Page 40 of Roping Her In

“But you might be.”

“I might be,” she conceded. They’d talked about having another baby for years now. Years. In the end, it had never felt right, and while they both wanted a baby girl, they’d also both entered their forties and were perfectly content with their trio of boys.

“Just get the test, okay? It could be nothing; there’s a lot going around town right now.”

Finn nodded, though his wife couldn’t see him. “Okay, I’ll get everything you said, and I’ll see if I can make it home before I have to get the pizza.”

“You probably won’t be able to do that,” Edee said. “We don’t need any of it until after, so don’t stress over it.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll make sure I leave a couple of pizzas in the truck for dinner tonight.”

“I want all-meat,” Edith said, and Finn simply smiled, though she’d always craved plenty of meat when she’d been pregnant with their sons.

“Love you, baby.”

“Love you too, Finny.”

The call ended, and Finn slid from his truck and braved the gray day beyond. Of course he’d ordered three pizzas just for his family—and yes, one of them was an all-meat pie. His boys liked the three-cheese, and Finn had gotten an Alfredo Hawaiian as their third pizza.

Now, he just had to figure out where to get a pregnancy test—and master the self-checkout so the rumor mill wouldn’t be stirred up—and make it through the small ranch owners’ meeting before he could get back to his wife and find out if he’d be a father of four.

16

Smiles Glover couldn’t stand the pathetic lowing in the sick calf shed for another moment. He stepped outside, where the air went down chilly, but at least didn’t smell like foot rot, wet calves, and sadness. He looked up into the sky, which held a shade of gray that promised rain later, and sighed.

At least Beverly Russell would be coming up to the ranch that day, and Smiles checked his phone to see how much longer he had to wait for her arrival. Another sigh slipped out of his mouth, this one much more dramatic.

“Two hours,” he griped as his phone buzzed in his back pocket. Smiles hunkered down next to the shed to stay out of the wind as he checked it.

Can you come over to the family stables? Rock asked. Wilder and Link are here, and we need your brains.

Smiles knew that wasn’t true at all, but he’d been back at Shiloh Ridge now for a year and a half. He’d settled nicely into the leadership role preserved for him, and since he’d earned his veterinary degree, that made him part of the managerial staff at the ranch.

Truth be told, him being his daddy’s son would have done that, and Smiles did love his generational land and living nearby his brothers and sisters, his cousins and aunts and uncles, the way he always had. College had been more of a challenge for him than he’d let on, and probably the only person in the whole world who knew that was Rock himself.

Yeah, I can head over, he told his brother, and he tucked his phone away and started the trek toward the family stables.

Along with Smiles and Rock, Link, Wilder, Gun, and Robbie also played major roles on the ranch. All of them were married with children or about to be engaged, and Smiles felt like a wolf in sheep’s clothing whenever they got together for their management meetings.

He once again thought of Beverly Russell and wished she was coming up to the ranch for a different reason than to help him assess his sick and injured calves. But he’d asked her out before, and she’d told him no, citing that her divorce was very recent and she wasn’t ready to start dating again.

Smiles had backed right off, at least in his romantic pursuits. He hadn’t stopped texting Bevvy, or asking her to come to the ranch, or stopping by the veterinary clinic where she worked. She’d been a year ahead of him in school, and they’d been study buddies throughout college.

He had no idea what had happened with her ex-husband, and while he wanted her to play a different role in his life, for now, God had told him to be her friend.

Smiles had been doing that with the hope of something more in the future. Maybe even today, though he didn’t think so.

He reached the stable and pulled open the door to the sound of his brothers and cousins talking. The wind grabbed the door and caught it, forcing Smiles to leap after it. It banged hard against the outside of the stable before he could wrangle it, and when he finally made it inside, Rock was striding toward him.

“The wind is kicking up already.”

“Finn said the pressure had started to drop,” Rock said, a smile on his face, because the weather never really bothered him. Of course, Rock was a homebody, and he had a pretty wife and the cutest baby on the planet to hole up with if the weather turned.

And Smiles had to go back to his cowboy cabin down the lane from the homestead where he’d grown up. Alone.

Smiles had never really thrived while alone, and he grabbed onto his brother and clapped him heartily on the back. “Hey, you.” He stepped back, grinning widely. “How’s Clover doing with her online class?”

“Good,” Rock said. “She’s really liking it, though it’s a lot of reading, and she’s not sure about that.”