Her Right-Hand Cowboy (Forever, Tx Series Book 21) Read online

  “Good,” he concluded, “then you can go.” He glanced at his watch. The minutes were ticking away, and he hated arriving late. “I’ll be over to the house to pick you up in an hour. Is that enough time, or do you need more to get ready?”

  She didn’t know what sort of women he was used to, but she certainly didn’t need an hour to get dressed. “I don’t need more time—”

  He cut her off. “Great, then I’ll be there sooner,” Mitch told her. He started to leave the corral, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “You’re not walking,” he observed. Instead of asking her why, he offered, “I can take you back to the ranch house on my horse.”

  Ena sighed and finally walked out of the corral. Then with a determined gait, she walked right past him.

  “Guess we don’t need the horse,” he said, addressing Ena’s back.

  Ena didn’t turn around to answer him. All things considered, she felt it was better that way.

  * * *

  “Wow, I forgot how well you clean up,” Mitch said when, true to his word, he arrived at the ranch house less than an hour later to pick her up. Felicity had opened the door to admit him in.

  “If that’s your idea of a compliment, I think you need to work on your technique,” Ena told him, trying very hard not to let him see that his reaction had secretly pleased her.

  He nodded solemnly.

  “Duly noted,” Mitch responded. “But just so you know, that did come from the heart.” His eyes swept over the deep blue dress, appreciating the way it clung to her curves—just the way he would have liked to if things were different. “Maybe I should bring my gun with me,” he debated.

  Ena picked up the shawl she was bringing with her. She had found it earlier in the recesses of her closet. She had forgotten to pack the shawl and take it with her when she’d left ten years ago. The shawl had belonged to her mother. A bittersweet feeling had filled her when she had thrown the shawl over her shoulders and looked herself over in the mirror earlier. She’d come very close to crying.

  “Why?” she asked Mitch, now puzzled by his desire to bring a weapon with him. Forever was nothing if not peaceful.

  His grin told her the answer was self-explanatory, but he indulged her anyway. “To make sure that nobody gets any ideas about getting you to spend your time exclusively with them.” His eyes swept over her again. “You are really something in that dress,” he told her.

  Ena looked at him for a long moment. And then she nodded at his compliment. “I guess that’s an improvement—as long as you don’t wind up shooting anyone.”

  “Only if I have to,” Mitch deadpanned. And then he smiled at her and, his voice softening, said, “You do look really nice.”

  “Thank you. So do you,” she told him, returning the compliment.

  Mitch’s smile deepened, causing two dimples to appear in his cheeks and turning his rugged face into a boyish one.

  “Thanks,” he told her. Then he added, “Let’s just say you bring out the best in me.”

  With that, he presented his elbow to her.

  Ena was tempted to ask if he thought she was going to trip over something, but she refrained. This wasn’t the time to be flippant or act independent. Instead, she quietly slipped her arm through his.

  “Well, don’t you two look pretty,” Wade declared with a wide grin when he saw them leaving the house and walking toward Mitch’s freshly washed truck.

  Mitch didn’t rise to the bait. “You’re just jealous,” he told the wrangler he considered his right-hand man.

  “Yeah, I am,” Wade admitted. He never took his eyes off Ena. “You look nice, boss.” This time his words were directed toward Ena.

  She smiled at him. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Get back to work,” Mitch told the other man, pretending to be stern. And then he winked at the ranch hand. Wade nodded, then went back to the corral.

  Helping her into the passenger side of his truck, Mitch took Ena’s hand in his. He looked at her, slightly surprised.

  “Your hand’s icy.” The weather didn’t warrant that. “Are you cold?” he asked. Maybe she needed something more than just that shawl. “I can go back in and—”

  She shook her head. “I’m just nervous,” she confessed.

  So much for getting her something warmer, Mitch thought. Rounding the hood of his truck, he got in on the driver’s side.

  “Why?” he asked. This wasn’t like her, he thought.

  She shrugged as he started up the truck. “I haven’t seen a lot of these people in ten years. They’re probably all going to be judging me when they see me, wondering where I’ve been and why I wasn’t there at my father’s funeral.”

  “No, they won’t.” He sounded so sure of his answer that, for a second, Ena clung to it. “They’ll all be envious that you got to leave Forever and make something of yourself. Truth is,” he told her, “a lot of them wanted to do just that, but for one reason or another, they never did. But you’re the one who did. You got to live an adventure.”

  “An adventure, huh?” His description amused her. “Funny, I just thought I didn’t have a choice. It was either leave Forever, or slowly die by inches in front of a man who hated me since the day I was born. At least,” she said with a deep sigh, “that’s what I thought at the time.”

  He glanced in her direction. “And now?”

  She thought of all the things Mitch had told her about her father, about the way the man had claimed to feel toward the end of his life.

  “And now I’m not so sure.” She took a breath, collecting herself as she looked at him. “Can’t you drive this thing any faster?”

  “I could,” Mitch allowed.

  He was driving slowly because he wanted to have more time with Ena. There were always other people—the wranglers, not to mention Felicity—around and they couldn’t have these more personal conversations with all those ears listening in. But they were alone now, so she couldn’t feel that anyone was eavesdropping on their conversation even if it did get personal.

  “Then do it,” Ena instructed.

  Which was her way of saying that she didn’t like the way this conversation was going, Mitch thought. Well, at least he had broken some ground. That was good enough for now.

  Pressing down on the accelerator, he said, “Yes, ma’am,” and they took off, going twice as fast as they had been.

  * * *

  Because Murphy’s had more available space than Miss Joan’s diner did, Miss Joan had decided to hold the anniversary party for Dan and the medical clinic there. Which was just as well because the party turned out to be a joint venture out of necessity. Miss Joan provided the food and the Murphy brothers provided the liquid libations as well as the entertainment, courtesy of Liam Murphy and his band. A professional musician who had gone on tour more than a few times, Liam, the youngest of the three brothers, still enjoyed performing in his own hometown. And no matter where his tour took him, Liam never felt more appreciated than he did back in Forever, where it had all begun.

  “This is nice,” Ena had to admit as she and Mitch walked inside Murphy’s.

  Looking around, she found that she recognized several faces. And then several more.

  Everywhere she looked within the packed saloon, she discovered even more faces that were at least vaguely familiar to her. The nervousness she had managed to disguise began to dissipate in earnest.

  And then, suddenly, the crowd parted, shifting to either the right or to the left, creating a space for a rather elegant-looking Miss Joan to make her way over to them.

  Ena hardly recognized the woman.

  “You got her to come,” Miss Joan said to Mitch, sounding genuinely pleased. Her eyes crinkled just a bit as she said, “Nice work.”

  Mitch nodded, pretending to accept his due. “I only had to handcuff her to the back of the truck for part of t
he way.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Ena protested. Mitch looked so serious she was afraid Miss Joan might believe the fantastic claim.

  Miss Joan raised a brow in Ena’s direction. “Then he had to do it the whole way?” Miss Joan sounded completely serious. Ena began to vehemently deny the statement—and then she heard Miss Joan’s high-pitched laugh. “Just having a little fun with you, dear. Just like you should be having,” the woman added. She nodded in approval as Liam and his band started up another number. “Good music,” she noted. She turned her hazel eyes back toward Ena standing beside Mitch. “Dance.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion.

  Mitch slipped one hand around Ena’s waist and wrapped his other one around her hand.

  Ena looked at him in surprise. “What are you doing?”

  “Just following Miss Joan’s orders,” he told her. “If we don’t,” he whispered against her ear, “Miss Joan’s liable to take out a gun and start shooting at the floor around our feet the way they used to when they wanted to get someone to dance in those old cowboy movies.”

  He had to be kidding, Ena thought. “Miss Joan wouldn’t do that,” she protested.

  “Maybe not, but I’m not brave enough to find out,” Mitch said as he began to sway with her to the slow song that Liam was playing.

  Ena wanted to protest that she didn’t want to dance, especially not to a slow song, but she didn’t want to cause a scene, either. So dancing with Mitch turned out to be the less problematic of the two alternatives—even if it was so close.

  Leaning into him, Ena tried as hard as she could not to let herself enjoy what was happening. But she had to admit that it was really difficult for her to remain aloof. Especially since she really was enjoying dancing with Mitch. Enjoying being held by him. With so very little effort, she knew that she could allow herself to get carried away.

  She had to remain vigilant, Ena silently told herself. Otherwise, she could easily wind up melting—and people would talk.

  “People are watching us,” she told Mitch, feeling more than a little self-conscious. But even so, the warm feeling she was experiencing only seemed to increase in scope.

  “That’s because they’re all jealous of me,” he told her in an easygoing voice.

  “No, they’re not,” she protested.

  “Sure they are,” he contradicted. He drew his head back for a moment, his eyes looking into hers. “And why not? I’m dancing with the most beautiful woman here.”

  She struggled to keep her distance, at least emotionally. “I had no idea you were this smooth,” she told him.

  “If you’re referring to my dancing, I’ve been practicing,” Mitch admitted. And then he added, “With Felicity.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your dancing technique, I was referring to your tongue,” she clarified.

  “Oh. Well, what can I say? You inspire me,” he replied.

  Despite trying to maintain an emotional distance between them, she couldn’t help laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Back in high school, you just kept to yourself. I tried to get your attention a few times,” she admitted. “But you always acted like I didn’t exist.”

  “I told you,” he reminded her. “I knew that you existed. I also knew that your father existed, and if I made one move on you, just one, I knew that man would skin me alive.”

  She shook her head. He couldn’t have believed that. “You could have made all the moves you wanted. My father wouldn’t have cared.”

  “Just because he never said it out loud didn’t mean that he didn’t care,” Mitch told her. “All you had to do was look into that man’s eyes and you knew that he cared. A lot.”

  He was just trying to make her feel better, she thought. But he couldn’t because she knew the truth about the situation.

  “Yeah, right.” The two words fairly dripped with sarcasm.

  “Trust me,” he assured her. “It’s a guy thing. One guy knows what another one feels. And that man cared,” Mitch told her. “He just didn’t know how to let you know that.”

  They would just go round and round about this and not get anywhere. She wanted to drop the subject—permanently. “I don’t feel like talking about my father,” she told him, laying her head on Mitch’s shoulder as the band started to play another song.

  Mitch felt all the powerful emotions he was trying so hard to keep under lock and key struggling against their restraints. For now, he would just focus on holding her and nothing more.

  “I never said a word,” he told her.

  Taking a breath, he found himself breathing in the scent of her hair.

  Careful, he warned himself. It was all too easy to get carried away. All it took was one misstep on his part and he could wind up regretting it forever if he scared her off.

  * * *

  It was an evening Mitch didn’t want to see end, but perforce, it had to.

  But not before he had managed, with Miss Joan’s help, to get Ena together with A.J. Prescott, the bank’s manager.

  More than anything, when Miss Joan brought the man over, Ena just wanted to turn around and run. Dozens of reasons why she shouldn’t have this impromptu “meeting” popped up in her head.

  However, sensing that it was a now-or-never situation, Ena knew she had to plead her case with Prescott since it was his bank that held the mortgage note on the Double E Ranch.

  Keeping in mind what Mitch had told her, that the bank preferred not to foreclose on properties but have them be productive moneymakers, Ena sucked up her courage and laid out her plan on how to make the horse ranch more profitable.

  Somewhere along the line, as she talked almost nonstop to the manager, she also brought up the “miracle cure” for migraines by Mitch’s mother. When Prescott looked intrigued, she proposed a side business in which she and Mitch could sell the homemade product, comprised of natural ingredients that had already individually been approved by the FDA. She was certain that people would react to the product the way she had. The added proposed sales would be enough to put them over the top as far as being able to keep the ranch running and in the black.

  All she needed was for the bank to approve an extension.

  Prescott remained quiet for a very long moment. Then, looking over toward Miss Joan, who was standing several feet away from Ena, he finally nodded.

  “Considering your father’s long-term history with our bank, I’m sure that we will be able to arrange what we call a good faith extension. I’ll have McGreevy, our loan officer, draw up the terms and you can look them over. If you find them satisfactory, you can sign the document and keep the ranch. You’re better suited to ranching than the bank is,” Prescott told her with a smile.

  “That’s enough business talk for now,” Miss Joan declared, coming in between Ena and the manager. “Have some more apple pie, A.J.,” Miss Joan suggested. “And you, I believe you owe that studly foreman of yours another dance. Go, dance with him before I do,” she urged, putting her hand to Ena’s back and pushing her in Mitch’s direction.

  Ena smiled, feeling both empowered and giddy at the same time because of what had just transpired in the saloon.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she told Miss Joan as she went to do as the woman advised.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You know, for someone who dug in her heels about attending that little shindig today, you wound up practically closing the place down,” Mitch laughed as he drove them back to the Double E Ranch. The last time he had looked at his watch, it was almost eleven thirty.

  She pretended to frown at him. “Don’t lecture me, Parnell. This is the first time I’ve felt this kind of relief in a long time. I guess I just lost track of time,” she confessed.

  “Hey, this isn’t a lecture,” he protested. “I know better than anyone how hard you’ve been working since you
got here. Don’t forget, I was the one who suggested that you come to this thing in the first place and blow off some steam,” Mitch reminded her.

  She hadn’t meant to sound as if she was blaming him. “I wound up doing more than that, thanks to you and Miss Joan,” she told him. The truth of it was things had gone so well she felt as if she were flying. “It looks like we’re going to be getting that extension on the ranch’s loan.”

  He had been standing to the side at the time, acutely aware of everything that was happening because he was so in tune to her body language. He smiled at her now. “You’re the one responsible for that, Ena. We had nothing to do with it.”

  He was the one who had given her the courage to step up and make her pitch to Prescott, not to mention that if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have thought up her strategy with his mother’s migraine cure.

  “You’re the one who got the ball rolling,” she pointed out.

  “And you’re the one who knocked that ball out of the park,” he stressed, picking up on her metaphor as he brought his truck to a stop in front of the house. He got out, rounded the truck’s hood and came up to the passenger side. “End of the line, boss lady,” he said, opening the door for her.

  Ena took his hand and got out. “I don’t want this day to be over yet,” she told him. “Would you like to come inside for a drink?”

  She’d already had a couple after her business with Prescott had concluded and Mitch wasn’t certain how well she held her liquor. He didn’t want alcohol to be the reason things got out of hand.

  “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” he asked, bringing her to her door.

  Her lips quirked in a bemused smile. “Are you accusing me of trying to get you drunk so I can have my way with you?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was serious, but he took no chances. “No, I didn’t mean that. I just thought that you might—”

  Ena laughed, unlocking the front door. “Relax, Parnell, I’m just kidding. And you don’t have to worry about me, either. The one thing I did inherit from my father is his ability to hold his liquor. It would take a lot more than two drinks to have any sort of effect on me.”