The Rancher’s Second Chance Read online

  “Thank you, Mrs. Baker. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Never thought you’d deign to set foot in boring old Hope Springs again.”

  “Mama,” Cole broke in. “What do you say we get off the porch? Devon can show you his room, right, buddy?”

  “Gammy.” Devon obediently took his grandmother’s hand. Her expression immediately softened as he led her into the house. Cole’s father followed close behind.

  Cole met Sammie’s eyes and exhaled again. “He’s sure earning his allowance today,” he whispered.

  “He doesn’t get an allowance,” she tittered. “But it’s never too early to start teaching the value of a dollar.”

  “Whatever you say, Professor.” He leaned in to catch her lips with his, but she stopped him with a hand to his chest.

  “Cole,” she warned. “Your parents.”

  He swore and followed her into the house, muttering, “Christ, it really is like being in high school all over again.”

  “Hush,” Sammie whispered. She peered around the corner and down the hall to Devon’s room. “Don’t let them hear you. They hate me enough as it is.”

  “I say we just let them stay in there with Devon.” He knew he was complaining just like a teenager, too, but he didn’t care.

  With just Sammie, it was easy to forget this wasn’t his house. But with them here, waltzing in and criticizing the second they saw him, it was just one more reminder that Cole was a tenant. This was a temporary home, one more upheaval in Devon’s life.

  A flash of that old resentment had him grabbing for Sammie’s hand. “They’re not here to visit me; they could care less about all that.” He tugged invitingly. “Come on, free babysitting—how often do we get to be alone? Let’s not let my awful family ruin our day.”

  But Sammie’s face was pinched tight with strain. “Every family is awful, Cole. That’s just how it is.”

  Cole’s hand dropped from hers. “What do you mean, every family?” His chest felt tighter.

  Sammie gave a small shrug. “You know how it is. Nobody actually wants to spend time with their family. You just…do it because that’s how it’s done.”

  “I don’t know about that.” His mind flipped back to one of the guys in his squad. Tommy Watts faithfully called his sister every Sunday and seemed to actively look forward to their crackly chats over the satt phone. And no matter the grief the rest of the guys gave him, he just grinned. “I like my family,” Tommy explained.

  “Some people have happy families.” Cole grabbed her hand again. He wasn’t sure why it was so important to him that she believed this.

  She smiled. “You and Devon are happy.”

  Cole searched her face. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She was pretending to relent, but the stiff way she held her neck didn’t fool him.

  He hadn’t convinced her at all.

  “Come on.” She squeezed his hand. “Just get it over with.”

  Though he hated how she’d phrased it, she was right. He was just marking time until it was appropriate to cut the visit short, and what was worse, he knew his parents were doing the same.

  With a heavy sigh, he followed Sammie down the hall to Devon’s room.

  He found his parents standing awkwardly in the middle of Devon’s floor, watching their grandson with expressions of total confusion as he carefully built a stack of books at their feet.

  “These all his?” Cole’s father asked by way of greeting. He gestured to the stack at his feet as if he’d never seen a picture book before.

  “Some are from the library,” Cole said.

  “Gammy, weed dis.” Devon whacked Cole’s mother in the knee with a book on the life cycle of a frog.

  She picked it up with a frown and leafed through it, her eyes going wide. “Cole, this talks about—” She sniffed, then dropped her voice. “Sexual reproduction.”

  “He picked it out.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little…beyond him?” She dragged her finger down the page. “How’s he going to know what this word means?”

  Cole leaned over. “Amphibian? That’s what frogs are.”

  “Cole, he’s two!”

  “And what the hell does he need to know about life cycles for anyway?” his dad piped up. “Can’t tell me that’s exactly practical.”

  Cole took a deep breath and consciously unclenched his fingers. He could feel Sammie watching him carefully, but he couldn’t look at her. Not while the same damn scene that had played out a thousand times when he’d lived under his parents’ roof was now playing out under hers.

  It was too humiliating.

  “He picked it out.”

  “You’re his Daddy.”

  “I’m well aware.” His neck was heating up.

  “It’s your job to prepare him for the real world.” His father’s voice was rising. “Holding down a job, learning real-world skills. That’s what a father’s supposed to do for his boy, not indulge every little whim that comes into his head.”

  “Like your sister’s doing with her boys.”

  Cole narrowed his eyes. “That’s all Richard.” He’d disliked his brother-in-law from the moment he met him. “I bet Nancy wouldn’t mind those boys sitting down and cracking open a book once in a while instead of running from school club meeting to practice from morning to night.”

  His mother went in for the kill. “She’s making sure they have practical skills, Cole. Like Samantha’s daddy did for her.” His mother turned to the stricken-looking Sammie. “Ain’t that right? And now you’ve got that big fancy job because your father did his job as a parent.”

  Cole opened his mouth to tell them to leave Sammie the hell out of this…

  But she beat him to the punch.

  “Cole is doing a wonderful job as a parent,” Sammie snapped. She drew her shoulders back and unleashed the full power of her icy-professor voice. “He’s nurturing Devon’s intellectual curiosity, and Devon is flourishing because of it. He’s reading well above his age level, but that’s not even the important thing. The important thing is that he’s loved and secure enough to know that his father won’t ever keep things from him.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat, then smoothed her hands down her jeans and smiled. “Now,” she continued in a completely altered voice. “Can I fix anyone a plate? Mr. Baker? How about that burger? Cole, why don’t you go start the grill?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He slid past her and headed to the kitchen, feeling like he was a prisoner escaping trial. He was grateful to Sammie for stepping up and defending him, but he hated that she’d had to do it in the first place.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe no family was actually happy. Maybe it was just some fanciful notion he’d gotten in his head—maybe a book had put it there like his parents were always warning him against. His track record sure proved Sammie correct. He’d gone from miserable in his parents’ house to bewildered and confused in the one he’d briefly shared with Trish. The two of them had barely known each other and had been way too young and scared to know what it took to make a family.

  Maybe if they’d had more time together, they might have figured it out. Maybe if he’d stuck around instead of re-upping the first chance he got, they might have muddled through it together.

  But time had robbed him of that chance, and then it robbed him of Trish, and now here he was with Sammie who didn’t even believe they had a chance.

  This morning though? When it was just the three of them?

  He’d believed in the possibility of a happy family.

  And maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could make her believe it, too.

  Fifteen

  It had always been hard to resist Cole Baker. And the more time Sammie spent with him, the harder she found it to tell him no.

  And when he came to her office—forgetting his shirt but remembering to touch the brim of his cowboy hat? There was no possible way she could deny him.

  “I’m sorry to bug you, but there’s no way around it. If I st
op the pump now, it’ll undo everything…” He dragged his hand down his face, leaving a streak of mud in its wake. “I tell you, Sammie, we get two more problems for every one we fix. All that money on the mold mitigation for the bunkhouse, and then a random leaking pipe floods it all over again…”

  He said more, but Sammie was already nodding and saving her work before shutting her laptop. “I’ve got it,” she promised as she grabbed her bag. She stopped to let her fingers flutter across his chest before pressing a kiss to his jaw. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  His reply of, “Darlin’, where’ve you been all my life?” made her weak in the knees, but she didn’t stumble and was perversely proud of that fact.

  His words kept playing in her head the whole way into town, and every time they did, she caught herself smiling. And squirming. And smiling again.

  The cycle of pleasure brought her right to the door of Little Lambs Day care before she forced herself to snap out of it “Pull yourself together, girl,” she hissed at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She was acting like a lovesick teenager.

  Huffing in exasperation, she yanked out her ponytail and re-twisted it into a low bun at the nape of her neck. She was still dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, but at least her hair looked like it belonged to a grown-up. The rest of her just had to follow along.

  She entered the low building and stopped at the office. “Hi, I’m here to pick up Devon Baker? Samantha Jensen. His dad should have called to let you know I was coming.”

  “Oh yes, Ms. Jensen, you’re on the approved pick-up list.”

  Sammie flushed warm with pleasure, and all of a sudden, she was a teenager again. Hair be damned.

  But her happy little reverie was interrupted when Cheryl stepped efficiently over the baby gate that separated the office from the main room. “Oh, Sammie, good to see you again!”

  “Hi, Cheryl. How’s the little guy doing?” Sammie tried not to sound as flustered as she felt.

  Cheryl’s smile was radiant. “I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but he is one special little person. He sat on my lap for a solid forty minutes—forty minutes, do you know how rare it is for a two-year-old to sustain attention that long?—as we went over all the letter sounds. That’s…” She paused. “Pretty advanced.”

  Sammie’s chest swelled with pride. “He’s awfully smart, it’s true. I’m planning on letting him co-teach when I start my classes next fall.” She felt a little deflated at the thought of actually leaving and teaching but brushed it off. “The department might think it’s a little unorthodox, but three isn’t too young to start teaching, right?”

  Cheryl laughed. “Maybe let him get potty-trained first.”

  Sammie blushed. “Right. I, uh…is it obvious I don’t know much about kids?”

  Cheryl’s expression softened. “At this stage, all you’ve got to do is love on them as much as you both can stand.” She gestured towards the room. “That and keeping up with the need for snacks is really the bulk of it.”

  Sammie patted her purse. “I have snacks.”

  “Then you’ve got this.” Cheryl’s hand brushed her shoulder. “He told me a long story about Bammie today.”

  Sammie could hardly form words around the lump in her throat. “Yeah?”

  “Devon!” Cheryl called as she stepped over the gate. “Look who it is! Bammie’s here!”

  “Bammie!” Devon’s legs were a blur as he barreled across the room. Without even thinking about it, Sammie dropped to her knees and caught him up in a tight hug. She inhaled his toddler scent—Goldfish dust and baby shampoo—and closed her eyes. “Hey, little man.”

  “Hold you,” he ordered.

  “You want me to hold you?” She pushed herself upright and awkwardly lifted his bulk into her arms. “Oof, buddy. You’re a chunk!”

  “Bammie pay fishies.”

  “What?”

  “He wants to show you the fishing game,” Cheryl explained. “He’s pretty cutthroat.” She led Sammie over another gate and into the toddler area. Devon wiggled to get down and rushed over to the shelf and returned with a small board game.

  “Oh my gosh, I remember this!” Sammie exclaimed when she saw the retro game. “You hold the little pole over the pond and try to drop it into the fish’s mouth, right?”

  “You got it.” She and Cheryl watched as Devon demonstrated. He missed more fish than he could pick up but didn’t seem to mind.

  “I have to write this down.” Sammie pulled her pad from her purse.

  “Making your Christmas list already?” Cheryl teased gently.

  Sammie shook her head. “I write everything down. Has to be pen and paper—I could never get the hang of apps.”

  “I do that with my grocery list.” Cheryl leaned over, blatantly reading over Sammie’s shoulder. “Fishy game, Call Judge, Cole, Fence?” she read.

  Sammie reddened and tucked the pad back in her purse. “Things I have to remember to do.”

  “You have to remember to do Cole?” Cheryl dropped her voice to a whisper as she widened her eyes suggestively to Sammie.

  “No, I—!”

  “I’m only teasing you, Sammie.” Her eyebrows waggled. “I think you can remember what you need to do with that man even without the note.”

  This was mortifying. But in a strange way, Sammie was grateful for the chance to actually talk about Cole with someone. Even if it was a woman she’d known since she was little. “I wrote it down because—” She huffed out a sigh. “Well to remind me I have to do…something. But it’s getting harder to figure out what that something is.” She looked down at Devon, who’d already started a new round of the fishy game, and felt that swelling in her chest again.

  “Must be nice,” Cheryl mused. “Being back home again, right?”

  “It is.” It was the first time Sammie really let herself say that aloud.

  “Bitter Ridge is such a special place. Do you remember my parents dragging me along whenever we’d come to your dinner parties?”

  To Sammie’s surprise, she suddenly did. “I always loved your outfits but was too shy to say anything.”

  “Well, I always loved your mom’s cooking. My mother—bless her heart, she tried, but she could burn a pot full of water. Never understood how she managed it, but I was so jealous of you getting to eat those pies your mama always seemed to be making.”

  Sammie swallowed and nodded. “She was good at that.”

  “She made that place the center of town, even though you’re way outside the edge of it.” Cheryl laughed. “And now you’re here making sure that legacy keeps going, hiring on new hands, giving Cole’s little guy here a happy home to grow up in. It’s really nice to have Bitter Ridge running again.”

  Sammie narrowed her eyes. But there was nothing in Cheryl’s expression or tone that implied she wanted something from Sammie. Or wanted to force Sammie’s hand. In fact, there was nothing about her that implied she was doing anything other than just being…nice.

  “I’m not sure how well I’m doing,” Sammie said slowly. “But it’s getting harder and harder to think of leaving when everything is settled.”

  Cheryl squeezed her arm. And then pulled her into a tight hug.

  Sammie stiffened. But slowly, she gave in to the embrace and hugged Cheryl back.

  “Don’t give up,” Cheryl whispered, patting her back. “You’re a smart girl; you’ll figure it all out.”

  Sammie swallowed and nodded. She wasn’t sure if she believed Cheryl.

  But she wanted to believe her.

  And that was both a surprise and a relief.

  “You need to talk it out more, here’s my number,” Cheryl said, once she’d released Sammie. “Coffee or a piece of pie sometime. Don’t worry, I didn’t inherit my mama’s prowess in the kitchen. Thank heavens it skipped a generation.”

  Sammie laughed and accepted the torn scrap of paper with Cheryl’s number on it. “My mama’s kitchen skills seemed to have skipped a generation as well. If I call
you, maybe you could teach me?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Come on. I’ll help you get little Mr. Baker strapped into his seat.”

  Sixteen

  Cole was still running the pump in the flooded bunkhouse when his text message alert went off.

  He cranked the shutoff valve and wiped his hands on a rag. Today could go straight to hell, he thought to himself before pulling his phone from his pocket. If Sammie was having trouble at Little Lambs, she probably would have called instead of texted, but it never hurt to be sure.

  On the screen was the last thing he’d ever expected to see. A text message from his sister.

  Nancy: Mom says she dropped by last Saturday and that you and Devon are settling in well.

  The last one he’d received from her was one wishing Devon a happy second birthday and that was over four months ago now. What did she want? She wasn’t even asking a direct question, just…reporting. Letting him know that she and Mom talked about him behind his back.

  “Great,” Cole muttered and used the rag to mop the sweat from his forehead. For one brief second, he wished he hadn’t sent Sammie away, so that she could be here to read this over his shoulder and use that big brain of hers to tell him what the hell it was supposed to mean.

  But he couldn’t use Sammie as a shield forever. With a heavy sigh, he typed in his reply.

  Cole: Hey Nan, yeah thanks, things are going well

  Her reply came back so fast he wondered if she’d already typed it in.

  Nancy: We miss Devon

  Cole swallowed.

  Cole: Yeah?

  Nancy: Would you two like to swing by for lunch?

  Cole growled softly.

  Cole: When?

  Nancy: How’s this weekend?

  Cole growled again. Another weekend eaten up with his family instead of spent with his head between Sammie’s legs. This was getting to be an all too frequent occurrence.

  Cole: Sure, that sounds fine.

  He paused and thought for a second.

  Cole: Is Richard working?

  He stared at the screen as the little dots appeared, disappeared, and then reappeared. Finally, Nancy’s blithe answer popped up.