The Brookman ranch was nothing like Grace had imagined.
She had woven elaborate fantasies where she was a real cowgirl and rode the range with Hank, checking fences, trailing cows, pausing beside the river to share the canteen and a stolen kiss. Hokey, yes, but everything she knew about cattle, she’d learned from old movies in the library’s DVD collection.
Her father did not believe in television. Or the Internet. Or anything that might cause his children to consider viewpoints other than his own.
Even Grace had heard about the Brookmans, though. They were local legends, generations of the best ropers and horse trainers in Texas going back to Hank’s great-grandfather, who’d traveled all the way to Madison Square Garden to compete in the earliest version of the National Finals Rodeo. It was natural to assume their ranch would be steeped in that history, a place of towering oaks, weathered wood, rocking chairs on shady porches, and horses dozing at a hitching rail.
In reality, the place couldn’t have had less personality if it had been designed by an architect who specialized in tract housing.
There was a midsized manufactured home with no landscaping beyond a few sad-looking bushes, and a steel-sided pole barn built from a trucked-in kit. Even the corrals were ugly—heavy pipe posts with oilfield sucker rod for rails. Beyond the iron wheel that served as a signpost, there was nothing rustic in sight. Everything original had been consumed by the fire and replaced by whatever was quickest and easiest, but someone should’ve cared enough to spruce the place up a little in the thirty years since.
The saddest sight, though, was the arena. Weeds had grown up in the fence lines and roping boxes, and cattle munched at round bale feeders evenly spaced down the middle of what had once been the plowed surface.
Shawnee followed her gaze and shook her head. “It’s a damn waste. Johnny Brookman is a genius when it comes to rope horses.”
“Hard to do alone, I guess.”
Shawnee made a sound that was equal parts irritation and agreement and headed for the back door of the house. Grace was uncomfortable invading someone else’s personal space, but Shawnee barged through the mudroom and into the kitchen with the assurance of someone who’d visited often. The scarred wooden table was covered in junk mail, feed-store flyers, crumpled receipts, and at least three months’ worth of The Cattleman magazine.
Shawnee dumped her trio of reusable grocery bags on the narrow island separating living room from kitchen. One end of the couch was heaped with unfolded laundry, and beside the recliner, a coffee mug and an open carton of Oreos sat next to the television remote.
“Geezus,” Shawnee muttered. “You might as well put a sign up that says pathetic divorced male.”
“It’s not as bad as I expected.” Grace shuddered at the memory of drinking glasses in her brother’s apartment that had been left so long that whatever was inside looked—and smelled—like gray sewage. These countertops appeared to have been wiped recently, and a cereal bowl and a few plates were stacked on the drainboard.
“He pays the neighbor lady to come over and clean every couple of weeks.” Shawnee peered at a collection of photos on the closest wall. “Look at those baby faces.”
Grace looked, and was confronted with a picture of Melanie that could have been Maddie’s beaming face. Her daughter had definitely inherited the Brookman genes. Grace turned away to dump her bags on the island and peek inside drawers and cupboards in search of pots, pans, and cooking utensils.
Shawnee wandered through the living room and down the hall, opening a door on the right. “The bathroom is safe.”
The refrigerator was too, stocked with only canned pork and beans, a partly used package of hamburger, the remnants of a take-and-bake lasagna, and a Smoke Shack takeout bag. Mmm. Brisket.
Shawnee’s phone chimed. She glanced at the message and headed for the door. “Cole wants me to bring the side-by-side and fencing tools down to the pasture. We probably won’t be back until around one o’clock.”
She thumped out the door, leaving Grace almost two hours to manufacture enough food for four, including Cole. Shawnee hadn’t said who he’d wrangled to bring with him—probably one or two of the Jacobs hands—but having grown up in a family of nine, Grace could throw together a large meal in short order. Once she’d gathered the necessary tools, she sautéed vegetables in a Dutch oven, added cubed, cooked chicken, then poured in stock and a bag of frozen southern-style hash browns, one of her mother’s favorite time-savers.
Now for dessert. She dumped canned peaches in a large pie pan, sprinkled them with cinnamon and brown sugar, tossed in a few dabs of butter, and whipped up a simple batter of flour, sugar, cinnamon, and milk to pour over the top. While the stew simmered and the cobbler filled the house with the mouthwatering aroma of cinnamon and peaches, she threw together a pasta salad and stirred up a batch of biscuits, ready to slide into the oven while her diners washed up.
There. That would do. She gave the stew another stir before tackling the mess on the kitchen table. Receipts went in one careful pile on the island, magazines and newspapers in another, and mail in a third. Everything else went in a fourth pile, including a used plastic syringe, a couple of yellow ear tags, and half a roll of elastic veterinary bandage. After she’d wiped away dust, smears of barbecue sauce, and a sprinkling of hay, she found silverware and plates to lay the table.
Satisfied, she headed for the bathroom. Three other doors led off the hallway, the one at the end left open to reveal a master bedroom. The others would belong to Melanie…and Hank.
Temptation nudged Grace with sticky fingers. She could just take a peek…
She marched herself straight to the bathroom, then right on back to the living room. Once there, though, it was impossible to ignore the photos. There was Melanie, propped in front of her daddy in a shiny new trophy saddle at the famous Pendleton Roundup with her hair pulled up into sassy ponytails tied with pink ribbons to match her boots, and that smile so much like Maddie’s.
And talk about smiles—back in the day, Johnny Brookman had had one that could make a girl’s heart flutter. Grace had only seen him being large, dark, and grim at school events, but here his eyes brimmed with laughter and a hint of the mischief that used to constantly dance in Hank’s.
Damn life for taking the joy out of them, turning all that potential to pain. And damn them for letting it. People shook their heads at Hank, the way he’d squandered the opportunities handed to him, but how was that any worse than his father? Johnny had had three decades to recover from the devastation of the fire, but it didn’t look as if he’d even tried to revive his rodeo career. Grace had worked so hard to become a roper she couldn’t fathom being that good and just walking away.
She’d barely known the sport existed until the McKenna clan had moved to the Panhandle after her daddy had been hired as head custodian by the Earnest school district. From day one, she’d been awed by the girls who climbed out of beat-up pickups to saunter past with long, loose-hipped strides. Bring it on, their body language shouted. I can rope it or ride it better and faster than you.
Grace had immediately decided that somehow, some way, she was going to be a cowgirl.
She’d had to wait until college to begin turning that vow into reality. Had had to beg a horse trainer on the outskirts of Canyon to hire a clueless town girl, first to muck stalls, then to groom horses, and finally to be his exercise rider. Though rodeo wasn’t his specialty, he had taught her to swing and throw a rope, using a hay bale as a dummy calf. And he’d located Betsy for her, lounging around a pasture after the teenager who’d gotten her from Shawnee had lost interest in roping.
She’d had to scrape up money for feed, beg for opportunities to rope, and pay by the run, but she’d stuck with it. It made her vaguely sick to see all the signs of a Brookman rodeo legacy being allowed to wither and die. How did someone go from that proud champion, showing off his new saddle and his precious daughter, to an arena overrun by ragweed and thistles?
And how did Hank go from a laughing kid in an Earnest Badgers football uniform—seventh grade, and so skinny Grace had been sure he’d get snapped right in two on every tackle—to a flinty-eyed man who seemed like he’d forgotten how to smile?
At the rattle of the door, voices, and the scuff of boots in the mudroom, she spun around and hustled toward the kitchen.
“It smells great,” a familiar deep voice said, but the man Grace crashed into as she rounded the island was not Cole.
Hank grabbed her arms as her nose practically mashed into his chest. Recognition blasted through her at the scent of Irish Spring and warm male skin that had forever defined Hank. Like bees catching a whiff of clover on the breeze, her hormones buzzed to life. She jerked away. “What are you doing here?”
His mouth twisted. “You know what they say about bad pennies.”
She did. And damn her fluttering pulse, because Hank seemed determined to keep turning up when she least expected him.