Her Cowboy's Twin Blessings

by Patricia Johns

  “Are we in any danger?” Ember asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

  “I wasn’t about to stick around and give the wolves any ideas,” Casey replied. “We can shoot them if they harass us or the cattle, but they’re endangered, too, so I’m not about to start taking potshots at wolves if I don’t have to.”

  She turned back to face forward, and he was struck by the shine to her blond waves that fell over her shoulder and down her back. A twig was caught in her hair, and Casey had the urge to pluck it out, but he wasn’t close enough. She was a beautiful woman, but also vulnerable. A country woman wouldn’t be quite so reliant on him for safety and common sense out here, and he felt the weight of that responsibility.

  They rode in silence through the woods until they emerged on the other side into the scattered shade at the forest edge.

  “The wolves never come this close to a human settlement,” Casey said. “Not in daylight.”

  “Shouldn’t you be able to do more about the wolves?” Ember asked.

  “Yeah, if you buy this place, the wolves are your problem, too,” Casey said with a rueful smile. “But they’re an important part of the ecosystem out here.

  “Like I said before, it’s not about your convenience out here. It’s about finding a way to live alongside nature safely.”

  “I get it.”

  Did she? He wasn’t so certain.

  Casey let his eyes roam over the patchwork of fields and those gently snaking roads that made their way between them. He’d driven every single one of those roads, and he knew these fields—the kinds of grass that grew in them, the drainage when the snow melted, the state of the fences that surrounded them—like the back of his hand. If only he’d known his boss as well. He understood that things had deteriorated quickly for Mrs. Vern, but his boss had kept that private for a long time, too. He hadn’t opened up, shared a bit, given Casey any indication that he should be scraping some money together to make an offer that could compete with what a Reed brought to the table.

  Everyone looked out for themselves, it seemed. Even Christians. Even country folk. Everyone kept their personal business close to the vest and tried to sort out their own situation.

  Casey, people might like you a whole lot, but they like their own hide more, his father used to tell him. Funny how it took a couple of decades for wisdom to grow deep.

  When they got back to the barn, he dismounted, then helped Ember down from Patience’s back. She rubbed her legs and stretched—definitely not used to the exertion of horseback riding, and he turned his attention to unsaddling the horses and turning them out to pasture for the rest of the day.

  “Mr. Vern invited us up for lunch at the house,” Casey said, then paused. “Hold on—” He reached behind her back and plucked that twig out of her hair. It took a moment to untangle it, and her hair felt silky in his calloused hands. He held the twig up as proof that he’d had an excuse to touch her.

  She smiled feebly. “I’m not scared off, Casey.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you,” he replied, feeling mildly offended that she’d think so. “You saw the wolf, didn’t you?”

  She eyed him for a moment. “You’re a ranch manager here. What would make working for me so different?”

  “First of all, you wouldn’t be ranching,” he retorted.

  “Fine. But I have a feeling that even if I were intent on raising cattle, you’d still have a problem with working for me.”

  Casey headed for the door, pushed it open and waited for Ember to leave the barn ahead of him. “My family had a ranch, and we’d been on that land for three generations. Reed Land Holdings ran us out of business, then bought the ranch when we couldn’t hang on any longer.”

  Ember stepped outside into the spring chill, then turned back to look at him, some combination of uncertainty and compassion swimming in those blue eyes.

  “When was this?”

  “Fifteen years ago. I got a job here and worked my way up—not because I have a passion for ranching someone else’s land, but because I had no other choice. And now I’ve got the boys to raise, and no land of my own to do it on.”

  “What happened to your father’s ranch had nothing to do with me, you know.”

  “It’s your family,” he said.

  “But not me.” She met his gaze almost defiantly.

  “It’s your family’s money,” he said. “And forgive me for being picky about that detail, but it amounts to the same thing. I get that you aren’t some spoiled rich girl in the deepest sense, but you’re a part of the machine, and you’re looking to take a running ranch and turn it into something completely different. There will be ripples. This will affect a lot more than you think.”

  “And a good number of those ripples might be positive,” she said with a shake of her head. “Turning this place into a therapy center isn’t about me and my career. This is about something I owe to God.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, softening his tone.

  “I promised I’d do everything I could to strengthen families. If He helped me to get the education I needed, I’d take every penny that came from my tarnished family and put it back into building other people back up. I’m sorry this isn’t about cattle, Casey. Maybe you’d approve if I cared more about cows. But I am going to build something important here. This is about people.”

  She carried on toward the truck, leaving Casey to catch up this time, and he shook his head. They’d never see eye to eye on this, but she was convinced that she was doing something good and moral. There was no one more stubborn than a do-gooder. He picked up his pace and met her at the vehicle.

  “Let’s go,” he said, hopping into the driver’s side. She got in next to him, and as she buckled up her seat belt, he turned the key and snapped his own strap into place.

  When they got to the house, Mr. Vern was waiting. He met them with a cordial nod and stepped back as they came into the kitchen.

  “So what did you think of what you’ve seen so far?” Mr. Vern asked as Ember took off her jacket and hung it on a hook. The smell of tomato soup and toasted BLTs met them.

  “It’s a beautiful area,” Ember said. “Breathtaking, really.”

  “That it is,” Mr. Vern agreed. “And that’s only a tiny taste.”

  The old cowboy pulled a pot of soup off the stove. Sandwiches already waited on the table, cut diagonally and stacked on a plate. Mr. Vern ladled soup into a bowl and brought it to the table, then headed back to the stove. He moved slowly, purposefully.

  “Have a seat,” Mr. Vern said.

  It wasn’t Casey’s place to be served by the boss, but Ember sat down in a chair and looked hungrily at the spread before them.

  “Let me finish that up, sir,” Casey said.

  “Nonsense. Sit down, Casey. How was your ride?”

  “It was cut short,” Ember said. “There was a wolf eyeing us.”

  “Linda always hated them,” Mr. Vern said, coming back to the table with the last two bowls in his hands. Some soup slopped over the side of one bowl as he placed them on the table, and Casey dropped a napkin over the spill. “Before they passed the law protecting wolves, we had a whole herd of migrating elk that moved through in the fall. We had a decent income from hunters coming to hunt on our land, and we offered a guide service. But not anymore. The herd isn’t so big anymore, and they move through fast. The wolves make sure of that.”

  Ember frowned slightly, looking over at Mr. Vern with questions in her eyes. Casey’s mind wasn’t on the wolves, though. They were an old problem. He was wondering how the babies were doing. Funny how he’d started to worry about them when he was gone.

  “Let’s pray,” Mr. Vern said, bowing his head. “For this food we are about to eat, make us truly thankful.”

  He raised his head, nudged the plate of sandwiches toward Ember, then picked up his spoon. The ol
der man’s hand trembled, and he put the spoon back down.

  “Everything all right, sir?” Casey asked.

  “Fine,” he growled, and Casey eyed him a moment longer. That was a lie, but maybe he didn’t want to talk in front of Ember. Casey nodded, then took a mouthful of soup, watching his boss from the corner of his eye. After a beat or two, Mr. Vern sighed.

  “I got a call from the care home,” he said, his voice tight. “Linda had a bad morning. They couldn’t calm her down. They needed my permission to sedate her.”

  “What was she upset about?” Ember asked.

  “Don’t know,” Mr. Vern replied. “Something about getting dressed. She didn’t want to be touched.” He sucked in a wavering breath. “I’d have her here with me, but she kept wandering off, and the last time I found her, she was by herself in three feet of snow wearing nothing but her pajamas and holding a cookie sheet.”

  Silence descended around the table.

  “When we were kids, we used to sled on cookie sheets,” Mr. Vern said, then cleared his throat. “Maybe she saw the snow and in her mind... Anyway.”

  Mr. Vern picked up his spoon again and took a mouthful of soup. Casey and Ember followed his lead, but Casey’s stomach no longer wanted the sustenance. He could see the pain in the older man’s eyes. And he knew that it was more than just his wife’s problems that morning. The bills were climbing, and as his boss had told him earlier, he was in debt.

  “I’m a licensed therapist,” Ember said after a moment. “If you wanted to talk about it—”

  “No,” Mr. Vern said with a bitter laugh. “I appreciate the offer, young lady, but I don’t need to be asked how I feel. I know how I feel, and I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll go visit my wife. She’ll be sedated, but I think there will be a part of her that will know I’m there.”

  Ember fell into silence, and Casey met her gaze for a moment. She needed to understand that people out here were different. Tougher, maybe, and more self-sufficient. She was right that everyone had their personal issues, but not everyone wanted to talk about it. Sometimes, a man just needed enough dirt under his boots to soak up the pain.

  “I’m sorry—” Mr. Vern stood up. “I hope you’ll understand if I head down to the city now. It’s a long drive, and I need to see Linda for myself—know that she’s okay. You stay and eat. Just lock up on your way out, if you don’t mind, Casey.”

  Casey pushed back his chair. “Absolutely, sir. Do what you need to do.”

  That kind of love was a precious thing, and while the price was this kind of heartbreak at the end of that love story, it made a life deeper and more meaningful for the years of devotion.

  Casey had two little babies waiting for him back at his house, boys he’d determined to raise, and he wondered if they’d creep into his heart like that...become his meaning for all the hard work. Because that was what a family was, wasn’t it? And he was doing his best—taking care of the babies, trying to arrange things so that he could give them the best childhood possible. He’d be their dad—or at the very least he’d be the only dad they’d remember. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take before they truly felt like his.

  Chapter Five

  They finished eating after Mr. Vern left, then wrapped up the leftover food and put it in the fridge. Mr. Vern would be hungry eventually, and Ember wondered if there was any way she could help this man in his time of need. Except he didn’t want her help—that seemed to be a theme out here. Even Casey didn’t seem to want her well-intentioned offering of a job. Would it be so miserable to work with her for a little while until he sorted out something better? She didn’t want to turn his life upside down. She was trying to be reasonable here.

  Before they left to go back to Casey’s house, Ember made some phone calls to two different local historical societies. She’d asked them to look into the records to see who owned this plot of land going back as far as possible. So far, they had owners going back seventy-five years, but back in 1981, there was a big flood that had damaged a lot of the antique records. She’d hoped that coming out here might give her access to records that weren’t readily available online, but that didn’t look likely right now.

  “Any news?” Casey asked her when she hung up after her last call.

  “No,” she admitted with a sigh. “But I’m not giving up quite yet.”

  “Didn’t think you would.” He smiled ruefully. “Let’s get back to the house.”

  Once at the ranch manager’s house, Bert left for his own shift at work, leaving Ember and Casey alone with the infants. Ember ruminated over her challenge to find some evidence about who settled this land while she focused on the tasks at hand: diapers, bottles, sleeping. Casey put in a load of laundry, and Ember set to washing a sink load of baby bottles. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy to track her family’s holdings, but it seemed like every time she had an idea, she hit another roadblock.

  And while she agonized over her own problems, that old rancher was off visiting his ailing wife. She felt a pang at her own selfishness. Was that the Reed in her?

  “I feel for Mr. Vern,” Ember said, raising her voice a little so that Casey could hear her in the other room.

  “Me, too,” Casey said, and he ambled over to the doorway of the kitchen. “This is a tough time for him.”

  “How long have he and his wife been married?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Since they were about 18, I think. He told me once that he met her in high school.”

  “That’s sweet... I come across couples who have been together since high school in my practice. It used to be a regular occurrence. Not anymore.”

  “You mean marriages lasting that long?” Casey asked.

  “Marriages that started that young that last so long,” she amended. “But when it lasts, there is a really beautiful bond that only comes with time together.”

  “But the ones you’re seeing are coming for therapy,” Casey pointed out.

  “I never said it had to be marriage counseling,” she said, shooting him a rueful smile over her shoulder. “The last couple I met with who had been together that long were working through grief over the loss of—” She swallowed, biting off the words.

  “Loss of what?” Casey prodded.

  “Family land,” she finished, and a wash of guilt came over her. Land could mean something to various different people, but only one person could actually own it. It didn’t matter who won this—someone else would lose.

  Even in adoption, in order for Pastor Mitchell and his wife to adopt her son, she’d had to give him up. And they’d been trying for a decade to get pregnant, they told her. Nothing had worked. The wife—Sue—had told Ember a little bit about her struggle. She said that all she’d ever wanted was a big family...

  Ember’s mind continued to wander as she plunged her rubber-gloved hands into the hot, sudsy water. In order for Ember to gain some feeling of connection to her biological father, she’d had to tear into a perfectly happy family. Birdie hated Ember because she’d only found out about her husband’s affair when Ember showed up after her mother’s death. Then Alistair had been forced to confess it all to his wife and kids. So in order for Ember to have a relationship with her dad, her half siblings had to learn the ugly truth that their father had cheated on their mother. In order for anyone to take a step forward, it felt like there was a cost to be paid by someone else. Hardly fair, but the way the world worked—only one person could “win” at a time.

  Back then, when her mother died, Ember hadn’t been thinking clearly enough to consider consequences—the consequences of meeting her father...and of other things. She’d hated facing life on her own, and she’d had one surefire way to numb everything—parties.

  So that fateful night during her second year of college, Ember sneaked out to a party, as she’d done so many times in the past. The next morning, she’d woke
n up in a confused fog on a strange couch, and missing some rather important articles of clothing. Had she done what she feared she’d done?

  And she’d felt a flood of shame. Was this what she wanted for the rest of her life? A blur of alcohol and parties...flunking out of college, because she was too hungover to pay attention in class? Was this all she had to look forward to?

  Ember had pulled together what she could find of her belongings and headed back to her dorm room. Sitting on the edge of her bed, her head spinning and her stomach churning from the drinking she’d done the night before, she realized that she wanted more...she wanted to be better. Not to impress her father, or punish him—but for herself! She wanted to turn her life around and belong to the one Father she could count on to never stop loving her. And she longed for forgiveness for whatever it was she’d done the night before that left her feeling so soiled and empty. Sitting on the edge of that dorm bed, she’d bowed her head and given her life—as muddled as it was—over to Jesus.

  “...if You still want it,” she’d whispered.

  Unknown to her in that moment, she was already pregnant. Her change of heart—her desire to be something better—had all come one night too late.

  Behind her, one of the babies woke from his sleep, a hiccuping wail piercing the quiet. Ember pulled herself out of her memories and looked over her shoulder. Casey stood by the couch, a laundry basket filled with onesies, sleepers and tiny socks, and he dropped a onesie on top of a pile of folded laundry then headed for the cradle. Just then, the other baby let out a whimper.

  “You want to give me a hand?” Casey asked, and Ember dried off.

  “Sure.” She went to the other cradle and looked down into the scrunched little face. Will waved one tiny fist in the air, his lips quivering and tears welling in his eyes. She bent down and scooped him up, propping him up onto her shoulder. At a few weeks old, he was already bigger than her son had been the last time she’d seen him.