Page 34 of Cowboy Don't Go

Cooper nodded. He’d be back long before that.

*

Lulu and She-Ra were saddled and ready to go by the time Shay got to the barn at eight. Lulu was Shay’s horse—a sweet, nineteen-year-old bay quarter horse with white stockings and a blaze down the center of her forehead. She had the temperament of a lamb but could still out quarter any quarter horse around. Years ago, before Ryan, she’d done some barrel racing with Lulu and still had the trophies and ribbons up in the attic somewhere to prove it.

She-Ra—named by Ryan after becoming enamored with the cartoon character on YouTube as a little boy—was a gentle, strawberry roan Appaloosa who had taught Ryan all about loving a horse, and to this day, was his favorite. At least, up there with Kholá.

Cooper led the horses out of the barn and handed her the reins to Lulu. With a smile he touched the brim of his Stetson, the same way he had that first day they’d met at the auction. “Ma’am?”

Shay blinked. “Cooper? Did you just call me ma’am?”

He swung up on She-Ra. “We’re on official ranch business. What should I call you? Ms. Hardesty? Boss?”

“Let’s get one thing straight. You can address my mother as ma’am all day long. And you can call Liam boss if you want. But don’t ever call me ma’am again. It makes me feel . . . old.”

“Okay,” he said. “But you should know, you lookin’ old was the furthest thing from my mind.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you look real pretty at eight o’clock in the morning. Sunshine on your hair and all. That’s what I was thinkin’.” He nudged his horse into a lope and pulled off in front of her, leaving Shay to stare after him in shock. Pretty?

Her pulse scraped against the collar of her shirt as she mounted Lulu and nudged her after him. If she’d been trying to impress him by curling her hair or even putting on makeup in the two hours she’d, instead, spent futzing around the kitchen avoiding anything that smacked of trying, she’d be flattered. But she’d done none of those things, perhaps on purpose. She’d left her hair in a single loose braid, specifically to make sure he knew she hadn’t tried. The thought of spending the morning with him today—balancing on that precarious edge of her feelings about him—had cost her sleep last night, and now, with a few words, he’d justified every lost minute.

Just that you look pretty at eight o’clock in the morning. Sunshine on your hair and all.

She couldn’t remember the last time someone told her she looked pretty. Most of the time, she just felt invisible and frazzled.

His easy compliment set her teeth clenching. Gosh, she wasn’t that easy. Was she?

She inhaled deeply and gave Lulu another nudge to catch up with him. And wasn’t she supposed to be showing him the ranch, not the other way around?

It took them a while to work their way through the pastures and through the cattle gates that led to open grazing land. Copper Mountain rose in the distance, but here, the land rose into foothills, winding through scrub-covered washes and leading to the tree line. It was pretty country, and here, the pines scented the air as the horses crushed pine needles beneath their hooves.

Cooper glanced at his watch. “You got a destination in mind?”

“There’s an overlook that’s amazing and you can see the whole valley. There’s also a little surprise there.” She pointed to where the trail forked two ways. “Let’s head that way.”

There was a good deal of brush and low-hanging branches that would need to be cleared before bringing guests up this trail, but it looked doable to him with a hand-held mini-chainsaw.

He inhaled deeply, feeling the calm of nature soaking in. Even in North Texas, where there was nothing but prairie, he’d missed the forest and the singular fragrance of Montana. This was what the Hard Eight ranch could offer city folks who lived amidst concrete parking lots, skyscrapers, traffic, and honking horns. There was something centering about this breath of nature and beauty. Something that made one forget, for just a little while, that there were problems in their life, jobs to worry about, or things going wrong. Here was a little piece of heaven, and the only soundtrack that mattered was the sound of your horse’s hooves, the cry of eagles flying overhead, or the rush of your own heartbeat.

Shay held back until he caught up with her and the two of them took the wider trail together for a while. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done this,” he said as they rode. “There’s a terrible beauty up here.”

“That’s a funny way to put it.”

“But accurate. In this season, these mountains are a refuge. In others, they’re just a dangerous reminder of how insignificant we really are.”

She considered his words that were surprisingly deep for a man who moved cattle and trained horses for a living, proving, yet again, how little she really knew him. “And I agree. Winter’s unforgiving here and these mountain trails will be buried under snow and no good for riding. That’s when we put people on snow mobiles instead.

“To be honest, I haven’t done this in a long while either,” she said. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time. Life gets busy with Ryan and driving him five ways to Sunday. And ranch work is pretty focused on the cattle, so if there’s riding to do, it’s chasing after them or herding them into pens. This . . .” she said, staring out at the view ahead of them. “This is what it’s really about to live here. It’s, granted, a narrow window for this kind of weather, but even in the winter, these hills are beautiful. Good for snowmobiling at least. But summers . . . when I wasn’t practicing my barrel racing, we used to ride up here when I was young. Me and Lulu.” She patted her horse’s neck. “She’d been my one constant through it all.”

Cooper nodded. “I had a horse like that. Petra. She was a pretty Pinto and steady as they come. She was born on our ranch. But . . . we lost all of our horses, including her, when my dad went to prison. Lost pretty much everything but the ranch itself.”

She could hear the pain in that memory. “I’m sorry.”

He stared out over the valley as they passed through a stand of lodge pole pine. “I often wonder where she ended up. But that was a long time ago.”

“Maybe you could find her?”

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