along.
Whatever changes had happened in Ferrell, it was obviously still a small town at heart. People here really cared. He hadn’t given them enough credit for that. He’d thought they’d turn fancy and snobbish once the highway was built and tourist money started lining their pockets.
That he was wrong surprised and discomfited him.
And the food!
Everyone had brought their best dishes to share for the occasion. Buck was used to bunkhouse fare, and the layout of food here at Ellie’s was better than at any of the church potlucks he remembered attending as a child here in Ferrell. His stomach was soon as heavy as his heart was light.
It seemed only minutes had passed when Larry Bowman clapped Buck on the back of his shoulder. “The crowd is starting to disperse,” he said in a kind, gentle tone. Larry had been the town lawyer for as long as Buck could remember. “We can get down to business anytime you’re ready.”
“Sure,” Buck choked out, struggling for a breath. Why did he feel like he was being ambushed? Try as he might, he couldn’t shake it. “Just give me a few minutes, will you? I need to check on my son.”
Larry nodded in agreement and quickly moved back toward the nearest group of neighbors, giving Buck the space he so desperately needed.
Find his son?
What Buck needed to do was find Ellie. He realized he hadn’t seen her in an hour.
Ellie was a social being. Buck had expected her to be flitting around like a butterfly as hostess of this party, or at least that was how she’d been twenty years ago. He realized, with a pang of some emotion he refused to identify, that he really knew nothing of the woman she’d become.
Despite that fact, though, he had a less-than-altruistic reason for finding Ellie—the reading of the will. His tough veneer was a sham, and he knew it. And if he wasn’t careful, everyone else would know it, as well.
Where was she?
Buck asked around, but no one had seen her in a while. And then Buck remembered something Ellie had said earlier, when they were at the gravesite together. She’d said she would handle Tyler, once they’d agreed to come to the reception at her ranch.
Was that where she was?
With Tyler?
Ellie was in for trouble if she had any notion of pulling Tyler out of his shell. The boy was so angry and bitter, he rarely talked to Buck anymore, much less some strange woman from a town his father rarely spoke of, and only then with an animosity he knew he could not hide. He wouldn’t be too keen on anything Ellie offered, especially meeting new friends. Tyler had always been a bit of a loner.
Like Buck.
Even so, Buck’s gut was telling him he was on the right track with that line of reasoning, that he would find Tyler wherever Ellie was lurking.
Ellie had always been a stubborn woman, and Buck doubted that had changed in twenty years. She would be a formidable opponent, even for Tyler, though Buck wasn’t the least bit certain who would win any quarrel between them.
Buck hoped there was no quarrel.
Spinning on his heels, he clamped his black Stetson down on his head and moved slowly and awkwardly toward the front door, having to explain several times that, no, he was not leaving so soon, but rather that he was trying to find his son so he could introduce Tyler around.
If Buck could get the boy out of the truck. And if Ellie’s feelings weren’t too hurt by his son’s sharp tongue and broody disposition.
The scenario in Buck’s mind was looking worse by the minute. Tyler biting into Ellie in suppressed grief over the death of his beloved grandmother. Ellie forcing Tyler to meet kids his own age, when all that would do was make the boy even more uncomfortable than he already was. Buck couldn’t get to his truck fast enough—only to find it empty when he arrived.
Chapter Two
Ellie’s theory had been right on the mark. Once she’d remembered whose son Tyler was, she’d known just where to look for him—in the stable, with the horses.
Where Buck would have hidden given the same set of circumstances.
The boy obviously shared the same love for horses as his father, because as soon as Ellie entered the stable, she knew Tyler was present. She could hear Tyler making the same soft crooning sounds his father had always used—quite effectively, she clearly remembered—with his own horses.
“Tyler?” she called cheerfully, but her only answer was a sudden deafening silence in the stable. “Tyler Redmond? It’s Ellie McBride. We met earlier.”
Still no sound, but Ellie was no less certain Tyler was somewhere in the stable, and that he was no doubt straining his ears for any sound she might make. She moved noisily from stall to stall, speaking to each of her beloved horses as she went and thus giving Tyler plenty of warning—wherever he was. It was only when she peeked over the last door, the one to the birthing stall, that she found Tyler.
One of her quarter horse broodmares, Sophie, was due to deliver soon, so the sorrel-colored mare had been recently confined to the roomy birthing stall, filled with fresh straw to welcome the newborn foal whenever he or she came. Ellie thought it would be soon.
To Ellie’s alarm, Sophie was lying on her side, her breath coming in heaving snorts. Tyler was there with the sorrel, on his knees, hunkered over the mare, rubbing her down with his own bandana and murmuring encouragement to her. Ellie noted vaguely that Tyler’s denim shirt was now untucked, and the boy had obviously given no thought to dirtying his crisp new blue jeans as he knelt before the laboring mare.
“Tyler?” Ellie said again. “What is it? What’s wrong with Sophie?”
She realized belatedly she had no idea why she was asking a twelve-year-old boy such a question, but she opened the stall door and slipped inside, sliding to her knees next to the horse’s head and running her hand down Sophie’s sweat-stained withers, then rapidly across her stomach, mentally assessing how far into labor Sophie might be.
Her adrenaline surged as she realized help for the birth was not readily available. Doc Stevens, the local vet, wasn’t inside the ranch house with the rest of the community. Just after Esther’s funeral, the vet had been unexpectedly called away for an emergency at a nearby farm.
Ellie toyed with the idea of having Tyler run and ask someone at the house to fetch Doc Stevens immediately. Still, she waited patiently for the boy’s answer to her query, allowing Tyler the opportunity to voice his own opinion, as he’d been with the mare longer.
Tyler looked up at her with the same serious, low-browed gaze Buck often wore, shadowed by a camel-colored felt cowboy hat pushed low over his eyes. The boy reminded Ellie of his father in so many ways, it made her heart turn over and emotions clog in her throat.
“She’s in labor,” Tyler said, his voice at once soft and gruff, with the high-pitched twinge of a young man entering puberty. “It’s been an hour, maybe?”
Ellie smiled inwardly. She might have pointed out that she had already assessed that much just by looking at the situation, but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded
