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

  “No, he won’t,” Mitch declared. “And even if he does—I won’t,” he said, his voice dropping.

  No, she told herself fiercely, she wasn’t going to fall for that again. Mitch’s actions spoke louder than his words and he had practically shunned her these last three weeks. She let herself fall for him, had given him her heart and then practically gotten kicked in the teeth for her stupidity.

  Well, not again.

  Swinging around, Ena looked at him, her eyes blazing. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll get over it in record time. As a matter of fact, I bet that you probably already have.”

  He stared at her, lost. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you acting as if I had leprosy.” To underscore her words, she hit him in the chest with the flat of her hand. “As if I was someone you had to endure in order to keep your job.”

  When she went to hit him again, he took a step back, catching her hand before she could make contact. “Still don’t understand,” he said pointedly.

  “Then think about it!” she all but shouted in his face. “We made love, you put another notch in your belt and then you cut me dead. Seems simple enough to understand to me.” Her eyes narrowed, shooting daggers at him. “Now, if you have nothing else—”

  Mitch caught hold of her shoulders to keep her in place. “I have nothing else if you sell this ranch and leave Forever.”

  He was worried about his job, she thought angrily. “Don’t worry, I’m sure that Larabee will keep you on as foreman. I can even specify that as being one of my terms when I sell it to him—”

  “The hell with being foreman.” He blew out a breath as he looked up at the ceiling, searching for words. And then he looked at her. “I gave this my best shot, but I can’t do this any longer.”

  It was her turn not to understand. “I’m sure that I don’t know—”

  Now that he had found the words, he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ena, but shut up.”

  Startled, she stared at him. “What?”

  “Shut up,” Mitch repeated. “Do you want to know why I stayed away from you? Because I realized that you might think what happened between us was because I wanted to seal my place on the ranch. That you’d think I wanted to help you run the ranch or maybe even something more than that. But I don’t care about the ranch,” he insisted, then felt that needed clarification. “I mean, I care about the ranch, but definitely not more than I care about you.” He saw the disbelief on her face. He wasn’t doing this well, he upbraided himself. “Look, this is a whole new place for me.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m shoeing a horse and seeing your face.”

  Ena tilted her head. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “Well, it is,” he insisted, “because nothing has ever interfered with work for me before—until there was you.” He knew he was saying too much, but now that he had gotten started, he couldn’t stop himself. “I want you so much that I literally hurt inside. But what I don’t want is you thinking that I’m after the ranch. The only thing I’m after is you.” He took in a shaky breath. “I felt that way ever since I saw you in Mrs. Brickman’s English class and I feel that way now.” His eyes looked into hers. “I just don’t know how to prove it to you.”

  Ena smiled. “You just did.”

  “What?” He didn’t know if she was kidding him or not. “How?”

  She supposed it was so simple he didn’t see it. “Because you remembered when you first saw me. The thing is, you didn’t just make that up because I remember it, too,” she told him.

  That first time was very important to him. Had it actually been that way for her, too? Or was she just pulling his leg for some reason? “You do?”

  She smiled at Mitch. “I do.”

  His mind began racing, making plans. “Look, maybe I can find some work in Dallas,” he began.

  She stopped him right there. “Why would you want to do that?”

  He told her the truth. “Because the idea of my staying here when you leave makes me feel like my insides are all being scraped out.”

  She smiled at him. “Your insides are safe, Mitch. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He didn’t understand. Was she having fun at his expense? “But you just said—”

  Ena stopped him right there. “I say a lot of things when I’m hurt,” she told him.

  “Hurt?” he questioned. Was she telling him that he’d managed to hurt her? He’d never even considered that was possible.

  Ena closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. “You are going to require a lot of patience and work.”

  Maybe this was going to be all right after all, he thought. “I’m all yours,” he told her. “Do whatever you want with me,” Mitch said. “As a matter of fact, I insist on it.”

  Humor entered her eyes. “Careful what you wish for,” she warned.

  Now that the barriers were finally down, he felt he could be honest about everything. And it was time he told her. “Do you know what I wanted to say to you the first time I saw you?”

  “What?”

  “I wanted to say ‘Will you marry me?’” He saw her looking at him skeptically. “I didn’t,” he continued, “because I knew who your father was and I was going to ask him for a job the minute I graduated. I was afraid that if he heard that I’d said that to you, he’d accuse me of just saying that in order to make him consider me for that job.”

  Ena laughed. Boy, had he been wrong. “You obviously didn’t know my father.”

  “I also wanted to say it that night we came home from Murphy’s,” he told her. “I didn’t say it then because you were so confident that you were going to get that extension from the bank and I didn’t want you thinking I was trying to take advantage of the situation, you know, marrying you because of the ranch.”

  “And you started keeping your distance for the same reason,” she guessed.

  “It made sense at the time,” he said, although hearing it out loud now showed him how foolish he had been.

  “If you’re given to making stupid decisions,” she concluded crisply.

  He smiled at her. “That being said, I’m through with making stupid decisions.”

  She had a feeling that there was more. “All right,” she said, encouraging him to continue.

  He took a breath. “Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m rushing you.”

  “What am I not being rushed about?” she asked.

  He took another breath, a deeper one this time. “I have loved you ever since I first saw you in Mrs. Brickman’s English class, and when the dust finally settles, I’d like you to consider...” He tried again. “Do you think that you might be able to consider...”

  Ena looked up at him. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  He supposed he was making a mess of it, he thought. “I’m trying to.”

  She cocked her head. “But?”

  “I guess what’s stopping me is I don’t think I can handle you saying no.”

  Her eyes smiled at him first. “Well, lucky for you, I don’t plan on saying no—that is, if you ever finally ask.”

  “Really?” His smile seemed to grow until it encompassed his entire face.

  “First you have to ask,” she reminded him.

  Then, to her surprise, Mitch took her hand and got down on one knee. “Ena Meredith O’Rourke, will you marry me?”

  She winced when he said her full name. “Wait, you know my middle name?” she questioned in surprise. It wasn’t something that she typically told people. She had never liked the name, even though it had belonged to her parental grandmother.

  “I know everything there is to know about you,” Mitch told her.

  She was beginning to believe that, she thought.

  “Well, since you know my middle name, I guess I’m g
oing to have to marry you.” She blinded him with her smile and said, “So, yes! Yes, I will marry you.”

  That was all he needed to hear. Mitch pulled her into his arms and did what he had longed to do for the last three weeks. He kissed her.

  And he kept on kissing her for a very long, long time.

  * * *

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  Second-Chance Sweet Shop

  by Rochelle Alers

  Chapter One

  The chilly February temperature and lightly falling rain did little to dispel the excitement coursing through Sasha Manning. She’d lost track of the number of times she had glanced at the wall clock. It was a week before Valentine’s Day and the grand opening of her patisserie. Sasha’s Sweet Shoppe was located on Main Street, in the heart of Wickham Falls’ downtown business district. The mayor, several members of the town council and the chamber of commerce had promised to be on hand at ten for the ribbon-cutting photo op.

  “You can keep staring at that clock, but it isn’t going to make the hands move any faster.”

  Sasha turned to look at her mother. Charlotte Manning had worked tirelessly alongside her over the past four months to get the shop ready. And Sasha knew Charlotte, who’d had a mild heart attack nearly a year ago, could not continue to put in such long hours. Several days ago, she’d posted a help-wanted sign in the front window.

  “I keep wondering if they’re going to cancel the photo shoot because of the weather.” The words were barely off her tongue when the town’s photographer knocked lightly on the door. Sasha pressed her palms together to conceal their trembling. The door chimed when she opened it.

  “Good morning, Jonas.”

  “Good morning, Sasha. Charlotte.”

  Jonas Harper, performing double duty as the photographer for the town and The Sentinel, Wickham Falls’ biweekly, set his leather equipment bag on the floor and then walked over to the showcases filled with colorful confectionaries. “They look too pretty to eat.”

  Sasha smiled at the middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper ponytail. She’d spent the past two days putting together an assortment of tarts, tortes, cookies and pies. Earlier that morning she’d baked several loaves of white, wheat, rye and pumpernickel bread. “I’ve put aside samples for you and the others.”

  Jonas unzipped his bright yellow waterproof poncho. “Is there someplace where I can hang this up?”

  Charlotte stepped forward and held out her hand. “I’ll take that for you.”

  Sasha watched her mother as she took Jonas’s poncho, offering him a bright smile. At fifty-six, Charlotte was still a very attractive woman, despite what she’d had to go through during her volatile marriage to a man she was never able to please. Her blond hair was now a shimmering silver and there were a few noticeable lines around her bright blue eyes.

  As the youngest of three, and the only girl, Sasha would cover her head with a pillow to drown out what were daily arguments between her parents. She had counted down the time until she graduated high school and could leave Wickham Falls, as her brothers had done when they enlisted in the military. It had been more than a decade since she’d called Wickham Falls home, but now she was back to stay.

  “This place is really nice,” Jonas said, as he glanced around the bakery. “It reminds me of some of the little bakeshops I saw when I visited Paris.”

  Sasha nodded, smiling. The colorful wallpaper stamped with images of pies, cakes, muffins and cupcakes provided a cheerful backdrop for twin refrigerated showcases, recessed lights, a quartet of pendants, and a trio of bistro tables and chairs. She had also purchased a coffee press, a cappuccino machine and a commercial blender to offer specialty coffees.

  “That’s what I had in mind when I decided to open this place.” Although she’d never been to Paris, she had watched countless televised travel and cooking shows featuring French cooking to know exactly how she wanted her patisserie to look. Her mother had teased her, saying perhaps the residents of The Falls weren’t ready for fancy tarts and pastries with names they weren’t able to pronounce. But Sasha refused to let anyone dissuade her from her dream of starting over as a successful pastry chef.

  When growing up she hadn’t known what she wanted to do or be. Everything changed, once she left Wickham Falls and moved to Tennessee to accept a position as a companion to an elderly woman. Adele Harvey, the former English teacher and reclusive widow of a man who made a fortune buying and selling real estate, had become the grandmother Sasha never had.

  Sasha saw the ad online for a live-in companion and filled out an application, despite not having any experience aside from occasionally babysitting her neighbors’ young children. Two weeks following her high school graduation Sasha boarded a bus for a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, for an in-person interview with Mrs. Harvey and the attorney overseeing the legal affairs of the childless widow. It had taken the older woman only ten minutes to announce she was hired, and when Sasha returned to Memphis in mid-August it was as a first-class passenger on a direct flight, followed by a chauffeur-driven limo to what would become her new home.

  The bell chimed again, breaking into her thoughts, and the editor of the newspaper walked in. Langston Cooper had left The Falls to pursue a career as a journalist. For more than a decade he had covered the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for an all-news cable station before returning to the States to write several bestselling books. His life mirrored Sasha’s when he married a popular singer, but the union was dissolved amid rumors that she’d had an affair with an actor. Langston returned to Wickham Falls, took over ownership of the dwindling biweekly and within two years had increased the newspaper’s circulation and advertising revenue.

  Taking off his baseball cap, he smiled at Sasha, exhibiting straight, white teeth in his light brown complexion. Growing up, Langston and her brother had been what folks said were as thick as thieves. You’d never see one without the other.

  Walking over to him, she pressed her cheek to his smooth-shaven jaw. “Thank you for coming.”

  Langston dropped a kiss on the mass of curly hair framing Sasha’s round face. “Did you actually think I would miss the grand opening of The Falls’ celebrity pastry chef?”

  Sasha blushed to the roots of her natural strawberry-blond hair. She’d dyed the bright red strands a nondescript brown following her divorce to avoid attracting the attention of eagle-eyed paparazzi who’d hounded her relentlessly once the word was out that she was no longer married to country-music heartthrob Grant Richards.

  “Have you forgotten that I’m not the only celebrity in The Falls?” she teased with a smil
e. “After all, you are a New York Times bestselling author.”

  Langston nodded. “I didn’t come here for you to talk about me, but about you. After photos and the speeches, I’d like you to schedule some time for an interview for The Sentinel’s Who’s Who column.”

  Since coming back to The Falls Sasha had discovered her hometown had changed—and for the better. The list of those returning to Wickham Falls to put down roots was growing. Langston had become editor in chief of The Sentinel, Seth Collier was now sheriff, and Sawyer Middleton headed the technology department for the Johnson County Public Schools system. And for Sasha it was a no-brainer. The Falls was the perfect place for her to start over with a business where she did not have a competitor.

  “Can you call me in a couple of weeks?” she asked.

  “You’ve got it.” Langston leaned closer and kissed her cheek. “Good luck and congratulations,” he said as he left.

  She hoped the samples she planned to offer those coming into the shop for her grand opening would generate return customers. A nervous smile barely lifted the corners of her mouth when she spied the mayor, several members of the town council and the head of the chamber of commerce through the plate-glass window.

  “It’s showtime, Natasha,” Charlotte whispered.

  “Yes, it is, Mama.” Her mother was the only one who had refused to call her by her preferred name. When her mother brought her home from the hospital, her three-year-old brother could not pronounce Natasha; he’d begun calling her Sasha and the name stuck. She walked over to the door and opened it.

  * * *

  Sasha let out an audible sigh when the town officials filed out of the shop, each with a small white box, stamped with the patisserie’s logo, and filled with miniature samples of red velvet, pumpkin spice, lemon-lime and chocolate hazelnut cupcakes. Cupcakes had become her signature specialty.

  She pushed her hands into the pockets of the pink tunic with her name and the shop’s logo stamped over her heart. “Even though Mayor Gillespie was a little long-winded, I think it went well.”