Her Last Chance Cowboy: A Sweet Western Romance (Prairie Valley Book 5)

by Ellen Joy

  “How… how did it happen?”

  The officer stood with his hands behind his back, serious, but cautious. “It looks as though he swerved to avoid hitting something on County Road 95 and lost control of the vehicle, veered off the road and hit a tree. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Alcohol may have been a factor.”

  Of course, it had.

  “I asked Pastor Phil to be here so he can help you decide what the next steps are for your husband.”

  Hannah’s emotions exploded inside her chest, when she fully processed what the officer had said. He had been on County Road 95. Coming to see her. The room started to spin, her stomach heaved, and a cold sweat beaded her brow. She could hear voices, but it was hard to make out what they were saying.

  “Do you need someone to identify the body?” Olivia suddenly standing in the livingroom and asked the officer, sounding like she was underwater.

  “Hannah?” Maggie leaned in front of her to look at her eyes. “Hannah, do you want to talk to Pastor Phil?”

  She looked at Maggie. “How am I going to tell Emma?”

  Maggie’s chin trembled as a tear dripped from it. “We’ll all be right here with you.”

  The officer gave his condolences and spoke some more with Olivia, but Hannah didn’t move from the chair. She shook her head to the tea Maggie offered. She listened as the pastor prayed with them. She remembered getting up and asking Emma to come downstairs.

  “I heard,” she said, holding baby Mae in her arms. “Dad got into an accident.” Tears quivered in her eyes.

  Hannah rushed over to her, but Emma thrust Mae into her arms and ran out of the room, crying.

  Mae started fussing, and Olivia took her as Hannah ran out to look for Emma. She caught sight of her running through the pastures, up the hill to where the horses grazed. She flung her arms around Midnight and sobbed into his mane. Hannah slowed her steps, watching her daughter break down, hearing her cries from across the field.

  As she approached, Emma lifted her face from the horse. “He said he wanted a family.” Tears streamed down Emma’s face.

  Hannah approached her daughter and began rubbing her back. She didn’t speak, because what was there to say?

  Jake stood with Sam and Ryan as the new pastor gave Troy’s eulogy at the gravesite. He kept an eye on Hannah, but there was really no need. The Boudreau clan had closed ranks around her, protecting her like a horde of mama bears.

  Troy’s mother was up front with Hannah and Emma, acting hysterical and milking the occasion for everything it was worth, Jake thought coldly. The crowd did not hold back their sideways looks and whispers, but Hannah held her head high. She kept her cool, but he could see that the woman’s theatrics were starting to wear on her.

  As people started trickling away from the gravesite, Jake and Ryan headed back to the parking lot.

  He wished the women had let him get within arm’s reach of her, but he knew that would just have caused more gossip. The way Hannah stared off into the distance, even while maintaining her composure, worried him. He wished he could hold her in his arms and comfort her. Tell her it would be alright and protect her from anything else that could ever hurt her.

  But instead, he went back to the ranch and gave her some space.

  “Well, Millie, it’s me and you today,” he said to the pig, as he let her out the back door. She trotted to her favorite spot in the yard, the mud pit he had created for her. Millie loved to dig.

  He waited on the porch as a pot of coffee brewed inside. He couldn’t shake his worry. Hannah had looked so sad, so lost, so defeated, Emma confused, and Marie a clown.

  I’m here. If you need anything, let me know. He hesitated, then sent the text.

  He changed out of his suit and into regular clothes, then worked in the barn as Millie lay in a patch of sunlight. He checked his phone every once in a while, but there were no messages.

  By the next morning, he still hadn’t heard from Hannah, and he wondered if he should text her again. But no, he’d wait. He decided to head into town and meet Josh at the diner. When he did, he almost lost his mind.

  “Apparently, people are saying you were sleeping with Troy’s wife,” Josh told him.

  “What? Who said that?”

  “Troy.” Josh leaned over the table and whispered, “Were you?”

  “No!” The urge to pick up the table and throw it across the room came over him. Instead, he gripped the leather booth’s edges and squeezed. “Troy said that?”

  “Yeah, the night he died. He was pretty loud about it all.”

  “He left his wife and baby to fend for themselves years ago, and even dead, he’s still torturing Hannah.” He spoke loudly, so that the other customers who were not so subtly shooting glances at him would hear. He pushed away his plate of eggs. “Everybody in this town knows how that guy treated his wife. Nobody is going to miss that piece of trash.”

  “Shhh!” Josh flung out a cautioning hand. “People are listening.”

  “Good! It’s about time!” Let them hear it. The old timers at the counter, the blue-haired ladies gathered together in booths, and all the other busybodies. “Hannah is a great mother, and she’s had to do it all on her own. He hasn’t been a husband or father since Emma was born, and to think he’d try to ruin her reputation because she was finally moving on is disgusting. It’s even more disgusting that certain people are buying into his sob story for the sake of some juicy gossip.”

  He slammed his hand down on the table.

  Josh didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at him like he had gone crazy. “Tell us all how you really feel about it.”

  Jake pulled out his wallet and threw down enough to cover the tab.

  “Jake, stop being so dramatic.”

  He wished he could grab hold of Troy one last time. “The guy left a mess behind, but it’s only dumb luck that he didn’t kill someone.”

  He had heard that Troy had been three times over the legal limit. And there was no question in his mind where he had been headed. “He was only a couple miles from the farm.”

  Josh made a face. “So?”

  “He’d already been harassing Hannah.” If there was one thing he regretted, it was not punching Troy while he still had the chance.

  “He was an idiot for sure, but the guy’s dead now.”

  Jake slid out of the booth.

  “I need some help at the site,” Josh said, telling Jake the real reason for the breakfast. “Can you spare one of your guys from the ranch to work at the downtown site?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Josh rolled his eyes.

  Sighing, Jake nodded. “Sure, I’ll talk to some of the guys.” He put his hat back on and touched the brim. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Let me know who you’re sending,” Josh took a drink of coffee, his attention already on his phone.

  Jake shot a belligerent look around the diner at anyone who might still be snooping into his business. As soon as he left the diner, he called Hannah’s cell, but it went to voicemail again. He didn’t want to read too much into Hannah’s silence since the funeral. He knew she was going through a lot. But he was starting to get an uneasy feeling.

  Hannah lay on the sofa bed as a rooster crowed outside. The night sky slowly melted into day, showing off the twinkling lights for one last moment in a navy-blue sky. Birds twittered, their songs strengthening with the light.

  She watched the cracked-open door to Emma’s room.

  After the funeral, Emma had hung out with the other kids like always, and came in for dinner like always, but she went straight to bed afterward. She didn’t want to talk about things with Hannah, which broke her heart. Emma always came to her with her troubles. Today, however, was Emma’s birthday, and Hannah was going to do her level best to make the most of it. She blew up balloons and hung streamers throughout the barn. Olivia put up a banner and promised a big breakfast at the house.

  She got up and peeked inside Emma’s room, watching
her chest rise and fall with each sleeping breath. She had already decorated her bedroom. Posters, photographs, and certificates covered her walls. She thought of her own teenage bedroom. She wasn’t allowed posters or anything that had to be fixed to a wall. She’d had a bed, a closet, and a nightstand with a lamp. And a father telling her she should be grateful that he let her stay. She’d always wanted to point out that most parents simply saw it as their natural duty to care for their children, but she hadn’t quite dared.

  Maybe she was naïve, but she really had thought her father might reach out after Troy’s death. But she should have known better. Joel Destin wasn’t one for sentiment.

  She wondered if Troy had really wanted to change. By pushing him away, had she driven him back to the bottle? Which of course led to the question that was really eating her up… did she bear some responsibility for his death?

  Emma stirred then, snapping Hannah back to reality. Her eyes opened, her arms and legs stretched, and Hannah knelt and pulled her into a hug. “Happy birthday, baby!”

  Emma wrapped her arms around Hannah’s neck and squeezed with all her sleepy strength. Hannah felt tears threaten and blinked them back, not wanting to confuse her daughter.

  “Happy birthday, sweet thirteen!”

  “Have you been watching me sleep?”

  She rubbed her eyes and swung her legs out of bed.

  “Yes,” Hannah laughed.

  “You’re so weird,” Emma said, but she hugged Hannah again. She bounced up and headed into the other room, looking around. “You decorated!”

  “Yup, and we’re having pancakes for breakfast, up at the house.”

  Emma smiled and went straight to the table, where a gaudily wrapped gift sat. She picked it up, but she knew the rule.

  “Can I please open it?” she asked.

  Hannah smiled, but shook her head. “Not until after you blow out your candles.” She had always made her wait until 6:36 P.M., The exact moment that Hannah’s life had changed forever, the moment she heard the cry of her baby girl. Troy might have caused her pain and problems, but Emma was her promise of a better future, and she would be forever grateful for that. Well, they had a new life ahead of them now, and they could make changes if they wanted to. “You know what? Go ahead.”

  Emma’s eyes widened, and Hannah noted signs of puffiness lingering from her bout of tears. She ripped off the paper, and when she saw the label on the box, she dropped it back on the table and wrapped her arms around Hannah.

  “You got me a phone!” she squealed. “My very own phone!”

  That moment meant everything to Hannah, even if it had cost her everything she had left in her savings.

  “It’s not just for fun, but also for safety.”

  Emma opened up the box, pulling out the accessories and pressing buttons on the phone.

  “I love it!”

  “Here’s another gift.” Hannah passed over a small box. Inside was a protective phone case. She knew her daughter.

  Emma hugged her again, and out came tears she’d tried to hold back. “Mommy, don’t cry.”

  She scrubbed the tears away. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  Emma looked pensively out at the fields. “I know he wasn’t a good husband, but he said he was going to try to be a good dad.”

  Hannah swallowed her response. If Emma could hang onto this one positive memory of her father, then let her.

  “I just wish I got to know him,” she whispered. She turned abruptly and went into her room, her thumbs already working the phone’s buttons. Hannah stood there, alone with her thoughts. She understood what Emma was feeling. She had always wanted to know her father, too.

  When they entered the kitchen, the air was filled with the scent of butter and cinnamon and maple syrup, and the table was laden with platters of pancakes. The family all sang as Emma stood in the doorway, blushing.

  “You cooked all this?” There was enough to feed a whole congregation. She hadn’t really eaten much since Troy’s accident. As she looked at the fluffy pancakes and crisp bacon and freshly made cinnamon-apple muffins, her appetite returned with a will. She picked up a plate and served herself three pancakes, drizzling syrup with a heavy hand, then snagged some bacon and a muffin.

  “Atta girl.” Maggie set Mae in the highchair and handed her a sippy cup of milk.

  “I’m just suddenly really hungry,” she said.

  Maggie nodded in satisfaction.

  Breakfast over, the bus came to pick up the gaggle of kids. Emma seemed happy enough, getting on the bus. Olivia departed for her office, and Rosie headed out to the fields, leaving her alone with Maggie and the baby.

  “When I lost Johnny, it was the hardest thing I ever had to go through.”

  Hannah froze in the act of grabbing plates off the table. Maggie didn’t talk about her John very often. The father who Georgie, Rosie, and Annie frequently brought into conversation didn’t seem in any way comparable to Troy. He sounded like the perfect husband, and the best dad this side of the Mississippi.

  “I sure was upset with God for taking him away from me.” Maggie cut up bite-sized pieces of pancake for Mae.

  Hannah knew Maggie well enough to let her keep talking, that there’d be a piece of advice in there somewhere.

  “I tried hard to stay the same, after he died.” She poked the fork into the piece of pancake and fed it to Mae. “I stayed busy. I cleaned and decluttered. I did all the same things I did before, my clubs, my bible studies, church dinner. I watched the same shows, I sat in the same spot, I went to sleep at the same time.

  “But what I didn’t understand was that death changes you, and you’ll never be the same again. No matter how hard you try to hang onto the past.”

  Hannah was suddenly able to take a breath. It was as if someone had spoken straight to her soul. “No, you won’t.”

  Maggie nodded. “And I stayed angry. Real angry.”

  Hannah felt it, too. How could God give her more than she could handle?

  “But as I let that anger grow inside of me, I forgot all the good things life had given me, that I still had in my life.”

  She looked at Mae.

  “In time, I started looking around and celebrating all that I had. I started to see I could be happy for tomorrow, because of what God gave me yesterday. I stopped thinking of John as being gone, and paid attention to how he’ll live on. My heart was not empty because he wasn’t there, but full, from the love we shared.”

  Maggie epitomized happiness, gratitude, and celebration of a blessed life, but Hannah was not there yet. “You’re right, Maggie.”

  “I know you and Troy went through hard times, but I know you loved him in your own way, and I know that he gave you more than what you lost.”

  Maggie got out of her seat and hugged Hannah. “Remember, we always take care of one another.”

  That’s when Hannah knew things would be okay. She had a family.

  Chapter 11

  The next few days were a blur for Hannah. Pastor Phil came each night for dinner, just in case she wanted to talk. But Hannah didn’t. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that when Troy had died, the first feeling she’d had was of relief. Then guilt for feeling relieved.

  She got down on her hands and knees and began washing the floor of the old apartment. Country music played from the little clock radio on the counter, and she didn’t hear the footsteps until they were right outside the door. “Knock, knock.”

  Hannah looked up, the wet rag in her hand. “Hi, Mrs. Curtis.”

  She sat back on her heels, waiting for her the bad news. Would she be penalized for breaking her lease? Losing the deposit already hurt quite enough.

  “Here, Hannah.” She passed over a white envelope.

  “What’s this?” She stood up to take it.

  “It’s your deposit.”

  Hannah’s jaw dropped. She opened the envelope to see a check with the full amount of her first month’s rent scribbled in. She closed the envelope
and handed it back to the woman. “I can’t take this.”

  “It’s yours.” Mrs. Curtis stepped out of reach. “You deserve it, Hannah. You and Emma have been great tenants.”

  Mrs. Curtis looked around the room, then nodded her head and left. Hannah would have hugged her if she’d thought the old lady would tolerate it. She pulled out the check to look at it again. She had money. Not a lot, but something to put by for a rainy day. Something to build on while staying on the farm, or maybe something to invest for her future. For the first time, she felt she might have a chance to get her feet under her.

  She opened her wallet and tucked the envelope inside. She’d put it in the bank. Figure out a plan. Start a savings account, or maybe she’d be able to sign up for those online classes. It probably wasn’t enough for all the textbooks. But for the first time, Hannah had hope.

  Jake knew he had to give Hannah her space. But it was harder than he had expected, especially when he had no word from her at all, even a brief text to say she was doing ok. Now that Troy was dead, things seemed even more complicated. He wasn’t sure why she was avoiding him. If it was because of the gossip around town, he didn’t want to add any fuel to the fire. Julia had been happy to share all the juicy details.

  “Last night at Lumberjacks, people were talking about Hannah and you,” she’d said, as they stood outside the Gunderson’s new mega barn. It was the biggest job he’d ever managed, and he was proud.

  “Again? What are they saying now?”

  “That you two had an affair while she was married to Troy.” She looked away.

  “An affair, now?” He couldn’t believe some people. “Everyone knows how Troy was. How can they talk about Hannah after all she has gone through?”

  “Well, Allison’s still not super pleased with how things ended, but the conversation started because Joel Destin got kicked out for being too drunk,” Julia explained.

  “He was at Lumberjacks?” He hadn’t met Hannah’s father before, but had heard enough about him to know what a deadbeat he was.