Page 67 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“It’s amazing,” she said. “Fascinating. All of this is.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty amazing, these guys.”

“You know Rowdy from the rodeo?”

“Yeah. And he was amazing there too. Trust me. Everybody thought so. He’s one of those people.”

“Really? I think Jax stands out more.”

She hadn’t meant to say that, and her face felt warm. Jessica didn’t look offended, though. Instead, she smiled. “I don’t blame you for having a thing for Jax. He’s gorgeous.”

“Well, he’s more than that.”

She looked down at her food, her cheeks turning pink. She couldn’t see them, obviously, but she could feel how hot they were. They were surely a beacon of light.

“They’re all more than that,” Jessica said. “But they’re…inaccessible.”

She frowned. Because that hadn’t been her experience with Jax at all. He didn’t feel inaccessible; he was wonderful. So sweet to her.

But then… Jessica was friends with Rowdy, so she should know.

“You grew up here?”

“Yes. Born and raised. There’s nothing to do. Which is how I got into barrel racing, because I had to make my own fun. I didn’t think I would be getting myself a permanent injury. But, what can you do? Barrel racing is typically one of the safer events in the rodeo, but I managed to mess myself up.”

“I bet that changed a lot of things.”

“Yeah. It did. Ended a long relationship and put me on a totally different career path. The cooking. So, I’m going to do that here. I think that’ll be good. I think it’ll give me some focus. It’s really funny, I didn’t think I would enjoy cooking. Because I’m not into stereotypically traditional wife sort of things.”

“Statistically more chefs are men.”

“True. But it definitely felt like a slide into domesticity. Which I really didn’t want. Oh well. I do love it.”

“Well, your food is amazing. And I think you’ll do great.”

Ernestine didn’t have anything in common with her. And yet somehow she felt like she did. Because she could feel her sadness. Her sorrow at being excluded from a world she wished she could be part of. And also feeling like she was between things. Ernestine generally felt that about socializing. About life. She felt it in a lot of places.

And she could feel Jessica’s frustration. One thing Ernestine didn’t know anything about was changed plans. She had been on a trajectory from the time she was very young. And none of her plans had ever changed. She had been determined that she was going to keep working at the museum until retirement. Writing grants there, doing displays, going on digs, but it was going to be her home base. And that hadn’t changed. What would happen if something had to change, like it had with her? She had never really considered that. Enforced change the way that Jessica had gone through.

Or even the way that Rowdy or Jax had gone through. They hadn’t had a say in those major shifts in their lives. They had just happened, and they had to survive.

“I think it’s really resilient of you. To redirect like this.”

“The other option is sitting down on your butt and crying,” Jessica said, talking around a mouthful of cornbread. “And that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I just don’t know if I could be that resilient.”

“Don’t you hang out in the heat all day digging for bones?”

“Yes. But it’s what I chose to do. It’s the thing that I’m most interested in.”

“It’s hard. It’s hard to lose your passion. I don’t know that I’m really over it. It hurts. It hurts really badly. But I’ve found other parts of myself. At least, I keep trying to. Good riddance to my ex, good riddance to… Well, not really the circuit. But I’m just trying to be in the life that I am in. That’s all you can do.”

“Yeah. I guess it is. But a lot of people flail.”

“Yeah. A lot of them do. I don’t think you would, though.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”