The Cowboy Takes A Wife

When Cole wrapped his arm around Devon’s shoulders, she went stiff as a fence post. He wondered if he’d made a miscalculation of how she’d respond, but then she relaxed a fraction and played along with the tale he and his mother were spinning by the seat of their pants.

Though he suspected his mother was up to something, he followed her lead. It was that or continuing to watch Devon’s mother bully her. How the older woman was treating her daughter raised his ire, the same way he was angered anytime he saw a parent belittling or mistreating a child. He’d damn near gotten himself thrown in jail up in Wyoming the time he’d intervened when he’d seen a woman grab her little girl by her ponytail and nearly drag her out of a restaurant. Thankfully, there had been enough witnesses who took his side that he’d avoided ending up behind bars. But he wouldn’t have done anything differently even if he had ended up there.

Granted, Devon was a grown woman, but that didn’t suddenly give her mother the right to embarrass her in public.

“It was nice to meet you, Steven,” Devon said, sounding sincere. “I hope you enjoy your visit to Blue Falls.”

“Thank you,” the man beside Angela Newberry said.

Cole fought the strange urge to dislike the guy, but it appeared Steven had been roped into this awkward situation unknowingly.

Angela appeared as though she was about to protest again, so Cole steered Devon away from her mother and toward the parking lot. Yes, it was partly to prevent Devon from having to endure any more pressure from her mother, but it was more so he’d remove himself from Angela’s presence before he said something that would embarrass both his mom and Devon.

“Devon,” Angela called out.

“‘Bye, Mom.” Devon threw a wave over her shoulder without looking back.

As they put distance between themselves and Angela, Devon didn’t move to extricate herself from him. Most likely it was because she knew her mother was probably staring at Devon’s back, but it felt good to have his arm wrapped around a woman again nonetheless.

Oh hell, he was not going there. If he could be sure Angela wasn’t watching them, he’d be the first to step away. The absolute last thing he needed in his life was a woman. He’d been down that path more than once, and it always ended up dead-ending in Craptown.

When they maneuvered their way to the other side of his truck, he lifted his arm away from her and let it fall to his side while he propped his other arm along the side of his truck bed.

“Thanks for the rescue,” Devon said, not making eye contact.

He wondered if she was embarrassed because he’d witnessed the disagreement between her and her mother or if it was that she’d allowed him to pose as something he wasn’t. And would never be. He might convince himself to go on the occasional date, but from now on it was going to be casual one-and-done for him. Getting serious with someone led to marriage, and he’d tried that twice already and neither had ended well. There was no third-time’s-the-charm.

“No problem,” he said.

She shifted from one foot to the other, as if she might be about to turn and leave.

“You’ll need to come out to the house now,” his mom said as she joined them.

At that, Devon looked up.

“If you don’t, your mom will find out and know this was all a ruse. Plus, it’d be nice to visit anyway. And you could see Cole’s sculptures.”

There it was, his mother’s undying belief that “the one” was still out there for him, the woman who would love him and give his mom grandchildren. He could tell her a million times that he was done with marriage and she still refused to believe him.

“Neither of those marriages worked out because neither of them was the right woman,” she’d said on more than one occasion.

He’d finally stopped wasting his breath. She’d figure it out when year after year passed by with him still single and childless. Leave it to his younger brother, Cooper, to be the provider of grandchildren. Maybe then his mom would abandon her determined hope for Cole’s happily-ever-after.

He expected Devon to decline. Instead, she nodded.

“You’re probably right. I hate that you all got sucked into the gravitational pull that is my mother’s belief she can find the perfect man for me.”

His mom made a dismissive sound. “Don’t worry about it. We were happy to help.”

In fact, his mom sounded a bit too happy. And for a moment, Cole wasn’t sure if all that barely contained glee was solely because she might have some matchmaking up her sleeve. Now that he thought about it, he remembered the occasional offhand remark from his mom about Angela Newberry that indicated she didn’t like the other woman. He hadn’t thought about it much when she’d made those remarks, but now he wondered if there was some bigger story there.

His mom clapped her hands together once. “Well, we better get going before Angela gets suspicious.”

If Devon’s mom had a lick of sense, she was already suspicious. But he guessed they had to run with this a while longer. As he slipped into the driver’s seat of his truck, he couldn’t help but glance toward where Devon was walking to her car. There was no denying she was pretty with that head full of long, curly red hair. And despite the fact that she lived in Texas, her skin wasn’t tanned. Maybe with her fair complexion she burned easily and took caution in the sun.

“She’s certainly grown into a beautiful woman, hasn’t she?”

He shifted his attention to his mom sitting in the passenger seat. “You can just stop right there.”

“What? I can’t say when I think someone’s pretty?”

He snorted. “We both know where you’re going with this, and my view on the whole idea hasn’t changed.”

His mom sighed. “Fine. Maybe you two can at least be friends. With a mom like hers, I’m sure she could use them.”

“What’s up with you and Angela Newberry anyway?”

“She’s always been too snooty for words, thinks she’s better than everyone else.”

He still thought there might be more to the story, but he also knew when his mom wasn’t going to say more on the subject. “Good enough reason for me.”

He started the truck and pulled out onto Main Street, not allowing himself to check the rearview mirror to see if a certain redhead was following.

* * *

DEVON SHOOK HER head as she followed Cole and Barbara toward their ranch. Perhaps going through with the visit was overkill, but sometimes it felt as if her mother had eyes and ears everywhere. Not for the first time, Devon wondered how her life would be different if she’d moved away from Blue Falls, hundreds or even thousands of miles away from her family.

No doubt her mom would still find a way to know everything she was doing and criticize it. To Angela Newberry, Devon had chosen a life beneath her. She was supposed to marry a man with the right pedigree according to her mom, take part in carefully chosen causes and pop out a few babies while her husband was brought into the fold at Diamond Ranch Western Wear.

Ugh. The image made her skin crawl. It wasn’t that the thought of marrying and having children repulsed her. But, funny thing, she’d like to be the one picking the husband in that scenario, preferably someone who looked at the world as she did, who wasn’t bedazzled by her parents’ money. Even the name of her parents’ huge ranch and the namesake clothing company that produced high-end Western wear for everyone from governors to famous country singers didn’t sit well with her. It sounded pretentious. She hated pretentious.

She much preferred her little sustainable farm, where she raised chickens, goats and sheep, spun wool, made goat’s-milk soap. It provided the peace and freedom from stress that she’d lacked growing up. Money often couldn’t buy you the things you wanted most. She’d even chosen a simple name for her home, Phlox Farm, because the hillside next to her house had been covered in bright purple phlox the first time she’d seen it. So unlike Diamond Ranch, where the only diamonds to be found were on her mother’s hand or in her jewelry box.

The day she’d visited her farm, it had been love at first sight. When her mother had found out where Devon was moving, she’d sworn Devon had lost her mind. Her mom didn’t realize that by saying that, it only made Devon more convinced she’d done the right thing by buying it.

She lifted her hand to shade the setting sun trying to blind her through the driver’s-side window. Leaving thoughts of the past in the past where they belonged, she focused on the pickup in front of her, and not getting so lost in her memories that she drove too close to it.

Cole looked over toward his mom, putting his strong profile on display. Devon’s heartbeat did a disconcerting fluttery thing, causing her to take a slow, deep breath to calm the rhythm. She had to purge this problematic attraction, especially if she didn’t want to trip over her own tongue and make an idiot of herself while she had to spend time at the ranch.

She nearly hit the brakes and turned around. She’d ceased letting her mother have power over her decisions years ago, and yet here she was, willing to go hide out at the Davis ranch simply because her mom was trying to fix her up again.

This wasn’t your idea.

No, but she hadn’t put the kibosh on it, either.

Good grief, she was putting too much importance on the impending visit. She liked Barbara, who was friendly and a faithful customer of the fabric section of A Good Yarn. Both she and Cole had helped her out, so the least she could do was maybe have a cup of coffee with them, take a gander at Cole’s work, say some appropriately complimentary words, then head home to that bath and book that seemed to keep getting further and further away.

Several miles north of town, Cole finally put on his left-turn signal and pulled into his family’s ranch. She wondered what it had felt like to him when he’d returned home after several years on the rodeo circuit. When he’d left right after high school, his father had been alive and his younger brother had still been at home. Now it was Cooper out riding the circuit, so Cole had come home to only his mom.