Page 36 of The Cowboy Who Came Home

“You told me to four times.” The plastic bag rustled as he started rifling through it. “I figured I’d be dead if I showed up without it.”

“I didn’t tell you four times.”

“You so did,” he said. “I got that same text four times.”

“That was a glitch then.”

“Sure,” he said with plenty of sarcasm. He handed her a white Chinese container and a pair of chopsticks. “Cashew chicken. I’ll take Alex his, and we can drone after we eat.”

“Is drone a verb?” she teased him as he got to his feet.

“You’re the author,” he said. “You should know that.” He flashed her a sexy, playful smile as he turned and took Alex’s food into the house. She heard them talking behind her, but she flipped open her cashew chicken and took a bite.

Sure is nice to have someone to call for help, she thought. And Finn had come, bringing all the things she and Alex needed. The drone. Lunch.

And as he settled next to her on the steps again and said, “I got the orange chicken, and I’d be willing to share if you let me have your fortune cookie,” Edith thought the best thing he’d brought was himself.

“I don’t even like fortune cookies,” she said with a smile. “So that’s a done deal.”

“You don’t like fortune cookies?” He scoffed and used his chopsticks to move a chunk of orange chicken from his container to hers. “How is that possible?”

“It’s possible, Chopstick.”

He coughed and then burst out laughing. Edith grinned from ear to ear too, then she started giggling as she said, “Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.”

“You’ve always done that, Edith,” he said.

“Done what?”

“Call me funny nicknames,” he said. “Or whatever they are. Terms of endearment.”

“Chopstick is a term of endearment?”

Finn stopped laughing, but his smile remained. His gorgeous blue eyes sparkled at her seriously as he said, “Coming from you, it is.”

“All right, Butterscotch,” she said next, and they laughed together, his hip and leg pressing against hers. Yes, Edith had been starving in so many ways before Finn, but with him at her side, she might finally be able to feel whole again. To heal completely when she hadn’t been able to for years. To fall in love again.

Chapter Eleven

Finn walked beside his father as they left the church with the other people who’d come to church that morning. They didn’t speak, but Finn knew Daddy needed a moment with his daddy, and Finn didn’t mind the slower, calmer atmosphere in the graveyard behind the church.

Momma had gone home with Aunt Chelsea and Uncle Pete, and Finn assumed a huge meal would be served at either the homestead or his uncle’s when he and Daddy finally made it back to the ranch.

He stood in front of his grandfather’s grave, his thoughts still circling Coyote Pass, Alex Baxter, and of course, Edith. He’d spent the afternoon there yesterday, and he wanted to head there again right now. He hadn’t seen the Baxters in church, but he knew Edith and Alex attended.

Glancing over his shoulder, he caught his father swipe his cowboy hat from his head as his eyes drifted closed. Another couple had entered the cemetery, but they went left, away from where Finn stood with his praying daddy.

He looked back to the grave, the feeling inside him growing and growing and growing. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured, and Daddy grunted his acknowledgement.

Finn turned away from the familiar headstone, the one that brought comfort and peace to his soul, and wandered down the row. The breeze wafted through the leafy trees here, adding more coolness to the shade.

He tucked his hands in his pockets and drank in the Texas stillness. The bright blue sky. He reached the paved path that ran down the middle of the cemetery, and he walked to the end of it, where a gloriously golden field of wheat grew on the other side of the fence.

“I love it here,” he whispered to himself. His heartbeat skidded through his veins as he realized God had just given him a step to take. Or rather, a piece in the puzzle of his life—and that was to stay right here.

“But where?” he asked. “I can’t live in my mother’s basement forever.”

Daddy would give him anything he wanted. An acre of the ranch to build a house. Or a cowboy cabin to himself. The whole ranch. The entire world.

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