Chapter 3

Chapter Three

H enry pulled up to his cousin’s house a couple of minutes early. But in his family, a couple of minutes early meant he was ten minutes late. Finn had the cutest little log cabin set against a beautiful Texas ranch landscape. He had a barn and a stable off to the right, but Henry couldn’t see them now that he parked in front of the house alongside the other trucks that had already arrived.

He looked up to the log cabin with its front door right in the middle and two smiling windows on the side. He wondered what he’d find behind them. His friends, of course, his cousin, and they’d all welcome him happily with smiles and open arms. There would be good food and lots of laughter, and hopefully Henry wouldn’t have to make too many explanations.

He glanced over to Angel. “You ready for this?”

“Sure,” she said after taking a deep breath. She let it out as she continued to look at the house, and Henry noted that she would not look at him. He wondered what she was thinking, what explanations he’d have to give, and how she’d react to them.

Her blond hair and blue eyes accentuated her frilly dress. Henry found himself wanting this to be a real date. They’d had a great dinner with easy conversation because he’d deliberately kept it light. He asked her nothing about Lone Star, nothing about her dad, and nothing about her mama. He could tell she didn’t want to talk about those things. In fact, those were the things that she was trying to escape.

Henry wanted to be that escape for her. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

He got out of the truck and went around to help her down. But of course, Angel, in her strong-willed glory, opened the door before he got there.

“Hey,” he said. “I can come help you down.”

She glanced at him, finally. “I know, but I can get out of the car just fine myself.”

“Yes,” he said. “But it’s what proper gentlemen do on dates.”

She glared at him now, and he at least knew that she was feeling something inside. Of course she is , he thought to himself. She has thoughts and feelings—a lot of them. That’s why she sobbed into her hands right in front of you.

Still, he offered her his elbow, and she laced her fingers through it while he pushed her door closed.

“All right,” he said. “Don’t get overwhelmed. There are only eight people inside. I’m related to some of them. Others I’ve just known for years, grew up with here in Three Rivers.”

He glanced over to her as they started up the steps. “Did you ever come to Three Rivers growing up?”

“No,” she said. “Not much. Maybe to the light parade for New Year’s Eve. My family usually shopped in Amarillo. Sometimes we’d go up to Oklahoma for holidays and stuff. My granny lives up there.”

Henry nodded, noting the bit about her grandmother, which she had not shared with him previously. “Three Rivers is a great little town. We’d go fishing, and hiking, and hunting. Of course, there’s always work to do on the ranch.”

“Always,” Angel murmured.

Henry arrived at the front door and knocked. Then he opened the door without waiting for someone to tell him to come in. Everyone else was here, after all, and certainly, he didn’t need to wait for Finn or Edith to come get the door.

He entered and found all eight adults standing in the back of the house around the island, which was probably laden with leftovers, snacks, and desserts.

A baby shrieked, and Henry’s eyes went over to the little boy sitting in a brightly-colored play seat. His arms flailed and his fists hit the plastic toys attached to the tray in front of him. Henry lit up then, because he could distract himself with a baby.

“Hey, you,” he said, moving over to the little boy. “Angel, this is Theo.” As he said those words, all conversation in the room stopped. All eyes came to him as he bent down and pulled Theo from the play seat.

He held the chunky baby boy who was blond, not so much like him, as Henry’s mama had real dark hair. But both Finn and Edith both came from lighter stock than him, and Theo looked just like them.

He turned toward the kitchen, the weight of eight sets of eyes so heavy. Henry never had any problem talking to women. He’d never struggled introducing women to other people. In fact, he’d brought a complete stranger to Link’s wedding—and that had been their only date.

“Guys,” he said. “This is Angel White. Angel.” He half-turned back to her. “This is everyone. I’ll go around and say all their names, but I don’t expect you to remember them. If y’all would just raise your hand when I say your name, maybe she’ll be able to associate your face with your name.”

He smiled as the little boy grabbed onto the edge of his cowboy hat. He pulled the hat off and took it away from Theo, then looked over to his friends again. Finn had come forward, of course.

“My cousin, Finn,” he said. “He’s married to Edith.” She raised her hand dutifully. Henry bounced the little boy. “This is their little baby, Theo. He’s, what, nine or ten months now?”

“Ten,” Edith said.

“Lincoln and Misty Glover are here,” Henry continued. They both raised their hands. “Link works a ranch south of Three Rivers. It’s quite a drive for him to get here, so we always appreciate when he decides to come up north.”

Link chuckled and shook his head, and Misty simply beamed with all the strawberry-blonde radiance she possessed.

“And then we’ve got Dawson and Caroline,” Henry said, smiling at the cowboy he’d known for years. “They’re not married yet. Engaged, getting married in, what, two weeks? Three weeks?”

“Three weeks,” Dawson said, glancing over to Caroline, a lovey-dovey smile on his face. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and it was very clear who they were, even though neither of them had raised their hands.

“Dawson and Caroline, wedding in three weeks,” Henry said with a big smile. He handed Theo to Edith as the little boy started to fuss. She took him and soothed him, then put him right back in his seat, where she handed him a few pieces of cereal, which he went after immediately.

“And last but not least,” Henry said. “We have Ollie and Aurora Walker. Ollie works at a tech company over in the high-rise buildings in Three Rivers, and they have three little kids.”

Aurora moved forward out of all of them and said, “Oh, it’s so nice to meet you. You’re Henry’s boss, right?”

Henry had not conveyed that tidbit of information. He wondered how Aurora had known that. Of course, Finn probably knew, as did all of Henry’s brothers, and Henry’s aunt and uncle obviously knew. But he had not called Finn and told him he was bringing Angel. He’d only called his mother.

“Yes,” Angel said, shaking Aurora’s hand. “Henry and I work together at Lone Star.” She glanced over at him, a fond smile on her face that he had never seen before. At least, not aimed in his direction. “He’s a great farrier, one of our team leads.”

“Is that right?” Ollie said as he came forward. “So great to meet you. Welcome to game night.”

“We’re just having snacks,” Finn said, glancing at Henry. His eyes said so much more than his mouth, and Henry wanted to run to him, hug him, and say, thank you for not making this a big deal .

He just needed someone to come with him to game night, and Levi had been sick. Angel was not special, despite the fact that she would go out with him if he could ask. He didn’t want to figure that out right now, so he clapped his hands together and said, “What are we playing tonight?”

He moved over to the counter to see what snacks they had, his taste buds dancing for something sweet. “Oh, I love these lemon bars.” He took in the pan of beautifully baked bars, nostalgia hitting him hard.

“You like sour things in your desserts?” Angel asked as she stepped to his side.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sweet and tart go great together, and this one’s got a little bit of salt in the crust.” He glanced over to Edith. “At least, if it’s my momma’s recipe, it does.”

Edith smiled at him. “It’s your mom’s recipe.”

Henry beamed at her. “Look at you, being all domestic with the baking.”

She grinned back at him. “I can do it, sometimes. If I have to.” She bumped him with her hip and added, “Come on, you guys. Now that Henry and Angel are here, let’s gather around the table.”

“We can bring the snacks over, right?” Misty asked.

“Sure,” Edith said as she picked up a bowl of popcorn that had M&M’s in it.

“Absolutely,” Finn said. “Nobody can play games without snacks on the table.” He turned to Angel. “I can barely stand to play when there are snacks.”

“Hey,” Edith said. “You like games.”

“Do I?” Finn pulled out a chair and sat down, his eyes hooking into his wife’s as he did.

“Absolutely you do,” Edith said, her voice a bit on the grumpy side. “We host these game nights every quarter. If you don’t like game nights, what are we doing?”

He laughed and said, “I like game night well enough. Like Link, I like getting out of my house at night.”

Henry had always enjoyed that too. “Tell me about it,” he said as he followed the others to the big dining room table. “When I was living in the dorms going to farrier school, I couldn’t stand staying home at night. I had to get out of there.”

Angel’s piercing blue gaze fixed on him. “Ah, is that why you had to get out at night?” She rolled her eyes, half amused, half annoyed, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Those places were small, and man, some guys didn’t like to shower right away.” He shook his head as he pulled out a seat for Angel and nodded to it with his chin.

She dutifully came and sat down, and he helped her push her chair in before he took a seat next to her. “I had to get out of there. My spirit’s a little restless. I don’t like sitting home at night.”

“It’s really true,” Finn said. “We could never get Henry to slow down. If we put a movie on and his mama said, ‘Park it right there and watch this,’ he would. But within ten minutes, he’d be up tying rope or looking for a pocketknife. Or he was always trying to do something on the computer.”

Henry chuckled but couldn’t deny it. He simply shrugged like this was normal. For him, it totally was.

“All right,” Rory said. “We brought the game tonight, and y’all are gonna love it.” She had something hidden behind her back, and she pulled it out and yelled, “Charades!”

Henry groaned along with several others. He hated charades, and he wasn’t one who liked the spotlight on him.

“Well, it’s not really charades,” Ollie said as he took the box from Aurora. “You can draw it, you can act it out, you can do all kinds of things. You just can’t say certain words, right?”

“Right,” Rory said. “It’s really fun to play in teams. Like, you can play with your partner, and everybody has to guess, and you try to get more than the rest of the group.”

Henry had no idea what that meant, but he looked over to Angel. He sure did like the word “partner” when it came to her—as long as they were talking life partner and not something like work partner or chemistry final partner . He raised his eyebrows. “Charades?”

Angel grinned like she had just stepped onto the greatest stage of her life and was ready for it. “I love charades.”

Henry could only stare at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not kidding,” she said. “Trevor and I would play with my cousins when we were younger, and I always won.” Henry would’ve found the competitive streak in her eyes, even if she hadn’t warned him about it on the way here.

“All right,” he said with half a laugh. “Let’s see how this goes.”

He sat back and listened to the others squabble about how to form teams and whether they could really do two-person teams, one person performing for another while the other eight people tried to get as many clues as them.

“That doesn’t really seem fair,” Finn said. “There’s no way one person can get as many as seven other people.”

“Yes,” Rory said. “Because it’s your partner . It’s someone who knows you really well.”

Henry raised his hand and said, “I think that’s totally unfair for me and Angel. We’re not even dating. We’re not together. She’s not my partner.”

That once again brought all eyes to him. He glanced over to Angel, heat creeping into his face. “I mean, she came, because we both needed an escape from the ranch, and I knew I needed a partner to come tonight, or I’d have had to cancel.”

“You could’ve come alone,” Edith said.

Finn gave her a stern look and said, “No, this is a couples night.”

“Well, he’s come with Brandon before,” Link said. “What? Are they a couple?” He chuckled lightly. “I don’t think so.”

Henry pointed to him. “That’s my point. But it’s another person, and I would be at a disadvantage with Brandon too. He’s also not my partner.”

Angel sat there silently, her hands clasped neatly in her lap, looking like the gorgeous heavenly being she was. She didn’t dispute that she wasn’t dating Henry, that they weren’t together, that she wasn’t his partner, and that only made his frown deepen.

“All right, all right,” Oliver said. “What about men against women?”

“Oh, I like this idea,” Misty said.

“Yep, this is a good idea.” Rory grinned as if she’d just won the lottery, and Edith edged her chair a little bit closer to Angel.

“I think we’re going to wipe the floor clean with you guys,” she said. “All right, you cowboys. Move to the other side. Ladies over here. Let’s go. Everyone move.”

Everybody shifted around until the five men sat on one side of the table, with their ladies on the other. Henry sat directly across from Angel, and he grinned at her with all he had. She smiled back, and she seemed to be twinkling like all the stars in heaven.

He sure hoped tonight and this weekend would be an excellent escape for her from the pressures and anxieties and worries of her professional—and personal—life at Lone Star Ranch.

Not only that, but Henry thanked the Good Lord above that he had been the one to provide this escape for her, and he hoped that when she needed another one, she would text or call him.

In fact, he made a mental note to check-in with her more often to make sure she was okay, so that if she needed even an hour off the ranch, he would be the one to drive her to Amarillo to get her favorite soda. Eat a hamburger. Or just go sit somewhere that wasn’t Lone Star-owned, so that she could find the peace and serenity that she so richly deserved.

A couple of hours later, Henry couldn’t stop laughing as he drove down the dirt road and around the bend toward his childhood home at Three Rivers Ranch. “I have never seen someone so animated during a game,” he said, bursting into another round of laughter. “You should’ve seen yourself. It was incredible.”

She laughed with him, and they’d been having a great time ever since they’d arrived at Finn’s. Good food, ice cream, the best company, no awkward questions, and an amazing game.

“Hey, it was life or death,” she said through her giggles. “We were only up by two points, and I knew you guys were gonna close in on that round.”

Henry said, “Well, you cinched it with that last one. You were standing up. I’ve never seen—you’re a petite woman, but your arms were flailing. You almost hit Edith in the face, like, four times.” He laughed again, really filling the cab of his truck with the sound.

Angel sucked in a breath and said, “Oh, I’m so embarrassed.”

“Why?” he asked. “You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m too competitive. I was like this growing up too. And my daddy kept telling me, ‘You have got to find a way to curb this because you’re not gonna have any friends as an adult.’”

Henry grinned. “I really liked it. I think my friends really liked you too. Don’t even worry about it. Nobody got hit in the head.”

“Yeah,” she said, and then she sighed happily. “Thank you, Henry. This was amazing.”

A deep sense of contentment descended on him as he rounded the corner and the night sky became brighter because of the streetlights and house lights on the ranch.

“Yeah, no problem,” he said easily, because it was no problem. He’d had a great night too—dinner with a beautiful woman, game night with his friends. They all laughed with her, accepted her into their fold, chatted with her about her life, and enjoyed treats together. What was wrong with that?

“Well, here we are,” he said. “This is Three Rivers Ranch. My daddy’s place is right here on the right. That’s where I grew up.” He paused before turning down the long driveway. “Big equine therapy unit right here.”

He nodded forward to the huge glass-front building that was Courage Reins. “My daddy gets nonprofit funding from different organizations around the country, some even up in Canada. He helps veterans, people who have been in accidents, special needs children and adults. All kinds.”

“They come for therapy?”

“Heck, sometimes I just like to go out there with the horses and play ball with them. Tell them all my troubles, walk around the fields with them.” He quieted, thinking of his time with the therapy horses. He did love horses with his whole soul, and they were the best listeners on the planet.

“We can go out tomorrow if you want,” he said. “My daddy will probably have appointments in the afternoon, but he doesn’t do anything in the morning because they go to church.”

Angel didn’t say much for a beat or two either, and then she asked, “Do you go to church, Henry?”

He kept looking down the road toward the chicken coops and the long row of stables and the barn that he couldn’t see, and the administration building for Three Rivers Ranch where he’d worked one summer with his uncle. Ah, Three Rivers Ranch.

“I have in the past,” he said after a minute. “It’s not a priority right now. I’m still trying to find my feet under me at Lone Star, trying to figure out where I belong there, who my friends are, all that.”

“You’re friends with everyone,” Angel said. “I’ve seen you. Everyone loves you.”

“Well, that’s not really true,” Henry said. “Appearances can be a little deceiving.”

She scoffed. “I don’t believe that. You’re charismatic, you’re strong, you’re kind, you’re knowledgeable. What’s not to like?”

“Maybe the part where I boss everyone around,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s fine. I know who I am. I’m trying to be the best version of myself. Levi and I get along real great, but he doesn’t go to church, and I just haven’t really found my way back there.”

“Yeah, it’s quite the drive,” she said quietly.

“It is. You go with your folks, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Every week.”

He looked over at her. “It doesn’t sound like you really like it.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I mean, it’s—yeah, it’s fine.”

Henry didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t know how to press it further. He didn’t want to press Angel anywhere right now. It was late. He told his mom they’d be in by ten-thirty, and it was ten-twenty-four. He needed to simply get down the lane, get Angel in bed, and then he could pace in his bedroom and try to figure out what to do after that.

“Anyway, another family friend who worked here at Three Rivers for a long time bought up some land on the left here. That’s Bowman’s Breeds. She trains barrel racing horses.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Angel said. “I did barrel racing for a year or two in high school.”

“Did you?” Henry asked. “I would not pick you for the rodeo type of woman.”

Angel laughed lightly. “That’s why I did it for a year or two, cowboy.”

Henry laughed with her and then, out of habit, put his blinker on to turn right. Feeling like a complete fool, he switched it off again and muttered to himself, “I don’t know why I did that,” and then made the turn to go down the lane toward his childhood home.

“My brother is down in the Hill Country,” he said. “His girlfriend’s parents live down there, and he’s meetin’ them this weekend.”

“Wow,” Angel said.

“Yeah.” Henry took in the house as they drew closer. He wasn’t sure why he’d told Angel about Paul. It didn’t matter. He was simply supremely glad that he didn’t have to deal with his brother—and Angel—this weekend.

“My mom loves stained glass,” he said. “You can’t see it right now, but in the morning, the front window and the front door have beautiful stained glass that my daddy put in when he built this house for her. It’s real beautiful.”

“Your daddy built this house for your mama?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Henry said. “Yep. Before he even asked her to marry him, he started building it. Figured if he was going to live here, his best friend’s sister might as well live here with him since he was in love with her and all.” He grinned. “They have a beautiful love story. They’re really fun most of the time.”

“Yeah, they seemed nice when I met them when you moved in.”

“You met them when I moved in?”

“Just your momma,” she said. “I mean, I saw your daddy, but I didn’t meet him. I still don’t even know their names.”

“Pete and Chelsea,” he said quietly as he came to a stop in front of the closed garage. “Momma will be up waiting for us. I don’t know who else will be. Daddy gets up real early, and the other kids aren’t even living here.”

“Okay,” Angel said.

Henry got out, not even bothering to go around and open her door this time. He moved to the back passenger seat to get his overnight bag with his clothes and toiletries. He looked up into the night sky as Angel’s door slammed.

“Dear God,” he whispered. “Please don’t let this be a disaster.” He didn’t know what else to ask for, but he figured that was good enough. He probably would have to give his momma and daddy a lot more answers than he’d given his friends, but not tonight. He could at least buy himself a few more hours before he would find himself out in the stables bright and early with his daddy.

But for right now, he met Angel at the front of his truck, took her hand, squeezed it, and then, as he entered the house through the kitchen entrance, he let go of her hand and softly called, “Momma?”

She rose from the couch, her face illuminated with the blue light from her phone. Henry reached for the light and snapped it on. His mom grinned and said, “There you are,” in the most pleasant, kind voice ever. Henry loved coming home. In fact, there was nothing he liked more, and he hoped Angel would be able to feel the comfort, peace, and love of his parents while she was here with him this weekend.