Date with a Cowboy: Iron Cowboy / In the Arms of the Rancher / At the Texan's Pleasure

“Sara, do you feel all right?”

Sara just grinned. “I never felt better.”

“If you say so. I’ll get these ordered.” She glanced at Sara. “He wants you to take them out to him on Saturday.”

Sara grimaced. “He just likes ruining my weekends.”

“He hardly knows you, dear. I’m sure it’s not that.”

Sara didn’t answer her.

On Thursday, Harley phoned with bad news. “I have to fly to Denver on business for the boss, and I’ll be gone a week or more,” he said miserably. “So we can’t go to the movies on Friday.”

“That’s all right, Harley,” she assured him. “There will be a movie left when you get back that we can go see. Honest.”

He laughed. “You make everything so easy, Sara.”

“You have a safe trip.”

“I’ll do my best. Take care.”

“You, too.”

She hung up and wondered idly why Harley had to go out of town just before they went on another date. It was as if fate was working against her. She’d looked forward to it, too. Now all she had to anticipate was delivering books to the ogre. It wasn’t a happy thought. Not at all.

Well, she told herself, it could always be worse. She could be dating HIM—the ogre.

Three

Sara took the ogre’s books home with her on Friday, just as she had the last time, so that she didn’t have to go to town. At least it wasn’t pouring rain when she went out to her car early Saturday morning to make the drive to the White Horse Ranch.

This time, he was waiting for her on the porch. He was leaning against one of the posts with his hands in his jean pockets. Like last time, he was wearing working garb. Same disreputable boots and hat, same unpleasant expression. Sara tried not to notice what an incredible physique he had, or how handsome he was. It wouldn’t do to let him know how attractive she found him.

He looked pointedly at his watch as she came up the steps. “Five minutes late,” he remarked.

Her eyebrows arched. “I am not,” she shot back. “My watch says ten, exactly.”

“My watch is better than yours,” he countered.

“I guess so, if you judge it by the amount of gold on the band instead of the mechanics inside it,” she retorted.

“You’re testy for a concert goer,” he returned. He smiled, and it wasn’t sarcastic. “You like Debussy, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

She was taken aback by the question. “I like Resphigi, Rachmaninoff, Haydn and some modern composers like the late Basil Poledouris and Jerry Goldsmith. I also like James Horner, Danny Elfman, Harry Gregson-Williams and James Newton Howard.”

He eyed her curiously. “I thought a country girl like you would prefer fiddles to violins.”

“Well, even here in Outer Cowpasture, we know what culture is,” she countered.

He chuckled deeply. “I stand corrected. What came in?” he asked, nodding toward the books she was carrying.

She handed the bag to him. He looked over the titles, nodding and pulled a check out of his pocket, handing it to her.

“Is it serious?” he asked abruptly.

She just stared at him. “Is what serious?”

“You and the cowboy at the concert. What’s his name, Fowler?”

“Harley Fowler. We’re friends.”

“Just friends?”

“Listen, I’ve already been asked that question nine times this week. Just because I go out with a man, it doesn’t mean I’m ready to have his children.”

Something touched his eyes and made them cold. His faintly friendly air went into eclipse. “Thanks for bringing the books out,” he said abruptly. He turned and went in the house without another word, closing the door firmly behind him.

Sara went back to her car, dumbfounded. She couldn’t imagine what she’d said to make him turn off like a blown lightbulb.

The next day she went to church and then treated herself to a nice lunch at Barbara’s Café in town. The ogre’s odd behavior had disturbed her. She couldn’t understand what she’d said to put that look on his lean face. She was upset because she didn’t understand. She wasn’t a woman who went around trying to hurt other people, even when they deserved it.

After lunch, on an impulse she drove back to her church, parked her car and walked out into the cemetery. She wanted to see her grandfather’s grave and make sure the silk flowers she’d put there for Father’s Day—today—were still in place. Sometimes the wind blew them around. She liked talking to him as well; catching him up on all the latest news around town. It would probably look as if she were crazy if anyone overheard her. But she didn’t care. If she wanted to think her grandfather could hear her at his grave, that was nobody else’s business.

She paused at his headstone and stooped down to remove a weed that was trying to grow just beside the tombstone. Her grandmother was buried beside him, but Sara had never known her. She’d been a very small child when she died.

She patted the tombstone. “Hello, Grandad,” she said softly. “I hope you’re in a happy place with Granny. I sure do miss you. Especially in the summer. Remember how much fun we had going fishing together? You caught that big bass the last time, and fell in the river trying to get him reeled in.” She laughed softly. “You said he was the tastiest fish you’d ever eaten.”

She tugged at another weed. “There’s this new guy in town. You’d like him. He loves to read and he owns a big ranch. He’s sort of like an ogre, though. Very antisocial. He thinks I look like a bag lady …”

She stopped talking when she realized she wasn’t alone in the cemetery. Toward the far corner, a familiar figure was tugging weeds away from a tombstone, patting it with his hand. Talking to it. She hadn’t even heard him drive up.

Without thinking of the consequences, she went toward him. Here, among the tombstones, there was no thought of causing trouble. It was a place people came to remember, to honor their dead.

She stopped just behind him and read the tombstone. “Ellen Marist Cameron,” it said. She would have been nine years old, today.

He felt her there and turned. His eyes were cold, full of pain, full of hurt.

“Your daughter,” she guessed softly.

“Killed in a wreck,” he replied tonelessly. “She’d gone to the zoo with a girlfriend and her parents. On the way back, a drunk driver crossed the median and t-boned them on the side my daughter was occupying. She died instantly.”

“I’m sorry.”

He cocked his head. “Why are you here?”