And Cowboy Makes Three

Rowdy ran a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “It sounds like something out of the Holy Scriptures. You know, when Jesus was speaking to Peter and kept telling him to feed his sheep? You think this is some kind of secret message?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even certain Granny was lucid when she wrote this stuff down. Maybe what she really meant to convey didn’t quite translate to paper.”

Rowdy hoped that was the case, but he sincerely doubted it. Life was never that simple, and he’d been there during Granny Frances’s final days. She had been coherent until her very last moments, when she had given her soul up to Jesus.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Whatever this letter means, she knew what she was doing when she wrote it. I’m sorry you weren’t able to be there with her during her last moments, but I was, and I can tell you definitively that she was fully lucid all the way up to the end.”

His words weren’t quite the accusation they had been earlier. “The last word she breathed was Jesus. Her expression was so peaceful. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind her Savior was there waiting with open arms to welcome her into heaven.”

Tears sprang to Ange’s eyes and she dashed them back with her palm, while her face blotched with red and purple. Rowdy thought she might be having trouble holding herself together. She’d always been a private person and her struggle with grief was real, even if everything else she’d ever told him varied from the truth in some way.

And the worst part was, seeing her tears tore at him, ripping into his chest.

He didn’t know how he felt about her expressing her grief. When Ange had left Serendipity, it had been for good. She had not even come to visit Granny Frances.

Not once.

And though he now understood why she had missed Granny’s funeral, that didn’t make the whole situation any less confusing.

Here she was now, trying to make things right when it was too late for her to do so.

Too late for Granny Frances.

And too late for him.

For them.

He swallowed hard, but a smile lingered on his lips despite the fresh wave of grief.

He stammered quickly over his next sentence, returning the conversation to safer grounds.

“J-Jo appeared to know exactly what was going on,” he pointed out. “Maybe we should just toss the letter and ask her straight out. I’ll bet she has answers.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Ange assured him.

“Although how much she’ll divulge is another thing entirely. If she made a pact with Granny Frances, we are only going to learn what your granny wanted us to know.”

“That’s right. So I guess we have to play sleuth and see if we can figure it out on our own before we approach Jo on the matter.”

“Well, the first note was literal, right?” he asked, trying to make logic out of the cryptic words. “Picnic With Jo?”

“Up to a point, it was. Obviously, there was a lot Granny left out. Intentionally, I suspect.”

“So, what if this letter is the same? Maybe she really means you should feed her sheep.”

“Me? I don’t know the first thing about sheep.” Her gaze widened and for a moment, she gaped at him. “There aren’t any sheep at her ranch anymore, are there? She adored her sheep. I remember she used to lovingly refer to them as her woolies. She wouldn’t let them starve. I guess I just assumed that since Granny knew she had a terminal disease, she’d have all her affairs in order and sell her stock off before she passed.”

He bit on the inside of his cheek, wondering just how much he ought to tell her.

Any way he looked at it, Rowdy didn’t like where this was going. The way he saw it, and the only interpretation that made any sense, was that Granny Frances’s intention was for him to subtly introduce Ange to the ins and outs of ranch life, possibly hoping she’d decide to keep the land in the family.

But that was unfair, for so many reasons. For one thing, Ange was the furthest thing from a rancher ever, and she’d need a ton of help—assistance Granny Frances assumed would come from Rowdy.

And for another, though Granny Frances knew he had taken over her ranch out of love for her, she also had to have known he needed to expand if he was going to keep making a profit on his land.

They had never spoken about it, but joining their two ranches was the perfect answer to that dilemma. She would have had to have been blind not to recognize the hope he carried in his heart for the joining of the properties, and Granny Frances was as astute a woman as one could find anywhere.

“I’ve been taking care of her stock,” he admitted, his thoughts working frantically.

Ange looked mortified. “You don’t really think she wants you to teach me how to care for sheep, do you?”

He shrugged.

It crossed his mind that he could sabotage the plans to get Ange on board to keep the ranch, if that was what they were. After all, Ange deciding to do so was the exact opposite of what Rowdy wanted to happen.

But deep down, Rowdy knew he would never be so underhanded as to resort to anything as devious as that. It wasn’t in his nature. Nor would God be happy with that kind of thinking—much less acting.

Besides, as far as he knew, Ange still agreed with him about how Granny Frances’s estate should be handled—so there should be no conflict despite Granny Frances’s note suggesting that Ange needed to learn to feed the sheep.

No. Ange wanted to sell her ranch.

To him.

And he wanted to buy.

It was a win-win, putting enough money in her pocket to find a good place to live in the city and have some left over for Toby’s long-term care.

It wasn’t that he was afraid Ange would change her mind and decide to stick around. Ranch work was hard and dusty. If anything, Feed My Sheep would convince her that she should sell like nothing else might.

Even one day of herding sheep and mucking around in a smelly barn would be enough to send her running back to Denver faster than she could say “Giddyap.” He would put his last nickel on the fact that she didn’t even own a pair of mud boots.

And he had loved Granny Frances. That fact was cut-and-dried. If teaching Ange to feed Granny’s sheep would honor the deceased’s memory, then he would cowboy up and do it, even if every second in her presence was torture, plain and simple.

He just had to hold on to the knowledge that it wouldn’t last forever. Whatever the outcome of this game Granny Frances was playing with them, it would end eventually.

He would hold fast to the idea that Ange had indicated she wanted to sell him the ranch. The sooner he cooperated with this—whatever this was—the sooner she would leave and he could take full ownership of Granny Frances’s ranch and incorporate it into his own.

“You don’t think—” Ange started, and then her sentence dropped off and her face drained of color. “This is the second envelope. Jo didn’t say it was the last one. What if there are more letters after this one? More stuff she wants us to do, more riddles we have to figure out? Could this be some kind of outrageous scavenger hunt Granny is sending us on?”

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Rowdy shook his head voraciously as his thoughts denied the possibility.

“I don’t think we ought to keep speculating on this bit. We need to go find Jo and clear up the confusion,” he said. “There’s no question that I want to honor Granny Frances’s memory, but...”

“Exactly,” she said, even though he hadn’t finished his sentence. “Whatever needs doing, needs doing quickly. I absolutely cannot stick around after this weekend. My flight back to Denver leaves tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got to return to my job on Monday. It’s my first day back after my maternity leave. I’ll lose my position for sure if I don’t show up. My boss is a real stickler about stuff like that.”

“What do you do?”