Roping In The Cowgirl

His offer to walk her to her car had taken her by complete surprise. Maybe he was just being a gentleman, but she had a feeling he had something on his mind. If so, she’d find out soon enough.

He opened the front door for her, and she stepped out onto the wraparound porch, where a row of empty rockers were lined against the wall and flanked by pots of red and pink geraniums. As he joined her, she took a moment to savor the sights and sounds of the evening. The moon was only a sliver tonight, yet the stars twinkled brightly in the sky. In the distance, a horse whinnied.

Not wanting him to think she was dawdling or trying to eke out more time with him, she started toward her car, her pace slow until he caught up with her.

“So where did you learn to play poker?” he asked.

“My dad taught me. I used to watch him and his buddies play on Saturday nights, and sometimes, when they needed a fifth, they’d ask me to join them.”

“Your mom let you do that?”

Shannon wasn’t sure how much of her past she wanted to share with him. But she adored Sam and couldn’t see any reason to be leery of his nephew. “My mom died when I was six.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” She gave a little shrug. “Anyway, my dad taught me a lot of things, poker being only one of them.”

They continued toward her car, the soles of their shoes crunching along the dirt walkway.

“Your uncle reminds me a lot of my father,” she added.

“Oh, yeah? Is your dad a rancher?”

“Actually, our ranch belonged to my mother’s family, so she was the expert on that sort of thing. My dad was a long-haul trucker. But when she passed away, he quit his job so he could stay home with me. And he did his best to work our small spread.”

“I really don’t remember my dad,” Blake said. “He died right before I started school.”

Sam had told Shannon that Blake had lost his father in a skiing accident, but she hadn’t realized how young he’d been when it happened.

“That’s too bad,” she said.

Now it was Blake’s turn to give a slight shrug. “My mom and I moved in with her mother in California. But she kept in touch with Sam and Nellie, who practically raised my dad. And when I got a little older, she let me spend summers in Texas with them.”

“Sam’s a great guy,” she said. “Just like my dad.”

“It sounds like you and your dad are close.”

They certainly had been. “Together, we made a good team. We both tackled the household chores, and each week, after cutting out coupons and planning the meals, we went grocery shopping. And on Saturdays we worked in the yard.”

Since her dad was always working on or refurbishing a vehicle in the garage, he’d taught Shannon how to change the oil on the pickup, not to mention spark plugs, fuel pumps and flat tires.

Some men, like Mike Cavanaugh, a city boy she’d dated in college, found her “unconventional hobbies” to be unsettling—maybe even demeaning. But she was a country girl at heart, one with varied interests and diverse abilities. And she wasn’t going to pretend to be someone else. At least, not again.