Page 40 of Her Second Chance Cowboy

“Hey, Reagan, I’ve been looking at those contracts, and there are some more things that I want.”

“Of course,” her boss said. She sounded almost proud, as if Nancy was doing the right thing by not taking the first offer. Nancy rolled her eyes, wondering why it always had to be this way. Must everything be a negotiation, one party scheming to see how much they could get away with screwing over the other? She’d always hated that about the business world.

“So I think the buy-in price is too high for the percentage,” she said. Nancy hadn’t honestly looked at the contract beyond a cursory glance, but the words fell out of her mouth as if she’d been preparing from the moment her and Reagan’s meeting ended. “It either needs to come down, or I need a higher take, and I need two more planners that will work directly under me.”

As she spoke, Reagan made agreeable sounds. “I think that sounds fair. Let me take this back to the partners—”

Out the window, Nancy saw Colin loading twinkle lights and a few other things for the wedding into his Gator. He was going to string up the lights today and check on the air conditioning in the chapel if she remembered correctly. For a moment, she wanted to be down there with him; she had a plan in mind so that the lights could be left up for most events in such a way that they could be useful but not intrusive if the people hosting had no interest. She had planned to show him and see what he thought.

It hit her that she cared more about what Colin would say about a lighting arrangement than what Reagan was saying. She could demand anything she wanted from the woman because she didn’t care if Reagan got offended or told her no: she wasn’t invested in the outcome either way. What she wanted was right in front of her. But she couldn’t have Colin—he’d made that clear. “We should be able to reissue the contract with the new offer within the next twelve hours. Does that sound fair?”

Nancy bit back a sigh. “Sounds great, Reagan,” she said and hung up. She was about to tuck the phone into her pocket so that she could start hauling her bags downstairs when it began buzzing almost violently in her hand. She looked down: the emergency broadcast system had sent out a tornado warning for the area.

Bex’s face sprang to mind. Where’d she run off to? To feed the chickens? Nancy hadn’t heard Jessie’s clunker of a car rattle its way up the driveway, so she didn’t think they’d started for school yet.

Bex was somewhere out on the ranch with a tornado warning hanging overhead. Nancy’s stomach lurched, but she shoved down the initial panic, turned on her heel, and started running—she had to find Bex and make sure she was safe.

TWENTY-FIVE

Thick, threatening green-yellow clouds hung overhead. Colin had come out of the barn to check his phone—Jessie normally called him to let him know she was on her way to get Bex, and at this point, she was going to be late—and he found the world had gone oppressively still. A tornado was coming, that was for sure. He grabbed his phone out of the Gator: he’d call Jessie and tell her to take Bex to the ranch’s tornado shelter. He definitely didn’t want them on the road in this.

“Colin!” It was Nancy. He stepped around his truck and saw her sprinting in his direction. “There’s a—”

“Tornado coming, yeah,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “I know.” His phone buzzed in his hand with a message from Jessie, saying she hadn’t felt safe on the road and was hunkering down at her place.

She skidded to a stop in front of him, panting slightly. “Colin, where’s Bex?”

He couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. It was as if Nancy just spouted off in Mandarin. “What do you mean? Isn’t she in the house?”

Nancy shook her head frantically. “She came out to feed the chickens before school. Haven’t you seen her?”

The meaning of Nancy’s words finally hit him, and he looked back at her, his stomach sinking to his toes. He would have seen her if she was going to the chicken coop, and he hadn’t seen her since he left the house. Where was his little girl? “Go back to the house and check the rooms. All of them, okay?”

Nancy nodded and took off for the house again. Colin started for the stables. The horses would be the next logical place where she might be. He could see the clouds starting to form a funnel now, and he put on speed, pushing his muscles until they burned. “Bex!” he screamed. “Bex, where are you!?” His words were torn away from him as the wind whipped up.

He crashed through the stable doors, spooking the already frightened horses. Normally, he would move slowly and do all he could to alleviate their fear, but adrenaline was pushing him to go faster. To find hernow. Colin started looking under hay bales and tarps, thinking that Bex may have hidden if she was scared of the wind, or if she caught sight of the sky. Colin had taught Bex the signs of an impending tornado from the time she could comprehend what a tornado was, and he’d made sure she knew how dangerous they could be. “Bex?” he called, but only nervous whinnies answered him.

Colin apologized to the horses before he went back through the door and down the dirt path to the house. The wind was screaming now. He saw Nancy, standing in the doorway of the main house, yelling what he knew was Bex’s name, but he couldn’t hear her despite the strain he could clearly see in her face.

When Nancy saw him, she ran his way. “Any luck?” he shouted over the roar of the wind.

She shook her head. “Would she go to the shelter on her own?”

“She can’t lift the door by herself.” He practically pulled on his hair. “She knows to meet me when the weather gets like this.”

Nancy’s face had gone a sickening white. “She made me pinky-promise that I would say goodbye before I went to Evie’s,” she said. “She came in while I was packing. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t going, you know?”

“She made you promise to say goodbye?” he asked, an idea forming.

Nancy nodded. “Yeah. We pinky-swore on it.”

He snapped his fingers. “She’s hiding,” he said. “She must think if you can’t find her to say goodbye, then you won’t leave.” Colin knew Bex; he knew how she thought.

A complex look of pain and love twisted across Nancy’s face. Colin knew the feeling. They headed back into the house together, throwing open closets and looking under beds, shouting her name. “Bex, darlin’, please!” Colin begged, desperation clutching hard at his chest. “I’m not mad! Nancy’s not mad! But you can’t hide anymore. We just need to make sure you’re safe. Please!”

Nancy, who was a few rooms ahead of him, burst into the hallway. “I know where she is!” she called and took off running. “She’s at the rainbow—” Her voice faded, and Colin stood there for a split second.Rainbows? What the hell?But then, he thought of Bex’s rainbow house. She wasn’t supposed to go there by herself—he didn’t really even want her going when other kids were playing there—but he knew that she had claimed it as a clubhouse of sorts. Jessie had caught her down there often enough when she was upset. Colin had done his best to allow her the space. She’d told him it was for girls only, and he’d respected that as much as he could.

Colin took off after Nancy. “We can take the truck,” he told her, and they practically dove into the cab as the rain started to fall in a hard, pelting sheet. He pressed the gas pedal to the ground, and the old truck jumped into action. He didn’t bother with the windshield wipers; they’d never be able to keep up in this downpour, anyway.

---