Courting The Cowboy

She stifled a groan, frustrated that seeing him could bring up the old pain so easily. Though she knew it would hover like a shadow over her life, she thought she had pushed it further back.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him again.

Pablo whined and she shut the lid of her laptop with a decisive snap.

“Okay, okay. I guess we’ll go for a run instead,” she said to her dog.

The first two years of Pablo’s life had caused extra stress for Ella as she tried to work his exercise in between painting and helping her mother and Darren at the gallery.

However the past couple of years the two of them had clocked hundreds of miles as Ella ran every day, seeking peace and absolution in the steady movement of her feet on pavement.

At one time she could lose herself in her painting but that had eluded her since she lost her baby son. Two months later Darren’s death had sent her world into a tailspin.

Running centered and grounded her. Gave her a purpose.

Then, as she stepped outside, Suzy’s and Paul’s voices carried through the grove of trees between the houses. It sounded like they were arguing.

It’s none of your business, she told herself, tightening her grip on Pablo’s leash as he strained toward the noise of the children. Boyce or Cord should take care of that. Not you.

But the fight was escalating. Then she heard a hollow thump followed by a heartrending wail from Suzy. And it sounded much closer than the main ranch yard.

She waited to see if someone would come but no one did.

So she tied Pablo up and followed the sound of Suzy’s cries. To her surprise they led her to the back of her cabin. She turned a corner and there they were.

Suzy sat on the ground by a tall, metal swing, sobbing and clutching her head. She was wearing a frilly pink dress. Paul had on a pair of blue pants and a white shirt. They looked dressed up. Probably ready for church.

“What happened?” Ella asked, hurrying to Suzy’s side and kneeling down beside her.

“Paul...pushed...he pushed me off the swing...on purpose,” Suzy wailed, leaning into Ella.

The movement caught her off guard. Once again she was holding on to a little child and once again her heart contracted.

“I didn’t hurt her,” Paul protested. “She wanted me to give her a push.”

“You didn’t need to push so hard,” Suzy shouted back at him. She returned to Ella, wrapping her arms around her, sobbing.

In spite of her own reaction, Ella’s arms automatically slipped around the little girl’s narrow shoulders and held her close. To her surprise, it felt good to be wanted. To be needed. Even if it was by a slightly dramatic six-year-old.

Suzy seemed to be milking this for all it was worth. Ella could hear that her cries had turned from sincere to forced and she suppressed a smile.

Paul squatted in front of Suzy and touched her shoulder. “I’m supposed to say I’m sorry, right?”

“You’re supposed to be sadder,” Suzy said, her head buried against Ella.

Ella almost laughed aloud.

Then she heard Pablo bark and the kids sat up, looking past Ella, and scrambled to their feet.

“What are you kids doing here?”

Ella looked back to see Cord standing a few feet away, hands planted on his hips. He could have been intimidating with his broad shoulders and piercing eyes and stubble shading his lean jaw.

But the buttons of his blue-and-white shirt didn’t line up with the buttonholes and one of the tails of his shirt hung out of his wrinkled jeans. He looked like he had dressed in a hurry.

“Sorry, Daddy. We asked if we could come here when you were in the shower.”

“Did I say yes?”

Paul dropped his head, his one toe digging in the dirt around the swing set as he slowly shook his head.

“I thought you said yes,” Suzy said, her expression guileless, her hands folded demurely in front of her. Ella was impressed with how easily she shifted from brokenhearted to beguiling.

“I didn’t.” The tiniest note of hesitation slipped into his voice and Suzy seemed to jump on it.

“But I thought you did,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes wide, her expression pleading. “And these swings are way more fun than ours and you always like us to play outside. You say it’s healthy. So we thought we could come here. That was a good idea, right?”

Ella looked away so neither Suzy nor Cord could see her battle to repress her smile.

But Cord must have been subjected to his daughter’s machinations more than once and seemed to be unaffected.

“Wrong,” he said with a note of finality. “You know what Grandpa Boyce and I said about disturbing Miss Ella.”

Ella lifted a hand in a gesture of protest at the form of address. “Please. Let them call me Ella.”

Miss Ella sounded like she should be wearing a hoop skirt and drinking lemonade on a plantation.

“Did the kids come to ask you?” he asked, leveling his eyes at her.

Ella glanced over at Paul and Suzy and caught the little girl’s pleading look. She wasn’t going to lie and cover Suzy’s disobedience yet she felt sorry for them. No mother, and now no nanny and a father who seemed busy.

“We didn’t ask her,” Paul said, intervening. Then he turned to Ella, his expression serious. “And I’m sorry we bugged you. We didn’t mean to. We always played on these swings before ’cause we don’t have any by our house.”

His words sounded so sincere and, at the same time, so formal and so adult for his age.

But what was even worse was the notion that she was the Big Bad Neighbor taking away their fun.

The solitude had been what she signed up for, she told herself. However, as she looked down at their sad faces, she felt petty. What did it matter if the kids came to her yard to play on the swing set?

Was saving herself a few moments of discomfort worth making these kids feel restricted on their own ranch yard?

“You know what?” she said. “I go out for a run every day with Pablo at eight o’clock in the morning and after supper. Why don’t you come and play on the swings either of those times?” That way she would be satisfying Cord’s demands that her kids stay away from her dog, and the kids could come and play there while she was gone. She glanced at Cord as if to check with him but, for some reason, he was still frowning.

Suzy let out a cheer and then grabbed Ella’s hand, looking up at her with a wide grin. “Thanks, Miss Ella. That’s awesome possum.”

Her faint lisp made the words sound even more adorable.

“Okay, kids, over to the house,” Cord said. “You have to get ready for church.”