Make Mine a Cowboy

by A. J. Pine

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. Snow was nothing new to her after years in New York. But it was new here. Now. With him.

  “I know,” Ben said. But he wasn’t looking up anymore. His eyes were focused on her. Then he grabbed her hand. “Come here. This is what I wanted to show you.”

  She bit her lip as he led her to the back of his truck. He lowered the tailgate and pulled out a large lawn sign with white letters posted on a red background that read FOR SALE BY OWNER.

  Her breath caught in her throat. “You’re selling it?” she asked, voice shaking, though she wasn’t sure why.

  He nodded, expression unreadable. “Sam, Colt, and I will finish building, but I rushed it,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No, Ben. You can’t sell this place because of me.”

  “It’s not you…It’s me.” He laughed softly. “Sorry. Bad relationship joke. But it really is about me. It was pretty foolish to think that just because I decided one morning that I wanted my life to go a certain way that I could make that happen at the drop of a hat.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve been beating myself up the past couple weeks about all my should-haves. I should have been a better brother. I should have been a better son. I should have just been there, period, for the people in my life instead of putting myself first. This”—he motioned toward the house—“That was more of the same.”

  Her throat felt tight, like it might strangle her if she spoke. It wasn’t as if she knew what to say. She couldn’t tell him to keep it, not if this was what he wanted.

  “You just worked so hard already,” she finally said. “And there’s so much more to do.”

  “And I’ll work hard on another one someday. When it’s the right time. I bet I can find a buyer who’d love to see the job through, put on their own finishing touches. But right now it’s time for me to put my heart into the ranch instead of simply treating it like a job I could take or leave. I need to show Sam and Colt that I give a damn. And now that my mom is signing on to stay, I need to count my lucky stars that I still have another shot at being the kind of son I want to be.”

  He lifted his knee and shut the tailgate.

  She pressed a palm to his cheek. “You were a good son to your father, even if you made mistakes. You loved him, and he knew that. I could see that after only one night with you two.”

  He covered her hand with his. “I can be a better son to my mom. A better man. I need to be a better man.”

  “Nothing I say is going to make you believe you already are, is it?” she asked, and he kissed her palm, lowering her hand back to her side.

  “I wish you could, Doc. I really do. But I need to figure this out on my own.” He glanced down at the sign he was balancing on his feet with his free hand. “I wanted you here to make this official. I hope that’s okay.”

  Whatever he needed. For this last night, she’d give him whatever she could to help him on this path he thought he needed to follow.

  “Let’s do it,” she said. “Together.”

  They carried the sign to the edge of the property about ten feet from where the grass met the road. Ben kicked the toe of his boot against the snow-speckled grass and laughed.

  “I probably should have made this decision in the spring after the thaw, but I never was good with timing.”

  She forced a smile.

  Timing.

  Would there have been a better time for them to have met? She guessed this would have always been the way it ended. Knowledge, though, didn’t make it any easier. There was a first. She and Ben were victims of more than just time. There was circumstance and distance and it all added up to a relationship doomed to fail, yet knowing the facts, for the first time, didn’t give her the comfort it was supposed to.

  He raised the sign and jammed the posts hard against the ground, then stood on the horizontal bar between the posts to drive them farther into the frigid earth.

  “There,” he said, crossing his arms. “It’s official.”

  And that was exactly how it felt—like the finale to a show she always knew would end, yet she somehow hoped for one more scene before the credits.

  “I feel like we should shake on it or something,” she said, wanting to fill the space between them with the words she could say, instead of the ones she couldn’t. She held out her hand.

  Ben offered a bittersweet grin and grabbed her hand, but instead of shaking, he pulled her in for what she knew was their last kiss, under the Northern California snow.

  “Dinner was fantastic as always, Pearl,” Delaney said, scraping the last of her redskin garlic mashed potatoes from her plate and closing her eyes in what looked like ecstasy as she licked her fork clean.

  They all sat around the table in the inn’s private dining room, the one used only for small events and family dinners, like this one. Charlotte’s heart swelled as she glanced at everyone who’d made the past seven weeks better than she ever could have imagined.

  Sam and Delaney. Ivy and Carter. Casey, Chief Burnett, her grandmother, and beside her, Ben.

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” Pearl said to Delaney, taking a sip of her red wine.

  Sam laughed. “I already got an earful from Luis for eating ‘off grounds’ tonight, especially when I told him it was an early holiday dinner due to Charlotte leaving. ‘I want a detailed menu breakdown for what Pearl serves for a holiday meal. Whatever your favorite dish is, I’ll top it,’” Sam said, quoting his talented yet competitive chef.

  “Potatoes,” Delaney said, stealing a forkful from Sam’s plate.

  “Hey there,” he said. “That’s theft.”

  Delaney laughed and stole some more.

  Charlotte drew in a shaky breath. She wasn’t one for speeches or sentimentality, but she felt like something ought to be said. She’d fallen for so much more than Ben Callahan. She’d fallen for all of them—Delaney, Ivy, and Casey. Sam and Colt. Having Carter here was beyond amazing. And Gran—Gran who’d always been the most special person in her life. It was like she was leaving Oz to go back to Kansas, her real home. Only instead of waking from the dream to find her loved ones still there, she was going to be alone.

  “Thank you all for coming,” she started. “I’m not really great at sharing how I feel. But I want you all to know how much your love and friendship have meant to me and Pearl. I know I always had my grandmother, but now I feel like I have a whole family to come back to the next time I visit.” She was grateful for Ben sitting beside her so she didn’t have to look him in the eye. With a forced smile, she added, “And I hope Luis will forgive me for pulling you all away and for the fact that I know my grandmother will never divulge her recipe for her mashed potatoes, which means there’s no way he’ll be able to top them.”

  Pearl laughed. “Even if he had the recipe, he wouldn’t top me. Not with that attitude. Good food—unbeatable food—comes from the heart. It’s the same with anything you do whether it’s riding horses, rescuing animals, tending to sick children, or trying to pull the wool over your grandmother’s eyes. If you put your whole heart into it, you can’t fail.”

  She gave her granddaughter a pointed look, and Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat. She could feel Ben looking at her but didn’t dare give herself away by looking back—even though she was pretty sure their deception had already been found out.

  “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, Gran?” she asked with a nervous laugh.

  Pearl shrugged. “Honey, I’m your grandmother, and I simply want the best for you, which means your happiness. And if that means laying it on as thick as my secret recipe mashed potatoes to make you see what you need to see, then so be it.”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to say who knows what, but nothing came out.

  “You know, I feel like that should be a toast,” Pearl said, holding up her glass. “So how about it? To laying it on thick and seeing what needs to be seen.”

  Soft laughter and mumbling sounded around the table, but everybody raised their glasses,
so Charlotte had no choice but to follow in kind.

  “To laying it on thick and seeing what needs to be seen,” everyone else said.

  Charlotte downed her whole glass without coming up for a breath.

  “Now, who wants my also unbeatable apple crisp?” Pearl asked with a wink, and Charlotte knew Sam and Ben would drive Luis crazy with details of her grandmother’s fabulous feast while that over-the-top toast would sit like an anchor in her belly for the rest of the night.

  When the last of the dishes had been washed and dried and Charlotte had been hugged too many times to count, Pearl cornered her before she could make it out of the kitchen.

  “Did you really think I didn’t know?” her grandmother asked, brows raised.

  Charlotte could play dumb, but where would that get her? At the end of the day, she’d tried to lie to her grandmother, and she’d been found out.

  She cleared her throat. “How long have you known?”

  Pearl scoffed. “That you were pretending to date Ben Callahan to get your meddling gran off your back or that you’d fallen in love with him and are too damned scared to admit it?”

  “I— I mean we…” she stammered. Then she groaned. “So, the whole time is what you’re saying.” It wasn’t a question. Of course Pearl had known. She’d always known.

  Her grandmother narrowed her eyes. “What is so wrong with admitting how you feel?” she asked.

  “This visit wasn’t about my feelings,” Charlotte said, exasperated. “I came here to take care of you. I came here to take care of the inn. This was never about me.”

  Pearl jutted out her chin. “The town would have rallied to fill in for me. You didn’t have to come back. You didn’t have to lock yourself into a longer contract in New York on my account. I would have survived.”

  Charlotte huffed out a bitter laugh. Her grandmother sounded just like Ben had the day of his father’s burial.

  “Maybe I want more for you than that,” she said, echoing her own words. “Maybe I want to be here for you when Mom can’t. Maybe I want to take care of someone I love just because I can. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  Pearl’s gaze softened, and she grabbed Charlotte’s hand. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “Don’t you get it? I know you think I meddle and maybe even pressure you a little bit, but it’s only because that’s exactly what I want for you too—more than just surviving. If you’re happy—truly happy with your life and you won’t regret leaving him behind, then that’s all that matters to me.” She gave Charlotte’s hand a squeeze. “Tell me you’re happy with your life,” she said.

  Charlotte was happy—with her job. Her apartment. And her best-coffee-in-the-world bodega.

  “That’s a long pause,” Pearl said.

  “I—” she started, ready to argue. But her shoulders fell. “I need to get ready for bed.”

  Pearl nodded. “I think you have one more guest to say good-bye to before you do.”

  Then she let go of Charlotte’s hand and backed out of her way.

  Charlotte found Ben in the lobby, quietly pacing.

  “I thought you might have left with Sam and Delaney,” she said, his back facing her.

  He stopped and turned toward her.

  “I thought maybe I should have,” he said. “Didn’t seem like the smart thing to do—hanging around. Guess I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave. Not yet, at least.”

  She let out a relieved breath.

  “Do you have an early call time tomorrow?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Breakfast duty. Sam and Delaney are headed out to Dr. Murphy’s clinic to pick up a stray puppy who needs fostering, and Colt is headed back to Oak Bluff to visit his sister for Christmas and New Year’s. So I can’t pull any of my old stunts and not show up.”

  She smiled. “I don’t think you’d do that even if you could.”

  He smiled right back. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  This was usually the part where she invited him back to her room or he invited her to his. But this was no usual night. And as much as she’d love to wake up with him one more time, she could tell that would make all of this so much harder than it already was.

  “Why did you stay, Ben?” she asked, as if he’d been part of the conversation she was having with herself in her head.

  He let out a nervous laugh, then ducked behind the registration desk and came back with a rectangular gift wrapped in plain pink paper.

  “Someone once told me that friends buy each other gifts for special occasions. So…I got you a going-away gift,” he said, holding it out for her.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she clasped what felt like some sort of book between her palms.

  “You can’t open it until I leave though,” he added. “I don’t think I could take it if you hate it—and I also don’t think I could handle it if you love it. So in my last selfish act, I’m going to save face and get while the gettin’ is good.” He grinned, but then his jaw tightened. “Thank you, Doc,” he said softly, then brushed a kiss across her cheek. “For everything.”

  She held the gift against her chest and stared at him, unable to speak for fear her words would melt into tears.

  He pressed his lips into a sad smile and nodded once, then slipped out the inn’s front door.

  It took her several seconds to realize he wasn’t coming back and several more to remember the package in her hands. But when she did, she tore off the wrapping and burst into a tearful laugh when she saw what lay beneath.

  The List Maker’s Journal:

  A List for Every Day of the Year

  He bought her a book of to-do lists!

  She opened it to a random page where it said List five things that make you laugh. Then she flipped to another that asked her to list her favorite sounds. And another made her wonder about her favorite sandwiches—not food, but sandwiches specifically—PB&J and Brie had always topped the list, but now the reasoning was two-fold. It was ridiculously delicious but it was also what Ben had fed her on their first date. That wasn’t a date. But really, she guessed it sort of was.

  With a start, she threw open the door, thinking he might still be waiting on the other side. But there was no sign of Ben or his truck. No sign that what she held in her hand was anything more than what he’d said it was—a good-bye gift.

  As she closed the book, a folded piece of paper fell out through the fluttering pages, and she caught it before it hit the floor. She blew out a shaky breath, unfolded it, and read.

  Didn’t have the heart to say good-bye, Doc. Not the actual words. So I’m not going to. Because we’ll see each other again someday. We have to. You still owe me one. So for now I’ll simply say, “Until then.”

  Until then, Doc

  —Ben

  Well…who knew Ben Callahan could be such a romantic?

  Charlotte. Charlotte knew.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ben paused to take stock. So far he’d accidentally slammed his hand in his truck door—bruised, not broken (he hoped); punched the head of the drill through the drywall; sawed off the tip of his glove (and almost his index finger); and spilled hot coffee on his jeans trying to open his thermos. If he tried hard enough, maybe he could trip over the cord from the work light and give his other eye a matching scar.

  Things were not going well.

  “Can’t get any worse, right, Callahan?” he mumbled to himself. He just needed to get his head screwed on straight so he could focus on the job.

  Not on her.

  Except now he was focusing on her.

  It was time for a break. He grabbed the thermos and strode through the front door opening, hopped down, and sat on the ledge.

  There was just enough coffee to justify a coffee break, so he poured what was left and drank.

  Charlotte had been gone two weeks. Somehow he’d muddled through the holiday without his father, telling himself he had to put on a brave face for his mom. But the emptiness in his gut went deeper than that, and it was
getting harder and harder to ignore.

  “You look like you’ve been through the meat grinder a time or two.”

  Ben looked up to see his brother standing in front of him.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” he asked. Then, still wearing his torn glove, he held his small cup of coffee up in a gesture of cheers before throwing it back like it was a shot of whiskey.

  God he wished it was a shot of whiskey. He needed to start spiking his coffee.

  “Same place you did,” Sam said. “Drove over from the ranch. But it looks like you’re in your own little world here.”

  He glanced past his brother into the house, where the visibly damaged piece of drywall hung for all to see.

  “Looks like things are going well,” Sam added with a wry smile.

  Ben offered him a one-fingered salute.

  “You know,” his brother said, “you don’t have to work. It is New Year’s Eve. Colt’s got dinner duty. Mom is over the moon to host the bonfire. And Delaney is curled up with a book and a three-legged cat in her lap.”

  “Sounds like you two have quite the New Year’s bash going on,” Ben said flatly.

  “Hey,” Sam said. “I’m not saying I won’t have a beer or two before falling asleep on the couch.”

  “Party animal,” Ben said with a quiet laugh.

  Sam shrugged. “I’ve got seven and a half hours before I need to pop the top off a cold one and kiss my fiancée at midnight, so what do you say I buy you a drink? Consider it a pre-birthday celebration.”

  Ben scrubbed a gloved hand over his jaw.

  He’d been in such a fog he hadn’t even realized that tomorrow was his thirtieth birthday.

  “I’m not really in the mood for a celebration,” Ben said. “But a drink or two sounds a heck of a lot better than drilling a hole through my own flesh and bone.”

  Sam’s brow furrowed. “Wait, did you—”

  Ben shook his head. “Almost though. More than once.” He pulled off his torn glove to show his brother his bruised hand. “This is courtesy of the truck’s door, and I’m wearing most of my thermos. I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t be handling power tools for the rest of the evening.”