Page 58 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

But they’re private, right?Mitch asked, and Daddy conveyed the question this time.

“Yes, they’re private, remote, and beautifully maintained.”

Mitch’s throat closed over the fact that he might spend millions to build this academy.I think maybe I’d like to see some of those.

“Sure,” Jerry said once Daddy had told him what Mitch had said. “How long are you in town?”

I fly out Friday.

“Let’s meet on Thursday. That’ll give me a couple of days to find what you’re looking for, and I can take you around to some properties then.”

Sounds great, Mitch said. He shook Jerry’s hand again, and they all got back in the car. So many things teemed inside of him. He just wanted to start flailing his arms and spew them all out into words, but he contained himself while they made the long drive back to the real estate office.

He shook Jerry’s hand again, and then he and his parents piled back into his truck. He still couldn’t talk to his momma and daddy as he drove, but as soon as they got back to the Edge, they got out of the truck, and Mitch started talking and talking and talking.

Chapter Nineteen

INACH,Angel texted as she got back behind the wheel of her SUV. Over the past month since she and Henry had started seeing each other, they’d devised little ways to communicate secretly. If someone else saw either of their phones, they wouldn’t know what their cryptic messages meant.

INACHmeantI need a cowboy hug. It also told Henry that Angel was on her way to town, where he should be already.

He had been tasked that morning to go to town and pick up their supplies—a whole load of feed, some tools they had taken in for repair, and more. He was not expected on the ranch until evening. When Angel had discovered that, she’d urged her brother and father to put in their grocery orders, claiming she was out of cream for her coffee and all of her oatmeal cream pies. She simplyhadto go that afternoon. She’d told her daddy, “I just need a break from this place,” to get him to order faster. That excuse had started working with everyone in her life.

Now that she’d started to restructure some things, she hadn’t done roll call in a month—five or six weeks, actually. But she had gotten up last Friday and announced that there would be more positions opening up at Lone Star.

She’d said she wanted a farrier to apply for the job of a foreman position—and that this new position would co-foreman with Justin Owens, who already ran the horseman side of things.

She’d met with Justin previously, and he was ready to work with someone, help her with the interviews, and go through the applications with her.

She’d announced they would be promoting into three new captain positions and three new team lead positions that didn’t currently exist. She was looking for two welcome greeters—new positions that also didn’t exist. That made eight new positions on the ranch, plus the foreman.

Nine new positions, and Angel’s vision went a bit blurry at the thought of it all. She barely had twice that many men working at Lone Star right now.

The buzz in the group that day had been astronomical, and Angel had hidden in her office for the rest of the day. In the subsequent days, applications had been coming in, and Angel filled her time scheduling meetings, talking to Justin, and laying out applications. She liked to see them all side by side as she considered certain personality traits and skills.

Applications were due by five p.m. today, but she didn’t have to be present to take them. Men could put them on her desk, give them to Trevor, hand them to Justin, or leave them at the house.

So she sent a text saying she would be off the ranch for the afternoon, getting groceries in town. If anyone needed anything, they could let her know. Often, a cowboy would need a dozen eggs here and there as they ran out, and she expected to get several texts as she drove to Amarillo.

Her phone beeped with Henry’s text, and she glanced at it. It said,I got you, with a smiley face. She loved how he added emojis to his texts since she’d told him she liked it.

They’d met several times in secret locations around the ranch, once earlier this week in her office with the door closed.Henry had pressed her there and kissed her for a good long while before she said, “I didn’t ask you here to kiss me.”

And he’d said, in his lilting teasing-cowboy tone, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought that’s why I came.”

She warmed up just thinking about it. Shehadasked him to come. She had wanted to kiss him, but really, she wanted to know if he was going to apply for any of the positions.

“Absolutely,” he’d said. “I’m going to apply for all of them.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s good.”

“That’s why you called me here?” He kissed her again. “I really think you called me just to kiss me.”

And so they did that for a while, and then Henry slipped out, leaving Angel breathless and hot. She’d taken a walk out on the ranch for a good long half-hour so she’d have a reason to be sweaty and red-faced.

Now, she made the drive to town and parked on the side of the grocery store in the shade. She did have pickup orders to get, and she checked her phone. She had five or six items she needed to run into the store to get for the cowboys at Lone Star, but really, she and Henry were here for a date.

She’d once seen the cowboy filling up plastic clamshell containers of food from the hot bar and the salad bar here at the gourmet grocery store in Amarillo. She liked their food too, and when he suggested they meet there one day, Angel started trying to figure out how to make it happen.

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