Her Stubborn Cowboy

by Patricia Johns

  “So what really happened that night at the fair?” she asked.

  Chet looked down at her, his gray eyes narrowing as if he was trying to decide something. Then he shrugged and opened his box of food. “Does it matter?”

  There it was again—that Granger solidarity. She heaved a sigh and pulled open her own box of food, the battered and deep-fried dill chips sending up an aroma that made her stomach growl.

  “It matters to me,” she said, and right now, she needed to take care of herself.

  “Andy called me up and asked me to come get you,” he said simply. “So I did.”

  “But why?” she asked. “Where did he disappear to?”

  Chet opened a packet of tartar sauce and squeezed it onto the box lid, then dipped a chip into it and popped it into his mouth.

  “You should probably ask Andy that,” he said.

  “I did,” she retorted. “You were there. He didn’t answer me.”

  This whole male protectiveness thing was getting old quickly.

  “Hey.” His voice was low and strong, and his gaze pinned her to the spot. “I’m a man of my word, and that means you can count on it, too. So don’t ask me to break a promise, Mack. You know I’m not that kind of guy.”

  She didn’t answer him. Maybe she was being unrealistic expecting to sort this all out before she left.

  “I can tell you this,” he said quietly. “Trust your gut, Mack.”

  That was what she was doing by asking all these questions—listening to that uncertain feeling deep inside that told her there was more to this. But a gut feeling could take a woman only so far, and eventually someone had to spill already. His words sounded faintly like a warning, though.

  “Trust my gut with whom, exactly?” she asked, shooting him a wry smile. “That’s rather vague.”

  “All of us.” He pulled his gaze away from her and he put his attention back into the food in front of him.

  Was that a warning? She had no idea, but his words felt heavy with meaning. The Grangers stood together, and the Grangers needed land. Why was it that she kept hoping that this was about something more, something deeper? She hadn’t come to Hope to find romance. She hadn’t even come for answers about the past, yet here she was.

  Stupid, she mentally chided herself. When a man told you to be cautious of him, it was for good reason.

  The sound of chatting people eating their greasy fair food murmured around them, but Mackenzie and Chet sat in silence for a long while. It was as though she’d come up against a wall with Chet, and she knew better than to pound on it. He wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know, and that was most telling itself. After a few minutes of munching on their food, Chet’s low voice broke the silence.

  “Our mom took us to the fair when we were kids.”

  Mack could hear a difference in his voice. His tone was quiet, and she had to lean closer to hear him clearly.

  “I tried to win her a teddy bear and spent all my allowance in the attempt. It was a water-gun game where I was supposed to knock down a bottle.”

  Chet didn’t talk about his mother often, and the tenderness in his voice gave her pause.

  “That’s rather sweet.”

  “I felt like an idiot when I lost again and again,” Chet went on. “And that night, I went to bed miserable because I hadn’t been able to win the bear for her. She came into my room and I still remember how she looked standing in the doorway.” He let out a sigh. “She told me that she didn’t need a teddy bear to know how much I loved her. She said she could see it every day in how hard I worked. I felt like a real man that night. I was taking care of her.”

  “How old were you then?” she asked.

  “Maybe fourteen.” He sighed again. “But Andy spent more time with her than I did. He’d come inside and talk to her while I was out with the animals. When she got sick, I tried to spend more time with her, and that’s when I saw how close she and Andy were.”

  “You were jealous?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He jabbed his fork into the cardboard box. “But that teddy bear had mattered to me. I’d just found out that my mom had cancer, and I couldn’t even win her a bear.”

  Mackenzie felt the tears well up in her eyes. “I’m sure she understood how much you wanted to.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  “And those games are rigged, you know.”

  “I know.” He shrugged. “In life, most of them are. But sometimes a guy thinks that if he just has heart enough, he can beat the toughest odds.”

  “How old were you when she died?” she asked quietly.

  “Fifteen.”

  Mackenzie slipped her arm through his. “I’m sure she tried to stick around for you boys, too. Sometimes heart isn’t enough.”

  “Sometimes,” he agreed gruffly, and he met her gaze. “But I’m the kind of guy who keeps hoping that this time it might be.” His gray eyes moved over her face slowly, his chiseled features softening until she thought she could see a glimpse of the nineteen-year-old in him again. He ran a rough hand over hers where it rested on his biceps.

  “I wish you’d told me how you felt back then,” she said quietly.

  “Would you have ditched my brother and chosen the serious party pooper instead?” he asked with a chuckle. He looked away, his gaze moving over the far tables.

  Would she have? Perhaps not. Ten years ago, she’d lacked the wisdom she had now. Ten years ago, Andy had seemed exciting and Chet had been exasperating. Now that she was a grown woman, it was the other way around.

  “Oh, Chet,” she said softly. “I was young and stupid back then. Who’s to say what I would have done and lived to regret?”

  Chet traced her fingers one by one with the tip of his middle finger. “There was this one afternoon you were in the hayloft reading a book. I came by to get a tool your granny had borrowed from us, and you hadn’t heard me come in. I watched you read for I don’t know how long. You were gorgeous—like always. The sun was coming through the open loft door, and you were propped up on a hay bale, your legs crossed in front of you... I had to physically stop myself from climbing on up and showing you exactly how I felt about you.”

  A memory of his hands moving through her hair, his lips coming down onto hers, brought a blush to her cheeks. Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she thought he might lean closer and show her exactly what he meant, but he didn’t. His finger kept up the slow tracing over each of hers, moving from knuckle to fingertip in a patient glide.

  “I wish you had,” she said at last.

  “Imagining something and doing it are two different things,” he said quietly. “Besides, I made some noise and you looked down and saw me. You immediately asked me where Andy was.”

  His finger stopped tracing hers as those words came out of his mouth and her heart sank in her chest. She remembered that afternoon. She’d been too moon-eyed over Andy by that point to ever notice his older brother. If only she’d been able to look a little wider back then. But she’d been loyal, too, and by then she’d made her choice in Andy.

  “You asked me what happened at the fair that night,” he said. “Do you really want to know?”

  Chapter Ten

  Looking over at Mackenzie, her honey-blond hair tucked behind one ear so that her milky neck drew his eye, he knew what he was going to do—even if he did regret it later.

  “If I tell you, Mack,” he said quietly, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let Andy know that I’ve told you. I’d rather not tick him off right now with that developer sweet-talking him, if you know what I mean.”

  Mackenzie turned toward him, those blue eyes fixed on his face hopefully. He had a feeling that expression was going to change when she heard the truth, though, and he hoped he wasn’t going to be the cause of more grief than necessary.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m a woman of my word, too, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s just...” He sighed. “It wasn’t Andy w
ho asked me to keep the secret. It was Helen.”

  Mack’s eyes widened, and a voice came over the loudspeaker, interrupting him. “Would the owner of the blue Chevy pickup, license plate number—” here there was a rustle of papers, and then the number was rattled off “—please return to your vehicle. The lights are on.”

  The timing was impeccable. Chet closed his eyes and blew out a breath. That was his truck. He didn’t remember having the lights on, but he must have flicked them on without even thinking. His truck battery wasn’t the strongest and could use changing soon, so if he didn’t get those lights off pronto, it would drain completely and they wouldn’t be getting home tonight. It was just lucky someone had noticed.

  “That’s mine,” he said. “Sorry. You stay here and eat. Save my spot. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Wait, you can’t just walk away. You were telling me—” she started. “Never mind. I’ll come along.”

  “No, stay.” He cleared his throat. “Seriously. I’ll be back in ten minutes. And then I’ll fill you in. That’s a promise.”

  Chet would tell her—he’d just given his word that he would—but he wanted a couple of minutes to order his thoughts. If he was about to break an oath to a deceased friend, then he should at least make sure he did it carefully.

  He rose to his feet, easing his long legs out from under the picnic table. This wasn’t the kind of thing he could just blurt out and walk away from. He’d need to gauge how she was taking it and maybe talk her through it a bit. That took time.

  As Chet headed for the parking lot, his mind was swirling. He hated this balance of self-interest and morality. He wasn’t even sure if he could call telling Mack the truth the moral thing to do, because he’d be breaking a promise to her late grandmother in the process. This was a whole murky gray area, and he hated gray. He liked black-and-white. He liked to know exactly what side of the fence he was on.

  “Idiot,” he muttered to himself. He had excellent reasons to keep his mouth shut, and in a moment of weakness with those snapping blue eyes riveted to his face, he was about to go against everything he’d been so sure about mere days earlier.

  He obviously wasn’t thinking straight right now, and he wasn’t even sure that he cared. Mackenzie deserved something better, and maybe it was stupid of him, but he wanted to be that something better for her—or a part of it, if that was all he could manage. If Andy sold, he might be forced out, too. At least her memories of the Grangers wouldn’t be all heartbreak.

  A quilt display stood next to a Girl Scouts tent selling cookies. The display was set up on racks, a few quilts hung by clamps to larger frames so that the full pattern could be seen by passersby. The Hope quilting guild made tiny quilts to be given out to new mothers as they left the hospital, as well as slightly larger quilts for a children’s hospital in Billings. But after the charitable work was done, those ladies worked their fingers to the bone for the quilt competition at the fair. He knew this because Helen had competed yearly.

  As he passed the quilt display, one of the tags caught his eye. He hadn’t been paying attention the first time they’d passed that way, and his heart sank. It was affixed to a pinwheel quilt made of pink and orange—bright and attractive. He remembered seeing Helen working on this on her porch, stitching each piece together by hand, her knuckles swelling with the meticulous work. But she’d always been the tough type, and she’d said there was a right way and a wrong way to make a quilt. For Helen, the right way was with hand stitching.

  This particular quilt had a sign pinned at the top saying Honorable Mention: Quilt by Helen Vaughn.

  Helen must have submitted this quilt to the contest six months ago, and the realization that she’d not lived long enough to see it win an honorable mention was sad. Helen had had a lot more living to do, and she’d been taken far too soon. But standing here, looking at her quilt hanging in front of him, he felt a tickle of guilt.

  He was about to break his word, when his word was all she’d needed from him because she’d known that of all men, Chet Granger could be trusted to stand by it.

  “Helen, I’m sorry,” he muttered aloud. Either way he stepped, it looked as if he was hurting Mack, and he hated that. He just wanted to ease some of that pain for her, except he couldn’t tell what would help most—his silence or the truth. Helen’s bet was on silence. Here’s hoping that he was right and the truth would set her free.

  * * *

  MACKENZIE TOOK ANOTHER bite of deep-fried pickle, but her mind just wasn’t on the food. Her fingers tingled where Chet had touched them. Thinking of how he’d felt about her back then made her sad, but she knew she had to be careful. Ten years ago, they’d all been teenagers, and Chet would have broken her heart, too. She still would have gone to college in the city, and Chet would have stayed to run the ranch. Young hearts didn’t part easily, and she’d have been left with a gaping hole in hers just the same as she had with Andy. And yet the man Chet had grown into was even more capable of breaking her heart, and she knew it. In some ways, she was so different from her teenage self, but in others she hadn’t changed at all. She was still fully vulnerable to falling in love with a man she had no future with. The Grangers seemed to be her Kryptonite.

  If Granny were here, she’d have some sort of advice. She’d say something folksy like “Don’t corner anything meaner than you,” or she’d tell a story about a goat who adopted a calf, and Mack would say, “What are you talking about, Granny?” Then her grandmother would bring out the thread of wisdom that tied it all together. But Granny wasn’t here to offer her stories and proverbs. Mack had to do this one on her own.

  “Hey, you.”

  Mackenzie startled and looked up to see Andy standing behind her, and he shot her a warm smile—the kind she remembered from a decade ago.

  “Hi, Andy,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

  “I’m sneaky that way.” He winked and she found herself grinning in spite of herself. He angled his head toward the rides. “Want to walk with me?”

  “Chet just had to go turn off the lights of the truck, and he’ll be back in a minute—”

  “Yeah, the truck.” Something flickered across Andy’s face. Then he shrugged. “Chet is a big boy now. I’m sure he can find us. It’s not exactly the world’s fair. Besides, I wanted to talk to you. Alone. Chet’s been looming lately.”

  This fair was small and intimate—not exactly a great place to get lost. She was sure Chet could find them easily enough, and she was finished with her food, anyway. Besides, Chet wouldn’t finish what he was telling her until they were alone again.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s walk a little bit.” With any luck, Andy would run into another old friend by the time Chet came back.

  Mackenzie picked up the last of her food and closed the container, then got to her feet and angled toward the big garbage. She looked toward the main gates as they came away from the table, but there was no sign of Chet.

  “So how are you liking working the ranch?” Andy asked.

  “It’s—” She smiled. “It’s hard.”

  “Do you miss city life yet?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “At least I got weekends off.”

  She laughed at her own little joke, but there was sadness underneath it. She’d miss Hope, and she’d miss Granny’s ranch, but it wasn’t the same without Granny and she couldn’t base her future on the help of neighbors. She could either do this alone or face facts.

  “Why not go back?” Andy asked. “I had no idea you were so close by. If I’d known—”

  “You were engaged, Andy,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah. So I wouldn’t have.” He shrugged. “It’s good to see you again, though. Really good.”

  Mackenzie crossed her arms in front of her as they made their way out into the general mix of people. A ringtoss game had drawn a few people, and one teenager seemed to be doing pretty well at it. Every time a ring landed, a trill of chimes erupted from the
speakers. Everyone was watching the kid throw, and they sidled around the outside of the crowd.

  “Mack...” Andy dipped his head closer to her. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  A family wandered past them pushing a double stroller with two toddlers inside. They were both blond-haired boys with grubby faces. Mack stepped aside to give them room, and Andy trailed her. They moved around the corner from the ringtoss. The vendors were calling out to passersby, and the jangly music of the game grated on Mackenzie’s nerves.

  “Oh?” She shot him a curious look. “What about?”

  “Chet.”

  Andy scanned the people moving from tent to tent, and then he tugged her into an empty space between the ringtoss booth and another tent selling T-shirts and knickknacks. Mackenzie followed, her intrigue heightened. It was dusk, and in the causeway, lights illuminated everything as bright as noon. But here between the tents, they stood in the shadows.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, frowning.

  “I don’t even know how to start.” He smiled awkwardly. “I know you probably think I’m the problem here. I swoop back into town and threaten to sell my land, but—”

  “Don’t do it,” Mackenzie said. “He’s your brother.”

  “I have to do it,” he said with a sigh. “If I don’t, I’m walking away from my inheritance, because I’m not staying here. My life is in Billings. I suspect yours is, too.”

  There was truth in that, and it pricked her at her heart. He was right. Her life was in Billings, and even if she didn’t much like the choices she’d made there, Hope wasn’t going to be home, sweet home. Things had to change, but Hope wasn’t her answer.

  “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” she admitted. “I don’t like to take something on that I can’t finish on my own.”

  “I thought so,” he said. “And there’s no shame in that. So have you thought of who you’ll sell to?”

  Mackenzie’s heart sped up and she looked out toward the crowds of people. The family with the stroller was beside a concession stand. The mother was wiping one of the toddler’s noses, and the father was paying for some Popsicles. The woman paused and glanced up and she and her husband exchanged a smile. They looked tired, and they weren’t exactly dressed to impress, but that look they exchanged appeared to be something really precious, and one day, when she was dressed in mom clothes and feeling tired, she hoped she had a husband who still looked at her like that. Until then, she needed to take care of herself.