Page 66 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

Angel smiled at him, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. Henry didn’t know what else to say. He’d already brought upmarriageand where they might live if that happened, and he figured that was enough for tonight. With all the graduations weighing on his mind, and Paul possibly moving to the Hill Country, Henry simply couldn’t think about anything more. So he held Angel in his arms, and he slowed all the way down until only the two of them existed in this small living room, in a house, on a ranch, in the Texas Panhandle.

Angel lay softly in his arms, and when she breathed in deep and then let it out slow, he realized she’d fallen asleep. He loved that, because it meant she had also slowed down enough, and she was comfortable enough with him, that she didn’t have to be on high alert. She didn’t have to be on alert at all.

Henry’s disappointment over the 3D printing of the horseshoes melted away, all the stress of his calendaring and scheduling, and the worry over perhaps getting a promotion here at Lone Star—none of it mattered.

Only the woman in his arms mattered. Henry stood as carefully as he could so that he didn’t disturb her, and he carriedher down the hall to her bedroom. She stirred slightly as he tucked her in, then she went right back to sleep.

Henry tiptoed out of her room. He wasn’t sure if she pulled her bedroom door closed all the way or not, so he left it open a few inches and snuck back into the night.

The sky spanned forever above him, pricked with starlight. Henry allowed all of his questions to come out, and he murmured them as he took the fifteen-minute walk back to his cabin.

“What’s the right thing for Paul to do? Can John really come to my graduation? Should Angel and I make our relationship public? How will things go over when the new employee handbook comes out? Who are she and Justin and Bard going to pick for the promotions? What should I do with my life? Should I stay on for another year? Should I start my own farrier business? Should I try to find a place of my own to live in and commute to Lone Star if I stay?”

Everythingcame out, and Henry let it because the night was so big and so wide that it could absorb whatever came out of his mouth. God felt the same way to Henry. He was so big and so wide, and He could take anything Henry threw at Him.

His front porch light activated as he stepped close enough to his cabin, and Henry murmured one more thing: “Lord, light the path ahead, and I will follow it.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Angel bent over the whiteboard in her office. It had been covering her desk for the better part of the past two weeks. She and Justin had made nameplates for every man working at Lone Star, and she’d started moving them into new positions.

“If we move Copper to a welcome greeter, will he still be able to keep up with his duties in the stables?” She didn’t look at Justin as she asked, and he came over to her desk with a cup of coffee.

She straightened and took it, and he said, “Yeah, Copper’s great. He’ll have no trouble keeping up, even as we move into summer.”

She took a sip of her coffee, wondering if her choices would hold. She had been relying a lot more on her intuition, making moves, and then taking those decisions to the Lord at night.

She prayed every morning over breakfast with Momma and Daddy that she would have a clear mind and eyes to see, and that she would meet the needs of the men at Lone Star who had embraced the culture. They lived for it and wanted to be there.

“I think our welcome greeters are great,” Justin said. “Shad’s going to do fantastic as a farrier foreman. Caleb will be amazing in your captain position here.”

Angel nodded and said, “Hm,” just like Henry did. Caleb would be their first all-horseman captain, as in the past, all their captains had been farriers. The farriers dictated what horse care needed to be done, and then the horsemen carried those out.

She and Justin had agreed on Cedric, Jake, and Nathan as new team leads, which would fill those three positions—if you hadn’t moved Henry and Ray to captain positions, she thought.

That had created two more vacancies for team leads. She’d given them to Thompson and Miles, both interns this year, who showed incredible promise. Henry and Ray would move into two of the three new captain positions, as well as Thane, another horseman who had never held a leadership position before. As she’d studied his application, she’d seen a fantastic horseman, worker, and person. He was in his mid-thirties, so he wasn’t new to this, and he’d come to them from another farm when it had closed.

She took another sip of her coffee and looked at the whiteboard. “I’m not sure what else to move.”

“We haven’t moved names on this thing for three days.” Justin grinned at her and turned around so that he faced the door and she faced the window. He looked out the side of his eye, because sometimes it was better if people didn’t make direct eye contact with Angel.

“Angel, I think this is it. You’re obsessing over it a little bit. It’s time to just make the announcement.”

She nodded and said, “I’ll tell Trevor I’m ready for Monday.” A nest of bees grew in her stomach instantly, but that also could have been hunger pangs, as Angel hadn’t eaten since that morning.

“All right,” Justin said. “You’ve got contracts to generate, don’t you?” That was his not-so-subtle way of sayingstop obsessing over this. The lineup is final.He walked out of her office, gently closing the door behind him.

Angel studied the whiteboard for several more moments, as well as the names on the side who hadn’t been moved into any of the new positions. The nurturing, caring side of her wanted to give every man at Lone Star an opportunity for leadership and advancement. She knew it wasn’t possible, just like she knew she couldn’t hire every farrier at Sherman Academy.

She turned away from the whiteboard and went to sit at her temporary desk, which was a four-foot-long folding table that Henry had set up for her last week. Her computer sat there, as did her printer, and Justin had been right. She had contracts to print.

She’d seen no need to duplicate the work of interviewing everyone at Lone Star to find out if they were going to stay for another year—something she’d normally do in two or three weeks—when she was already interviewing everyone for these new positions on the ranch. So she’d asked everyone a month early, and she told them all to let her know by yesterday.

And they had. So, yes, today she had new contracts to generate, even though they wouldn’t be signed for another six weeks. She wanted to hand every man moving into a new position a welcome folder with their job descriptions, their teams, and their new contracts. Since she’d had to move people into team leads and captain positions, as well as appoint a new foreman and her welcome greeters, she now had eleven new packets to generate.

Justin and Daddy had gone through the teams and mixed everyone up so that everything would be brand new and shiny starting on June first. Angel simply had to input the names of who would be on what team, and of course, she’d spent the last month laboring over the new employee handbook, which now included brand new job descriptions for welcome greeters as well as a farrier foreman. That wouldn’t be back from theprinter for another month, but she could print individual pages for those specific jobs.

She still hadn’t brought up the no-dating rule with Daddy, and she hadn’t shown him the employee handbook before sending it to the printer. “Justin saw it,” she muttered to herself, but he had made no comment on it.

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