Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

I NACH, Angel texted as she got back behind the wheel of her SUV. Over the past month since she and Henry had started seeing each other, they’d devised little ways to communicate secretly. If someone else saw either of their phones, they wouldn’t know what their cryptic messages meant.

INACH meant I need a cowboy hug . It also told Henry that Angel was on her way to town, where he should be already.

He had been tasked that morning to go to town and pick up their supplies—a whole load of feed, some tools they had taken in for repair, and more. He was not expected on the ranch until evening. When Angel had discovered that, she’d urged her brother and father to put in their grocery orders, claiming she was out of cream for her coffee and all of her oatmeal cream pies. She simply had to go that afternoon. She’d told her daddy, “I just need a break from this place,” to get him to order faster. That excuse had started working with everyone in her life.

Now that she’d started to restructure some things, she hadn’t done roll call in a month—five or six weeks, actually. But she had gotten up last Friday and announced that there would be more positions opening up at Lone Star.

She’d said she wanted a farrier to apply for the job of a foreman position—and that this new position would co-foreman with Justin Owens, who already ran the horseman side of things.

She’d met with Justin previously, and he was ready to work with someone, help her with the interviews, and go through the applications with her.

She’d announced they would be promoting into three new captain positions and three new team lead positions that didn’t currently exist. She was looking for two welcome greeters—new positions that also didn’t exist. That made eight new positions on the ranch, plus the foreman.

Nine new positions, and Angel’s vision went a bit blurry at the thought of it all. She barely had twice that many men working at Lone Star right now.

The buzz in the group that day had been astronomical, and Angel had hidden in her office for the rest of the day. In the subsequent days, applications had been coming in, and Angel filled her time scheduling meetings, talking to Justin, and laying out applications. She liked to see them all side by side as she considered certain personality traits and skills.

Applications were due by five p.m. today, but she didn’t have to be present to take them. Men could put them on her desk, give them to Trevor, hand them to Justin, or leave them at the house.

So she sent a text saying she would be off the ranch for the afternoon, getting groceries in town. If anyone needed anything, they could let her know. Often, a cowboy would need a dozen eggs here and there as they ran out, and she expected to get several texts as she drove to Amarillo.

Her phone beeped with Henry’s text, and she glanced at it. It said, I got you , with a smiley face. She loved how he added emojis to his texts since she’d told him she liked it.

They’d met several times in secret locations around the ranch, once earlier this week in her office with the door closed. Henry had pressed her there and kissed her for a good long while before she said, “I didn’t ask you here to kiss me.”

And he’d said, in his lilting teasing-cowboy tone, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought that’s why I came.”

She warmed up just thinking about it. She had asked him to come. She had wanted to kiss him, but really, she wanted to know if he was going to apply for any of the positions.

“Absolutely,” he’d said. “I’m going to apply for all of them.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s good.”

“That’s why you called me here?” He kissed her again. “I really think you called me just to kiss me.”

And so they did that for a while, and then Henry slipped out, leaving Angel breathless and hot. She’d taken a walk out on the ranch for a good long half-hour so she’d have a reason to be sweaty and red-faced.

Now, she made the drive to town and parked on the side of the grocery store in the shade. She did have pickup orders to get, and she checked her phone. She had five or six items she needed to run into the store to get for the cowboys at Lone Star, but really, she and Henry were here for a date.

She’d once seen the cowboy filling up plastic clamshell containers of food from the hot bar and the salad bar here at the gourmet grocery store in Amarillo. She liked their food too, and when he suggested they meet there one day, Angel started trying to figure out how to make it happen.

Their little secret relationship had definitely been finessed. She’d suggested to Henry to come this afternoon to get all their supplies, pick up their feed, and get their tools, and he had taken it and run with it.

She didn’t see the big farm truck that Henry had driven. He was picking up a lot of feed today, as well as salt blocks for the horses, and he wouldn’t be driving his personal vehicle. She turned off her car and started to get her purse together, stick her phone in, and take her sunglasses off. Then she turned to get out of the car.

Someone stood in the space between her car and the one next to her, and she grunted in surprise, her adrenaline high and her fight reflex up immediately. A man’s hand wrapped around her wrist and pinned it against the car. He leaned down and kissed her.

And oh, Angel knew this kiss. She knew the shape of this mouth. She knew the taste of Henry Marshall.

She relaxed into the kiss as Henry’s arm swept along her waist and brought her flush against his body. They stood in public, so he didn’t go on too long. When he pulled away, he said, “Took you long enough to get here,” in that devilish, flirtatious tone that he’d perfected.

“I texted you when I left,” she said.

“Yeah, and I mapped you the whole way.” He drew her into his chest and whispered, “Here’s your cowboy hug, sweetheart.”

She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his pulse, and enjoyed the way they fit together. They hadn’t had too many serious conversations yet. They were only six weeks into a secret relationship that no one else knew about. Angel hadn’t even brought it up with Trevor again.

“You good?”

“Yes.” Angel exhaled. “Thanks, baby.” She looked at him, and Henry cupped her face in one of his big hands.

“You’re calling me baby now?”

Angel smiled at him. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it.”

“I do like it,” he said. “I want you to say it again.”

Angel absolutely would not say it again. Not right there. Not just because he told her to. She pressed her palm against his chest to get him to back up. “I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

He chuckled and gave her room. She moved out of the doorway of her car, closed the door, locked it, and they went into the store together. They both went down the bar, filling their clamshells with whatever they wanted.

The grocery store had tables in the back corner where they could sit. A few people sat there, but no one Angel knew, thankfully. She didn’t expect anyone from the farm to catch them. When she sat down with her soup and her salad, Henry slid onto the other side with his hot food and salad too.

“Are you going to text your momma?” she asked.

He whipped his phone out. “Yes, ma’am.” He snapped a picture of the veggies, his thumbs then flying over his screen. That done, he set his device aside and picked up a plastic fork.

“I started making a new employee handbook,” she said, forking up a slice of cucumber with her lettuce.

“Is that so?” He took a bite of his teriyaki chicken and rice. “What’s going to be new about the handbook?”

“New rules,” she said. “Some new procedures for our welcome greeters, that kind of stuff. All the new positions, what they do, the teams, scheduling, and new roles on the ranch.”

He swallowed and kept his gaze on his hot lunch. “You going to take out the rule about not dating on-site?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s already out.”

“Have you showed it to your daddy?”

“No.” She stabbed a grape tomato doused in ranch and put it in her mouth. Henry looked up at her, barely meeting her eyes from underneath the brim of his cowboy hat. She knew what he wanted, but at the same time, she wasn’t ready to give it.

“Everyone will know eventually,” she said. “The new employee handbook is going to come out at the same time as the promotion announcements.”

He said, “And what do you think cowboys will think when they find out we’ve been kissing, and you promoted me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And who says you’re going to get a promotion?”

“Maybe I won’t,” Henry said. “It all feels knotted up.” He leaned back in the booth. “I’m just going to shoot straight with you, sweetheart.”

“As if you haven’t in the past,” she said dryly.

He didn’t smile. He’d hitched a mask in place she couldn’t see through. “If I get a promotion, I want to get it because I’m good. I want to get it because of my merit. I want to get it because I deserve it, not because I’m your boyfriend.”

“Of course,” Angel said.

“If I don’t get a promotion, it’s because I didn’t deserve it, I’m not ready, or there are more qualified men on the ranch. Not because we’re breaking the rules, and I’m your boyfriend.”

She nodded. “It is a little bit knotted, isn’t it?”

“It’s completely twisted up,” he said. “Who’s picking all the promotions?”

“Me and Daddy and Justin for some, and me, Trevor, and Daddy for others.”

“So you’re gonna have other opinions besides yours when you look at my application?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay. Then I’m gonna stop worrying about this. I’ll let it go.”

“Okay.” She marveled that Henry could compartmentalize like that. He could let things go and stop worrying about them once he knew the parameters of how things operated. She wished she could be a little bit more like that, but she wasn’t.

“I’m starting horseback riding lessons again.” She took another bite of her salad. “I’m real happy about that.”

“I am too, sweetheart.” He gave her a nice smile. “That’s great. I think you’ll enjoy that.”

“Were you ever at Lone Star when I did the lessons?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I think that was before my time.”

“It probably was.” They ate a little bit more, and then Angel looked at him and said in the boldest voice she had, “I want another date on the calendar.”

“All right,” Henry said easily. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to find a way for us to finesse a night out on the town,” she said.

“It might be hard for us to both be gone in the evening.”

“I want dinner at a nice restaurant, and I want to go to a movie or a show with you. And I want you to buy me dessert after.”

Henry chuckled. “You’re not demanding or anything.”

She laughed too. “You can plan the date. But I want to go out with you.”

“We are out right now,” he said.

“We’re at the grocery store,” she said. “And you’ve done a ton of errands, and so have I.”

“We’re still out.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “I guess I just want something….” She trailed off, but Henry seemed to be able to read her mind.

“Romantic. You want something romantic. You want me to be your boyfriend, and you want me to act like it.”

She read his eyes, nothing wavering there. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I want.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll start working on it.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll work it out, just like we worked out this afternoon.”

She nodded. She’d finished eating, and so had Henry. They cleaned up their clamshells, and Henry took hers from her to take it to the trash.

When he returned to the booth, Angel had just gotten to her feet. “You got stuff you gotta get here, sweetheart?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Some cowboys called in last-minute things.”

“Me too,” he said. “I’m out of chocolate-covered pretzels and red licorice.”

She laughed. “You and your obsession with red licorice.”

“As if you don’t have an obsession with oatmeal cream pies,” he said.

“That was my excuse to come to town,” she said with a giggle. “So we have to make sure we get a bunch of those.” Another text came in, this one from Trevor, and she looked at it and added, “Oh, Trevor forgot to put butter on his list.”

Henry grabbed a cart, and they walked around the grocery store together, putting items in that they or the cowboys at the ranch needed. It felt like a very domestic thing to do, something Angel would do with a partner, a spouse.

As she and Henry checked out, she gave him a furtive glance.

He gave it right back to her. “What’s that for?”

“Can grocery shopping be considered romantic?” She threw a look toward the cashier, but she seemed engrossed in weighing the green grapes she’d gotten for Shad.

Henry swept his arm around her and pulled her into his side. “Of course it can be.” He kissed her temple and then her cheek. He took the change from the cashier and started toward the door with their groceries.

Angel followed him, and stood back as he loaded her groceries into the back of her car. “I have to text to get the pickup orders.” She looked at him, wishing they’d just arrived at the grocery store. “I don’t want to go so soon, but I’ve got stuff in the car that needs to be in the fridge.”

Henry took her face in both of his hands and kissed her again right there in the parking lot. “I’m gonna come over tonight.”

“You’re going to come over tonight?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll make sure no one sees me. Once I get in your house, no one will know I’m there.”

“What are you going to tell Levi?” she asked, still trying to think through the excitement of his kiss and what he’d said at the same time.

His face looked blank for a moment, and then strong determination came into his jaw. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to come over tonight.” He kissed her again, his lips sliding down and touching her neck.

“Because I miss you, Angel. And I want to see you every day. I want to talk more about what you want your life to be, hear more about your horseback riding lessons, and find out if you want to have kids, or if you want to stay at Lone Star, or if you’ve got other big dreams and things that I can help you achieve.”

She sure liked the sound of all of that. She threaded her fingers through Henry’s hair and guided his mouth back to hers. She kissed him this time, and Henry let her lead the way, stroke for stroke. When she pulled away, they stayed close, their breath mingling.

“I would love a slow evening with you at my house.”

“We do need to slow down,” he said.

She wasn’t sure if he meant the amount of kissing they did or if life was just hectic right now. For Angel, she was implementing a lot of changes at Lone Star. She had a lot of work in front of her before she could establish the nine new positions that would alleviate a lot of her stress.

“Yeah,” she said. “I need you to help me slow down tonight.”

“I’ll be there,” he said. “I don’t know when, okay? But I’m gonna be there.”

“Okay.” With great difficulty, she took herself out of his arms and got in her car. He pushed the cart down the long row to where he’d parked the big ranch truck, and Angel sighed.

Yes, they’d just eaten from a salad bar in a grocery store, and they’d only walked around and bought a few things, but it had felt intimate. It felt like something friends did, something she’d do with someone she trusted, someone she could just walk around casually with and be comfortable with.

Angel needed that level of comfort and friendship in her life, and she had just pulled out of the stall when she got a text from her momma that said, If you’re still at the store, I need more canning lids for strawberry jam.

Angel let out a sigh, pulled back into her parking space, and went to get the canning supplies. She could weather anything today. She could wrestle any challenge to the ground. She could shoulder anything—because Henry was coming over tonight.