the road.

* * *

WHO WAS THAT GUY? Caleb reined in Cisco behind a stand of paloverde on a rise near the road. Telling himself he was only watching because he was nearby, preparing to move Addie and her filly out of the pasture and move a few cattle in. Besides, he needed to see what was going on because he didn’t want any strangers coming to his place unannounced.

He observed Laney as she walked down the lane behind Sam and two other little boys on bicycles. Her arm was entwined with that of a man whose face he couldn’t quite see.

Caleb’s mouth twitched in annoyance. Laney and the guy looked pretty friendly. It irritated him that he couldn’t see the guy’s face. If someone was around, anywhere near his place, he wanted to know who it was. He didn’t like surprises and he didn’t want unexpected company. He had avoided people since he’d moved to Sweetsilver and he fully intended to keep it that way.

* * *

LANEY DIDN’T KNOW what to do with herself. She had finished getting her turnouts and other gear ready for the coming fire season, worked in her yard, swept the kitchen, and showered and washed her hair, deciding to let it air dry, allowing the dark curly waves to do whatever they wanted. Sometimes she simply didn’t feel like fighting them.

She ate a quiet dinner then wandered around the house, missing Sam. She had a book to read, a suspense novel guaranteed to keep her interested and probably terrified until dawn. Or she could call her best friend, Sarah, to see if she wanted to go into Sierra Vista to see a movie, have a girl’s night out—something they hadn’t done in months.

None of those things appealed, though. She was too restless, too unsettled and, probably thanks to her brother’s words, thinking too much about Caleb Ransom.

He did intrigue her. He was closed off, said he didn’t want company or friends. He was scarred on the outside and doubtless on the inside, too, but because of the defensive wall he’d put up, she would never know the nature of his scars, never know him. For despite all good judgment, she sensed a need in him that drew her.

Laney couldn’t have said why she even cared. He didn’t want her around; not her or her son. He had his own life, his own business, and she had hers.

Thinking about him made her move to her kitchen window, which looked out onto his land. The late-afternoon sun slanted down, casting long shadows across his pasture.

So much of her mind hadn’t been taken up with a man since James Carson—and she hadn’t had a pleasant thought about him in years.

Laney doubted that Caleb was anything like James. No doubt he kept his promises, she thought as she gazed out the window dreamily, and carried through with anything he’d decided to do.

Taking in abused and abandoned horses was proof of his compassion, his abilities as a horse owner and—

His cattle were in her yard!

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