Her Last First Kiss: Christian Cowboy Romance (Last Chance Ranch Romance Book 1)

by Liz Isaacson

  “Gramps, is it burning?” She turned, looking for something to carry water in. She saw a few water bowls and picked them up. “Adele, turn on the water.”

  She did, and they filled the bowls and hurried over to Gramps, who kept swatting at the ground. Over and over. “Gramps, back up,” Scarlett said, and she poured the water where he’d been hitting. It disappeared so quickly, and more white smoke lifted into the air.

  At least it wasn’t black, and she turned to get more. She almost ran into Hudson, who had found a big bucket and filled it with water. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his shirt, but Scarlett didn’t have time to admire his strength nor the width of his shoulders.

  He drenched the grasses where Gramps had been hitting, and he said, “More. Let’s make sure it’s really out.” He nodded back to the building, only a few feet away. “I found another one.”

  Scarlett went over to it, but there was no way she could lift it. Hudson arrived, handed the empty bucket to Scarlett, and took the nearly full bucket. After several trips back and forth, the ground was good and muddy and the smoke was gone.

  A siren filled the air, and Scarlett’s plans of an easy afternoon flirting with the handsome new addition to the ranch went up the same way that smoke had. “Why’d you have to call the fire department?” she asked, glaring at Hudson.

  “If this was bigger than we could handle—” His dark eyes blazed with fire, and Scarlett held up her hand.

  “I know, I know.” Scarlett took out her hair and let it flow over her shoulders for a moment. Then she gathered it all together again and put it back in a tight ponytail. “I’m sorry, Hudson. Thank you for all your help.” She glanced at Adele, who stood there, still holding a dog bowl.

  “Oh, Adele, this is Hudson Flannigan.” The sirens grew louder and louder. “Hudson, Adele Woodruff.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said without extending his hand. “I’ll take care of Gramps, yeah?”

  Scarlett looked at her grandfather, who’d collapsed into a chair against the side of the building. “Yes, please.” She sighed, wondering if the old man had started to lose his mind. The hoarding she could excuse away, due to her grandmother’s death. But starting a fire? “See if you can figure out what happened.”

  She watched Hudson step over to Gramps and touch him gently on his arm before he crouched down and started talking to him. Then she tightened her ponytail, said, “Adele, come with me, okay?” and stepped toward the gate where the fire truck had just pulled behind her best friend’s car, blocking it in.

  By the time Scarlett finished talking to the firefighters and getting Gramps back to his cabin, exhaustion pounded from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. “Gramps,” she said, sweeping her fingertips along his forehead. “No more trying to move things by yourself, okay?”

  “I’m sorry, Scarlett,” Gramps said. “I just wanted to help.”

  “I know.” Scarlett pressed her lips to his temple. “It’s fine. You don’t need to move the fence pieces. I’ll get Hudson to do it. Or Sawyer,” she said quickly.

  Gramps’s eyes drifted closed, and he said, “Hadley, tell me how the kids are doing.”

  Scarlett opened her mouth to say something, but shock kept anything from coming out. Her thoughts tumbled, and then she said, “Gramps, it’s Scarlett. I’m Scarlett.”

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket for the third time since those sirens had come up into the foothills. She wanted to chuck it at the wall and get a new number.

  Hadley was her mother, and she suddenly couldn’t wait to call her mom and report that Gramps wasn’t doing so well. But she stayed with him and talked about her two brothers and her sister. Gramps never asked about Scarlett, and she finally fell silent, sadness permeating the very air in the bedroom.

  She got up and tiptoed out to the kitchen, where Adele was making grilled cheese sandwiches. Scarlett sighed as she sat at the kitchen table and pulled out her phone. A groan started somewhere deep inside her when she saw whose call she’d just missed.

  “Not Jewel Nightingale.” She cradled her head in her hands.

  “Who’s Jewel Nightingale?” Adele asked, placing a sandwich in front of Scarlett. The scent of browned bread and butter made Scarlett’s mouth water.

  “She runs Forever Friends,” Scarlett said, sitting upright quickly and dialing her back. The call was only fifteen minutes ago. Maybe Jewel hadn’t left for the day yet. But the line just rang and rang, and Scarlett ended up leaving another message and turning to cheese and bread for comfort.

  “So that Hudson Flannigan is drop-dead gorgeous,” Adele said, joining her at the table.

  “Is he?”

  “Oh, girl, please.” Adele’s laughter was entirely too joyful. “I know you, remember? I saw you admiring him.”

  “When?”

  “When he carried those buckets full of water back and forth. I was watching him, because dang, the man has muscles, you know?”

  “I guess,” Scarlett said, taking an overly big bite of her sandwich. Then she’d at least be able to buy herself some time to come up with a reason why she couldn’t be interested in Hudson.

  The warmth from his hand still lingered in her skin, and she couldn’t help flicking a glance at Adele. Her marriage to Vance had been over for years before she’d filed for divorce, and that had taken over three years to become final.

  She’d been alone for a long time now, and maybe Hudson stirred something inside her that hadn’t been touched in a while. And she didn’t have to say any of the things running through her head. Adele knew without Scarlett having to say anything.

  “So maybe you’ll go out with him,” Adele finally said, causing Scarlett to scoff.

  “Right,” Scarlett said. “Go where? Out to Piggy Paradise for a romantic date?” She giggled, met Adele’s eye, and they both started laughing.

  When she finally got control of herself, Scarlett shook her head, “No, Adele. My life is this ranch now, and there’s nowhere romantic out here.”

  Scarlett stood with one foot up on the bottom rung of the fence separating her from the llamas. They grazed in the pasture, and everything about the sun setting to her right and the way the crickets had started to chirp was serene.

  It was one of the things she’d loved best about coming to the ranch as a child. Even a teenager. The peace this place possessed.

  But she felt anything but peaceful as she said, “Mom, he thought I was you.” Her voice almost broke, but she contained it. Losing Grams had been hard for everyone, but no one struggled as much as Gramps. Naturally.

  Scarlett thought she’d be the most hard-hit by his death, and she couldn’t imagine staying on this ranch if he wasn’t here.

  “He is eighty-one-years-old,” her mom said, like that made it okay.

  “Should I take him to the doctor?”

  “He has no health insurance.”

  Scarlett didn’t either, but she couldn’t just let him suffer. If there was something she could do, she should do it. Her parents had insurance, as well as plenty of money. But her mother made no offer to pay for the doctor’s visit.

  “Any advice?” she asked, wondering why her mother was so unconcerned about this.

  “Scarlett, we took him to the doctor last year. He was fine.”

  “Well, what did they say?” Because he was not fine now. He was trying to move huge eight-by-eight-foot pieces of chainlink fence by himself, starting fires, and forgetting her name.

  “They said he was getting older and might get confused from time to time.”

  “So it’s not dementia? Just a memory issue?” Problem was, Scarlett didn’t even look all that much like her mother, who’d never worn anything higher than a size six and had dark hair cut into a pixie. Scarlett’s auburn locks had come from the slight reddish tint in her father’s hair, and her hair fell almost to her waist.

  “Probably,” her mom said.

  “Okay, I have to go,” Scarlett said, hanging up a moment later without
saying good-bye. Her mother had frustrated her for years, but this took the cake. “Why isn’t she concerned?” she wondered aloud to the llama lumbering a little closer to her. She’d named them all, and this brown and white one she’d called Hot Chocolate.

  She wasn’t particularly enthused about the llamas, as they always wore looks of contempt on their faces. They seemed unpredictable, and she’d read about them online to learn more. They did sometimes have disagreeable dispositions, and she usually kept her distance from them.

  Turning to face the horse pasture, she heard the crunch of gravel under someone’s feet, and she looked to find Hudson approaching her. “How’s Gramps?” he asked, his voice low and deep and sending rumbles through her body.

  She reminded herself that the man didn’t want to give her his number and that he was only here to earn a buck. Money she didn’t have to give him.

  “He’s okay,” she said. “Sleeping.”

  “What did your mom say?” He joined her at the fence and gazed into the pasture as well.

  Scarlett sighed. “She’s unconcerned.” She cut a glance at Hudson, thinking she might be able to trust him. With enough time, at least. “He called me my mother’s name.”

  “Huh.” Hudson let a few seconds of silence go by. “Want me to take him to the doctor when I go down to the automotive shop tomorrow?”

  Surprise coursed through her. “You’d do that?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He put his foot on the bottom rung too. “Did you want to come to the automotive shop with me?”

  Her lingering surprise turned into shock. “Why would I want to do that?”

  He shrugged and shuffled down the fence a foot or two. “I don’t know. You could help me pick out a paint color for the robot, and we could go to lunch….” He stopped talking, and the dusk falling between them seemed to absorb what he’d suggested.

  Scarlett had no idea what to say. The signals he put off were so confusing. Maybe she’d been out of the dating game for too long.

  “You have a lot of work to do around here,” he finally said. “I get it.” He knocked twice on the top rung of the fence and started to walk away. “See you later.”

  The sound of his footsteps had almost faded when she called, “Hudson?”

  He stopped, the silhouette of him all she could see. He turned and looked over his shoulder but said nothing.

  Feeling brave and drawing that courage all the way into her lungs, she walked toward Hudson. “I can’t figure you out,” she said when she got close. The sun was almost all the way down now, and she loved the way it eased the earth to sleep.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, turning fully now.

  She stopped and put her hand on her hip. “First, you wouldn’t give me your phone number, and then you’re holding my hand in the car, and now lunch?”

  Hudson looked away and sighed, and then returned his attention to her. “So you’re not ready to date again. I get it. Sorry I asked.” He didn’t sound sorry, and she wished she could see his face better.

  “You don’t sound sorry,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not all that sorry I asked,” he said, mirroring her posture by putting his hand on his hip too. “At least now I know you’re not interested.”

  Scarlett opened her mouth to argue—she had an ex-husband, after all—but she said, “I never said I wasn’t interested,” in a very quiet voice.

  Hudson seemed to take forever to take a step forward. “I guess you didn’t.”

  Something bubbled up inside Scarlett, but she had no idea what to call it. Hope, maybe. Excitement, sure.

  “So maybe I’ll go with you to the automotive shop tomorrow,” she said. “Help you pick out that paint.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, tipping his hat at her and turning to go back down the walkway. She hastened to join him, and they barely fit in the space between the two fenced fields. He walked much slower now, and on the third step, he took her hand in his, a simple gesture that sent flutters through her whole chest.

  Chapter 6

  Hudson wasn’t quite sure what he was doing but holding Scarlett’s hand felt right. It was almost dark, and he’d have to feel his way back to his cabin. He didn’t care. This human connection was more important than almost anything right now, and he couldn’t quite articulate how good it felt to hold her hand.

  “When I was a little girl, me and my siblings would come out here in the summers,” she said, their steps so slow they were barely moving.

  “How many siblings?” he asked.

  “Two brothers and one sister,” she said. “I’m second-oldest.”

  “I’ve got three brothers,” he said. “I’m the oldest.”

  “Oh, that explains so much.” She gave a light laugh, and he liked how mature it sounded. How flirtatious.

  “It does?” he asked, a smile on his face. “How so?”

  “You’re one of those take-charge kind of men, that’s all.”

  “And….” Hudson wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Someone had to put out that fire. Those dog bowls were too small.”

  Scarlett’s laughter flew into the sky, and she bumped into him playfully. “I’m not complaining.”

  “Hmm,” Hudson said as the homestead came into view. “So do you want to call the doctor in the morning? Then we’ll know when we can go to town.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Now that I have your phone number I can text you.”

  “I didn’t deliberately withhold my number from you,” he said. “And you didn’t have to come get Gramps that night. I would’ve happily brought him back. That was all.”

  “Which brother were you talking to when I came?”

  “Brent,” he said. “He’s…the only one I speak to at the moment.” He couldn’t believe he’d told her that, but it was true.

  Scarlett didn’t immediately demand to know why he wasn’t talking to half of his family. Hudson appreciated that, and he liked her even more when she said, “Families are tough. My mother doesn’t seem to care that Gramps doesn’t know who I am.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Families are tough.” They passed the three cabins that edged the back of the lawn at the homestead. The scent of curry met his nose, and he wondered what Adele was making for dinner, because it smelled delicious.

  “So Gramps is on the end down there. Adele next to him in the middle, and this last one’s empty. Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to put out an ad for more help tonight.” She sighed. “I need more people here. I just don’t have any way to pay them.”

  Hudson thought of the amount in his bank account. “Well, I could help out if you need it.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when she said, “No. That’s not necessary. We’ll sell the vehicles, and I’m going to get a Forever Friends grant. They called this evening when I was with Gramps.”

  “That’s great,” he said. “I need to learn more about them.”

  “Oh, they do great work with pets and animals,” she said. “I’ve done their Strut Your Mutt events in LA, and they made the city one of the first no-kill cities for dogs.” She came alive as she continued to talk about the organization and how she’d toured a few of their facilities.

  “And this place could be one,” she said. “We have over two hundred acres here, and all the pastures and fields and structures already.”

  “But no people,” he said.

  “Right. I need more people. We have some volunteers coming in, but I need people here full-time. And they’ll want to get paid and have benefits….” She let her voice trail off, and Hudson squeezed her hand.

  “I’m sure you’ll make it happen. You’re resourceful.”

  “You think so?”

  “Who uses a plastic snow shovel—in California—to scoop trash?” He laughed. “Trust me, Scarlett, you’ll be fine.” He paused at the back steps, sensing he was going to have to let her go soon. “And I’m willing to help any way you want. I can haul trash. I can fix cars and fa
rm vehicles. I can work with horses and other animals.” He faced her and gazed down at her. “You just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  He didn’t mean to sound so desperate, but he feared he did. Scarlett looked up at him, and Hudson had never met such a gorgeous woman.

  “So text me in the morning,” he said, leaning down quickly and sweeping his lips across her hairline. His cowboy hat prevented him from getting much closer to her, and that was a very good thing.

  After all, he’d just met this woman, and her divorce was only four months old. Even if the marriage had been over long before that. Hudson knew that some events carried deep wounds, and he didn’t want to push Scarlett too far away before she’d even come too close.

  He walked away from her, starting to realize that she needed a few seconds—or even minutes—to process the things he said. Because as he reached the corner of the house, she said, “I’ll text you in the morning.”

  He smiled into the darkness and pulled out his phone so he could turn on the flashlight. He certainly didn’t want to trip over something on his way back to his new cabin, and while he’d wandered around this place a lot today, he still didn’t know every danger out on these two hundred acres.

  “Two hundred acres,” he said to the cooling night air. He hadn’t even seen half of this ranch, and as he walked, he added, “Please help Scarlett get the grant from Forever Friends.”

  The next morning, he sat in his truck, waiting for Scarlett and Gramps. She’d texted an hour ago that they had an appointment at ten-thirty, but it was after ten now. They weren’t making that appointment, and Scarlett had texted several minutes ago to say Gramps was being difficult and didn’t want to go to the doctor.

  Hound whined, and Hudson unbuckled his seatbelt to get the dog out so he could take care of his business.

  The dog jumped down and started sniffing around while Hudson watched the house. He didn’t want to be the take-charge kind of guy and go see if she needed help. Or did he? He still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.