She Dreamed of a Cowboy

by Joanna Sims

  “Pissed off.”

  “That’s about right.” He looked down at Daisy and the cat lifted her head, gazed up at him lovingly and then meowed.

  Bruce lowered himself to the ground, grunting a bit. “You need something to sit on around here.”

  “I don’t get many visitors,” Hunter countered.

  “Nothing to visit, really.” His brother looked around.

  They didn’t speak for a while; Hunter waited for Bruce to say what he was really there to say.

  “You look like hell, bro,” Bruce noted.

  Hunter reached up and scratched his scruffy facial hair. He could use a shave. And he could put on some clean clothes.

  When he didn’t add to the conversation as he knew Bruce expected him to, his brother said, “Everybody—Mom, Dad, me—thinks you got involved with the woman from New York.”

  “Her name is Skyler.”

  Bruce knew right then—Hunter could read it in his face—that the family’s suspicion about the nature of his relationship with Skyler was true.

  “So it’s true.” His brother had a grim expression on his face. “What about Brandy?”

  Hunter stood up, frustrated, disturbing Daisy. The cat got up, executed a Halloween-cat stretch and then turned around in a circle several times before she curled back up on the bench.

  “Brandy doesn’t want anything to do with me and the feeling is mutual. She was a pain in the butt when we were kids and the only thing that’s changed now that’s she’s older is that she’s a heck of a lot prettier than she used to be. But still a royal pain in the ass.”

  Hunter paced a little beside the firepit. “And the fact that Jock got his hopes up that I was going to marry Brandy and then have a grandchild that would tie the two ranches together was nuts!”

  He stopped pacing. “You see that that was nuts, right?”

  “You and Brandy could’ve hit it off,” his brother said.

  “Well, we didn’t.”

  Bruce held up his hands. “Okay. So you didn’t. That still doesn’t explain why you’ve been living like a hermit out here with that cat.”

  “I’m figuring things out.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like,” Hunter said pointedly, “how I’m going to get Skyler back home where she belongs.”

  * * *

  The visit from his brother did have the benefit of “snapping him out of it.” After Bruce left, Hunter got himself cleaned up. He shaved, put on clean clothes and headed over to Chase’s ranch. Chase was the person in his life, a brother from another mother, who would understand his dilemma with Skyler.

  When he pulled onto the neglected driveway to the Rocking R Ranch, Chase was near the fence putting up a For Sale by Owner sign. Hunter got out of his truck and walked over to his friend.

  “This makes it real,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Chase had been hand-digging a hole for the wooden signpost. “It’s real. Molly told her folks about us last night.”

  Hunter helped Chase lift up the heavy signpost and together they put it into the hole.

  “Oh, yeah? How’d that go?”

  They both pushed dirt into the hole, helping the signpost to be more secure. Then Chase used the shovel to tamp down the loose dirt.

  “Not too bad, considering.” Chase leaned on the shovel for a moment. “I think they were hoping for a more of a white-collar kind of guy for Molly.”

  Hunter nodded his understanding. A lot of parents had a certain idea of who they wanted their adult children to marry—he was living proof of that.

  “Six years in the army did help soften the blow for them.” Chase threw the shovel in the back of Hunter’s truck.

  After the show got canceled, Chase had joined the army. He might have gone far in the armed forces if his parents hadn’t desperately needed his help on the ranch. Chase’s father had been a great guy, but he was lousy with money. When they were growing up, everyone knew that the Rockwells were always on the brink of financial disaster. All of Chase’s money from the show had gone to his family and even that hadn’t been enough to save them.

  Hunter drove them to the house. The Rockwell house had been built in the 1920s—it was a small two-story house with whitewashed boards and a rusty tin roof. There was a front porch with an old swing where Linda Rockwell, Chase’s mother, had treated Hunter with homemade root beer.

  As he parked, he stared at the house, memories of his childhood—great memories—rushing over him.

  “We had some good times here, didn’t we?”

  “We did,” Chase agreed. His friend didn’t say it, but Chase had also had plenty of bad times in that house, too. When he drank, his father could get mean. When he drank, his father had a temper.

  When he got out of the truck and looked around, something hit Hunter’s gut. There were crossroad moments in a person’s life—this felt like one for him.

  Inside the farmhouse, they sat at Linda’s kitchen table, a bit wobbly now as it was sitting on floorboards that had sagged over time.

  “What’s the news?” Hunter asked his friend.

  Chase popped the top off a bottle of beer and handed it to him. After he grabbed a beer for himself, his friend joined him at his mother’s wobbly table. The table, like the kitchen, seemed so much smaller than he remembered. But then again, most of the time he had spent at this table, he had been a kid.

  Chase held up his bottle of beer. “To Molly and Skyler.”

  Hunter touched his bottle to Chase’s. “To Molly and Skyler.”

  Chase was the first person he had told about his relationship with Skyler. To his mind, Chase was the only one who wouldn’t judge his feelings for her. After all, he had fallen for Molly in record time.

  “Molly sent me some ideas for a ring,” Chase said. “As soon as I sell this place, the first thing I’m doing is buying her the best damn ring I can afford.”

  Hunter took a swig of his beer then put the bottle down on the table. The table wobbled again.

  “How can you stand not to fix this?” He stood up, grabbed one of the bottle caps on the counter, kneeled down and put the cap under one of the table’s legs.

  “This table is the least of my problems,” Chase said.

  Hunter jiggled the table to see how well the bottle cap had worked. Satisfied, he sat back down.

  “What’s the news on your end?” Chase asked him, milking his beer, as he had done for years now.

  Hunter breathed in and let it on a frustrated sigh. “We’re stuck, bro. That’s the news. As long as her dad is laid up, she’s not willing to even consider coming back here.”

  “Is she worth the wait to you?”

  Hunter finished his beer. “Yeah, she’s worth the wait. Problem is, I miss her.”

  They sat together in silence, each occupied with their own thoughts. Sometimes a person just needed a chance to see a problem from a different angle—that’s what coming to the Rocking R had done for Hunter.

  “I’m going to help you get the money for that ring right now,” he told his friend.

  Chase raised an eyebrow at him, his fingers busy peeling the wrapper off the bottle.

  “I haven’t spent a dime of my Cowboy Up! money.”

  His friend shook his head. “I’m not taking another dime from anybody. Not even you.”

  “I’m not talking about borrowing.”

  “Charity.”

  “Not charity. A business transaction.”

  “Come again?” Chase said, but Hunter knew he had his friend’s full attention now.

  “I’m going to buy the Rocking R.”

  Just now, sitting in the Rockwell kitchen, Hunter finally knew what he wanted to do with all that money he had made from a show he had learned to regret. If he could buy the Rocking R Ranch, which would allow Chase to get that ring for Molly
and help him establish his life in New York, then being on that damn show would actually have been worth it.

  Chase stopped peeling the label and sat back in his chair. “You want to buy this place?”

  “I do,” he said. “I’ll take the whole damn lot. What’s your price?”

  His friend did not respond the way Hunter had expected. He had expected Chase to be excited, relieved and, of course, to think that he had actually saved the day. Instead, Chase frowned and shook his head.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “What do you mean nope?”

  “Nope,” Chase repeated. “I’m not going to let you buy this place just to bail me out. Forget it.”

  “I’m not buying it to bail you out.”

  Chase shot him a skeptical look.

  “Okay, I admit that one of the results of buying this place would be to bail you out. But that’s not the only reason.”

  His friend finished his beer and stood up. “Give me another reason.”

  “I’m years away from building on my stake at Sugar Creek. I could move right into this place. I could move Skyler right into this place.”

  Chase put another beer down in front of him, grabbed his empty bottle and put it in the sink. His friend didn’t get a second beer for himself.

  “You want to live with Skyler here?”

  “Yeah. Why not? I’ll look a heck of a lot more tempting with an actual house instead of a trailer. Right?”

  “I can’t deny that.” Chase laughed. “That trailer is not exactly a benefit to marrying you.”

  Hunter wasn’t offended by his friend’s friendly ribbing about his trailer; after all, it was true. He wanted to have a place for Skyler, a place where they could start their lives. They could save and design their perfect miniranch among the ancient oak trees while they occupied their time refurbishing the Rocking R.

  “You really want to buy this place?” He could tell that his friend was starting to warm to the idea.

  “Yeah,” he said after he swallowed a swig of beer. “I can’t let this place be sold to strangers. That way, it will stay in the family. And you’ll always have a place to come home to when you bring Molly out to Montana for a visit.”

  “We can settle on a price that’s fair,” Chase said and that was when Hunter knew that his friend was on board with the idea.

  Hunter held his hand out over the tabletop. “Do we have a deal?”

  Chase shook his hand with the grip of a man who had done hard work all of his life. “We have a deal.”

  Hunter finished his second beer, stood up, tossed the bottle into the sink and then said, “Let’s go take that damn sign out of the ground.”

  Chase stood up with a sigh, “Bro, I wish you had figured all of this out before I dug that hole.”

  * * *

  “I like your hair,” Hunter said to Skyler.

  She reached up and touched her newly cut hair. “Do you? Molly’s mom cut it for me.”

  “I like it short,” he told her, wishing that he could reach through the screen and touch her.

  “I kind of do, too,” she agreed. “I always wore it long but now I think it suits me.”

  Once Hunter came up with a plan, he didn’t want to wait to put it in action. While Skyler was busy getting her father set up with therapists, he had been busy buying the Rocking R Ranch. It had been a simple transaction—he was a cash buyer, not negotiating on the terms and he didn’t give a damn about an inspection report. He knew the Rockwell home inside and out; he knew where all the bodies were buried in the plumbing, in the foundation and the roof.

  “I have some news,” he told her.

  “Oh, yeah?” She settled back on her couch, which was her usual position when they talked.

  “I bought the Rocking R Ranch.”

  Skyler’s lavender-blue eyes widened. “You did?”

  He nodded. “It’s ours.”

  “Ours?” She repeated the word.

  “It’s a place to start.”

  Skyler had a confused look on her face. “Hunter—a place to start what?”

  “Our lives together,” he said directly.

  “But we’ve talked about this,” she said with a frown. “You know I can’t even consider coming back to Montana until things are more stable around here. And even then...”

  “Even then what?” Hunter asked, wondering why neither Chase nor Skyler had been as enthusiastic about his grand plan as he was.

  She bit her lip, something she did when she was hesitating to say something to him.

  “Even then what?” he repeated, prodding her to open up to him.

  “I’m not going to move my whole entire life to Montana unless we were going to get married, Hunter.” She held up her hand quickly. “And I’m not saying that to prompt some proposal out of you...”

  “Is that all?” he asked, a light bulb coming on his brain. In his excitement, he had missed a vital step with Skyler.

  “Is that all?” Now she was repeating the question. “It’s kind of a big thing.”

  He leaned forward so she could see him more clearly in the video. “You want to marry me, don’t you?”

  When she didn’t answer him right away, he came at it from a different angle. “I want to marry you.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do. I thought you would have picked up on that by now.”

  “You have never mentioned marriage to me. Not once,” Skyler told him.

  “Well, let’s fix that right now,” Hunter said, and at that moment, Daisy jumped up on the small table in his trailer, walked in front of the camera and hit him in the face with her tail.

  “Daisy!” Skyler exclaimed. “Hi, baby girl!”

  Hunter gently moved the cat out of the way. “Will you marry me, Skyler?”

  He couldn’t read Skyler’s expression—was she happy or mad?

  Daisy had turned around and was rubbing up against his chin, purring and blocking the camera shot with her body.

  “Damn it, Daisy. I’m trying to get something done here.”

  Hunter scooped up the cat and put her down on the floor with a quick pat he hoped would satisfy the feline for a moment or two.

  “What do you think?” he asked, wondering why Skyler hadn’t yet responded to his proposal.

  “Well...” Skyler said slowly, thoughtfully. “I think this isn’t the most romantic proposal on record. But yes, Hunter. I want to marry you.”

  A huge smile came to his face.

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “But we have to talk about my health, Hunter. Whenever I’ve tried to bring it up, you change the subject.”

  “You’re in remission. Subject closed.”

  “Hunter—it’s not that simple. I need to have regular checkups. I’m in remission, but there aren’t any guarantees. If it...” She paused, swallowed her own worries back and then restarted. “If it comes back, can you handle it?”

  “I can handle it, Skyler,” Hunter said seriously. “In sickness and health. Remember?”

  She smiled at him then. “Yes. In sickness and in health.”

  “So, is that a ‘yes, I will marry you’ smile?”

  “Yes.” Her smile widened. “I will marry you, Hunter.”

  “Hot damn.” The cowboy grinned at her. “We’re gonna get married, you and me.”

  “But we have to wait until after I get things settled with my dad, Hunter. You understand that I have no idea how long that will take.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You’re worth the wait.”

  That brought a lovely smile to Skyler’s lovely face. “Thank you, Hunter. You’ve always been worth the wait for me.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Hey, Dad,” Skyler said as she picked up the phone. “Everything oka
y?”

  “Everything’s fine,” her father said with an annoyed sigh. Her hovering had increasingly annoyed Chester and she had really been working hard to hide her worry from him. “Come to the house when you have a moment.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Skyler had been taking care of the garage’s bookkeeping from home and she was just at the point where she could take a break. Her father hadn’t objected to her taking care of the books for now, but he had been diametrically opposed to her going back to work in the garage.

  Skyler crossed quickly to the house, hurriedly opened the back door and headed toward the living room, where her father spent most of his time. She rounded the corner and then stopped in her tracks.

  “Hi, Skyler.”

  There he was—the cowboy of her dreams, standing in her living room. Wearing, as he always did, his boots, jeans and button-down shirt, tucked in. And his hat was on the couch next to where he had been sitting.

  “We have a visitor,” Chester said casually from his recliner.

  Skyler put her hand over her mouth and swallowed back happy tears.

  “Do you know how easy it is to get a COVID test around here?” he asked, walking toward her.

  She nodded and met him halfway. They embraced, but he didn’t kiss her, which was how she wanted it. They would kiss later, when they were alone.

  After they hugged, he looked down into her face. “Surprised?”

  “Floored,” she admitted. “What are you doing here? How did you pull this off without me knowing?”

  “He got in touch with me,” Chester said, turning the TV on mute.

  Together, Skyler sat down on the couch with Hunter, their hands intertwined, their shoulders and thighs touching. She couldn’t stop looking at him; he was real.

  “Your dad helped me keep it a secret,” Hunter said. “Chase has come to propose to Molly.”

  “Oh.” She welled up again. “I’m so happy for her.”

  Chester didn’t seem surprised when Skyler suggested that she give Hunter a tour of her childhood home.

  “Where are you staying?” she asked him.

  “I have a hotel room with Chase. But I have a feeling he’s going to be wanting some privacy.”