How the Cowboy Was Won

by Lori Wilde

  “Ranger!” said Bridgette Alzate, who looked so much like her daughter that it was uncanny. She gave him a glimpse at just how beautiful Ember was going to be at fifty-five. “Come in, come in. Don’t be shy. Lunch is buffet style, get yourself a plate and get in there with the rest of them.”

  “I’m waiting for Ember.”

  “Where is she, by the way?” Bridgette frowned.

  “Right here, Mama,” Ember said, breezing into the room, bringing sunshine in with her smile.

  Ranger grinned, and all was right in his world.

  Chapter 5

  “This sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults.”

  —Jane Austen, Emma

  “Have you forgotten how to throw elbows around this bunch?” Ember shoved a plate in Ranger’s hand and trotted him over to the kitchen table laden with a Mexican food buffet—chili-powder-laced hamburger meat scramble, chicken strips marinated in fajita seasoning, refried pinto beans, black beans, pico de gallo, shredded cheddar cheese, guacamole, homemade corn and flour tortillas, salsa, and sour cream.

  She wanted to ask how the ride over from the church had gone with Fiona, but didn’t dare. What if they hadn’t spoken at all? Fiona could be pretty quiet, and Ranger wasn’t a big talker either. Had she screwed up pairing them together?

  “Beer?” Ember held up an iced Tecate.

  He nodded. Ranger had loaded up a plate and was standing around looking for a place to sit. All the seats at the dining-room table were filled.

  She balanced her own plate and drink, and gestured toward the living room. Ranger followed.

  In the living room, Fiona was sitting on the couch bouncing a cooing Ingrid on her knee.

  Fiona didn’t look up at Ranger, and he had turned in the opposite direction to say something to his brother Rhett who was sitting on the love seat beside Aria, regaling her with stories of the PBR.

  Granny Blue Alzate sat in one of the two La-Z-Boy recliners with her feet propped up and a plate settled in her lap.

  Ember plunked right down beside Fiona.

  Ranger hesitated and shifted restlessly. He tried to take the cushion beside Ember, but she inclined her head toward the other side of Fiona. He shot Ember a look that said, I don’t wanna.

  Ugh. Things must have gone really badly on the drive over. Okay, so not an instant love match, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t wiggle room for a developing relationship.

  Fiona scooted over so Ranger could slip between her and Ember, her eyes glazed glassy with baby love. Tentatively, she peeked through her lashes at Ranger.

  He kept his attention locked on his plate.

  Uh-oh. Ember could read the signs loud and clear. Fiona was interested in Ranger, but Ranger was not interested in Fiona. At least not yet.

  What should she do about that? Help Ranger see Fiona’s sterling qualities? Find another way to get them together? Find someone else for Fiona? Write Ranger off as a lost cause?

  Fiona baby-talked to Ingrid, her plate of food untouched on the coffee table in front of her.

  “Isn’t she beautiful,” Granny Blue said of the baby. “From the minute Kaia told me she was pregnant I knew she would be a girl.”

  “Really?” Fiona leaned forward, looked intrigued. “How did you know?”

  Granny Blue waved a hand. “I read the signs.”

  “Which one?” Rhett chortled. “The sonogram?”

  Granny Blue glowered at him.

  Rhett gulped, and sweat beaded his brow. He mumbled, “Sorry, just kidding.”

  “Granny had a fifty-fifty chance at guessing right,” Ember answered Fiona’s question, trying to head off some of Granny Blue’s more eccentric beliefs. Her mysterious talk of reading signs and listening to one’s intuition could jolt the uninitiated.

  “Don’t disrespect your grandmother,” Ranger said solemnly. “She has her ways, and there’s more things in the earth and sky than man can understand.”

  Granny Blue lowered her eyelids, and sent Ranger a ghost of a smile.

  Hey, what was this? The scientist taking up for Granny Blue’s woo-woo?

  “She’s always been a skeptic, this one.” Granny Blue’s sharp, dark eyes settled on Ember. “She’s afraid to open her heart and mind. Terrified that if she does she will no longer be running the show.”

  Ranger laughed, not making fun, simply agreeing. “She’s got your number, Sparky.”

  Ember turned to Fiona; she loved her grandmother to pieces, but sometimes her mystical stuff defied all logic. “The month Kaia got pregnant, a black widow spider built a web in the east corner of Granny’s barn, and apparently that meant Ingrid was going to be a girl. I guess if the spider had built a web in the west corner, the baby would have been a boy.”

  “You’re poking fun at me,” Granny Blue said mildly, her eyes amused. “That’s okay. You don’t have to believe. It’s your life, live it the way you want. But don’t come crying to me when you end up with the wrong man again.”

  Ouch! The elderly lady didn’t pull any punches.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s missing, does she, Granny?” Kaia asked, sweeping into the room to collect Ingrid from Fiona. She cuddled her daughter and plunked down in a rocking chair. “Poor old Ember hasn’t a clue. If she’d listened to you, she wouldn’t have married Trey and made such a mess of her life.”

  “Hey, hey.” Ember tapped her fingers on her leg trying to release some tension. She felt like she was trying to climb one of the Davis Mountains during an ice storm, in high heels. “I didn’t make a mess of my life.”

  Kaia clucked her tongue, acting as if she were the big sister. “You’re divorced—”

  “Gratefully.”

  “If you’d listened to Granny, you wouldn’t have gone down the wrong road in the first place.” Kaia sniffed her baby’s head and looked more than a little smug.

  “Oh, here we go again.” Ember rolled her eyes. “Please no, not the glorious humming story.”

  Ranger edged his boot over and touched her foot. In solidarity? Or warning her to check herself? Was she being too opinionated? It was sometimes hard for her to tell when she’d crossed the line until it was too late and she’d hurt someone’s feelings.

  “Humming?” Fiona sat up straighter. “What humming?”

  Ember suppressed a groan. Now they were going to have to hear the old wives’ tale she’d listened to a thousand times.

  Ahem, lectured her better self, they are your family. Let them have their say. It won’t hurt a thing. It costs nothing to be kind.

  To keep from saying something she shouldn’t, Ember stuffed her mouth with a soft taco. Just because she’d had a bad experience didn’t mean she had a right to take it out on the ones who loved her.

  Granny Blue lowered the footrest on the recliner, set her plate of food on the end table, and met Fiona’s curious gaze. “My granddaughter thinks the story is silly and boring. Are you sure you really want to hear it?”

  “Granny, I truly am sorry.” Ember really should keep duct tape in her purse for times like these. She didn’t mean to step on toes, she just enjoyed lively debate and it often surprised her to learn other people did not feel the same way.

  “You’ve done nothing to be sorry for. You simply are who you are.” Granny Blue’s words were kind, her tone even kinder. “One day, if you’re lucky, you will understand.”

  To Fiona, Granny Blue said, “When the women in my family kiss their soul mate for the first time, they hear a soft, but distinct humming from deep inside the brain. It’s a sweet steady sound that fills all the cells in your body. And they also feel a light pressure right here.” Turning in her chair so Fiona could see the back of her head, Granny pressed two fingers against her skull on the same plane as the pineal gland embedded deep within her brain.

  Fiona looked dubious. Yay for Fiona. “You mean like ringing in your ears?”

  “No, not like that at all. For one thing it’s not inside your ears. For another thing
it’s a completely different sound. Ringing in your ears is high-pitched and annoying. This is a low, comforting hum. More like sound emissions from a miniature power generator. It is as if the sound of the universe is inside your head, and you are inside of it.”

  “I gotta say, I’m with Ember on this one.” Aria wrinkled her nose. “Seems pretty far-fetched.”

  “Clearly, because you’ve never kissed me, darlin’,” Rhett drawled and puckered up. “I’ll make you hum all over.”

  Aria threw a pillow at him. “In your wildest dreams, cowboy.”

  “Ye of little faith.” Kaia kissed her baby and looked through the door into the next room where her husband was having an engrossing conversation with her parents. Kaia and Granny Blue shared a meaningful glance.

  “I don’t get it. How could a kiss cause someone to hear humming in their head?” Fiona looked perplexed.

  “Ranger’s the scientist.” Aria turned to him. “What do you think?”

  Ranger’s smile was a shrug, light and casual. “The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.”

  “That was diplomatic. Good dodge.” Aria winked.

  “I’m thinking it’s just the power of suggestion.” Rhett threw the pillow back at Aria. “You know, like when your manager tells you that you can ride the most cantankerous bull out there and you do because he made you think you could.”

  “I cannot explain the why.” Granny Blue’s eyes were cryptic, her shoulders lifting easily, then riding back down. She didn’t care if anyone believed her or not. “I can only tell you what I know.”

  Kaia raised a hand. “I second that.”

  “Is it because you are Native American?” Fiona asked.

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The origin is not important.” Granny Blue held out both palms in an it’s-beyond-me gesture.

  “And it only happens to the women in your family?” Fiona picked up her plate but didn’t eat anything. “Not the men?”

  “Just the women.”

  “I wish I could hear it.” Aria sighed. “I’m quite musical. I would like to hear music in my head all the time.”

  “Wanna kiss me and see if I’m your soul mate?” Rhett waggled his tongue at her.

  Aria shoved him off the love seat. Laughing, he rolled around on the floor and stayed there.

  “It’s so fascinating,” Fiona murmured. “The mind is such a great mystery.”

  “Beyond fascinating.” Kaia kissed Ingrid again. “It’s cosmic destiny.”

  What a load of baloney! Ember thought. Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t—

  “Baloney. C’mon people, you aren’t seriously buying into this?” Ember’s tongue couldn’t hold back. “Granny Blue tells a ridiculous tale of finding your soul mate by hearing a humming in your head when you kiss him, and Kaia swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. That doesn’t make any of it true. She’s an elderly lady on medication for crying out loud!”

  The entire room went silent.

  Granny Blue’s face was impassive. Kaia looked wounded. Ember shot a glance over at Ranger.

  He slapped her with a chiding stare, and she sucked in her breath. Oh no. Message received. She was acting like a jerk, and he was disappointed in her. Once more her unfiltered mouth had gotten her into trouble.

  Remorseful, she dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry, Granny, really sorry,” Ember apologized. “Trey did a number on me, and I guess it all got stirred up again today with Ingrid’s christening.”

  “You think?” Kaia said sharply.

  “It’s all right, child,” Granny Blue said. “I understand the fear and your pain.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t believe in the humming either until it happened to me.” Kaia’s voice gentled.

  The truth? The real reason she was such a skeptic? Once upon a time she had believed in Granny’s humming story, believed it deeply, desperately, to the depth of her soul. When she was seventeen, and looking for love, she got it into her head that the legend was one hundred percent true and that in order to find her Prince Charming she had better get to kissing the frogs. In the course of one summer she kissed two hundred and sixteen guys. In all that time, and in all those kisses, she hadn’t heard anything.

  Not a whisper.

  Not a peep.

  Not a whimper.

  Much less a hum. Out of two hundred and sixteen men she should have heard something if she was going to. Right?

  But she did get a cold sore if that counted.

  There certainly had been no humming with Trey, but by then, she’d given up on the stupid legend, and had started operating like a normal person. In other words, absolutely clueless when it came to love.

  You never kissed Ranger. That sudden thought seared into her brain like a brand, glowing red-hot and strangely urgent.

  And why not? Why hadn’t she kissed him?

  There had been opportunities when she could have kissed him—under the mistletoe at Christmas, in the stands at a high school football game when his brother threw the winning touchdown to her brother, playing spin the bottle at age twelve and loudly declaring “yuck” when the bottle landed on him and running off. Any number of times they could have had a light, friendly brushing of their mouths, just to check it out.

  But she hadn’t ever seriously considered it. Not even once.

  Sitting here next to him, she realized with a start exactly why she’d never crossed that line. It had nothing to do with the fact they’d been best friends since childhood—well okay, maybe it had a little bit to do with it—but that wasn’t the whole megillah.

  The down and dirty reason she’d never considered kissing Ranger?

  Because what if she had kissed him and she didn’t hear the humming? It would confirm once and for always that there wasn’t a chance he could be her soul mate.

  And that scared her most of all.

  Thankfully, everyone finally stopped talking about the humming, and the topic shifted where it belonged: on the delicious food, the good company, and the beautiful, newly baptized baby.

  Ranger glanced up from where he was sitting beside Ember, caught Granny Blue studying him with intense black eyes. He noticed she had a sprinkling of sawdust in her hair. He didn’t ask why. He’d learned a long time ago that with Granny Blue, you’d most likely get an answer you weren’t sure you wanted to hear.

  The elderly Apache lady had always unnerved him a little. Often, it felt as if she had the uncanny ability to read minds.

  He smiled at her.

  She didn’t smile back.

  “Where have you been?” Granny Blue blurted.

  Ember might have gotten her looks from her mother, but she’d gotten her directness from her grandmother. He admired the ability in both grandmother and granddaughter, but he couldn’t say he was entirely comfortable with it.

  Caught off guard, he simply said, “New Zealand.”

  “That’s where kiwis come from,” Granny Blue said.

  “Yes.”

  “I never much liked kiwis.” Granny Blue dipped a chip in the salsa on her plate, but just held it in her hand without eating.

  “New Zealanders?”

  “No, the fruit. They’re too fuzzy and green.”

  He couldn’t argue with that assessment. Kiwis were fuzzy and green, but still delicious. Ranger stared at the chip, fascinated, wondering how long she was going to hold it suspended halfway to her mouth.

  “I like blackberries,” he said for no good reason at all.

  “Too many seeds.”

  “I can see how that would be a concern if you’re not into seeds.”

  “Do you ever take a hard stand?” Granny Blue asked. “Or do you always try to play both sides of the aisle?”

  “I try to piss off as few people as possible. Life is easier that way.”

  “And that’s your endgame?” The sawdust in her hair shook when she bobbed her head. “Easy?”

  “What’s wrong with easy?”

  “It’s laz
y. My granddaughter isn’t lazy.”

  “Kaia?”

  Granny Blue snorted. “Ember.”

  “I know that.”

  “Some people only learn when you piss them off,” she said, circling back around and almost leaving him in the dust. “Ember knows that.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Grow an opinion, young man!”

  “My opinion is that I want to keep out of this conversation.”

  “At last!” she cackled. “You owned it. Good job.”

  Um, okay.

  More people crowded into the room carrying plates and looking for places to sit. Ranger was feeling hemmed in and wished he wasn’t wearing his best suit. He also wished he could think of a graceful way to get out of there, but he didn’t want to be rude and he had to take Fiona back to the church. Thanks a million for that, Em.

  “So,” Granny Blue said, clearly not done with him yet. “Are you finished with New Zealand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She rolled her eyes. “There you go, taking the easy road again.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then what is true?” Her eyes were obsidian marbles, dark and shiny. “Are you going back to New Zealand or not?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  The woman was a tough customer. He liked that she didn’t suffer fools, but at the same time he worried that she considered him one of those fools.

  “I’ve applied for a permanent job at the observatory, but I might not get it.”

  “Why not?” Granny said. “You’re the smartest man in Jeff Davis County.”

  “Hey!” Rhett protested, thumping his chest with a fist. “I’m sitting right here.”

  Granny Blue barely flicked a glance Rhett’s way, kept her eyes trained on Ranger. “Well?”

  “Don’t worry.” Aria giggled to Rhett. “You don’t need smarts. You’re the handsomest Lockhart brother.”

  “I ain’t dumb.” Rhett glared. “Just ’cause I dropped out of high school to go on the rodeo circuit.”

  “I might be book smart,” Ranger explained to Granny Blue, “but they want someone in the position who also has people smarts.”