by Joanna Sims
“Yes. I think that’s what I was trying to say.”
“No.” Molly shook her head. “I know my own heart. I know my own mind. I love him.”
After a moment, Skyler knew there was only one thing she could say. “If Chase is the one for you, I’m going to be on this journey with you every step of the way. I’m going to give you the most incredible budget bachelorette party New York has ever seen!”
That made Molly laugh and her laugh broke the tension that had been an uncomfortable third wheel during the conversation. “I just want you to be happy, Molly.”
“I am happy.” Molly smiled brightly at her. “Skyler. I’m going to marry Chase Rockwell from Cowboy Up! Do you know what this means?”
Skyler shook her head, deciding to wait and tell Molly about her fling with Hunter another time. This was Molly’s moment to shine.
“That psychic I saw on my trip to New Orleans who saw in the tarot cards that we are destined to marry best friends was right. I told you she was right, didn’t I? You thought she was crazy and I thought she was a true clairvoyant.” Molly was grinning broadly. “Prepare yourself, Skyler. Because you. Are. Next.”
Chapter Eleven
“How do you know?” Hunter grabbed a bale of hay from the trailer and walked over to the barn at the Rocking R Ranch, Chase’s small ranch that bordered Sugar Creek.
Chase followed him with a bale of his own and dropped it in front of the barn. “I just do.”
“You’re going to marry her?” Hunter adjusted his mask before he grabbed another bale of hay.
Hunter was doing his friend a favor by dropping off some bales of hay they had just harvested at Sugar Creek. Times were tough for Chase and money was tight. Chase would do the same for him—that much he knew.
“I’m going to marry her.”
“I don’t get it, man,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else but me and her,” Chase said. “I saw her picture on Skyler’s Instagram and I knew I wanted to talk to her. When I talked to her, I knew I wanted to see her on video. When I saw her on video, I knew I wanted to marry her. It’s just that simple.
Hunter stacked his bale of hay on the bale Chase had just dropped.
“That doesn’t sound simple, Chase. It sounds crazy.”
“Crazy is knowing that I have met the woman of my dreams and not doing everything I can to be with her,” his friend countered. “I thought I was going to marry Sarah. We had everything all planned out. Right after high school we were going to elope and start a family.”
Hunter’s gut twisted as memories of Sarah’s sharp decline and suffering flooded his brain without his consent. He didn’t want his friend to be alone—he wanted him to move on from the pain of losing his first love. But like this? It didn’t sit right in Hunter’s gut.
Chase took a break from the work and looked him right in the eye. “I’m going to sell the ranch, get what I can out of it. I should be able to get a decent chunk of change. I’ll be able to get her a nice ring.”
“You’re going to sell the ranch?!” The Rockwells had been at the Rocking R for generations.
“That’s right.”
“Are you thinking about leaving Montana?”
“I’m not thinking about it, I’m doing it.”
Hunter looked around the Rockwells’ small ranch. Yes, it was showing the signs of neglect—fences were down and weeds were overtaking broken-down equipment that Chase hadn’t been able to afford to fix.
“You have a life here,” Hunter said with a shake of his head.
“No.” His friend jerked the last bale off the trailer. “You have a life here. I have an existence. And I’m tired of it, man. I’m over it. My dad destroyed this place—he ran this ranch right into the ground and then had the nerve to up and die and leave me to clean up his mess.” Chase had always been a man who knew his own mind, that much Hunter knew. “This place is my past—Molly is my future.”
Hunter couldn’t think of another thing to say; in fact, her knew that once Chase made up his mind, and spoke it aloud, it was already a done deal. Life as Hunter had always known it, with his best friend living just next door, was going to change. After they finished the job, Hunter knew he had to do right by his lifelong friend.
“If this is really what you want, you know I’ve got your back. I’ll hate seeing this ranch sold, but we’ve been friends for a long damn time.”
“That’s true,” Chase agreed, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I really appreciate you helping me out with this hay. I’ll pay you back as soon as I sell the place.”
Hunter brushed aside his offer. He didn’t expect to be repaid. This was what friends did for each other. “If you’re really serious about selling, I’ll talk to Bruce and Dad about buying your herd.”
“I’m dead serious about it,” Chase said without hesitation. His friend studied the ground for a moment and then said, “I was kind of counting on you to be my best man.”
“I’d be honored,” Hunter said, pushing aside his own wishes and focusing on his friend’s apparent happiness. “You name the date and I’ll be there. Heck, I’ll even put on a clean pair of jeans since it’s a special occasion.”
* * *
Liam was working Zodiac in the round pen when Hunter returned from his trip to Chase’s ranch. Skyler walked over to meet him, wondering if Chase had said anything to him about Molly.
“How’s he looking?” Hunter asked about the gelding.
“Liam says he’s still moving in the right direction. We seem to be past the worst of it.”
“That’s great news.”
She nodded, falling in beside him as they headed back to the round pen.
Liam raised his chin in greeting to his brother, but kept his eyes focused on the trotting gelding.
“He’s still favoring his left hind at the trot, but I don’t think its lameness. I still think its how he’s perceiving things,” the veterinarian said.
“Will we be able to ride him?” Hunter asked his brother.
“I don’t see anything that would indicate that you couldn’t ride him. But I’d like to see him out in the pasture healing for another couple of weeks.”
“I’ll bring another horse down from the main barn.”
Liam had the gelding slow to a walk, then stop and turn toward him. The veterinarian walked over to the horse, hooked a lead rope to the halter and then patted him on the neck affectionately. “Good for you, pops.”
After they put Zodiac out in the pasture with Dream Catcher, Liam took the opportunity to stop by and tinker with the old truck he was restoring.
“How’s Kate?” Hunter said, asking after Liam’s wife.
Liam rummaged through his tall toolbox and found the wrench he was looking for. “She’s hanging in there—her life hasn’t really changed. Folks still need their horses trained and they still want to take riding lessons. She’s sticking to individual lessons for now. It’s Callie I’m worried about.”
Callie, Hunter explained to her, was Liam’s eldest daughter with Kate. Callie had been born with Down syndrome, but even with an intellectual disability, she was a very accomplished young woman. Callie loved to cook and had a website and blog centered on her passion for creating home-cooked meals. She had lived in a group home in town to gain independence, had been earning her own money working at Strides of Strength equestrian program for differently abled children and was engaged to be married.
“She’s upset that the wedding had to be postponed.”
“Upset is an understatement.” Liam frowned. “She’s regressed a bit, having meltdowns and threatening to call of the wedding off entirely. I keep trying to reassure her that the wedding will happen—the country just needs to get past this rough patch.”
Skyler was standing a distance away from Liam, watchin
g as he worked on the engine.
“Does she run?” she asked, admiring the 1950s model truck.
Liam threw the wrench back into the toolbox and wiped his hands on a nearby rag. “She did. But she’s being moody.”
“Typical woman,” Hunter joked with a wink in her direction.
“Ha, ha.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Very funny.”
To Liam she asked, “Do you mind if I take a look?”
Liam appeared confused about the question; he stopped wiping his hand on the rag and glanced between his brother and her.
“You want to take a look?” Liam asked for clarification. “Under the hood?”
She laughed at the question. “Of course, under the hood. Where else?”
Liam stepped back from the truck. “I don’t mind.”
She saw Liam and Hunter exchange a look, but she ignored it. She was accustomed to the response when she helped in her father’s garage. Those who didn’t know her always doubted her first.
Skyler pulled a stool over to the front of the truck, stepped up and looked inside the engine. While Hunter and Liam watched, their faces full of misogynistic skepticism, Skyler examined the engine clinically, just as her father had taught her to do. She methodically checked the distributor to see if there was a crack in the distributor cap. She then checked the spark-plug wire to ensure that they weren’t cracked or frayed. The wires were secured to the spark plugs, as they should be.
She climbed down off the step stool and asked Liam, “I need to see if you have the right wrench for the job.”
She dug through the toolbox, found the tool she was searching for, climbed back up on the stool and reached all the way to the back of the engine. She put her wrench on the bolt that held the distributor in place so she could move the distributor.
“Okay,” she called out from beneath the hood. “Get behind the wheel and crank it when I tell you.”
With an amused look on his face, Liam climbed behind the wheel.
“Turn it over!” Skyler called out to him.
At first the engine sputtered and clunked while she twisted the distributor, and then the engine started to run smoothly.
“I’ll be damned!” Hunter’s brother shouted over the loud noise of the engine. He revved the engine several times before he stepped out of the truck to look at the engine. “What did I miss?”
“Yeah,” Hunter said. “How did you do that?”
“The timing was off.” She grinned at them, enjoying their disbelief. “My father set up a crib for me in his office at the garage when I was just a newborn—my first rattle was a ring full of old keys from 1950s-era cars and trucks.”
“Thank you.” Liam sat back behind the wheel, shut it off and then cranked it again. The engine turned over without any sputtering or knocking.
Skyler leaned her head toward Hunter. “You say cattle is in your blood—well, mechanics is in mine.”
* * *
“Hey, look!” Skyler and Hunter had just finished the barn chores. Hunter had brought down two geldings from the main barn—one for him to ride and the other, a thirty-year-old retired cow pony, to be a companion for Zodiac when they took the other two horses out to work.
“A four-leaf clover!” She pointed to a clump of cheerful, yellow flowers near the pasture fence. “It’s a four-leaf clover! It’s been right there in plain sight, this whole time?”
“Just be careful of the tall grass,” Hunter said with his typical, slightly bossy tone.
Skyler rolled her eyes and said “yeah, yeah” in her mind. She was born careful.
Sometimes he acted like a parent watching over a precocious child and she didn’t like it one bit. She was being judged on that one little fainting episode way back on her first day. Now she had the physical strength to match her mental strength. The whole Montana-babysitter routine was getting old.
Skyler picked her way through the brush to getter a closer look at the small yellow flowers. She leaned forward and sniffed the flowers. “Hmm. It smells so good.”
“Sweet clover. We plant it for the livestock. Savannah makes clover honey every year.”
“Oh,” Skyler said, disappointed. “It’s not a four-leaf clover after all.”
“Look...” She held it up for Hunter to see. “Three leaves.”
“You superstitious?” He was watching her, as he always did, with a slightly amused expression.
“Only a little.” She tucked one of the clover flowers behind her ear.
She was about to embark on a list of reasons why she believed in lucky clovers, but was distracted by a sharp, burning sensation under her pant leg. She glanced down and realized that both of her boots and the bottom of her pant legs were covered in ants.
It took her a second to register in her brain that she was being attacked by the miniature insects, but another bite on her skin, which meant that they were also under her clothes, made her leap into action. She ran out of the tall grass, and screamed, “Ants! Ants!”
She stopped when she was out of the tall grass, then bent over and started to scrape all of the ants off of her boots and pants.
“Get off of me!” she yelled urgently. “Get. Off. Of. Me!”
Hunter was at her side, kneeling down with gloved hands and slapping at her pants to get the clingy, biting creatures off her without them attaching themselves to him.
“Are they off?” she asked urgently. “Are they off?”
“Turn around,” he instructed, scanning her boots and her pants. “I think we got ’em all.”
The commotion stopped for a moment while Skyler caught her breath. Then she felt a sting on the back of her thigh.
“Oh, crap.” She started to hit her thigh with her hand, trying to smash the ant by trapping it between the denim and her skin. The little bugger, perhaps in the last throes of its life, bit her harder.
She dropped to the ground and started to tug on her boot. “I can’t get it off. I can’t get it off. Get it off!”
She held out her boot for Hunter to pull off. “Get my boot off.”
“I’m getting it off,” he told her, his voice even.
“Get my boot off!” She felt another ant bite her on her calf. “Ouch, you little bastard!”
“Did I hurt you?” Hunter threw her boot to the side and soon the second boot followed.
“No! The ant!” Skyler jumped up, clawed at the button and zipper of her jeans. Once unhooked and unzipped, she jumped up and down and pushed the jeans, which were sticking to her skin because of the sweat, and finally high-stepped out of the pants.
She turned around in a circle, craning her neck to look at her backside. “Do you see them?!”
Hunter found two more ants on her legs and removed them before they could bite.
“Any more?”
“Hold still.”
“Any more?” she asked again, her skin stinging and burning where the fire ants had bitten.
“I’m looking,” Hunter said, his tone less even. “Hold. Still.”
Skyler stopped moving while Hunter looked her over. “I don’t see any more.”
“Well, that’s a...” she began, just when she felt another bite. “Ow!”
“What?”
Skyler scowled, reached her hand into her panties, scratched her butt cheek several times and then pulled her fingers free of the cotton material to reveal the offending ant smashed between her two fingers.
“I got you.” She flicked the insect away from her.
She was standing in her socks, underwear, tank top and cowgirl hat. Hunter looked at her and she looked back at him.
“He bit me right on the butt,” she complained.
“You don’t say,” Hunter said drolly. “Too bad that wasn’t a four-leaf clover, huh?”
* * *
Skyler had been lucky during her ra
nch experience—most of the days had been sunny with some warm breezes to break the heat. Hunter was forever complaining about the dry days turning all the pastures brown.
“Looks like you got your wish!” Skyler met Hunter at the door a week after the ant attack.
It was still dark and it felt like a monsoon had struck. When she opened the door, the heavy wind was blowing sheets of rain sideways, hard enough that they reached the front door. Hunter’s raincoat was soaked with water and he was quickly making a puddle where he stood.
“It’s messy out there.” He raised his voice loud enough for her to hear over the wind. “Grab your slicker.”
“I don’t have one.”
Hunter stared at her for a second. “You brought five bags.”
“Two were pretty small,” she muttered quickly. Then she asked, “Do you have one I can borrow.”
He shrugged out of the one he was wearing. “Don’t argue. Just put it on.”
Skyler slipped on his bright yellow slicker made from heavy material. She had to cuff the sleeves so she would be able to use her hands. She felt terrible that he was going to get soaked in a couple of minutes, but when it came to the ranch work, and he told her not to argue, she gave him that respect.
Hunter ran to the truck and together they drove the short distance to the barn. They made quick work of the chores since she was able to match him stall for stall now.
“We’ll stop by Bruce’s place—he’ll have some rain gear I can borrow.” Hunter’s clothes were damp but not soaking wet when he climbed behind the wheel.
“Maybe Savannah has something in my size?” she suggested.
“That’s even better.”
Savannah did have a raincoat closer to her own size and she was grateful to have it. The rain was driving down from the sky, pelting them as they tried to get their feeding chores done as quickly as possible. Skyler didn’t want to admit it and didn’t want to focus on it, but doing ranch chores in the rain was a complete drag. It was muddy, and sloshy; her jeans felt cold and clammy and the damp denim was rubbing across her skin in the most annoying way. It was hard to hear because the rain and wind masked their voices, so they had to yell at each other just to communicate.