Page 11 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

“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 likework partnerorchemistry 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 yourpartner. It’s someone whoknows youreally 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.

---