His Texas Bride

“What?” Buck thought he might be squawking again, but he couldn’t help it. He’d never been more bewildered in his life, and on top of the roiling emotions he was feeling, the mental turmoil was almost more than one man could endure.

Guilt piled on guilt for the way he had treated his mother.

For the way he had treated Ellie.

“Your mother used the money from the sale of your childhood home to invest in another property—a working ranch,” Larry explained.

A working ranch?

Buck straightened a little at that news. He was the owner of a working ranch?

Except that it didn’t make any sense. Keeping Buck’s childhood home a working ranch had been the subject of his argument with his mother twenty years ago. If Mama had yielded, wouldn’t it have been for her own son?

Although after the way he’d acted, he guessed he wouldn’t blame his mother for writing him off. Still. The pieces didn’t fit together to make any kind of clear picture. “My mother wasn’t interested in working our ranch, and she certainly wouldn’t have been capable of working a new one.”

Larry nodded gravely. “That is true. Your mother never worked the new holdings herself. At the moment, the ranch is, er, being leased out to another party.”

“I see,” Buck said, a plan beginning to form in his mind. This wasn’t so bad. Having tenants currently leasing the ranch wouldn’t make his dream impossible—just a little bit more of a hassle. The end result would be no different than his original plan—sell the ranch, take the money and run.

“So there are people renting my place,” Buck asked, fighting hard to keep the excitement from showing, not wanting to look callous in front of Ellie.

“In effect,” Larry answered, flashing a brief, troubled glance at Ellie, which Buck did not miss.

What were they were keeping between themselves?

Whatever it was, it was clearly deeply bothering both of them, and neither of them would make eye contact with Buck, though he switched his questioning gaze back and forth between the two of them several times. Ellie pushed herself off the table and began pacing in back of Buck’s chair.

“So I’ll just give the renters a realistic notice, or offer to sell to them, if they want. In any case, I can sell that property,” said Buck. “I don’t want to be unreasonable about it, but I have things I need to do elsewhere. How quickly do you think you can wrap this up, Larry?”

“Well, there’s the matter of contacting Ferrell’s real estate firm, if you want to sell,” Larry hedged, his gaze noticeably shifting away from Buck’s.

“What do you mean, if I want to sell?” Buck demanded, leaning forward on his arms until the back of the chair bit into his skin. “I just told you that’s exactly what I want to do. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes. Er, no. There are…” Larry hesitated, once again glancing in Ellie’s direction. “Extenuating circumstances that may affect your decision to sell.”

Buck could not imagine an extenuating circumstance that would make him change his mind on this, but he shrugged and nodded for Larry to continue.

Larry blew out a breath and rushed on, his words falling on top of each other in his haste to spit the sentence out. “What you need to understand, Buck, is that you are currently sitting on the property in question. Quite literally.”

It took Buck a moment to absorb Larry’s meaning, but then his eyes widened and he whistled his surprise, just before his racing heart took a nosedive into his stomach. “Mama bought this ranch? Ellie’s ranch?”

Ellie cleared her throat and went back to leaning on the table, where she’d been earlier. She brushed a nervous hand over her long black hair, and her gaze darted randomly around the room. She looked everywhere but straight at Buck and took her time before speaking. “Technically, Buck, it’s your ranch.”

Buck needed a minute to ingest all the information that had just been thrown at him. Mama had sold his childhood home to buy Ellie’s ranch.

But why?

Nothing made sense anymore.

And where had his mother lived after the sale of their family home? Buck decided that was the first and most important question to be answered, so he stammered out an inquiry. “Wh-where did Mama live, then?”

“Why, with me, of course,” Ellie answered immediately, her smile wavering as her gaze got distant and her eyes luminescent with moisture.

“Ellie was the one who cared for your mother during her last days,” Larry added gently.

Buck rubbed a hand against his jaw, which was starting to prickle with a day’s growth of beard. “I don’t know what to say.” He shook his head. “I—I guess thank you would be in order,” he said, nodding his head in Ellie’s direction. “I really had no idea. None at all.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Ellie snapped and then took a deep breath in an apparent attempt to calm herself, though, from the flush on her face, Buck didn’t think it was working. “No one expected you to, Buck,” Ellie continued. “As we already indicated, Mama Esther wanted it to be this way. I’m sure she had her reasons.”

Buck’s mind was racing. Ellie rented this ranch—this Christian therapy ranch, which Buck had personally thought was just a fancy term for a tourist trap—from his mother. And Mama had lived with Ellie. Ellie, not Buck, had been the one to care for his mother during her illness.

Here.

Right where he was sitting.

He looked around, narrowing his gaze as he realized—now that he was paying attention to such things—that he did recognize some of the furniture and knickknacks as his mother’s. He blew out a breath. He really must have had his head in the clouds, shadowed by grief, to have missed such an obvious conclusion. His guilt and shame at the loss of his mother were obscuring his judgment much more than he had realized.

Ellie watched the mix of emotions crossing Buck’s face as he took in all this new information—hurt, anger, grief and confusion warring for prominence. She said a silent prayer for the man she’d once loved with her whole heart.

“You don’t have to make any decisions today,” Larry informed Buck. Larry stood and gave Buck’s shoulder a conciliatory pat. “Take as much time as you need.”

Buck flashed Ellie an apprehensive look, his pupils dilated and foggy, lending a grayish tenor to his eyes. He nodded slowly.

“I guess I do need a little time,” he murmured, his voice ragged.

Despite the feelings warring inside her, Ellie wanted to move to Buck’s side, to hug him. Just to hold him again, let him know he had a friend. But she wasn’t sure how he’d take it, so she didn’t move from where she leaned against the tabletop. She clasped her hands tightly to the table edge to keep from launching herself at him.

“I’m going to get out of here and give you two a bit of privacy,” Larry continued, his voice as low and compassionate as always. “I’m sure you have a lot to discuss. Let me know when you’ve reached a definitive decision regarding the ranch, Buck, and we’ll go from there.”

Ellie slipped into the chair vacated by Larry, thinking it would be better to be seated directly across from Buck. She wasn’t sure Buck was ready to talk about anything, but as Larry had indicated, she and Buck had a lot to say to each other—providing Buck was willing to listen to the whole story and did not just write her off without an explanation.

Ellie felt badly about not informing Buck of his mother’s decisions earlier. In hindsight, she decided it had been wrong not to contact Buck immediately when his mother had become ill. But so much had happened so fast. Ellie hadn’t had the time to think things through.

And Mama Esther had asked her to remain silent, wanting to tell Buck herself in her own time.

But as it had turned out, Esther hadn’t had that time, and Buck had been hit over the head with what must feel to him like a good-size boulder.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” she apologized sympathetically, realizing she’d already said that but not knowing how else to start the conversation.

Buck buried his head in his hands with a groan and refused to look at her.

“Do you have a headache?” she asked softly, her fingers twitching with the need to reach for him. “I have some aspirin in the medicine cabinet I could get for you.”

Buck groaned again, louder this time. “No, thank you. I feel like my head is going to explode, but I don’t think aspirin is going to help.”

He looked up at her and almost smiled, the corner of his lip twitching upward just the slightest bit. It gave Ellie hope, even that hint of a smile. She smiled broadly in return, hoping he could grasp the compassion she felt for him.

“I don’t think anything will help me right now,” he said with a shake of his head, which then made him wince as if in agony—which he probably was, emotionally, at any rate, Ellie thought.