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“I’m Shelby,” I’d finally said.
For that I was rewarded with a seductive grin. Momma called that grin of his wicked. Said it was going to ruin my reputation. I told her a thousand times she didn’t know the man behind the smile. He wasn’t all that wicked. In fact, when he wanted to be, he was sweeter than the homemade strawberry wine he used to make that we drank out of Dixie cups. But in the end Momma was right, and that pleased her more than anything. I should have ignored him at that concert when he responded, “Miss Shelby, I’m Ryder and I’d like to get to know you.”
Oh, I had tried to pay him no attention, but that man knew how to sweet talk the devil right out of hell. I gave myself credit for only giving him my email address that night. No matter how much I hated him now, it still made me smile to think about him slack-jawed and sputtering. Not sure a woman had ever denied him her number, or possibly anything. After the initial shock he took it all in stride. “You’ll be hearing from me, Miss Shelby.”
Bright and early the next morning I received his first email of many.
Dear Chief,
You’re in charge. I’ll let you make the next move. I hope to hear from you very soon. I look forward to the day our worlds collide again.
Ryder
Did our worlds ever collide, like when hot air meets cold air and a twister forms, threatening to rearrange everything around you. That was never my intention, but I knew dating him would brew up a storm I’d want to take cover from. That’s why it took me several days to respond to him. But I kept dreaming about his eyes and how they touched me physically. How when he said my name there was a whisper of familiarity as if I already knew him. Now I wondered if I ever knew him.
My thumb hovered over the delete button one more time.
“Do you really want to do that, Chief?” Ryder sounded in my head.
Yes! . . . No.Chapter TwoMy hands were shaking so bad I could hardly write out the deposit ticket for the nightly bank drop. I wished I could say it was because I was overcome by the amazing sales day we’d had. Today kicked off Memorial Day weekend—the unofficial start to summer. Don’t get me wrong, I was tickled with the store traffic and record-breaking sales day, but this weekend represented much more.
Emma had been good enough to break the Ranch’s privacy policy to tell me that a certain someone would be checking in this weekend. I’d waited on bated breath all day for Emma to tell me when he had. She was doing double duty now, running the Ranch and helping Sawyer get his practice ready to open. She’d decided to quit working for the steel factory at the beginning of this year since her duties as a metallurgist weren’t exactly conducive to a pregnant woman. The fumes she was exposed to daily there concerned her. Not that she was pregnant yet, but they were trying their hardest to become so. Two weeks ago, Emma had burst through the doors of the Ranch’s main house to announce to Sawyer, who was watching a baseball game with Emma’s daddy, Mr. Carrington, that she was ovulating, and it was time.
I’d never seen a man jump up so fast. Sawyer ran to her and swept her off her feet. He probably carried her all the way back to their cabin on the property in Shannon’s Meadow. It was actually temporary housing for them. They were staying in her mom’s and biological father’s old cabin while theirs was being built nearby in the meadow.
Her family was an odd thing. Emma, come to think of it, had the weirdest family connections of anyone I knew. Not only had her momma married her biological daddy’s best friend, the man who ended up raising Emma, but then Emma married her stepbrother.
That’s right, her stepbrother, though they no longer held that distinction. Emma’s daddy finally got that settled with Sawyer’s mom, his ex-wife. What an ugly affair that had been. Josephine, Sawyer’s momma, was even more overbearing than my own. And my goodness was she determined to get every penny she thought she deserved, which was way more than a year-long marriage necessitated. I think in the end, though, Mr. Carrington paid her more than he should have just to be done with the ugly affair. Not sure how much she got to keep of it, considering she’d hired every lawyer from here to Denver trying to overturn the prenup she’d signed.
But that was nothing compared to the way she’d behaved at Emma’s and Sawyer’s wedding last fall—the chilliest wedding I’d ever been to. Emma and Sawyer were determined to marry under the same pergola her parents married under. The same one that Mr. Carrington had placed in Carrington Ranch’s outdoor amphitheater. So romantic. Emma and Sawyer also didn’t want to wait until spring to get married after getting engaged in September. The lovebirds made it as far as October before they tied the knot. It started snowing during their nuptials. For most brides, it would have ruined the moment, but not Emma. She looked up smiling as if it were a sign from heaven. Sawyer kept brushing snowflakes off her hair and face between kissing her any chance he got. The sizzle between them was apparent and warmed all our hearts amid the freezing temperatures.
