Page 102 of Roping Her In

Finally, everyone had their lunch and their beverage of choice, and Finn was about halfway through his lunch when he said, “We’re going to do announcements while we finish eating, and then we’ll move on to today’s topic.”

He surveyed this good group of men and women, these friends and family that he loved so much. In fact, as he looked at them, he realized that they were friends who had become family, and he didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t have them in his life.

“I’ll start,” he said, and he cleared his throat. “We all know that Edith is pregnant with our fourth child. We had the ultrasound a couple of days ago, and they moved her due date up by almost a whole week.”

The room had become absolutely still and silent, and Finn met his sister’s eyes. Not even Libby knew this news. Finn ducked his head and chuckled. “We’re having a girl.”

Henry, ever the showboat, jumped to his feet and threw his hat in the air as he yelled, “Yahoooooo!” as if he’d just become part wolf and had to hold the last part of the word until his lungs ran out of air.

That got everyone else to release the tension that had come over them, and cheers and congratulations went around. Now Finn could focus on the other announcements and today’s meeting.

Oh, and he and Edith would need to find a way to agree on the name of their little girl. Thankfully, they had a few more months for that.

37

Smiles couldn’t believe where he currently stood and where he hoped to be in another half-hour. But he’d an insane idea about a week ago, and he’d been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. God had practically shouted at him that morning when Bev had texted him that one of her favorite places in Amarillo, a Hawaiian barbecue joint, had just opened up in Three Rivers.

So Smiles looked up at the menu. He’d eaten at Surf’s Up Meats during his time in vet school too, but he hadn’t been there in years. Thankfully, his mind wasn’t so muddled that he hadn’t asked Bev what she liked.

When it was his turn to order, he said, “I need a three-meat plate, please, with two pulled pork and one teriyaki chicken.”

“Do you want all white rice or brown rice?” the man asked.

“Sticky white,” Smiles said.

“Mac salad?”

“Yes, please.” He didn’t want to think more than necessary. “You know what? Make that two of those, but instead of the second pulled pork, I’ll take the marinated steak.”

The man got to work putting together the two orders, and the crazy idea wasn’t taking Bev lunch at the veterinary clinic. Smiles had done that a handful of times in the past several months.

No, it was the reason he was showing up today that had his nerves galloping through his veins like a herd of wild mustangs. He’d made up plenty of reasons to stop by Bev’s. He just had a question about this, or wondered what she thought about that and happened to be in the area.

He’d called her up to the ranch several times too, and he made it a point to get to church every Sunday. With those efforts, he’d managed to see Bev a few times every month. They texted often, but Smiles hadn’t seen a single crack in her defenses.

If anything, they’d only gotten stronger, especially after the spring branding, when Lowry Blackwell had asked her out. She’d been surprised, but she’d said yes. A piece of Smiles’s heart had died that day, only to be reborn when she’d texted him that Friday when she was supposed to be going out with Lowry, to tell him that she just couldn’t do it.

He’d immediately left the ranch and stopped by Wilde & Organic, where he got her favorite flavor of ice cream: banana with those tiny peanut butter cups and threads of caramel through it. He’d sat with her on her back porch while she ate that, and he ate a pint of cookie dough ice cream.

They hadn’t talked much, but she’d hugged him when he left, and Smiles clung to all the hope in the world that this idea wouldn’t bench him forever.

He paid for the meals, got in his truck, and before he knew it, he’d pulled up behind Boone’s veterinary clinic. He could walk in the back door and be greeted as if he worked there, as everyone in the office knew him.

He sometimes came to consult with Boone as well, but it had been Bev who’d solved their hoof problems at Shiloh Ridge right after the ice storm. He looked at the back door and kept the truck running so the air conditioning would continue to cool the cab.

He’d been back at Shiloh Ridge for two years now, and he’d started meeting with the good men who ran the ranch: Wilder, Link, Gun, Rock, and Robbie. All of his aunts and uncles had fully retired now or did minimal jobs around the ranch just to stay busy.

Smiles’s generation had stepped up, and they ran things through a big committee now—and Smiles had a seat on that as well—but he’d taken his desire for his own house to his cousins.

Wilder had purchased five acres of land in the corner of the ranch for him and Savannah, and she now ran Llama Mama’s from there.

Gun lived in his daddy’s house, and his parents had moved into the homestead with Wilder’s momma and daddy. Robbie was engaged and worked full time at the ranch, but his soon-to-be wife, Gina, owned a bakery in town with a huge apartment above it, and he’d be moving in there with her.

Smiles didn’t fancy the idea of commuting to the ranch, though he knew Bev had bought a house over in the same area of town where Elaine Walker lived.

“Used to live,” Smiles muttered to himself.

Elaine had moved her Walker Foundation for Women into the house she owned when she and Colt had gotten married last month. She now lived, of course, out at the orchards with him and Jonas.