Courting the Cowboy

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Again her comment carried a heavy subtext. Start producing.

  “Has the move to the cabin helped you at all?” her mother continued. “Given you inspiration?”

  “It’s slow,” Ella said, slipping a cup underneath the coffeemaker. “Still working through stuff.”

  Her mother was quiet, acknowledging what Ella had dealt with. “Honey, it’s been two years.”

  “I know exactly how long it’s been,” Ella replied, pressing the heel of her hand against her eyes, frustrated at the sharp tone her voice took on. “Sorry. It’s even more frustrating for me than it is for you.”

  “I understand, dear, but sometimes you need to push through the resistance. Sometimes resistance is a signal that better things are coming.”

  Ella had heard variations on that theme often in her artistic career. Her husband, who had at one time been a part owner of her mother’s gallery, had tossed the same words at her when she was stuck. And sometimes he was right. But this was different. This was a wall she couldn’t get over no matter how hard she pushed and clawed, trying to find inspiration.

  “I’ll keep plugging. I’m sure it will change eventually.” Ella glanced at some of her older paintings stacked against the wall. Dark landscapes with jagged trees silhouetted against blue-black clouds that screened a silver disc of a moon. Superimposed over them in a different medium, were vague shadows of angels—transparent if you stood directly in front of them, but they changed as soon as you moved sideways.

  Though she had indulged in darker paintings, the last few years of her marriage the landscapes had become bleaker. They’d come out of a deep sorrow. A plaintive cry for comfort.

  And they sold for thousands.

  Her mother had pleaded with Ella to part with the few she had kept, saying they would fetch a goodly sum at the gallery.

  But Ella kept them as a reminder of that time in her life and of her dependence on a man she should never have married. Darren had spun daydreams for her that made her think she would be cared for. Cherished. Nurtured. They would have a dozen children. A beautiful home. Money would not be a problem.

  For a girl who never had a father or siblings and a mother who, though she loved her, was occupied with her business, these were heady dreams.

  The house had come but at a cost.

  So had the marriage.

  “Have you gone running?” her mother asked. “That’s always helped you before.”

  “I have. It’s beautiful here.” Ella glanced out the window, her one arm wrapped around her midsection as she looked past the copse of trees dividing her yard from the neighbors’. Beyond that the land flowed away to the solid line of granite mountains still capped with snow. “The neighbor, Mr. Walsh, his son and grandchildren live in the house. Apparently he has a house in town. Did you know that?”

  Her mother’s moment of hesitant silence answered that question.

  “Boyce assured me you would have your privacy,” her mother finally said.

  “I hope so. I can’t afford any distractions.”

  “Do you want me to contact Blanche DuMonde in Montreal? Ask for an extension? Explain your situation?”

  Situation. Is that what this deep guilt and pain is called?

  “No. I don’t want to give them a reason to refuse me. I really want that opportunity. To be able to teach art and paint...it’s a dream come true.”

  A year ago Ella’s mother had sent in some of Ella’s work to L’école des Arts Créatifs based in the heart of Montreal. The owners of the gallery connected to the school saw her work, were impressed and contacted Ella’s mother about a teaching/artist-in-residence position they were opening up. They wanted Ella to apply. But she needed to create a body of new work in order to get the job.

  And that was where things had fallen apart.

  “I need you to know I have been praying for you,” her mother said, her voice quiet as if hesitant to even say as much as she did.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Nice to know that while she’d struggled to pray to a God she had thought let her down, her mother still could intervene on her behalf.

  Ella steered the conversation to inconsequential things. People they knew. Sales her mother had attended. Upcoming artists she was featuring. Then they said goodbye with the promise to stay in touch, and Ella set her phone beside her computer screen, glancing at the website on it.

  Cedar Ridge Community Church. Services at 10:00.

  No doubt the Walsh family would be attending, as well. Though she’d seen children at the other churches she attended, she’d managed to avoid them and the reminders they gave her.

  Her mind skipped back to yesterday and her heart contracted thinking of Ollie.

  That moment she had held his arm as she steadied him had cut her like a cleaver. His soft skin. The sweetness of him.

  She stifled a groan, frustrated that seeing him could bring up the old pain so easily. Though she knew it would hover like a shadow over her life, she thought she had pushed it further back.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him again.

  Pablo whined and she shut the lid of her laptop with a decisive snap.

  “Okay, okay. I guess we’ll go for a run instead,” she said to her dog.

  The first two years of Pablo’s life had caused extra stress for Ella as she tried to work his exercise in between painting and helping her mother and Darren at the gallery.

  However the past couple of years the two of them had clocked hundreds of miles as Ella ran every day, seeking peace and absolution in the steady movement of her feet on pavement.

  At one time she could lose herself in her painting but that had eluded her since she lost her baby son. Two months later Darren’s death had sent her world into a tailspin.

  Running centered and grounded her. Gave her a purpose.

  Then, as she stepped outside, Suzy’s and Paul’s voices carried through the grove of trees between the houses. It sounded like they were arguing.

  It’s none of your business, she told herself, tightening her grip on Pablo’s leash as he strained toward the noise of the children. Boyce or Cord should take care of that. Not you.

  But the fight was escalating. Then she heard a hollow thump followed by a heartrending wail from Suzy. And it sounded much closer than the main ranch yard.

  She waited to see if someone would come but no one did.

  So she tied Pablo up and followed the sound of Suzy’s cries. To her surprise they led her to the back of her cabin. She turned a corner and there they were.

  Suzy sat on the ground by a tall, metal swing, sobbing and clutching her head. She was wearing a frilly pink dress. Paul had on a pair of blue pants and a white shirt. They looked dressed up. Probably ready for church.

  “What happened?” Ella asked, hurrying to Suzy’s side and kneeling down beside her.

  “Paul...pushed...he pushed me off the swing...on purpose,” Suzy wailed, leaning into Ella.

  The movement caught her off guard. Once again she was holding on to a little child and once again her heart contracted.

  “I didn’t hurt her,” Paul protested. “She wanted me to give her a push.”

  “You didn’t need to push so hard,” Suzy shouted back at him. She returned to Ella, wrapping her arms around her, sobbing.

  In spite of her own reaction, Ella’s arms automatically slipped around the little girl’s narrow shoulders and held her close. To her surprise, it felt good to be wanted. To be needed. Even if it was by a slightly dramatic six-year-old.

  Suzy seemed to be milking this for all it was worth. Ella could hear that her cries had turned from sincere to forced and she suppressed a smile.

  Paul squatted in front of Suzy and touched her shoulder. “I’m supposed to say I’m sorry, right?”

  “You’re supposed to
be sadder,” Suzy said, her head buried against Ella.

  Ella almost laughed aloud.

  Then she heard Pablo bark and the kids sat up, looking past Ella, and scrambled to their feet.

  “What are you kids doing here?”

  Ella looked back to see Cord standing a few feet away, hands planted on his hips. He could have been intimidating with his broad shoulders and piercing eyes and stubble shading his lean jaw.

  But the buttons of his blue-and-white shirt didn’t line up with the buttonholes and one of the tails of his shirt hung out of his wrinkled jeans. He looked like he had dressed in a hurry.

  “Sorry, Daddy. We asked if we could come here when you were in the shower.”

  “Did I say yes?”

  Paul dropped his head, his one toe digging in the dirt around the swing set as he slowly shook his head.

  “I thought you said yes,” Suzy said, her expression guileless, her hands folded demurely in front of her. Ella was impressed with how easily she shifted from brokenhearted to beguiling.

  “I didn’t.” The tiniest note of hesitation slipped into his voice and Suzy seemed to jump on it.

  “But I thought you did,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes wide, her expression pleading. “And these swings are way more fun than ours and you always like us to play outside. You say it’s healthy. So we thought we could come here. That was a good idea, right?”

  Ella looked away so neither Suzy nor Cord could see her battle to repress her smile.

  But Cord must have been subjected to his daughter’s machinations more than once and seemed to be unaffected.

  “Wrong,” he said with a note of finality. “You know what Grandpa Boyce and I said about disturbing Miss Ella.”

  Ella lifted a hand in a gesture of protest at the form of address. “Please. Let them call me Ella.”

  Miss Ella sounded like she should be wearing a hoop skirt and drinking lemonade on a plantation.

  “Did the kids come to ask you?” he asked, leveling his eyes at her.

  Ella glanced over at Paul and Suzy and caught the little girl’s pleading look. She wasn’t going to lie and cover Suzy’s disobedience yet she felt sorry for them. No mother, and now no nanny and a father who seemed busy.

  “We didn’t ask her,” Paul said, intervening. Then he turned to Ella, his expression serious. “And I’m sorry we bugged you. We didn’t mean to. We always played on these swings before ’cause we don’t have any by our house.”

  His words sounded so sincere and, at the same time, so formal and so adult for his age.

  But what was even worse was the notion that she was the Big Bad Neighbor taking away their fun.

  The solitude had been what she signed up for, she told herself. However, as she looked down at their sad faces, she felt petty. What did it matter if the kids came to her yard to play on the swing set?

  Was saving herself a few moments of discomfort worth making these kids feel restricted on their own ranch yard?

  “You know what?” she said. “I go out for a run every day with Pablo at eight o’clock in the morning and after supper. Why don’t you come and play on the swings either of those times?” That way she would be satisfying Cord’s demands that her kids stay away from her dog, and the kids could come and play there while she was gone. She glanced at Cord as if to check with him but, for some reason, he was still frowning.

  Suzy let out a cheer and then grabbed Ella’s hand, looking up at her with a wide grin. “Thanks, Miss Ella. That’s awesome possum.”

  Her faint lisp made the words sound even more adorable.

  “Okay, kids, over to the house,” Cord said. “You have to get ready for church.”

  Suzy kept looking up at Ella, still held her hand. “Are you coming with us? To church?”

  Ella wasn’t sure what to say or how to say it. And the pleading look on the little girl’s face tugged at her heart.

  “Paul and Suzy, go to the house now and change, please. And go straight to the house. No stopping at Miss Ella’s porch to pet that dog.”

  Cord’s voice was firm and the kids sensed they had already gotten as many concessions as they could.

  “See you in church,” Suzy said, releasing her hand.

  The assumption that she was coming hooked into her soul.

  They walked past Cord but as they did he reached out and stroked Paul’s head, tucked a strand of flyaway hair behind Suzy’s ear, his casual gestures melting her resistance to him. It wasn’t hard to see he was a loving father. “Could you two wash up? And tell Grandpa I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He spoke softly, smiling at his children.

  He watched them leave and once they were out of earshot he turned back to Ella.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Paul was right. They played here all the time. The house used to be my dad’s. I’m sorry they bothered you.”

  Before she could say that they hadn’t disturbed her, he carried on.

  “And don’t feel like you have to let them come over. I know you’re not crazy about kids.”

  She wanted to protest, realizing how things might have looked. But she stopped herself as she held his steady gaze. He was an attractive man and his interaction with his kids made him even more appealing.

  She had to shut this down. There was no way she was going there again. Darren had taught her some harsh lessons about trust and relationships.

  “If I’m gone when they come over I think it should work out fine,” she said, looking away from his blue-green eyes, reminding herself that she had other priorities, as did he. “Besides, they have school so I probably won’t see them much.”

  Cord sighed and shook his head. “Unfortunately they have two weeks off for spring break starting Monday.”

  Ella shot him a frown. “So they’ll be around all day?” What was he going to do with no nanny?

  “I’m sorry if that’s a problem,” he said, his voice going hard and his hands going up in a gesture of defense as she realized that he had misunderstood her. “They’ll be out of your hair all day today because after church we’re visiting my in-laws in Calgary. But if you need to look for another place to stay, my dad can help you out.”

  Then before she could explain what she had actually meant, he turned and walked away.

  Pablo barked at him as he went past and Cord shot her dog another frown.

  Awesome. Way to underline his perception of us, Ella thought, sighing. Clearly he seemed to think she didn’t like his kids at all.

  She glanced at her watch. In twenty minutes they would be leaving for church. She should take Pablo out so she could be gone when they left.

  But as she walked back to where Pablo was tied up, the memory of Suzy clutching on to her hand and asking her, so innocently, if she was going to church clung to her thoughts.

  I should stay home. I should work.

  There was that word again. The one Darren kept throwing at her. She should work harder. She should contribute more.

  She should be a better wife.

  She didn’t want to do should anymore.

  And what do you want to do?

  She held that question as she sought the reason she used to attend church.

  When she and God were closer. When she trusted Him to take care of her.

  Her and her baby.

  She shook off the thought but behind it came the thought of Suzy’s expectant face and the hope she was reluctant to extinguish.

  * * *

  “Miss Ella came to church,” Suzy whispered, grabbing Cord’s hand as Reverend Blakely pronounced the final blessing on the congregation.

  Cord didn’t want to look back to see the very attractive Miss Ella with her exotic eyes and narrow features.

  He felt a flicker of self-reproach at th
e attraction she created in him. This morning, when the kids were gone, he’d had to stop himself from taking a step closer to her. From holding her gaze and trying to find a connection between them.

  He knew she was all wrong. She didn’t seem to like kids and Suzy and Paul were his priority.

  But still, he got such mixed vibes around her. Because while she seemed uncomfortable around his kids, when she looked at them he saw a haunted look that puzzled him. He wanted to find out more about her.

  Yet he knew he shouldn’t go there. He didn’t have room in his life for anyone else. Things were getting too busy with his Rodeo Group work.

  He turned to leave but his father, who had been sitting beside him, stayed where he was, grinning about something.

  “So what do you think about asking Miss Ella over for lunch?” Boyce asked, his eyes bright.

  Cord sent up a prayer for patience, recognizing, once again, his father’s not-so-subtle matchmaking.

  The past couple of months his dad had been after Cord to go out and date. Make himself available. The same thing his friend Owen had been saying.

  “Me and the kids are going to Lisa’s parents’ place for lunch,” he said, squashing his dad’s plans. “Besides, she won’t come anyway.”

  “You’re making those poor kids sit in the car for over an hour just for a visit?” Boyce grumped, conveniently ignoring the last part of Cord’s statement.

  Cord knew exactly what his father thought of his bimonthly visits to his in-laws. Boyce brought it up most every time he went. “Suzy, Paul and Oliver are their grandchildren too,” he said.

  “Seems to me they could get themselves over to the ranch once in a while,” Boyce muttered, hitching up his blue jeans.

  Cord wasn’t getting into that old argument. Though they had come to the Bar W a couple of times, Louis and Hope had often said how hard it was for them to be in on the ranch in this house. To see the memories of their daughter and be reminded of their loss.

  Did they never think it was hard for him to be there every day?

  He brushed the disloyal thoughts aside. He made the trip because he should. It had become a way of finding some type of absolution.