Page 5 of Mistletoe Cowboy

“I know some Cowlings. Good people.”

“She and my husband’s father had a ranch in Montana where they were living when my husband was born. After her husband died, she came back here to live, on the family’s ranch. She ran it herself until her death early this year. She left my husband the ranch. He was going to sell it, but he was . . . he . . . anyway. It took us some time to get moved here.”

“It’s a good place to raise a child,” he said, and he smiled gently at Teddie.

“She’s going on thirty,” Katy said, tongue-in-cheek, as she glanced at her daughter.

He chuckled. “Some mature faster than others.”

“We need to get Bartholomew home,” Katy said, and she was staring at the horse as if she wondered how exactly they were going to do that.

“Give me a second to get Wings and I’ll be right back.” He didn’t explain. He just went around the side of the house.

“Honestly, Teddie,” Katy began, exasperated.

“I’m sorry. Really. But he ran away!”

“I know. But still . . .”

“Next time, I’ll come get you first. I will.” Her eyes pleaded with her mother’s.

Katy gave in with a sigh. “All right. But don’t let it happen again.”

“I won’t. Poor old horse,” she added, looking at the palomino. “Mr. Parker said that he’s been abused.”

“He seems to know a lot about horses,” Katy agreed, just as Parker came around the house leading a white mare.

“What a beauty,” Katy exclaimed involuntarily.

“Wings,” he said. “She’s mine. Two years old and my best girl,” he added with a smile.

The horse had a halter and bridle, but no saddle.

Before they could ask what he meant to do, Parker took the oats gently away from the palomino and put them beside the road. He caught the horse’s bridle, led it to the mare, and vaulted onto the filly’s back as if he had wings himself.

“Okay,” he said. “Lead on.”

They laughed. He made something complicated so simple. Teddie and Katy piled into their vehicle and led the way home, with Parker bringing up the rear riding one horse and leading the other. Both went with him as easily as lambs following a shepherd.

* * *

The house was in bad shape, he noticed as he stopped at the front porch and tied Wings’s bridle to it. He patted her gently.

“Just stay right there, sweetheart. Won’t be a minute,” he said in a soft, deep tone, running his fingers along her neck. She looked at him and whinnied.

He went to get the palomino’s bridle and led him, along with the woman and the girl, to the ramshackle barn.

He made a face when he saw it, along with the broken fence where the animal had broken through.

“I know. We’re living in absolutely primitive conditions.” Katy laughed. “But at least Teddie and I have each other, if we have nothing else.” She said it with affection, but she didn’t touch her daughter.

“Yes, we do,” Teddie told her mother. “Thanks for not yelling.”

“You never teach a child anything by yelling,” Katy said softly. “Or by hitting.”

Parker glanced at her and saw things she didn’t realize. He put the palomino in a stall in the stable and closed the gate.

“We have to lock it,” Katy said. She drew a chain around the metal gate and hitched it to the post with a metal lock. “He’s an escape artist,” she added. “Which is how he happened to be hightailing it past your place. I guess he learned to run away when his owner started brutalizing him with that whip.”

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