The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Leann Harris

  He didn’t trust himself to open his mouth. He simply nodded.

  Both Mary and Erin glanced at him.

  “Excuse me,” he said, not trusting his reactions, and walked out of the room.

  He didn’t stop at the end of the hall. He walked to the exit and descended the stairs to the main floor. Emerging from the stairwell, he saw the door to the ground-level garden for the patients and families and pushed it open.

  In one corner, he found a bench shaded by the building and sat, trying to regain his footing. He never thought he’d see his mother alive again. He’d often wondered what had happened to her. She hadn’t bothered to contact her sons once she’d hit them up for money right after Caleb had been declared an emancipated minor. They’d moved away and settled in the small city of Plainview, south of Lubbock. Sawyer doubted his mother had ever tried to discover what had happened to her sons.

  They had grown into manhood despite their mother’s actions, and both his brother and he imagined she was probably dead.

  As he thought about it, his mother looked like a woman in charge of her faculties. She certainly had to be in order to be a nurse in the hospital.

  He frowned. A nurse? When had that happened? Before his dad died, his mother had always taken care of her boys when they were sick, and she had a talent for making them feel better. She looked as if she had a peace about her, which brought him to the million-dollar question—what had happened in his mother’s life?

  * * *

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Mary replied to the doctor’s final assessment.

  “I’ll look for a rehab center closer to home,” Mary told him. “I think going home for his rehabilitation would help my husband.”

  “If you need anything else, be sure to have the nurses contact me.” The doctor left the room.

  Mary turned to her husband and smiled down into his face. “It’s good news, husband. It will take work on your part to get you back to your old self, but I don’t doubt you can do it.” Mary cupped his cheek. “My heart nearly stopped, and your children have not known what to do, so you need to work hard to get better. And Tate needs you more than ever.”

  Detrick nodded.

  “I’ll look around, Mother, for a place closer to home,” Erin said.

  “All that is important is that your father gets well. Oh, I have one more question for the doctor.” Mary hurried out into the hall.

  Erin stepped to her father’s side and grasped his hand. His eyes held a question.

  “What is it?”

  He glanced toward where Sawyer had stood.

  “Are you wanting to talk about Sawyer?”

  He nodded. Talking took effort, and he tired easily.

  “I will say I didn’t understand why you voted for someone else, but as the days go by, I see that vote in a different light.” She squeezed her father’s hand. “Sawyer and I have found some discrepancies in the last budget done for the rodeo update.”

  He squeezed her hand again.

  “As we’ve talked about it, I realized if Sawyer found the discrepancy, others would believe him quicker than me.”

  Detrick’s body relaxed.

  “Is that it?”

  He blinked and tried to speak, but the sounds coming out of his mouth weren’t intelligible.

  “It shook my faith, but I knew you had a reason.”

  A tear ran from the corner of her dad’s right eye. She wiped it away.

  There were other things she wanted to talk to her father about—how Sawyer had reached out to Tate and how she’d found herself enjoying her skirmishes with him—but now wasn’t the time.

  The door opened again, and Erin turned, expecting Sawyer. It was her mom.

  “I’m going to find Sawyer and go home. Don’t stay too late, Mom. We might tire out Dad.”

  “Ah, now it happens, the child is trying to become the parent,” Mary replied.

  “No, it’s a daughter who is worried about her mother’s safety.” Leaning over, Erin kissed her mom’s cheek and thought about asking her mother why she kept ignoring her accounts at the store, but now wasn’t the time to confront her. Tomorrow they’d talk.

  Walking out of the room, Erin looked for Sawyer. He wouldn’t have left, but she did not see him. At the nurse’s desk, she asked Sylvia, “Have you seen Sawyer?”

  Sylvia’s hand jerked on the computer keyboard. When she glanced up, she took a deep breath. “No, I haven’t seen him on the floor. Would he have left?”

  Erin rubbed her neck. “Not without me. We drove together from home.”

  Erin started to the elevator doors.

  “Have you known him long?” Sylvia asked.

  Erin turned. “No. He won the bid over me to take our failing rodeo and turn it around. I wasn’t happy to have lost, but I will say he’s much different than I expected.”

  “How so?”

  Erin shrugged. “Well, first of all, the man’s a cowboy who has won a championship belt buckle, so he knows his stuff. We don’t have some egghead who thinks he knows what a cowboy and his horse need. Sawyer’s lived it. But what’s amazed me is that he’s listened to my input to his plan.” A laugh escaped her. “I might have lost the bid, but I wasn’t going to walk away from our rodeo and let this stranger have free rein over it.” She smiled.

  “And he’s been helpful with my seventeen-year-old brother.” Suddenly Erin couldn’t stop the words rushing out of her mouth. Here was the nurse who’d been with them from the beginning, who could give an unbiased opinion or at least a reasonably unbiased one. “Tate wouldn’t talk to any of us women about Dad’s stroke, but somehow Sawyer understood his turmoil.

  “And for that I’m grateful.” Erin shook her head. “With all the upheaval and craziness going on around the ranch, Sawyer recognized a lost teenage boy and reached out to him. When the sheriff called me about my brother ditching school, my first reaction was to rain all over him, but Sawyer talked me out of it. He’s surprised me with his keen perception of the situation. Most men wouldn’t follow through like he did, but he’s gone riding with Tate and they’ve talked a couple of times.”

  “That’s amazing for a stranger to do.” Sylvia picked up a pen. “Sometimes what we think is the end is a turn in the road we didn’t expect.”

  Erin had the strangest feeling that Sylvia wasn’t talking about her situation now. The words came from experience.

  A buzzer from one of the patient’s rooms took Sylvia in a different direction. Erin walked to the elevator doors. Before she could push the button, the doors slid open and Sawyer emerged. He looked around. “Are you ready to leave?”

  “Yes. When I didn’t see you out here, Sylvia, the nurse, asked if you’d left without me. I told her no, that you’d driven me.”

  “I’m sorry. I went downstairs for a moment.”

  She waited for more of an explanation but didn’t get it.

  “Are you ready to leave?” The tone of his voice was flat.

  The more he spoke, the more suspicious she became. “Yes.”

  With the exception of a Western music station out of Albuquerque playing on the radio, the ride home passed in silence.

  Erin knew something had changed at the hospital, but she couldn’t figure out what.

  “I’m encouraged by how good Dad looks,” she said, hoping to get a conversation going.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I’ll talk to Mother about her bookkeeping.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And I think I’ll ride my horse right into church tomorrow to liven things up.”

  “That’s a good approach.”

  She turned and faced him head-on. It took him several minutes to realize she had stopped talking. When he looked her direction, he said, “What?”

 
“Where are you, Sawyer? Because you’re not here with me in this truck.”

  “Things piled up on us today, and I’m just trying to sort them out.” He looked back to the interstate.

  His explanation could’ve been the truth, but she had this feeling in her gut it wasn’t the entire reason he was so far removed from her. She didn’t try again. The words of caution he’d offered before about Tate rang again in her head. Don’t push.

  It went against her nature. She wanted answers, to sort out the situation now, but something inside her warned her, and for the balance of the drive, nothing was said.

  He pulled into the ranch driveway. Following her out of the truck, he caught up with her in a couple of steps and caught her hand.

  “Are you okay?” He studied her face.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  He pulled her into his arms and held her close, resting his chin on the top of her head. His hand rubbed her back. She found comfort in his action, but wondered if he didn’t need the comfort, too.

  “It’s been a long day and seeing your dad was hard, I know.”

  She noticed he didn’t answer her question. Instead, he cupped her face and gently kissed her. It wasn’t a kiss of passion but of comfort and solace. He brushed another kiss across her lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She stared after his retreating form, wondering what was going on with him, because she didn’t have a clue.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sawyer stared at the ceiling trying to find his way through the maze of conflicting emotions. It’d been a roller coaster of a day, from this morning around the Delong table with coffee and inquisitive minds, to the joy of talking with Erin about the bids that had come in, to his discovery of her mother’s use of her. Erin had honestly listened to him without any recriminations.

  Her reaction rocked him back on his heels, but the coup de grâce was meeting his mother face-to-face in Detrick’s room at the hospital. His knees had nearly buckled when he’d heard her voice. He thought he might be hallucinating, but when he turned, it was his mother—a better, healthier version of his mother, much like she’d been when his father was alive. But there was something more in her demeanor that puzzled him.

  What was it? She didn’t seem nervous or unsure. She moved with confidence. A woman at peace.

  That thought blew him away.

  The nurse in Detrick’s room physically resembled his mom, but she’d changed from the inside out.

  He should call his brother and tell him what had happened, but he wasn’t ready to talk to Caleb.

  Sawyer thought about calling Pastor Garvey in Plainview to talk to him, but what would he say? He saw a woman who was a dead ringer for his mom but acted nothing like the woman he’d known. Besides, his mother wasn’t a nurse.

  People can change, the thought came.

  He rested his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. He needed to know more before calling his brother.

  * * *

  Erin walked into the kitchen, where her mother stood making her special honey cake for breakfast before church.

  “Did you and Sawyer finish the business you had in Las Vegas yesterday before you came to the hospital?” Mary asked. “You didn’t mention anything about how things went.”

  “We worked while on the road to Vegas and dropped by your store.”

  “You two agreed on what needs to be done.” Mary looked up from the bowl with a knowing smile.

  “We have. Sawyer’s an insightful man.”

  Mary smiled. “Did you ask him if he is part Navajo?”

  Erin hoisted herself onto the counter and stole a few raisins from a bowl.

  “No, I didn’t ask him about that, but he asked me why I was doing your books at the store since you’re such an insightful and capable woman, and why you didn’t hire a bookkeeper or buy a software program that would track your sales and expenses instead of drafting your daughter into doing your books.”

  Mary paled. “What did you say?”

  “I blinked at Sawyer, realizing, for the first time, that he was right about what was happening.”

  Mary pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. Erin jumped off the counter and squatted in front of her mother.

  “What has frightened you, Mother?”

  Mary cupped Erin’s cheek, and her eyes glistened with moisture. “I realized that my firstborn was now a grown and very capable woman who had earned her undergraduate degree and is close to getting her masters.” Mary took a breath. “I guess I feared you would feel you no longer need your mother and leave to make your own way. I didn’t want to face that.”

  Rising up on her knees, Erin wrapped her arms around her mother. “I will never outgrow my need for you. But I know you want to see me spread my wings and fly. You and Father made that possible. Everything was possible. If I could think it, I could try it. I knew this because of you and Father. Never did you put any limits on my imagination. I’ve talked with other girls in college and heard how they were directed in the way their families wanted them to go, never paying attention to their daughter’s strengths. I found this so foreign and wasteful of their talents. I appreciated my parents even more.”

  “So much has changed,” Mary whispered.

  “True, but you always said there is a merciful Lord who walks with us.”

  Mary laughed through her tears. “There is nothing more humbling than having to live by one’s own words.”

  “Sometimes we forget and need to be reminded.” Erin gently wiped the tears from her mother’s cheeks.

  Betty walked into the kitchen. She looked at them and asked, “What is going on?”

  “The sharing of wisdom, Sister, and the reminder to live with one’s words with grace.”

  Betty looked from her sister to her niece and frowned. “What?”

  Erin stood and wrapped her arm around her aunt, drawing her close.

  Mary took a deep breath. “My daughter called me out on trying to keep her close. She assured me her love will continue, no matter where she is.”

  Understanding lit Betty’s eyes. “It’s hard, Sister, to let the first one go. Talk to me, I will help.”

  “Thank you, Auntie.”

  * * *

  Sawyer slipped into the back of the church. He’d overslept and thrown on his clothes and dress shirt. He’d missed the song service. Instead of parading down the aisle, making a show of himself, he sat in the next to the last pew and listened to the sermon. The preacher spoke about forgiveness and said that if you forgave the person who wronged you, that forgiveness would free you. No longer would you have to carry around the crippling weight that ate your soul.

  Sawyer’s gaze drilled a hole into the pastor. Obviously, the man didn’t know what he was talking about. He hadn’t had to sleep out in the field behind his house when his mother entertained her drunk boyfriend who was spoiling for a fight.

  “Let loose and let God heal your heart.”

  Sawyer folded his arms over his chest, throwing up a barrier. His heart and head weren’t interested.

  The pastor said the final prayer, and the organist played the closing hymn.

  As people filed out, Sawyer didn’t move from his place on the pew, still struggling with the message.

  Tate sat beside him. “You plan to sit here all day? Church’s over. I thought you were eating with us.”

  When Sawyer looked around, he saw Erin, her aunt and mother standing at the end of the pew. They’d witnessed his struggle.

  Fighting his awkwardness, he stood and pasted on a smile. “I’m ready.”

  Mary cocked her head, studying him, as if she could read his confused heart. She nodded.

  “I’ll follow you to the ranch,” Sawyer told them. “I’d be more than willing to have T
ate ride with me.”

  Within minutes, they were on the road.

  “Sis was worried that you might not show up today.”

  Sawyer shot a glance at Tate. “She say why?”

  “No. But she kept looking down the aisle while we were singing.”

  “I overslept.”

  “I hear you. One time I slept through my alarm for school and managed to get ready in five minutes. Amazed my mom and sister. Dad knew I could pull it off.” At the mention of his father, Tate seemed to deflate.

  “Your dad looked good yesterday at the hospital.”

  “Yeah, he did when I saw him, but Sis acted kinda strange when she came in last night. I thought something had happened with Dad.”

  Hearing Tate alerted Sawyer that Erin had picked up on his agitation. “We did a lot yesterday. I think the relief your sister had after seeing your dad made her a little—uh—”

  Tate grinned, waiting to hear Sawyer’s explanation. “Yes?”

  “Off,” he said, finally committing to a word. “But I expect you to keep this conversation between us.”

  “You bet.” The kid folded his arms over his chest and kept grinning.

  “Anything I need to know before your mom questions me?” Sawyer asked on the drive.

  Tate stroked his chin. “Just be straight-up honest with her.”

  “I hear ya.”

  “I know. Believe me, I’ve never gotten anything by my mom, and I’ve tried.”

  Sawyer laughed. He could see Tate trying to put something over on Mary. It was nothing like his experience with his own mom, who had managed not to be aware that her boys were even in the house.

  “But Mom’s fair.”

  Sawyer wondered how fair Mary would be since he won the contract over her daughter. So far she’d been reasonable, but he hadn’t spent much time with her. He knew his mom would’ve been out for his hide if he’d won over the person she wanted to get the job. Her sons weren’t necessarily the people she backed.

  The ranch house came into view. Tate’s prediction would soon be put to the test.