Page 133 of Promised to the Cowboy

Dad sets down his coffee. “Yes, ma’am.”

Caleb coughs into his fist.

I look at him. “You laughing?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Maggie points toward the house. “Lunch in ten minutes. And if any of you track mud onto my clean floor, you’ll eat outside.”

She turns and disappears.

Dad picks up the board I set down earlier, and Caleb reaches for the other end.

I move to help, and both men look at me.

“No,” they say together.

I stare at them. “I hate both of you.”

“Good,” Dad says. “Means you’re feeling better.”

They carry the board toward the far stall while I follow with my coffee and what remains of my dignity.

Chance watches us pass. Evie’s shelves line the wall beyond her. The rehab space is almost finished. In a few weeks, the firstfrightened horse will arrive, and Evie will stand in this barn with our daughter beneath her heart, offering patience to something that’s forgotten how to trust.

Three days from now, she’ll become my wife. For once, the future does not look like something waiting to be taken from me. It looks like a house full of people, a barn being rebuilt, a father who stayed, and a friend who came because he knew he did not have to stand alone.

And Evie.

Always Evie.

I set down my coffee. “Where are those tables?”

Dad glances back. “You carrying one?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll show you.”

By the time I reach the house, lunch has become something closer to a siege. Every surface in the kitchen is covered. Trays of rolls, bowls of fruit, flowers in buckets, folded linens stacked on one chair because Delaney has apparently decided chairs are no longer for sitting. Kitty is hunched over a tray of moss, tiny potted plants, and lengths of copper wire, constructing something she claims is a living centerpiece but currently looks like a forest floor being held hostage.

Shay stands at the counter, piping something onto a cake while Kitty holds a ruler against the side of it.

“That tier is leaning,” Delaney says.

“It is not leaning.”

“It is three degrees off vertical.”

Shay studies the cake for a moment before saying, “It gives it rustic charm.”

Tom carries a box through the doorway with Max perched on one hip and a length of ribbon trailing from his pocket.

Maggie points at him without looking up from the dough beneath her hands. “Not in here.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You brought the goat ribbon inside.”