Buch lesen: «Her Right-Hand Cowboy»

Chapter One

It felt familiar, yet strange.

The closer she came to the sprawling two-story ranch house, the simple five-word sentence kept repeating itself over and over again in Ena O’Rourke’s brain like a tuneless song. Part of her just couldn’t believe that she had returned here after all this time.

She could remember when she couldn’t wait to get away from here. Or rather not “here” but away from her father because, to her then eighteen-year-old mind, Bruce O’Rourke was the source of all the anger and pain that existed in her world. Back then, she and her father were constantly at odds and without Edith, her mother, to act as a buffer, Ena and her father were forever butting heads.

The way she saw it, her father was opinionated, and he never gave her any credit for being right, not even once. After enduring a state of what felt like constant warfare for two years, ever since her mother lost her battle with cancer, Ena made up her mind and left the ranch, and Forever, one day after high school graduation.

At the time, she had been certain that she would never come back, had even sworn to herself that she wouldn’t. And although she wavered a little in the first couple of years or so, as she struggled to put herself through college, she had stuck by her promise and kept far away from the source of all her unhappiness.

Until now.

She swung her long legs out of her light blue sports car and got out. She had sincerely doubted that a man who had always seemed to be bigger than life itself was ever going to die.

Until he did.

Bruce O’Rourke had died as tight-lipped as he had lived, without ever having uttered a single word to her. He had never even tried to get in contact with her. It was as if, for him, she had never existed.

It figured, Ena thought now, slowly approaching the house where she had grown up. Her father hadn’t bothered to get in contact with her to tell her that he was dying. Instead, he had his lawyer summon her the moment he was gone. That way, he hadn’t given her a chance to clear the air or vent her feelings.

He hadn’t wanted to be held accountable.

Because he knew he had driven her away, she thought now, angry tears gathering in her eyes.

“Same old Dad,” she bit off angrily.

She remained where she was for a moment, just staring at the exterior of the old ranch house. She had expected to see it on the verge of falling apart. But apparently her father had been careful not to allow that to happen. He had taken care of the homestead. The house looked as if it was sporting a brand-new coat of paint that couldn’t have been more than a few months old.

She frowned to herself. Bruce O’Rourke took a great deal more care of the house and the ranch than he ever had when dealing with her. Her mother, Ena recalled with a stab of pain, was the only one who could effectively deal with the man. What Edith had advised her on more than one occasion was to just give the man a pass because he was under so much pressure and had so much responsibility on his shoulders. It wasn’t easy, the genteel woman had told her in that soft low-key voice of hers, trying to keep the ranch going.

“So you kept it going while pushing me away—and what did it get you in the end, Old Man? You’re gone, and the ranch is still here. At least for now,” she said ironically. “But not for long. Just until I can get someone to take it off my hands. And then I’ll finally be done with it, and you, once and for all,” Ena concluded under her breath.

She was stalling. She supposed she was putting off dealing with that oppressive wave of memories that threatened to wash over her the moment she walked through the front door and into the house.

But she knew that she couldn’t put it off indefinitely.

Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and took another tentative step toward the house. And then another until she reached the steps leading up to the wraparound veranda. The place, she recalled, where her mother and father used to like to sit and rock at the end of the day.

As she came to the second step, Ena heard that old familiar creak beneath her foot.

Her father never had gotten around to fixing that. She could remember her mother asking him to see to it and her father promising to “get to it when I have the time.”

“Obviously you never found the time to fix that that, either, did you, Old Man?” she said, addressing the man who was no longer there.

“Is that a Dallas thing? Talking to yourself?” a deep male voice behind her asked.

In the half second that it took Ena to swing around to see who had crept up so silently behind her, she managed to compose herself and not look as if the tall, handsome, dark-haired cowboy behind her had launched her heart into double time.

“Is sneaking up behind people something you picked up while working here?” Ena countered, annoyed.

Her father had had that habit, materializing behind her when she least expected it, usually to interrogate her about where she had been or where she intended on going. And no matter what she answered, her father always sounded as if he disapproved and was criticizing her.

The cowboy, however, sounded contrite. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I wasn’t making enough noise for you.” He then coughed and cleared his throat. “Is that loud enough?” he asked her with an easy grin.

Ena pressed her lips together and glared at him without answering.

The cowboy nodded. “I take it from that look on your face that you don’t remember me,” he said.

Ena narrowed her clear blue eyes as she focused on the cowboy, who must have towered over her by at least a good twelve inches. There was something vaguely familiar about his rugged face with its high, almost gaunt cheekbones, but after the restless night she had spent and then the long trip back, she was not in the mood to play guessing games with someone who was apparently one of her father’s ranch hands.

“Should I?” she asked coldly.

Mitch Parnell winced. “Ouch, I guess that puts me in my place,” he acknowledged. He pushed back his worn Stetson and took off his right glove, extending his hand out to her. “Welcome home, Ena.”

The deep smile and familiar tone nudged forward more memories from her past. Her eyes slowly swept over the dusty, rangy cowboy. It couldn’t be—

Could it?

“Mitch?” she asked uncertainly. But even as she said his name, part of her thought she was making a mistake.

Until he smiled.

Really smiled.

Even as a teenager, Mitch Parnell had always had the kind of smile that the moment it appeared, it could completely light up the area. She and Mitch had gone to high school together, and for a week or two, she had even fancied herself in love with him—or as in love as a seventeen-year-old unhappy, lost girl desperately searching for acceptance could be.

Her mother had died the year before and communication between her father and her had gone from bad to worse. It felt as if the only times Bruce O’Rourke spoke to her, he was either lashing out at her or yelling at her. Hurting, she had been desperate to find a small haven, some sort of a retreat from the cold world where she could pretend she was loved and cared for.

But at seventeen, she had been awkward and not exactly skilled in womanly wiles. Consequently, she just assumed that Mitch had missed all her signals. It even felt as if he had dodged all her outright romantic gestures. In any event, she wound up withdrawing even further into herself, biding her time until she finally graduated high school and could flee the site of her unhappiness.

At the time, Mitch had just been someone she’d gone to school with. If anything, he had been a further reminder of her failure to make a connection with someone. She didn’t associate him with her father’s ranch. Had he come to work here after he had graduated high school? The few conversations they’d had back then, he had never mentioned anything about wanting to work on a ranch. Seeing him here was a surprise.

It occurred to her that she knew next to nothing about the good-looking guy she had briefly thought of as her salvation.

“Mitch?” she repeated, still looking at him, confused.

Pleasure brought an even wider smile to his lips. “So you do remember me.” There was satisfaction evident in his voice.

Ena fervently hoped that he merely thought of her as someone he’d gone to school with and not as the girl who had made an unsuccessful play for him. This was already awkward enough as it was.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I work here,” Mitch answered. His tone was neither boastful nor solicitous. He was merely stating a fact. “As a matter of fact, your dad made me foreman of the Double E almost three years ago.”

Ena stared at him, trying to comprehend what Mitch was telling her. When she’d left, her father only hired men to work on the ranch who he’d either known for years or who came highly recommended by men he had known for years. Apparently, some things had changed in the last ten years.

“Where’s Rusty?” she asked, referring to the big barrel-chested man who had been her father’s foreman for as long as she could remember.

The smile on Mitch’s lips faded, giving way to a somber expression. “Rusty died.”

She stared at Mitch in disbelief. “When?” she finally asked.

This was almost more than she could process. Rusty Hayes had been the man who had taught her how to ride a horse. When she was really young, she remembered wishing that Rusty was her real father and not the man who periodically growled at her and even growled at her mother on occasion. Rusty had been even-tempered. Her father couldn’t have been accused of that.

“Three years ago,” Mitch told her. There was sympathy in his eyes. “You didn’t know,” he guessed.

“There’s a lot I didn’t know,” Ena bit off. “My father and I didn’t exactly stay in touch,” she added angrily, trying to process this latest blow.

Mitch continued to look at her sympathetically. “So I gather.” She was still standing on the top step of the veranda. He decided that maybe she needed a gentle nudge. “Would you like to go in?” he asked.

The question seemed to snap her out of the deep funk she had slipped into. Ena pulled her shoulders back as if she were gearing up for battle. “I lived here for eighteen years. I don’t need your invitation to go in if that’s what I want to do,” she informed him.

Mitch raised his hands up in mute surrender. “Didn’t mean to imply that you did,” he told her, apologizing without saying the actual words. The next moment, he saw her turning on her heel. She walked down the three steps, away from the porch. “Are you leaving?” he asked her in surprise.

“Are you trying to keep tabs on me?” she demanded.

To Ena’s surprise, rather than answer her, Mitch began to laugh. Heartily.

Scowling, she snapped, “I wasn’t aware that I had said something funny.”

It took him a second to catch his breath. “Not exactly funny,” he told her.

Her eyes had narrowed to small slits that were all but shooting daggers at him. “Then what?” she asked.

This whole situation had made her decidedly uncomfortable, as well as angry. This person she had gone to school with—and had briefly entertained feelings for—was acting more at ease and at home on this property than she was. For some reason, that irritated her to no end.

Mitch took in another deep breath so he could speak. “I was just thinking how much you sounded like your father.”

If he had intentionally tried to set her off, he couldn’t have found a better way. Anger creased Ena’s forehead.

Struggling not to lose her temper, she informed him, “I am nothing like my father.”

Mitch’s response was to stare at her as if he were trying to discern whether or not she was kidding him. Before he could stop himself, he asked in amazement, “You honestly believe that?”

“Yes,” Ena ground out between clenched teeth, “I honestly do.”

The smile on Mitch’s face was almost radiant. He pressed his lips together to keep from laughing again, sensing that she really wouldn’t appreciate it if he did. But he couldn’t refrain from saying, “Wow, you really are like your father.”

No wonder her father had made this man his foreman. Mitch Parnell was as crazy in his own way as her father had been. “Stop saying that,” she insisted.

“Okay,” he agreed good-naturedly, relenting. “But it doesn’t make it any less true.”

Ena curled her fingers into her palms. She wasn’t going to give Mitch a piece of her mind, even though she would have liked nothing better than to tell him what an infuriating idiot he was. Which only left her with one option.

Ena turned on her heel and headed back to her vehicle—quickly.

Mitch followed at a pace that others might refer to as walking briskly, but he cut the distance between them so effortlessly it didn’t even look as if he was walking fast.

“Hey, was it something I said?” he asked. “If it helps, I can apologize,” he said, although he had no idea what he could have said to set her off.

But because he had just lost a boss who over the years had become more like a surrogate father to him, Mitch was willing to apologize to Bruce’s daughter. He knew that having her here would have meant a lot to his boss. Besides, he had looked into Ena’s eyes, and while she probably thought she had covered up things well, he had glimpsed pain there. Having her run off like this wasn’t going to eliminate that pain.

“I came to see the ranch house,” Ena informed him crisply. “And I saw it. Now I’m going to see my father’s lawyer and find out what he has to tell me so I know exactly where I stand.”

“You’re talking about your dad’s will.” It wasn’t a guess on Mitch’s part.

Ena’s antenna went up. The accounting firm in Dallas where she had worked her way up to a junior partnership had seen all manner of fraud. Fraud that had been the result of greed and a sense of entitlement. Initially, when she had first encountered it, she had been surprised by the way people treated one another when a little bit of money was involved. But eventually, she came to expect it, just as she now expected to have to fight Mitch on some level because he had probably come to regard the ranch as his own and had hung around, waiting for her father to die. He undoubtedly expected to have her father leave the ranch to him.

Maybe, for all she knew, Mitch had even helped the situation along.

Well, too bad, she thought. If her father had left the ranch to his “trusty foreman,” Mitch Parnell was going to have one hell of a fight on his hands.

Calm down, Ena. You’re jumping the gun and getting way ahead of yourself, she silently counseled.

But she wasn’t here to try to prove that Mitch had somehow brought about her father’s demise because he had designs on the Double E. She was here to try to make the best of the situation, sell the ranch and move on. With any luck, by the end of the week she could put her whole childhood behind her once and for all.

Starting up her car, she half expected Mitch to run up to her window and try to stop her—or to at least say something inane such as “Don’t do anything hasty.” But as she pulled away, the foreman remained standing just where he was.

She could see him in the rearview mirror, watching her and shaking his head.

The smug bastard. Was he judging her?

Deep breaths, Ena, she instructed herself. Deep breaths. You can’t let someone out of your past get to you. You’re here to listen to the reading of the will and to sell the ranch. The sooner you do that, the sooner things will get back to being normal and you can go on with your life.

A life she had fought hard to forge, she reminded herself. On her own. Without asking for so much as a single dime from her father.

She was proud of that.

At the same time, the fact that she had had to do it on her own, without any help, or even an offer of help, from her father managed to sting bitterly. It reinforced her feelings of being by herself. She hadn’t always been alone. There’d been another child, her twin brother, but the baby had died at birth. While her mother had treated her as if she were a perpetual special gift from Heaven, she had always felt that her father resented that she had been the one to live and her brother had been the one to die.

“Sorry, Old Man,” she caught herself saying as she drove into town, on the lookout for the attorney’s office—there had been no lawyers in Forever when she had left. “Those were the cards you were dealt. You should have made the most of it. I would have made you forget all about the son you never had. But you never gave me the chance.” She shrugged, her shoulders rising and then falling again carelessly. “Your loss,” she concluded.

The next moment, not wanting to put up with the silence within her car a second longer, Ena turned on the radio and let Johnny Cash mute her pain.