Page 41 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

“I’m going to start sketching it out,” Angel said. “I had Ford pass out the farrier assignments this morning. That’s another thing I don’t need to be doing. And I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m going to rely on our three master farriers who already know what horses need to be done and when and who knows those horses to make those assignments and drop off those folders.”

Daddy simply looked at her, neither confirming nor denying that he’d even heard her, but she knew he’d heard her.

“Okay. Sketch it all out, Angel. I’d love to see it. And then let’s have a meeting with the new foreman and our master farriers and see if we can figure it out.”

“Okay,” Angel said. “I’m going to make a shortlist of those that I think would be great to move into a foreman position from the farrier side and what the ripple effect of that might be.”

“All right,” Daddy said.

“All right,” Angel parroted back to him, and then she got to her feet. “I’ll be in my office for a bit this morning, working on that.”

“You’ve got your phone,” Daddy said, and that was his way of saying,If I need you, I’ll text you.

Angel forced herself to make it all the way to her office in the blue and white barn that she’d painted herself before she looked at Henry’s text. It said,I hope that you’re feeling good today. Let me know if you need anything.

Of course, she wasn’t going to let him know that she needed anything, because Angel didn’t do that. If she got too close to him, he’d know just by looking at her. But Angel did press her phone to her heartbeat and sigh, because it sure was nice to have someone checking up on her, asking how she was. Surely he’d noticed that she hadn’t done roll call this morning. She’d felt his eyes on hers, and she’d looked his way just as he glanced away from her back to Shad.

She tapped out a quick message to him.Just talked to my momma and daddy about the weekend.

He started typing a response almost instantly.I’d love to know how that went. You want to meet this afternoon?

She stared at his text. “Meet this afternoon?” she asked out loud. “Where would we meet this afternoon?”

Maybe over by the East barn, he suggested.It’s real shady in the afternoon. A couple of cowboys put chairs there. We can just sit and you can catch me up on what your momma and daddy said.

Then Angel did one of the most surprising things she’d ever done. She allowed her fingers to type whatever they wanted.All right. I’ll meet you there at three.

Henry came back with,Sounds good, Angel. See you then.And this time, he put an emoji that made every organ insideAngel’s body melt into a puddle of goo.Sounds good, Angel. See you then. <3

Angel arrived in the shade of the East barn ten minutes before three. Henry wasn’t there, and she paced the length of it, wondering why in the world she’d agreed to come here.

“Why are you even here now?” she asked herself out loud. Four camp chairs stood in a semi-circle right in the middle of the patch of shade of the East barn. Men obviously came here to take a break and chat. She and Henry could be happened upon at any time, and then what would people think? Surely he wouldn’t warn them away in private texts, because that would also alert them to their budding relationship.

“It’s not a relationship,” she muttered to herself. But she wanted it to be, and that was the real problem. She made it to the edge of the shade again, then turned back just as Henry came around the corner.

“Oh, hey,” he said easily, as if meeting a woman in the shade of the East barn at three o’clock was an everyday thing.

That almost made Angel angry. She didn’t respond, and he held up something in his hand.

“I brought you an oatmeal cream pie.”

Everything tight in Angel loosened. “You brought me an oatmeal cream pie?”

He granted her that grin that lifted higher on the left than the right, and it made him look so sexy, so handsome, and so devilish at the same time. She moved toward the middle of the barn as he did, and he handed it to her.

“Yep,” he said. “I just stopped by my house to check on something, and I grabbed a couple. Figured you might want one. I know you like them.”

“You know I like them?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, when you set out that Thanksgiving Day picnic a few months ago, you emptied box after box of them into a bowl.” He gave a light laugh, and Angel couldn’t look away from him.

He’d watched her empty the oatmeal cream pies into a bowl?

“And then I noticed that you pulled back two or three, tucked them in a box, and hid them behind the bags of napkins. I figured you liked them.”

“I do,” she said, ripping open the package. “If my house is empty of oatmeal cream pies, I go immediately to the store.”

He laughed and said, “I’m like that with red licorice and Doritos.” He grinned full-force at her. “Now you know one of my dirty little secrets: I’m addicted to nacho cheese Doritos.”

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