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Chapter One
Lucas Ryan’s mama, Pearl, had a plaque on the wall that read,Home is where the heart is.He wasn’t sure if that was true where he was concerned. He’d been roaming around the world for the better part of twenty years now, and if he had a motto, it would probably be:Home is where you hang your hat.
Lucas had always been more comfortable with horses than with people—even with his two brothers, Jesse and Cody—so he had mixed feelings about moving back to Honey Grove, Texas. Visiting the family was great, but after a few days, the wanderlust started calling his name again. Sometimes he stopped by the ranch in between his gigs as a trainer for cutting horses, and even though he hung his hat on the rack beside the back door, it still didn’t seem like home.
He had planned to move back to help his brothers on the family property, the huge Sunflower Ranch, back in the summer, but then a six-month job that paid so well he couldn’t turn it down had come up. Now he had an offer to go to Ireland—one of the places on his bucket list—to work for a year. As he hooked up the horse trailer to the back of his truck, he wondered if he really wanted to put a few more dollars in his already fat bank account or if it was an excuse not to move back to Honey Grove. For a long time, he had told himself that he wanted to learn more about training horses before he went home. There was always some new technique to pick up. Lately, though, he had felt a yearning for more than bachelorhood when he spent time around his two older brothers and their wives.
The time had finally come when he had to either sign on the dotted line for the Ireland job or else make good his promise to go home. As luck would have it, his brother Jesse had called him a couple of days ago and told him how much the family was looking forward to having him on the ranch during the holiday season.
“We can sure use some help around here,” Jesse had said. “With the holidays coming on, a lot of the hired hands are wanting to be with their families, and it’s stretching us out pretty thin. I don’t want Dad to think he needs to go out in the cold in his condition.”
“I’ll be there soon as I can,” Lucas had promised, and a Ryan didn’t go back on his word even if his hand itched to sign a contract.
Lucas hunched his broad shoulders against the howling wind and held on to his hat. A strand of light brown hair fell across his forehead. He removed his hat, combed his hair back with his fingertips, and resettled the old worn black hat that had been with him for more than a decade more comfortably on his head.
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asked himself as he headed back to the barn to get his horses. On one hand, he couldn’t wait to get to Sunflower Ranch, to have some of his mama Pearl’s cooking, visit with his father, Sonny, and see the rest of the family. Then there was the other side that had been fussing at him about a trip to Ireland, a place he’d always wanted to see.
In his mind, he knew that commitment to family would put him on the ranch forever, and to a drifting cowboy that was more than a little scary. Lucas wasn’t sure that he was—or ever would be—ready to put down roots. According to the rancher in Ireland, the job was his anytime he wanted it, so even though he was going home, he could keep that on the back burner.
His father had MS, but he was managing it, and Jesse and Cody were there to take care of the ranch, so when it came right down to the brass tacks of the issue, Lucas wouldn’t really be needed at the ranch when the holidays were over. Addy, Jesse’s wife, was a nurse, and she took good care of his father. Cody’s wife was a veterinarian, and both she and Addy were good ranch hands. They were all getting along fine without him living on the place.
Maybe it was the crow’s feet around his eyes that reminded him he wasn’t getting any younger and made him think—even for a minute—that he was ready to settle down. Or it could be the fact that he had begun to get pretty danged homesick for the first time in all the years he’d been gone.
I want to be there for Dad, but I feel like a fifth wheel when I’m around Jesse and his family, and Cody and his new wife, Stevie,he thought.I’m not sure I’m ready to settle down to a family or even if I want one, but the yearning is there.
If you are arguing with yourself, you better be careful.His father’s voice popped into his head when he entered the barn and headed back to the stalls where Winnie and Buttercup were waiting.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this or not, but I can’t disappoint the folks another time. Besides, Jesse and Cody shouldn’t have to bear the entire burden of taking care of the ranch. It wouldn’t be fair for me to inherit the same portion as they do if I don’t help,” he told Winnie, his Appaloosa horse as he tossed a bright blue blanket over the animal and fastened the straps under her belly. “It’s a little warmer than this in north Texas, and when we get to the Sunflower Ranch you will have a really nice barn to stay in when the weather is bad, and a big pasture to run when the sun is shining.”
When he led Winnie out of the barn, he saw the foreman of the Pine Valley Ranch leaning against his truck’s back fender. Lucas hated goodbyes. He thought he had taken care of all that the night before when he and his bunkhouse buddies had shared a few drinks and promised to stay in touch.
“Any way I could talk you into sticking around?” Eddie asked. “I’ll double your salary if you’ll sign on for another six months.”
“I appreciate the offer, but my folks are expecting me to be in Texas by suppertime.” Lucas busied himself getting Winnie into her side of the double trailer and making sure she was comfortable before he closed the door.
“Well, son,”—Eddie straightened up and stuck out his hand,—“you’ve got a job here any time you want or need one. We’ll miss you.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” Lucas shook with him and appreciated the fact that the man just turned and disappeared into the darkness without trying to talk him into staying for breakfast.
He went back into the barn, flipped a red blanket over Buttercup’s back. He had chosen the two Appaloosa horses to train as therapy horses a few years back because they were so good with children. After he bought them, he’d accepted only jobs that he could drive to and bring his horses with him. But the Irishman had offered to pay for his horses to be transported across the Atlantic and give them free room and board on his ranch—that made turning the job down even tougher.
“If all goes well, we’ll be in Honey Grove by suppertime,” he said as he fastened the blanket and led Buttercup out of the barn. “This could be the last time you have to get into this trailer. Hopefully, by springtime there will be some little kids that will come around to get acquainted with you.”
He took time to close the barn door, and then he and Buttercup walked out across the crunchy, frozen grass together. When she was tucked into her side of the trailer, he took out his phone and checked off the list that he kept for the days when he left a job. Saddles were in the storage room at the front of the silver trailer. His personal belongings were in duffel bags in the back seat of the club cab truck—not much accumulation for a thirty-eight-year-old cowboy.
The wind whistled through the cab of the truck when he opened the door. He quickly slid under the steering wheel, slammed the door shut, fastened his seat belt, and started the engine.
“Just another place to leave behind,” he whispered around the lump in his throat. Lord have mercy, he hated making friends and having to say goodbye. He removed his cowboy hat, laid it over on the passenger seat, and smiled.
“Right fittin’,” he whispered, “a pickup truck has been my home for almost two decades, and other than dozens of bunkhouses, my cowboy hat has ridden beside me every mile. It’s where I’ve hung my hat, so I probably should call it home.”
He adjusted the rearview mirror and stared at his reflection for a moment. The eyes were the same light brown as they had been almost twenty years ago when he had left Honey Grove to go to Wyoming to work on a horse ranch. His hair—blond or brown, depending on who was judging—was a little longer than it had been back then, but he hadn’t been in the military like his oldest brother, Jesse. Ranchers didn’t care if their hired hands had a crop of hair that hung down their backs, if they were bald, or even if they had a mixture of both. Lucas smiled at his reflection when he thought about Buster, one of the guys in the last bunkhouse, who had only a rim of gray hair that was so long that his braid reached halfway down his back. He glanced down at the dashboard—six-thirty a.m., December 10—not quite two weeks until Christmas.
“Enough procrastinating,” he told his reflection. “You are going home whether it’s where your heart is. Your traveling days are over, and you’ll be hanging your hat in the old bunkhouse where you will be living alone.”
By the time he reached Erin, Tennessee, a beautiful sunrise filled his side window. Of all the things he missed about Honey Grove, Texas, the sunsets were what he missed the most. He and his dad had spent many evenings out behind the barn—sometimes not saying a word—and enjoyed the beauty of the land as the sun made its nightly descent out there beyond the scrub oak and mesquite trees.
“I’m hoping that we can have more days like that while he’s still able to enjoy them,” he said as hooked up his phone to Bluetooth and listened to his playlist—a combination of old country songs that he’d grown up hearing and the newer ones that he liked.
