did Jess and Devlin cope? Had they somehow buried the past too deeply to even notice anymore?
That seemed impossible.
“Say you do manage to buy that company and its bucking stock.” Jess pursed his lips as he surveyed the living room before moving on to the kitchen. “You’ll still need time to develop your business plan, advertise and start to schedule rodeo dates for next year. Maybe you’ll need to stay here longer than you think—at least until you get on your feet.”
“What about the livestock semitrailers you’ll need for going cross-country to rodeos?” Devlin interjected.
Tate snorted. “I appreciate all of the fatherly advice, but I have it covered. The guy holding the dispersal sale is selling his trailers, and he’s willing to work with the winning bidder as a salaried manager for the first year to ensure an easy transition.”
Jess rocked back on his heels. “You do know this won’t be cheap.”
“I found a good broker early on, and invested my rodeo winnings for years. I’ll also qualify for business loans.” Tate shrugged. “I’ve always known I couldn’t compete forever, so this has been my plan for a long time.”
Jess tipped his head toward a window facing the barns. “At least you’ll have this—a place to keep the livestock.”
“Actually, I’ll be looking for something more central—close to Denver, probably.”
From outside came the sound of tires crunching across the gravel parking area, then pulling to a stop.
Devlin skated a sidelong look at Tate and raised an eyebrow. “I guess we’re in luck. Now that we’ve sorted out your new career, we can all go out to greet the vet and see if you have any chance with her at all.”
“Maybe we can even help,” Jess added with a laugh. “You’ll probably need it.”
Tate stifled a groan as his childhood memories flooded back.
Jess and Dev had always been bigger, stronger and fiercely competitive with each other. He’d idolized them. Shadowed them. In turn, they’d relentlessly teased him as only older brothers could, and they’d become experts at it.
He didn’t need that now.
Even if seeing Sara again had reawakened a glimmer of feelings he’d buried long ago, he had no intention of pursuing her. There was no point, given her career in town and his plans to hit the road.
But both Jess and Dev could make the next few months more than awkward if they decided to make overblown declarations about unrequited love…and embarrassed Sara or gave her the wrong impression.
Hopefully they’d matured beyond the teenage taunts and teasing that all three of them had shared, but he wouldn’t put it past them, either.
Still, he had to give them credit.
They’d each found an amazing woman to settle down with, and from what he could see, they’d both found hope and inspiration in their faith. He couldn’t lay claim to any of that. The years had made him more cynical.
God hadn’t listened to him years ago, when Heather and Mom died, or after his rodeo buddy Jace was injured in a horrific rodeo accident. A good, kind man and a devout Christian, Jace died anyway, leaving a distraught wife and two little kids. Where was God then?
After that it hadn’t seemed worth the effort, no matter what Grandma Betty said about God always answering prayers. It had been a while since he’d stepped inside a church. But maybe God would be willing to handle something small.
Listening to his brothers’ laughter as they sauntered toward the barn, he glanced heavenward, then briefly closed his eyes and prayed.
Sara reached across the front seat of her truck to stroke the dog’s head, then rested her hand on its thin shoulders. “We’re going to find you a good home, Lucy,” she murmured. “Someone who will take care of those pups of yours too. I promise.”
It wasn’t going to be easy. Mostly black, with a white shawl over its neck and shoulders and four tall white socks mottled with black freckles, she looked like an indeterminate mixture of border collie, golden retriever and perhaps a pointer, and the father of her pups was anybody’s guess. The folks five miles down the road hadn’t known, and hadn’t cared. They’d just wanted her gone.
She was halfway out of her truck when she spied the three Langford boys—men—striding across the parking area toward her.
Even from a distance, she knew they couldn’t be anyone else, each of them tall and broad-shouldered, with the same sort of self-confident saunter. No one could mistake them for anything but brothers, though Tate was a bit taller and Jess was a little heavier.
But despite the rocky end to their high school romance years ago, Tate was still the only guy who had ever made her stomach tie itself in knots and made her foolish heart beat a little faster.
She stifled a sigh, wishing this vet call was already over.
Jess reached her first and thrust out his hand. “Good to see you again, Sara. You and Tate were three years behind me, but I remember you from school.”
She shook his hand and nodded, then looked over at Devlin and offered her hand to him, forcing herself to avoid any reaction to the scarring that trailed down the side of his temple and disappeared inside his shirt collar. “Devlin. Good to see you again.”
“Same here.” He shot a quick, indecipherable grin at Tate as he shook her hand. “I hear you recently moved back to Pine Bend. I expect we’ll be seeing you out at the ranch quite a bit in the future. For vet calls, that is.”
There was an undercurrent of tension—maybe even sly humor—radiating between the three brothers that she couldn’t quite read, and she faltered for a split second, then regained her composure. Whatever nonsense was going on between them, she needed to check the injured horse and be on her way. Leaving the Langford place would make the rest of the day seem a whole lot brighter.
“So how is that gelding doing?” she asked briskly as she grabbed her satchel from the backseat of her truck and started for the barn. “Still on stall rest, right?”
“Absolutely.” Tate followed her toward the barn.
The other two brothers veered off toward a gleaming black Ford F350 hitched to an empty hay wagon. “See you later,” Jess called out. “I’ve got to meet a cattle buyer this afternoon.”
“Thank goodness,” Tate muttered under his breath as the truck took off down the lane, light snow boiling up from beneath its tires.
“What?”
He hesitated, then gave her a wry glance. “Dev seems to think you and I were quite an item in high school, and that it never stopped.”
She stumbled, but caught herself. “Oh.”
“And
