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

  “Yes,” Ted said simply. Women didn’t fall apart because someone rang the doorbell and then went around the side of the house. This ranch was crawling with people, and it would take someone with some special skills to do something unnoticed.

  But maybe Emma had been dealing with someone with just those kind of special skills. Ted’s mind whirred, especially when Nate didn’t say anything. The man never did just fill the silence with chatter, and Ted normally appreciated that.

  Emma appeared in his rear-view mirror, and Ted opened the door and slid out. “Do you want the window or the middle?” he asked.

  “Window, please,” she said, her voice stronger now. Her makeup had been cleaned from her face, and she hadn’t redone it. Ted stared at her, finding her natural beauty even better than the gorgeous woman she was with dark eye makeup and blemish-free skin.

  And in that moment, he also knew who she was.

  Emma Clemson, of course.

  Emma Clemson, the girlfriend and known associate of Robert Knight, a suspected crime ringleader from the Knight family of criminals. They operated all over southern Texas, moving people and drugs, committing petty thefts and assaults, and sometimes, if they had to, people ended up dead.

  It had been Ted’s firm’s job to find as many of their known associates as possible and interview them about a specific incident that could put Larry Knight, Robert’s brother, behind bars for a very long time.

  He’d been right. He’d seen her picture in a case file.

  She lifted her eyebrows, and Ted realized he’d fallen into simply staring at her while he reviewed the case mentally. “Sorry,” he said, hurrying to get back in the truck and slide over next to Nate.

  “I need to talk to you tonight,” he murmured to his best friend as Emma climbed onto the seat next to him.

  “Deal,” Nate said just as quietly, and then he reached for the volume dial on his radio. “Okay, phones first?”

  “Yes,” Ted said. Nate set off down the dirt lane that led to the highway, but Ted couldn’t relax. He sat straight and tall, not daring to let any part of him touch Emma. Tension radiated through the cab, despite the pop music playing, and Ted couldn’t help turning his head to look at Emma again.

  Something roared to life inside him when her eyes met his, and he wanted to protect her from whatever had happened and whoever had hurt her in the past. His fists clenched, and he had to work to calm his fight or flight reflexes back into submission.

  There was no fight here.

  And he literally could not leave the ranch by himself, so the flight option was out too, leaving Ted’s tension and adrenaline with nowhere to go but back into his body.

  An hour later, Ted stood on the sidewalk outside the cell phone store, the line to his mother ringing.

  “Teddy,” she said, her voice full of light though it had grown old in the last several years. “I wasn’t expecting you to call until three.”

  “Ma,” he said, a laugh bubbling in the back of his throat. “I’m out of River Bay.”

  “Out?”

  He let his laughter out, and he met Nate’s eye, the other man smiling in return. “Yeah, Ma,” Ted said, still chuckling. “They approved my request for the Residential reentry Program, and I went to Hope Eternal Ranch yesterday.”

  “Oh, Teddy.” His mother began to weep, and Ted sobered a little bit.

  “I want you to come visit,” he said. “It’s not nearly as far to Sweet Water Falls as it is to River Bay. A couple of hours.” He cut a glance to Emma, who sat on the fountain wall, her attention seemingly only on her phone. Her fingers flew across the screen while Ted waited for his mother to confirm or deny.

  “I’ll call Britta,” his mother said. “We’ll come.”

  “Thanks, Ma,” Ted said, his chest expanding in a whole new way now. It felt like he’d broken through an invisible band that had prevented him from taking a full breath. “I don’t have her number memorized like I do yours. I can call her too,” he said. “Or could you give her my number and have her text me everyone’s numbers?”

  “Yes,” his mother said. “Yes. Let’s see…let me get a pencil….” A moment later, she told him to go ahead, and Ted rattled off his phone number from the cell phone contract he held in his hand.

  He felt…powerful standing there on the sidewalk, talking to his mother at whatever time he wanted. They could talk for as long as they wanted too, and Ted barely knew what to do with himself. He was so used to having conversations in code or in under fifteen minutes.

  Nate did tap his wrist a few minutes later, because getting a cell phone wasn’t the only task they needed to accomplish that day.

  “All right, Ma,” Ted said. “My friend says we have to go. I have to go buy a bunch of clothes and stuff too.”

  “Teddy, do you need some money?”

  “No, Ma,” Ted said. He would not take her money. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I have a little extra.”

  “It’s not necessary, Ma.” Ted told her he loved her and couldn’t wait to see her, and then he ended the call.

  “How is she?” Nate asked.

  “You called it, brother,” Ted said, holding out his fist for Nate to bump. He did, and they chuckled. “She cried.”

  “Are you going to call your dad?” Nate asked.

  “I will tonight,” Ted said. “He’ll be in the back, and he doesn’t answer the phone when he’s in the racks.” His father still ran the dry cleaning shop, despite the amicable divorce that had happened a year before Ted had gone to prison.

  He’d barely adjusted to his parents not being together, and with the long separation between all of them, he barely knew how to have two halves of a family that had once been whole. “Do you think I should invite him to come alone?”

  “Maybe ask Britta?” Nate asked. “Emma, do you want us to run you back to the ranch? Ted has a ton of shopping to do.”

  “No,” she said, looking up from her phone. “I’m fine to wait here. Jess is on her way to get me.” She looked at Ted on the last few words.

  “We can wait with you,” Ted said. He wouldn’t just walk away from her and hope she made it back to the ranch okay.

  “Yeah, we’ll wait,” Nate said, and he sat down on the fountain wall too.

  Ted sat next to him and slipped a glance in Nate’s direction, who said, “Let’s go to the bank first. I have a guy who’ll set you up nice.”

  Ted couldn’t argue, and he had very little money. He wasn’t sure how he’d be able to pay for the items he needed, and he’d already let Nate buy his phone.

  The noise of the water splashing from the fountain to the pool was the only conversation, and Jess pulled up in a ranch truck several minutes later. “Thanks for bringing me to get a new phone,” Emma said as she reached for the door handle. “And thanks for waiting with me.” She glanced at Nate, because the rest of her words had been directed at Ted.

  He couldn’t say anything, so he just tipped his hat at her again, and he really knew why Nate liked this cowboy hat. It was growing on Ted too.

  Emma got in the truck, closed the door, and Jess eased away from the curb.

  “What was that?” Nate asked.

  “What?” Ted stood up, glad to be off the hard cement.

  “She barely looked at me.” Nate watched him as they started back to his truck. “I think she has a crush on you.”

  Ted scoffed. “You’re delusional.”

  No one had ever had a crush on Ted before. Of course, he wouldn’t have known if they had. His focus before prison had been work, work, and more work. He hadn’t dated in years before he’d taken the fall at his firm, and he didn’t even know what flirting looked like or sounded like.

  But he was pretty sure Emma hadn’t been doing it.

  “Listen, I’m going to put some money in your account, Teddy,” he said. “And I don’t want you to argue with me about it.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Ted said. “Honestly.”

 
“I don’t care if you do or don’t,” Nate said. “I have plenty of money.”

  Ted nodded, because Nate had told him that he had a lot in his bank account while they were in prison together, and Ted suspected Nate had gotten more from his brother. When Ward died, he’d left everything to Nate, and Ted knew he had a house in White Lake, a small town only twenty minutes from here.

  Ted got set up at the bank, and he didn’t ask Nate how much money he’d put in his account. Nate went upstairs with a white-haired man for several minutes, and when he came down, he had a debit card with Ted’s name on it. The man really could work miracles, and Ted shook his head and clapped Nate on the back in a quick hug.

  “Okay, clothes,” Nate said. “Groceries. Household stuff. We can get it all at Wal-Mart.”

  “Deal,” Ted said, because he didn’t care what he wore to work. The only thing he didn’t want to get at Wal-Mart was shoes, because he’d already worked six hours on his feet that morning, and he now knew he needed decent footwear.

  Hours later, Ted finally had everything he needed—except dinner.

  “I know what you want,” Nate said, and he aimed the truck down the street away from the shoe store where they’d just bought a nice, sturdy pair of work boots, and a pair of running shoes, and a pair of cowboy boots. The last one was at Nate’s insistence, because he claimed if Ted would wear them every day, they’d become the most comfortable shoes he’d ever worn.

  Trying them on in the store had felt like sticking his feet into a torture device, so Ted wasn’t sure how that would ever come true. But it was Nate’s money, and Ted just swiped the card.

  “Burger Barn,” Ted said, his mouth watering. “I want to go there.”

  “I know.” Nate grinned as he swung into the drive-through. “You’ve talked about this place since the day I met you.”

  “I can’t believe there’s one here,” Ted said. “They’re not everywhere, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Nate rolled down his window to study the menu.

  Ted looked at the one on his side of the stall, because he hadn’t been to Burger Barn in a very long time. They didn’t seem to have updated their menu, and he said, “I want combo number fourteen, with chicken strips and half and half fries. Huge Dr. Pepper.”

  Nate put in their order, and only five or six minutes later, more food than the two of them could ever eat got delivered right to the truck. Ted once again marveled at the ease with which he could get things on the outside. He’d forgotten about this magical thing called fast food, and his mouth watered as he picked up a regular French fry and a sweet potato fry at the same time.

  He closed his eyes and put them in his mouth, and Ted knew then that the stars had aligned.

  They’d both eaten through most of their food before Nate asked, “So how do you know Emma?”

  “What?” Ted asked. “I don’t know her.”

  “Oh, please.” Nate threw him a sarcastic look. “I literally slept five feet from you for five years. I know something’s bothering you, and I think it’s her.”

  “Maybe I’m just thinking maybe I have a shot with her, like you and Ginger.”

  Nate blinked, clearly taken aback by that. “No, really.”

  “So you don’t think I have a shot with her?” Ted enjoyed the heat as it filled Nate’s face.

  “No, I just meant…do you like her?”

  “Sure, I like her,” Ted said, grinning now.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous.” Nate wadded up the paper from his second burger and put it in the bag. “Let’s go back to the ranch.” He backed out of the space while Ted took a long drink of his soda.

  “I think it’s interesting you asked how I know her,” Ted said as they left the busier part of town behind them. “I don’t know her, but I did recognize her at the house yesterday. Today, I realized how—she was a known associate in a case I was working before I, you know, assaulted that police officer.”

  “Okay, first off,” Nate said. “You didn’t assault anyone. And second, really? She was a bad guy in a case?”

  “A known associate is not a bad guy,” Ted said, chuckling. “It just means we wanted to talk to her. Interview her. Find out everything she knew about the guy we were taking to court. We’d get affidavits from known associates, and sworn statements, and sometimes, you could establish an alibi—or break one—with those interviews.”

  “So you interviewed her?”

  “I didn’t, no,” he said. “I don’t recall if she ever got interviewed or who did it. I just remember her face.” He could still see it in the file, and she definitely hadn’t swept on perfectly pointed wings of eyeliner back then.

  “Does she know you know anything about her?”

  Ted shook his head, pieces falling together in his mind. “But she was really upset about that guy in the blue grasshopper truck. And she was a known associate—the girlfriend of a Knight, from the Knight crime family.” He looked at Nate. “What if she’s mixed up in something bad?”

  “From a decade ago?” Nate swung his attention to Ted. “She’s been working at Hope Eternal for ten years.”

  “Yeah,” Ted said, his pulse quieting again. “It doesn’t make sense that something would follow her for that long.”

  Nate said nothing, because he’d had loose ends to tie up after he’d gotten out of prison. Ted didn’t; not really.

  But maybe Emma had some dangling strings from her past that still needed to be stitched up. If so, what were they?

  Ted really wanted to know, because he never wanted to witness her sobbing in a panicked state again. He wanted to help her, protect her. That was what he’d always wanted to do for the people he’d served as a lawyer.

  But he wasn’t a lawyer anymore, and she wasn’t one of his clients.

  As he put away his groceries and clipped price tags from his new clothes, he actually let his mind wander down the path that led toward a future with him and Emma in it together…just like Nate and Ginger.

  It was a scary walk, but a beautiful outcome, and Ted decided he’d simply ask Emma if she knew Robert Knight the next time they were alone together.

  Easy, he thought, but he instinctively knew nothing with Emma was going to be easy. He was going to ask her anyway.

  Chapter Six

  Emma finished feeding Ruby, a sharp pain pulling through her back. “All right, girl,” she said to the horse, pulling the empty bottle from her lips. “You got it all.” She stood up and stretched her back, a groan coming from her mouth.

  This day had felt like a week, as her emotions had been all over the place. She’d started the day with a scream, been surprised at the homestead, then had a near-panic attack. She’d been exhausted on the way to the downtown mall, but she’d gone because she needed a new phone.

  She’d gotten that, and she’d been able to keep the same SIM card, so all of her contacts were still there. She wasn’t great at using the newest electronics, but she could text and call, and everything else she could figure out later.

  Emma had used her credit card to buy the new phone, because so much of what she made at work she sent to Fran and Matt Black, the couple who took care of Missy for her. They were raising her as their daughter, and while her official birth certificate said Missy Clemson, they’d gotten a new one with their last name on it so they could register her for school under their surname.

  Fran had said Emma didn’t have to send money, but Emma did anyway. She didn’t want Missy to want for anything, and if that meant she put her fancy cell phone on a credit card, that was fine with her. Fran and Matt hadn’t adopted Missy; she wasn’t in foster care. Emma had looked up an agreement online, because she’d been too afraid to go to a lawyer. If even one person knew about Missy and who her father was, word might spread.

  She knew all about the seven degrees of separation, thank you very much. The lawyer might have an assistant, who might have a girlfriend, who might then say something to a client in her hairdressing chair.

  And si
tting next to them would be Rob’s sister, and before Emma knew it, Rob knew about his daughter.

  Realistically, when she wasn’t spiraling, Emma knew this would probably not happen. But she’d done everything she could over the past eleven years to make sure her daughter was one hundred percent safe.

  She knew Missy loved Fran and Matt as parents, and they loved her the way a mom and dad would. Sometimes, Emma mourned the fact that she couldn’t raise her own daughter. A lot of times, actually.

  A heaviness weighed her down as she washed out the bottle and left it to dry, then left the stables. The sun had started to arc toward its final destination in the west, and Emma looked at all the reds and oranges in the sky. Above them, navy was coming to steal the last of the light from the day, and Emma was glad.

  This day needed to end.

  She walked slowly back toward the homestead, ready for bed. She’d missed a couple hours of work that afternoon, and she’d have to catch up with payroll and the accounts payable she owed to the travel and tourism bureau and the IFA tomorrow.

  Stalling along the fence that ran in front of the homestead, Emma put one foot on the bottom rung and looked out toward the trees that grew along the river. The ranch sat on one side of the river, and down the dirt and gravel lane, as well as over a bridge, sat the highway. Another service road ran along the tree line on the other side of the river, but right now, Emma felt isolated and protected.

  She could still see that blue truck parked only a few feet to her left. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the man’s face that she’d seen. She could see the denim jacket with the fleece lining. The jeans. The blue ball cap. She couldn’t make out much of his face, and she wished she’d grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and done a rough sketch.

  He’d been tall, but not overly tall. She’d classify him as a medium build, though he’d tried to bulk himself up with the jacket. He’d carried a clipboard and another device. Not a phone, and she’d assumed it was something to read the meters.

  But there were no meters there. So what had he been carrying?