“What’s that?”
“Take it one day at a time.” Nate gave him another smile and said, “Okay, so you’re going to meet a bunch of people at once. Don’t try to remember all of their names. You just need to know Ginger’s.”
“Ginger,” Ted repeated. “Got it.” He never forgot a face, but names did sometimes slip through the cracks in his mind.
Nate climbed up the couple of steps and opened the door, and Ted followed him, a little weirded out that there wasn’t any clinking of chains accompanying his footsteps. Just like he’d had to get used to life at River Bay, he’d have to figure out how to get used to life here at Hope Eternal Ranch.
“All right, guys,” Ginger said over the gaggle of people inside, most of whom were talking. Ted saw several more men wearing cowboy hats. Women wearing cowgirl hats. One in an apron. All of them looked fresh, and happy, and almost like they glowed.
Ted felt completely out of place, and he’d wished he’d asked Ginger to pull over so he could change his clothes. He stood halfway behind Nate as Ginger continued with, “This is Ted Burrows, our new cowboy. I expect everyone to welcome him to Hope Eternal Ranch the way we do.”
He wondered what way that was, and Nate glanced at him, questions in his eyes.
“I need to change,” Ted hissed, and recognition lit Nate’s face.
“Emma has your clothes.” He nodded toward a brunette, who was walking toward them with the widest smile on her face. “Ted, this is Emma Clemson.”
Ted blinked at her, because he knew her face, and her name tickled something in the back of his mind too. He knew this woman. He knew the slender face with the slightly pointed chin at the bottom. He knew the dark eyes with long lashes on the top and bottom. He knew the width of her shoulders, and the high cheekbones, and the dark hair that parted on the right side and fell toward her shoulders in straight sheets.
His eyes narrowed at her, because she didn’t quite look like the woman he’d seen before. She wore a lot of makeup, for one, and Ted felt sure she hadn’t in the past. He’d compartmentalized things from his past, and he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Emma smiled at him, and everything in Ted’s world got brighter. She had a gorgeous smile, with straight, white teeth, and an inner light that shone out of her dark eyes. She wore a sleeveless, purple shirt with a pair of jeans, and she said, “I’ll show you where you can change.”
Her voice wasn’t as familiar to him, and he wondered if his firm had represented her as a client. Or if she’d been a witness he hadn’t had to interview in person. Something…something worked in the back of his mind, and he knew she was tied to his old job somehow.
He followed Emma while another woman started explaining the vast amounts of food covering the counter. Emma led him away from the fray, and relief spread through Ted. He was ready to be away from the crowd. He’d lived for too long with dozens of other people in close quarters, and he just wanted to be alone.
“Here you are,” she said, handing him an obviously brand-new backpack.
Ted took it but hesitated. “Have we met?”
Something like fear flickered across her face, but she kept her smile hitched in place. “I don’t think so.”
“Of course not,” he said, feeling stupid for asking. But he’d definitely seen her face before. At least he thought he had. “Thanks.”
He ducked into the bathroom and closed the door, locking it behind him. And finally, it was quiet.
Chapter Two
Emma Clemson stared at the closed bathroom door, her heartbeat thrashing in her chest. She didn’t know Ted Burrows from any other man she’d see on the street in Sweet Water Falls. He could’ve been any tourist that came to Hope Eternal for their annual boar hunt or to sit in one of their bird blinds, hoping to catch a glimpse of some of the Texas Coastal Bend’s rarest birds.
“He doesn’t know you,” she whispered to herself, though at least half a dozen doors had been thrown wide open with that one question.
Have we met?
Emma hadn’t had to deal with anyone thinking they knew her for a while now. Life at Hope Eternal Ranch had become peaceful and easy. Her life was very common, and she lived it well below the radar of anyone who might somehow know someone from her past.
Ted was not the first prisoner Ginger had brought to the ranch through the reentry program. He wasn’t even the second. Emma had honestly never worried about someone coming out of a low-security facility knowing or recognizing her.
After all, the Knight crime family got sent to maximum security federal prisons, most of them in solitary confinement or on death row. No way Ted would’ve run into any of them.
Thankfully, Emma hadn’t either. Not in the last decade since she’d given up her teaching job and started keeping books, paying cowboys, and organizing field trips from the other side for Hope Eternal Ranch.
She’d once been the teacher bringing her students to the monarch butterfly activities here at the ranch. Now she set them up, called teachers, booked buses, and made sure everyone had a great time.
No one had ever looked at her with such interest in their eyes, and to think Emma had thought Ted was gorgeous and mysterious as he stood halfway behind Nate.
She turned away from the door and strode down the hall. Even if Ted was gorgeous and mysterious—and he was—she was not going to get involved with him. She couldn’t, and she knew it.
She could cut his paychecks and make sure he got the money in the right account. She could text him when he needed to meet with Ginger, as she also managed her best friend’s schedule around the ranch. She could endure his presence at ranch-wide lunches or dinners. She didn’t have to become friends with him, and she didn’t have to explain anything to him.
Satisfied in her resolve, which was very, very strong, Emma returned to the party and put her celebratory smile back in place. She told herself she’d be much better off alone, and that had been working for the past decade.
She hadn’t even dated anyone in that time, and no one around the ranch thought that was odd. Hope Eternal really was the best place for Emma, because she needed all the hope she could get. Maybe in another decade, once her daughter was an adult, Emma could consider letting a man into her life.
Until then, she simply had too many secrets she wasn’t willing to share with someone she was in a relationship with.
Ted’s eyes, intense and dark and full of questions, entered her mind. He’d want to know everything about her, and dang if she didn’t already want to tell him.
She wouldn’t, though. Emma hadn’t even told Ginger about her daughter, and she’d known the woman for thirteen years. She’d lived here at the ranch for ten, and her daughter would be eleven this winter.
A month later, Emma’s eleventh-year anniversary at Hope Eternal would be celebrated. Her mind flowed easily back to that time, and how incredibly difficult it had been to leave Missy behind that first time. Even now, when she went to visit on the weekends, sometimes Emma cried the whole way back to the ranch, despite the fact that Missy was whole and well and thriving.
You did what you had to do, she told herself as someone said her name.
She turned toward Jessica Morales, another woman who lived here in the West Wing with Emma and Ginger. “Right?” Jess asked.
Emma had missed the question entirely, and she shot a glance at Nick and Spencer, cowboys here at the ranch, who both looked at her expectantly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” Her pulse rippled. Did they know about her daughter?
“I said the dip has a ton of dairy in it,” Jess said, and Emma’s stomach stopped swooping. “Right? Nick says he thinks he’s lactose intolerant, but he’s downing that dip like it’s made of veggies.” She grinned at the young cowboy, and Emma laughed too.
The sound filled the air with happiness, though Emma didn’t feel any of it coursing through her. She’d worked so hard to cover up the darker side of her life for so long that it happened naturally now.
; No one who knew her would ever say she had a ten-year-old daughter she was hiding from a crime lord. Not only that, but Robert Knight had also been the parent of one of her second graders eleven years ago.
She’d have lost her job if anyone had found out about the relationship and resulting pregnancy. Instead, she’d quit, left town, had the baby by herself without anyone in her life knowing, and then left Missy with a couple in San Antonio.
“Lots of dairy,” she confirmed. “Sour cream, milk, mayonnaise.” She didn’t actually know if mayo was in the dairy family or not. It was made from eggs, so maybe not. No matter what, the dill dip was definitely not lactose-free.
Nick scooped up another dollop of it with a stalk of celery. “I’m taking my chances.” He grinned and took a bite of the celery and dip while Spencer shook his head.
“You just have a dill addiction,” Jess teased Nick, and he shrugged, not denying it. Spencer said something about Jess’s hazelnut addition, and they laughed again. Jess did eat a Nutella and banana sandwich almost every morning for breakfast, claiming that it had fruit, and it was almost like having toast with her coffee.
She was still tall and lithe, because she literally walked twenty thousand steps each day, while Emma went to sit behind a desk for the majority of her working hours. She did work in the stables in the mornings and evenings with the new foals that had been born in the past couple of weeks.
Other than that, if Emma didn’t wear a smart watch, she could go hours without taking a single step. It was also because of this that Emma didn’t eat breakfast at all. Her intermittent fasting schedule had her first meal at noon, and she’d contributed her maintaining weight to the fasting.
Ted came out of the hallway, and he looked much more relaxed in a pair of fresh blue jeans and a white polo with blue and green stripes. She stared at him, because he commanded that she did.
Thankfully, she wasn’t the only one. Spencer had paused in his flirtations with Jess, and they both watched him step over to Ginger and Nate and say something.
Nate grinned and clapped the equally tall man on the shoulder. Then he turned away and picked up a black cowboy hat, handing it to Ted with his eyebrows raised.
Ted looked dubious, but after a few seconds where Nate said something Emma couldn’t hear across the room, Ted took the hat and settled it on his head.
Her breath seized in her lungs, because the cowboy hat only made him more desirable. Her blood heated to a point where she felt scalded from the inside out, and she quickly ducked her head and tucked her hair when Ted swung his head toward her.
Ginger called to Jess, and she said, “I’m up. I knew she was going to give him to me.”
“You’ve got this,” Spencer said, and Nick went with Jess too, as he’d just been assigned to the horse herd as well. Obviously, Ginger was going to have Ted join that crew, and Emma didn’t think Jess really minded. She was always asking for more help with the horses, and this way, she’d get it.
“When are you going to ask her out?” Emma asked, picking up a baby carrot. She swiped it through the dill dip and looked at Spencer.
He kept his eyes on the group across the room for another moment and then looked at Emma. “Who?”
“Jess, duh,” she said. “You’re flirting with her like crazy. And she does the same with you.”
Spencer smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Then you’re blind.”
Spencer sobered and looked back at Jess. “Do you think she’d say yes?”
“Yes, Spence, I think she’d say yes.”
He looked at her, surprise in his eyes. “Really?”
“Sure,” she said. “You’re a good-looking guy, Spence. And you work hard, and you’re smart. Why wouldn’t someone want to go out with you?” Just because they all worked crazy hours at the ranch didn’t mean he couldn’t sneak away and go to dinner with someone. It was hard to meet people on the ranch, Emma could acknowledge that. It was also why this job and life appealed to her so much. She rarely interacted with people she didn’t already know, and in a lot of ways, that provided an extra layer of protection from her past that she really craved.
“You didn’t want to,” he mumbled, and Emma’s heartbeat skipped over itself.
“That’s because of me, not you,” she said as casually as she could, focusing back on the group where Ted stood. Really, she just focused on Ted. If he asked her to dinner…Emma almost spontaneously combusted just thinking about it.
Of course, she wouldn’t go. She’d say no, just like she had to Spencer. They hadn’t met, and Emma didn’t date. The end.
She told herself that for the rest of the party, never more relieved than when the cowboys started heading out the door to get their evening chores done.
“I’ll show you your room,” Nate said, heading for the exit with Ted in tow. Emma stayed in the kitchen, because she mostly manned the kitchen too, and she’d start cleaning up before she wandered back into the office to finish…whatever she needed to do that day.
She didn’t know, because her mind blanked as Ted looked her way and their eyes met. He reached up with his left hand and touched the brim of that sexy cowboy hat, clearly saying good-bye to her without having to use his voice.
Emma froze to the spot and watched him go, his gait easy and casual. Nothing inside Emma felt easy and casual as her whole body throbbed with her pulse now.
“Okay,” Ginger said, appearing in front of her. “I’m headed out too. Thanks for putting all of this together for Ted.” She hugged Emma, and Emma wished she could relax into the embrace. Ginger had always made her feel so safe and so loved, and it was literally because of the auburn-haired beauty that Emma had survived after she’d had Missy.
“All right,” Emma said. “I know Bill kept good records in the stables for you.”
“Yeah.” Ginger stepped back and sighed. “I always feel behind.”
“You were gone for the weekend,” Emma said. “You’re allowed to leave the ranch sometimes.” She picked up the lid to a container of ranch dip—store bought—and clicked it into place. “Did you and Nate and Connor have a good visit with his family?”
“Yeah,” Ginger said slowly. “It was good. I think his family was surprised he’d gotten engaged so quickly.”
“We were all a little surprised by that,” Emma said, glancing at Ginger. “And I was because of you, Ginger.”
“I know.” Ginger looked toward the back door, where the cowboys had gone. “I do love him, though.”
“Mm.” Emma turned to put the cold items in the refrigerator. “What are you going to do? Build another house here? Get a place in town?” She lived in this house with Ginger right now, as did Jess, and three other women—Hannah, Michelle, and Jill. Sometimes, one of Ginger’s sisters needed a place to stay too, and she’d come to the West Wing.
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “I think build another house here. We have plenty of land, and then we can basically call this the administration building and bunks.” She looked at Emma. “Has a nice ring to it, right?”
“Nice,” Emma agreed with a smile.
“I could move the cowboys out into the cabins on the ranch,” she said. “And we’ve got those two in the corner as well.”
“But then where would we put the guests?” Emma asked.
Ginger frowned. “We could build more cabins.”
“Are your parents still considering living in one of those cabins in the corner of the yard?” Emma managed a lot for Ginger, and she didn’t mind reminded her of the things her boss and best friend didn’t keep in her head.
“Yeah,” Ginger said. “I need to talk to them about that. Those cabins haven’t been lived in for a while.” She looked at Emma with hope in her eyes. “Maybe with some creative shuffling, Nate and I could live in the Annex.”
“Another possibility,” Emma said. “You’d have to talk to Hannah about the accounting if you’re going to build or take away revenue from the guest c
abins.” Hannah worked on the ranch about seventy-five percent of the time. Other than that, she did the bookkeeping and taxes for the ranch. She oversaw the global money management, while Emma did more of the day-to-day expenses and payroll.
“It would be like five or six more buildings if we built.” Ginger shook her head. “I don’t want that many new buildings. We still want people to come here for a true wildlife experience.” She smiled at Emma and shrugged. “I need to think more about this, but I’ve got to run. See you later.”
“Yeah, bye.” Emma kept cleaning up after Ginger left, her mind moving at ten times the speed of her hands. Hope Eternal Ranch was fifteen hundred acres of wetlands, meadows, natural lakes, trees that grew along the riverbanks, and brush land. People came here for hunting, fishing, bird-watching, to gather and buy honey, to see the butterflies as they migrated south, and so much more.
They made their living on tourists—and the horseback riding lessons they did. So many horseback riding lessons, and Emma suddenly remembered what she needed to get done that day.
Invoices for the almost two hundred horseback riding accounts the ranch had.
A sigh pulled through her body, and she really just wanted to wander down the dirt lane behind the house until she came to the border of the ranch, where the Mission River flowed.
“Later,” she muttered to herself as she put the last of the chocolate cake under foil and moved toward the office. As she sat behind her computer, her mind was already centered on Ted Burrows and not the invoices she needed to complete.
She pushed against him, but he would not move. He stayed right there, those handsome eyes and his deep voice asking, “Have we met?” while she clicked and started setting up the batch invoicing program that would bring in another month’s fees for the lessons.
Chapter Three
Ted didn’t know how to sleep for more than a few hours in a row. His body was used to getting up every couple of hours, and when the sun finally started turning the darkness into day, Ted finally got out of bed for good.
Overprotective Cowboy: A Mulbury Boys Novel (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance Book 2) Page 2