Overprotective Cowboy: A Mulbury Boys Novel (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance Book 2) Read online

  She nodded as he turned around and went back the way he’d come, closed the door behind her, and pressed her back into it. That was as far from the men who lived here as she could get and still be in the house. The house was far too quiet for the number of men who lived here, and Emma heard voices coming from the direction of the hall where Nate had disappeared.

  They didn’t sound like happy voices, and Emma’s flight instinct kicked into gear. Her fingers scrambled to find the doorknob, but when they did, she froze.

  She literally had to stop running from every difficult situation in her life.

  Help me, she prayed, and she felt sure the Lord did, because she didn’t run. Even when Ted appeared at the mouth of the hallway, his eyebrows drawn down. He too was dressed down, and Emma liked this softer version of him, a man who wore silly T-shirts and casual shorts and bare feet.

  His hair looked tousled, as if he’d been about to fall asleep and she’d interrupted him. A stinging sensation buzzed in her chest, because he hadn’t been busy tonight. He could’ve come to the stable to see her. He’d chosen not to.

  “What are you doing here, Emma?” he asked, not taking one single step toward her. With him looking at her with those hooded, displeased eyes, her voice stuttered in her throat, and she couldn’t say anything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ted didn’t want to make Emma’s life more difficult. But he didn’t want to be lied to either. He didn’t want a woman who kept secrets from him day after day, even when he knew she had them.

  He’d been telling himself all day that he’d only known her for two weeks. He didn’t have to know everything about her in two weeks. She didn’t have to completely trust him in only fourteen days. She was allowed more time.

  All of that was true.

  He still hadn’t gone to the stables tonight, because he liked his heart in one piece. He felt like she was holding a carving knife, and there was no reason for him to open his chest and give her free access to cut his most vital organ into a thousand pieces.

  When she didn’t answer his question, Ted took a tiny step toward her but stopped. “It’s getting late.”

  “Why didn’t you come to the stables?”

  Ted looked away, because words could be sharp, he knew. “Busy weekend, and a long, tiring day,” he said. Both of those things were true.

  “Okay,” Emma said, opening the door behind her. She had to edge forward to let it swing past her, and Ted watched her do that. She was nervous, and he honestly wasn’t sure why he wanted to be with someone who didn’t want to share their life with him.

  “Where’d you go this weekend?” he asked.

  She froze, her eyes locking onto his. “San Antonio,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I go every couple of weeks,” she said. “Get away. See friends.”

  Ted couldn’t tell if she was lying, and all the other times he’d been able to. “Okay,” he said. “Did you have fun?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We mostly stayed in,” she said. “Watched movies and made homemade bread.” She flashed a timid smile. “My friend always wants me to teach her how to make bread.”

  “I’d like that too,” Ted said, putting a smile on his face he hoped was gentle. He felt like he was trying to coax a scared squirrel to come get a treat from him. He wasn’t sure why he wanted Emma to stay if she wanted to go. If she didn’t want to confide in him, he shouldn’t make her.

  “You also said you’d teach me how to ride a horse,” he added.

  “When you have time to do that,” she said. “All the horses are taken.”

  “So maybe you’ll have to teach me to bake in the afternoons.”

  “And heat up the house during the hottest part of the day?” She shook her head, clearly flirting with him now. Ted did like that, and he told himself he still had three months here at the ranch. He didn’t need to know everything right now.

  The lawyer inside him just wanted to have all the facts up front. The protective side of him wanted to know what situation Emma found herself in, so he could plan best how to help her.

  “So horseback riding is out,” he said, stepping all the way to the island in the kitchen. “And so is baking. Hmm, what else could we do?”

  “I actually work while you nap in the chair in my office,” she teased.

  Ted ducked his head, though he wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat and couldn’t actually conceal his face. He sobered and looked up at her. “The weekend trips are part of the secret, aren’t they?”

  The flirtatiousness slid off her face. “Yes.”

  He nodded and looked away again. “Okay, well, I said you could tell me when you’re ready, so I guess I can’t be mad if you’re not ready.”

  She swallowed hard enough for him to see the movement in her throat, and he said, “Good night, Emma. See you in the stables in the morning.” He fell back a step, and then another, and she moved out of the way of the door so she could leave the Annex.

  “’Night, Teddy.” With that, she was gone, swallowed by the night beyond the door. Ted waited a couple of seconds, and then he crossed the kitchen to the door to lock it. Emma wasn’t on the deck, and Ted took a deep breath of the air where she’d been standing. He caught just a hint of her perfume, the soft, floral scent of it calling to everything male inside him.

  “I want to trust her,” he whispered to the glass, still trying to see her though she wasn’t there. “I want to get to know her, but that’s a two-way road.” And it felt like he was trying to get to Emma. He was in a very fast truck, with his foot pressing the accelerator all the way to the floor. He was desperate to get to where she was.

  And she was running just as fast in the opposite direction.

  Ted fell back into the routine on the ranch. He didn’t mind doing the same thing day after day, especially because here, no one was telling him where he had to be, and when. Jess had taught him what to do, and Ted did it. He worked steadily, and he took a break when he wanted to.

  He took his lunch and all the dogs to the shade under the trees, only a stone’s throw from the river, every afternoon, and he’d gone back to helping Emma with her foals and relaxing in her office in the afternoons. When he left the West Wing, his dogs were always waiting for him, panting in the shade of the backyard.

  His conversations with Emma had gone back to normal things, like siblings and favorite pets, birthday meals, and their past careers. Ted learned something new about Emma every day, and he shared things about himself as well.

  But they were just dancing, waiting for the end of this song to see what the next one would be. He didn’t like the dance. He wanted to sit down to dinner and have it out. Get the truth. See all the pieces and try to figure out how they fit together.

  She left the ranch again that weekend, and Ted didn’t ask where she was going. She wasn’t going to tell him anyway.

  San Antonio.

  Visiting friends.

  Making homemade bread.

  The words ran through his mind on a constant loop, and he knew he was missing something.

  “You’ve got to focus when you’re in the saddle,” Nate said, and Ted blinked his way out of his own mind. Because Emma couldn’t teach him to ride, Ted had asked Nate to do it. The ranch did horseback riding lessons on weekends too, but not after noon. So Ted and Nate had taken care of the horses from the lessons that morning, and then Nate had taught Ted how to saddle a horse and how to get on.

  “Sorry,” Ted said. He squinted into the bright sunlight, grateful for his cowboy hat. “I’m paying attention.”

  Nate went through how to balance, and how to get the horse to move and how to command him to stop. Nate had given Ted a pretty gray horse named Enterprise, and he’d learned that Ginger named all of the horses on the ranch, and apparently, she liked Star Trek.

  “Now you try,” Nate said, and Ted nodded.

  He held the reins loosely in his hand, and he moved his heels b
ack. “Go,” he said, and to his great surprise, Enterprise started walking. A smile spread across Ted’s face, and he looked at Nate like he’d just done something great.

  “Let’s go,” Nate said, and he brought his horse around to walk side-by-side with Ted and the four blue heelers. Nate rode a brown horse with a black mane and tail. It was a special type of horse that Ted had forgotten the name of. But he was beautiful, and his name was Painted Desert.

  Nate led them down the road Ted had walked on with Emma several times. There would be some shade up ahead. The steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves soothed Ted, so he was off-guard when Nate said, “Ginger wants to have the wedding out here.”

  Ted swung his attention to Nate. “She does?”

  Nate nodded, his cowboy hat doing a poor job of hiding his displeasure.

  “Why aren’t you happy about that?”

  “In September? Out here? It’s going to be as hot as Hades.”

  Ted let a beat of silence pass, and then he burst out laughing. “That’s what you’re worried about?” He continued to chuckle as he shook his head. “Nate, you have a ton of money. Buy some misters and fans. Get some big tents set up, and air condition them. It’ll be fine.”

  Nate looked at him, new hope entering his eyes. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Of course it’s not,” Ted said. “When you’re rich, you don’t have to be hot, even outside in September.”

  Nate rolled his eyes and looked forward again.

  “What?” Ted asked. “I’m right.”

  “I was hot in River Bay.”

  “Yeah, well.” Ted thought quickly. “We only got a hundred and fifty dollars a month.” Yes, he knew even the rich went to prison. Dallas was a great example, as the man had been a renowned surgeon before he’d been convicted of insurance fraud and medical misconduct.

  Nate didn’t respond, but Ted didn’t want to go back into his own thoughts. There were simply too many of them, and he couldn’t sort through them well enough to know which ones he should worry about and which ones he shouldn’t.

  “Are you excited to get married?”

  “Yes,” Nate said. “I’d get married tomorrow, if Ginger would do it.” He glanced at Ted. “But she wants everyone there. Her parents. Her sisters and her brother. All of that.”

  “You don’t sound happy about that either.”

  “I don’t know,” Nate said. “Of course her family should be there, but she doesn’t seem to be that close to them in the first place. Just pick a date and tell them. If they can come, great. If not, well, we’ll save them some cake. You know?” He glanced at Ted. “I’m trying to be neutral about it. Let her do what she wants. But she doesn’t want that either.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She wants me to voice my opinion. Says I have a say.” Nate shook his head. “It’s not really true, because when I tell her what I think, she just argues back with me.” He clicked at his horse as it tried to stall and get a bite of the sweet grass along the side of the road. “It’s fine. We’re fine. Planning a wedding and running a ranch is a lot of work all at once.” Nate tossed a smile at Ted. “How are you and Emma?”

  “Okay,” Ted said, his voice pitching up a little bit.

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “She’s got secrets,” Ted said. “She doesn’t want to tell me.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  They continued down the road, and Ted was impressed with himself that he hadn’t fallen off his horse yet. In fact, he made it all the way back to the stable without even slipping in the saddle.

  “You did great,” Nate said with a smile. “You want to go out to the marshes with me? I need to check a couple of cabins that were used this week.”

  “Sure.”

  After they’d brushed down their horses and watered them, they turned them out into the pasture and went to the equipment shed. Ted’s blue heelers were never far from him, and two of them even jumped up onto the back seat of the ATV.

  “Oh, you want to go for a ride?” He grinned at them, and caught the key Nate threw to him. “I guess you can.” He swung his leg over the seat of the ATV, and the dogs adjusted themselves so they were balanced.

  He followed Nate, who’d fired up a side-by-side, down the road, his friend going much faster than Ted felt comfortable going. He hadn’t driven a vehicle in a very long time, and certainly not one with two dogs on the back of it.

  He pulled up to the cabins several seconds after Nate, who’d already gone inside. He came out with a trash bag in one hand and a wad of sheets in the other. Ted realized in that moment that Nate was doing housekeeping for these cabins.

  “Get over here and make yourself useful,” Nate said with a grin, and Ted killed the engine on the ATV. He took the clean sheets inside and started making the bed while Nate replaced the trashcan liners and swept the floor. He started the dishwasher as Ted marveled that this cabin at least a mile from anything else in the world even had a dishwasher.

  After Ted had run a duster over everything and Nate had scrubbed the bathroom, they went back outside, only to go to another cabin to do the same thing all over again. They repeated it two more times, and Ted found himself on a part of the ranch he’d never visited before.

  Ginger claimed this ranch wasn’t nearly as big as some others out there, but to Ted, it felt massive. He’d spent most of his time in the stables and working with the horses, except for earlier in the week when he’d gone out to the pond to help clean up the carnage caused by the blooming algae.

  Bill had been working on a solution to neutralize the water to stop the algae from spreading, and they’d put a fence around the pond so no animals would drink from it again.

  His phone rang while he was running the duster over the windowsill, and Ted pulled it out to look at it. “It’s Martin,” he said, dropping the duster in favor of swiping on the call. “Hey, Martin.” He looked at Nate, who barely glanced at him and kept working.

  “What does Wednesday look like for you?” Martin asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “I believe you said afternoons are good. say, four o’clock?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great,” Martin said. “I’ll be at the homestead at four. See you then, Ted.”

  “Yep.” Ted hung up, suddenly more nervous than before. This was a new step for him along this journey. He’d never met with a parole officer before, and he wasn’t sure how it would go.

  He’d met with Ginger every day for the first week, and after that, she’d only checked in with him once a week. On Monday, he’d start his fourth week on the ranch, and as Ted got back to work in the cabin, he realized how much he liked the ranch.

  He hadn’t anticipated that, because he’d come from a desk job, to prison, to this. He’d worked hard as a lawyer, and he’d often returned home exhausted. This was just a different kind of exhaustion.

  “Okay, done,” Nate said. “Let’s loop around to the east here, and that’ll take us to the homestead to get this laundry done.”

  “Lead out,” Ted said, and Nate swung himself behind the wheel of the side-by-side. He took off, and Ted thought perhaps his vehicle just went faster than Ted’s ATV. He didn’t mind being left in the dust, and he could see Nate just fine, so Ted knew where to go.

  He enjoyed the sunshine on his skin, and the wind in his face, and the presence of the dogs on the back with him. Out this far from the epicenter of the ranch, Ted felt like the only person in the world, and he knew why people rented these cabins. To get away from everything, and be with people they loved, and experience the stillness of the air in a way few people did. All of that appealed to Ted.

  The river bordered this side of the ranch too, and Ted slowed to look at it on this side of the property. One of the dogs jumped down, and Ted applied the brake. “Hey, Randy,” he called after the canine. To make matters worse, Paula jumped down too.

  “Okay, guys,” he said, thinking they’d just run to the river and grab a dr
ink. Instead, Randy started barking.

  Ted looked out into the trees, but he couldn’t see anything. The dogs were trained to chase wild boars, and maybe Randy had caught a whiff of something. Ted turned off the ATV and got off, walking toward the two dogs.

  Randy had quieted, and Ted kept looking out into the brush and trees that grew alongside the river. He couldn’t see anything.

  His heart pounded in his chest, but Randy and Paula didn’t seem concerned now. They trotted at his side, and he looked down at them. They both looked up at him, and Ted asked, “What did you see?”

  He stepped past the first tree, and came to a complete stop. Something blue loitered on the other side of the fence. Ted approached the fence much slower now, holding out one hand to keep the dogs back.

  The truck wasn’t on; Ted couldn’t hear the engine idling. He’d have to jump the fence to see if anyone was in the vehicle, and he wasn’t allowed off the ranch. He didn’t wear an ankle bracelet or anything, but he wanted to be obedient to the terms of his reentry program.

  He stood several feet back from the fence for what felt like a long time, undecided about what to do. No one got out of the truck, and there was no movement inside the cab.

  “Come on, guys,” he said to the dogs. “Let’s go.” He edged backward a couple of steps when he heard the tell-tale sound of another vehicle. It came from the left, which was the road that went around the back of the ranch. Ted didn’t actually know where the road went. It could diverge at any point, or have another road connect to it, and he wouldn’t know.

  This new truck was black and shiny, obviously recently washed. It was a king cab, and much, much nicer than the blue truck parked on the road.

  Ted fell back even more, pausing when the leaves and branches started to block his view. “Come on,” he whispered to the dogs. “Come.” He ducked behind a tree trunk and crouched down, glad when Paula and Randy came to his side.

  The black truck pulled to a stop behind the blue one, and the passenger door opened. So did the driver’s side door, but Ted couldn’t see that person.