Page 25 of We Redeemed the Rain

“I suppose it’s possible.” Even as I said those words, a realization hit my brain. That recurring charge on my account I didn’t recognize was probably for a booking system we didn’t use anymore. Reading statement memos wasn’t in a cowboy skillset—not this one’sanyway. But I should’ve done my due diligence. It’d been almost a year since we had guests. Money thrown straight down the drain.

Dammit. Do better, Taggart.

“Okay, then. Tell me what to do. She’s picking up a rental at San Antonio airport and wanted to confirm her reservation.”

“Three weeks you said?” I put Jesse on speaker while he confirmed and opened an app to see if I had any sort of reservation email. Sure did. I quickly scanned the information. She paid her first night’s fee and the rest was due on arrival. How was I supposed to take the rest of her money? Digitally? I didn’t have a clue. Deb was supposed to do all this.

Reservation total was $1,756.76.

My gut said turn her away and send her somewhere else.

But the part of my account bleeding from Cooper’s stupid bail said that was good money. I’d have to charge her less since the cabins were out of commission, but still. If I could squeak by getting—did a little mental math—$900, that would be an easy grand.

If a person booked a cabin at a remote ranch, surely they’d be a loner and not underfoot. Not like they’d be expecting the Ritz or anything. I could provide breakfast and do what the website promised—a trail ride and tour during stay’s duration—and get nine hundred bucks out of the ordeal.

I put the horse meds back in the barn fridge and slammed the door, quickly turning to head for the house. I had a room to get ready, breakfast to buy, expired food to empty out of the fridge, a front porch to tidy, and so on. Housekeeping and domestic tasks got the backest back burner around here.

I asked, “So what did you tell her?”

He hesitated. “I…pretended we got disconnected.”

I skidded to a stop in the middle of the barnyard, growling in frustration. “Come on, Jess. Please tell me you didn’t actually.”

Cade laughed in the background like this was some sort of comedy hour. “Yeah, I?—”

“Alright, listen. We don’t have time to shoot the breeze. Call her back. Apologize for thebad connection.Tell her the cabins are stilldamaged from the flood we had in April. Ask if she is willin’ to take a room in the main house. And we will charge her $43 per night.”

“Okay. Will do.”

“Call me right back.”

He let me go, and I picked up my pace. I had a lot to do and only a little time to do it, assuming she still wanted to come.

Five minutes later, he called me back. “It’s a go. She’s coming.”

I started running right as the rain clouds opened yet again.

SEVEN

Bea

The night I met the hayloft cowboy was seared into my memory, though it was a moment I didn’t think about very much as a child. When you’re young, you can’t really draw conclusions, because you’re not thinking about conclusions. Only moments, only beginnings.

As I grew, I thought of it more, deciphered more. And I knew, deep within my spirit, that the boy I found was wounded on the inside. And despite our years of deep, abiding friendship, he’d never told me why.

The bright moon illuminated a pair of boots hanging out over the edge of the loft, twitching ever so slightly. Pieces of hay fluttered to the ground from the two-story loft doors propped wide open. The sight of those dusty cowboy boots stopped me in my tracks. One dangled then dropped, airborne for a blink of an eye, it’sthudon the ground startlingly loud in the quiet of a rural Texas night.

My heart thumped in my chest—still riding the high from sneaking out of my family’s cabin. Mom and Dad wouldn’t like me prowling around in the middle of the night, but I was craving quiettime with Glory the Original. And quiet time was literally impossible to find when I was on a road trip with seven other people.

For a second, I thought I was going to be caught. That boot hitting the ground sounded like a stick of dynamite. But the feet above sat motionless, like the person didn’t even realize gravity stole their shoe.

I stood beneath the feet and whisper-yelled up. “Hey! You lost a boot!”

Nothing.

“Your boot is?—”

A soft moan and sniffle choked off my words. I froze. Was that…crying? I listened intently for several long moments, straining to hear new sounds among the din of crickets, until my ears started playing tricks on me.

---