by Deb Kastner
Not surprisingly, Rowdy didn’t have to entertain the crowd by doing tricks or flexing his muscles to get their attention, as other men before him had done. He merely flashed them his signature toothy grin and gestured with his fingers for his rapt audience to increase their applause. The resulting hoots, catcalls and laughter made Rowdy’s grin widen epically, and he tipped his hat in appreciation.
She remembered Rowdy’s smile all too well, along with the whispered words of a happy future meant just for the two of them alone to share.
An ugly, dark feeling churned in her gut and she swallowed hard against the bile that burned in her throat.
She counted those days as nothing more than the naïveté of youth, when they still thought they had their whole lives before them and that they could weather any storm life threw at them as long as they were together.
When they’d believed they were invincible.
They hadn’t yet comprehended that life could change in a moment.
But they’d learned. Oh, how painfully they’d learned.
It had only taken one second for their whole world to come crashing down around them.
One second.
And some things a person never recovered from—physically, emotionally or spiritually.
“Hush down, now,” Jo called, rapping her gavel to regain control of the crowd. “Quiet!”
A group of laughing young women near the front of the crowd immediately started bidding on Rowdy, cheerfully one-upping each other before Jo could officially open the bidding.
“Wait, wait. No bids, please,” Jo said, holding her hands up to stop the ladies from continuing.
The noise of the crowd immediately dropped to a hushed whisper.
“We’ve got a special case here with Rowdy, today,” Jo continued. “I’m sorry to disappoint all you single ladies out there, but Rowdy has already been bought and paid for before this auction even began.”
People gasped in astonishment.
“That’s not fair,” came a youngish-sounding female voice from the crowd. “No one else got to do that with any of the other men.”
The crowd rumbled in agreement.
Angelica continued to keep her head low but her ears were perfectly attuned to Jo’s words. She had a lot of questions that she was certain were echoing through the crowd.
Who had enough wherewithal to convince Jo to bend the rules of the auction?
Maybe a better question would be—how?
Jo tended to rule with an iron fist when she was in charge of an event—which she usually was. Between the two of them, Jo and her husband, Frank, the head of the town council, kept Serendipity running smoothly.
The old redhead was as stubborn as the day was long, and most people in town wouldn’t even conceive of trying to change her mind once she’d gone and decided what was what. There was no arguing with her. And she was a stickler for rules—at least when it suited her.
Apparently today it suited her to make up her own new set of rules.
Jo snorted and shook her head, laughing at the negative reaction of the townspeople. She didn’t even try to explain herself.
Not good old Jo Spencer.
Instead, she gestured for Rowdy to remove his hat, hitched up the rope in her palm—the one waiting for the winning bidder to lasso their catch with—and expertly flicked the noose around Rowdy, tugging the line tight around his shoulders.
Angelica was impressed with Jo’s roping skills. The old woman ran a café, not a ranch. Clearly, she’d been practicing, and apparently, Angelica guessed, whatever was happening here with Rowdy was the reason. She’d known beforehand that she would have to trick rope this particular pony.
Without so much as looking back to see if he was following, she snapped the line taut and led him off the platform, the crowd parting before her.
He was being ushered off to who knows where like a lamb to the slaughter, Angelica thought.
Rowdy didn’t resist. Why would he?
He had to be at least as curious as the murmuring crowd as to the identity of the woman who’d purchased him. Someone had cared an awful lot to go to the trouble, not to mention expense, of buying Rowdy in such an unconventional fashion.
Angelica didn’t even want to know. And she absolutely ignored the sting of envy that whipped through her.
She had no right.
Rowdy was in her past, something she would rather not revisit right now.
Or ever.
She had enough on her plate just caring for Toby—and now trying to figure out how best to put the Carmichael property to market and still honor Granny’s last wishes.
She appreciated the money she’d been left along with the land, and she knew Granny had been thinking of Toby when she’d written that part of her will. But Toby was special and would never run a sheep farm—and Angelica certainly couldn’t. She was the furthest thing from a rancher as it was possible for her to be.
She was a pastor’s kid—and not a very good one—who had grown up to be simple hotel banquet server. Not the best job ever, but it paid the bills. And as a single mother, she couldn’t afford to be picky.
The obvious solution was to sell the ranch that had been in the family for generations, and then pocket the money to use on Toby’s future—a future that didn’t include working with sheep.
Gramps had died young of a heart attack and Granny’s only son, Angelica’s father, Richard, had chosen the pastorate over sheep farming, leaving Granny Frances to work the land well past the time she ought to have retired.
Angelica would have been able to save the day merely by marrying Rowdy as she’d once intended to do. They’d planned to join their land together, since his family were sheepherders, as well.
But she hadn’t.
And they didn’t.
Instead, she’d run away and in the process dashed the hopes and dreams of more than one person.
That for even one moment she’d considered being a rancher’s wife without the slightest idea of what that meant, how to work with the sheep and tend to the land, was just one of many ways she’d showcased her youthful ignorance.
It had been all about love, as defined by a woman too young to know how to recognize it.
Pie in the sky, a twinkle in her eye and zero common sense.
Whatever love was, that couldn’t have been it.
Rowdy probably thanked the Lord every day that she hadn’t saddled him with her utter incompetence as a rancher and a life partner, not to mention her bad reputation across town.
No. As bad as it had been, and still was, she had done him a favor, even if he now hated her for it.
She’d cut those ties. Then her parents had virtually disowned her. Granny was all she had left after she’d left town, and for many years, she’d been too ashamed even to reach out to her.
After she’d discovered she was pregnant with Toby, she had made her life right with Christ and she had reached out for Granny, who had welcomed her back with open arms and a loving and forgiving heart. But Angelica had never gotten back home to see her.
Not in time. Granny had passed away when Toby was born. She hadn’t known that Toby would have special needs, be preciously different, and that God meant him for other things.
Extraordinary things.
But not sheep farming.
That was one prayer that would never be answered. Not as Granny had wanted it to be, anyway.
Angelica sighed. No matter how she looked at it, nor how much grief she felt at letting Granny Frances down, selling the ranch was the only conceivable answer to her dilemma—the only one that worked in the best interests of both Angelica and Toby. She was sorry not to be able to fulfill Granny’s wishes, but that was just how it had to be.
She had to think of Toby first.
She still had no idea why Jo had brought
her here to the auction, when she should be at Granny’s ranch putting her affairs in order.
As far as she was concerned, it was well past the time for her to leave the community green and the auction behind and return to Granny’s ranch house, where she could mull over her problems in private, release the thunder of emotions that had been hovering over her like a huge black storm cloud all morning.
With her decision made, she turned away from the platform and started walking back toward the street where she’d parked her sedan, knowing Frank would give Jo a ride home.
At the moment, the effervescent old redhead had her hands full with the auction—and, more specifically, with a rope full of Rowdy.
“Angelica May. Wait!”
Angelica skidded to a halt at Jo’s use of her middle name. The only other person in the world who had called her Angelica May had been Granny, God rest her soul.
Tears sprang unbidden into Angelica’s eyes at the many happy memories that instantly flashed through her mind. Granny loved Serendipity get-togethers and would have been bidding up a storm on behalf of the senior center—probably snatching up one of the good-looking young bachelors from right under the nose of a pretty, single woman.
And then, knowing Granny, she’d have him mucking stalls for her just so she could admire his muscular physique. Gramps had always been the only man for Granny and she’d never married again, but that hadn’t meant she couldn’t enjoy what the good Lord put in front of her eyes. She was old, not blind, she used to say, and then she and Jo Spencer would cackle over their shared joke.
With the well of deep emotion fractured, grief rolled into anger and Angelica stiffened. The scene unfolding in front of her became increasingly obvious with every step Jo took. She was dragging Rowdy right to Angelica’s side.
Angelica didn’t dash away, even if every nerve in her body was urging her to do so. Question after question pressed her down.
Why was this happening? Jo had to know there was no possible way any variation of this scenario would turn out well.
Angelica mumbled unintelligible words under her breath, quietly venting her frustration with the situation, but her throat closed around her air and it came out sounding like she was choking on carbonated soda.
So much for remaining incognito.
Now the whole town would know she was here. And she knew she wouldn’t be welcomed back with open arms.
Especially not after what she’d done to Rowdy.
Even as a teenager, Rowdy had been popular in town. And from what she’d seen today, with everyone cheering and all those young ladies bidding for some time with him, that hadn’t changed.
Rowdy was one of Serendipity’s favorite sons.
Angelica...wasn’t.
She hadn’t been well liked, nor had she been understood. No one in town other than Granny, Jo and Rowdy had ever given her a fair shot.
Now everyone would think she’d captured Rowdy at auction in some underhanded fashion that was unfair to the rest of the crowd.
And the fact that she’d shown up in town unmarried and with a baby?
This was so not going to work out well for her.
Oh, why had she ever come home to Serendipity at all?
She turned in time to see Rowdy digging in his heels, his cowboy boots raising dust. His brow was deeply furrowed and his lips were set in a hard line.
Yep. Not happy to see her.
Surprise, surprise.
Jo, however, wasn’t taking Rowdy’s reluctance as an answer. The more he balked like a mule, the harder she pulled. She stopped in front of a gaping Angelica and dropped the rope into her hand, pressing a sealed envelope into her palm at the same time.
“This particular letter is addressed to the both of you,” Jo informed them, pointing to Granny’s unmistakable script on the front of the envelope.
Angelica and Rowdy.
Angelica folded it in two and shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans without another look. Her mind was turning so fast she was getting dizzy. She couldn’t get her head around what all this meant.
Buying Rowdy at auction before the auction even started. Leaving a note for the two of them.
What part did Granny have in all this? Was she the one who’d put out the funds to keep Rowdy off the auction docket? Had she been conspiring with Jo?
It looked like it. But why?
“I had Chance prepare a special meal for you two in the picnic basket in the far corner of the green by the southeast bench,” Jo instructed.
Angelica nodded, but not because she’d needed the directions. She already knew where the picnic basket was. She’d been the one toting it, for crying out loud. Toby’s baby carrier had been left near the basket, as well, and her sedan was parked on the street just beyond the bench.
She should have realized something was off when Jo didn’t insist on taking her basket right into the center of the chaos. Jo wasn’t the type to live any part of her life on the outskirts. She wanted to dive in and be smack in the middle of everything.
“Talk to each other,” Jo suggested in a no-nonsense tone. “Don’t let the past eat you up before you figure out where the present is taking you. Work it out. And don’t forget to read what is in that envelope.”
Then she turned and headed back to the podium without one more word of explanation.
* * *
Work what out?
Surely Jo should know Rowdy and Ange were far beyond mending fences.
Rowdy growled and yanked at the lasso, pulling it from Ange’s hand. He realized only afterward that he’d probably left a rope burn on her palm as he struggled free of the noose, but if Ange noticed she didn’t complain or alert him to the fact. It irked him that he felt a moment of remorse for giving her a second’s pain.
Not when she’d given him a lifetime’s worth.
He stood up to his full six-foot height and straightened his shoulders. He wasn’t the tallest man at the auction, but at her five-foot-four-inch frame, he had plenty of height to glower down at her.
His chest burned with fire but his heart incongruously froze solid as anger sluiced through him like an ice storm in Antarctica.
Ange pushed her hoodie back and whipped off her ball cap, shaking her long blond hair out of their confines. Tilting her chin up, she met his gaze head-on.
It wasn’t the expression of someone who was sorry for what she’d done. She still maintained the same solitary determination as ever, ready to run roughshod over anyone who stood in her way.
He wouldn’t be a sucker twice.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he dug in before she could say a word.
“Ange,” he ground out, his low voice sounding like sandpaper as he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, steel walls clamping down around his emotions. No way was he letting her in this time.
“Rowdy,” she said, testing his name. She held out a hand to touch his arm but he grunted and twisted away.
But not before he realized she had a baby in her arms.
A baby.
“Rowdy,” she said again.
His frown deepened at the sound of his name on her lips. It had been such a long time. Her voice was so familiar...and yet, then again, not so much.
He lifted the lasso and shook it under her nose.
“What did you just do?”
Rowdy’s eyes briefly settled on the tightly swaddled infant in Ange’s arms and then he flicked his gaze to her unadorned left hand. He was reeling with shock to see Ange suddenly back in Serendipity after all this time, especially with a baby in her arms.
Why had she come back?
And why now?
She hadn’t come home once since the day she’d left him alone and brokenhearted at the altar. She hadn’t even bothered to attend her own grandmother’s funeral.
And
yet now, for no reason Rowdy could guess, she was here, standing in the middle of the community green with a town function going on around her.
Home.
With a baby.
And for some inexplicable reason, she’d somehow finagled things with Jo so she could buy him at auction before the event had even started.
What was with that?
And the craziest thing of all was that she looked nearly as startled about this whole situation as he felt. As if she didn’t know any more than he did about what was happening.
Which couldn’t be true, since she’d set it all in motion in the first place.
Hadn’t she?
It only remained to be seen as to why. What motive could Ange possibly have to want to see him again?
Or at all.
“I—er—” Ange stammered, shifting from foot to foot and lightly bouncing the baby she cradled in the sling. “What do you mean, what did I do? I didn’t do anything.”
He gritted his teeth to keep from snapping back at her. He could still turn and walk away, and not one person in town would blame him.
She’d come home for a reason, and it couldn’t be anything good. If it was only about selling Granny’s ranch to him, well, he and Ange didn’t have to talk face-to-face for that. Their Realtors could handle all the details regarding the transaction and all he would have to do would be to sign the papers and fork over the funds to make it a done deal.
Or was it more complicated than that?
Was Jo somehow involved? Jo had purposefully forced their sure-to-be-stormy reunion into pretty much the most public arena possible, leaving Ange and Rowdy no choice but to speak to one another with practically everyone in Serendipity looking on.
And then there was the mysterious letter Jo had given Ange—the one she’d immediately shoved into the back pocket of her jeans.
What was up with that?
Maybe Jo thought Rowdy and Ange ought to bury the hatchet, so to speak, although maybe that wasn’t the best metaphor to use in this particular situation.
As if he’d listen to anything Ange had to say. She’d ripped his heart to shreds. A reconciliation between the two of them was never going to happen.