Merry Cowboy Christmas (Lucky Penny Ranch #3)(70)

Jud’s heart skipped a beat. He’d never thought about her leaving permanently. His wildest idea was that Mary Jo and Sharlene had talked her into going back to that bar with them and that some other two-steppin’ cowboy would take her eye.

“The girl has run away again. Get that through your heads. Now eat up, son, so we can go see if that new calf is as good as the one you got the day before,” Truman said grumpily.

Jud ate breakfast, but he might as well have been eating sawdust. He helped Truman with chores, but that morning he didn’t care if he changed Scrooge into a nice person or not. He just wanted to know that Fiona was safe. He tried several more times to reach her and got the same results every time. At least Truman didn’t harp on the issue anymore. That much was a blessing. When they finished at Truman’s place, they went straight to the barn where the two calves were penned up with their mothers.

Blake was already leaning on the stall door, a smile on his face. “I believe this one is even better stock than the last one. He’s got good heavy bones and look how alert he is.”

Truman climbed up on the first slat and tilted his head to the left, frowned, squinted, and nodded. “You’re right. That’s a breeder. You’ll have to watch Herman. He’ll try to tell you that it ain’t so he can get a chance to buy him.”

“What about you, Truman?” Blake asked. “Would you buy him if you had a chance?”

Truman shook his head. “Sorry, boys, but I’m not real sure that this time next year I’ll be in the cattle business. I been doin’ some real hard thinkin’. I ain’t through yet, but seems like God is tellin’ me what I need to do. I just got to figure out if I want to listen to Him.”

“You plannin’ on arguin’ with God?” Blake asked.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Truman answered.

“How does that work out?” Jud asked.

“Okay, if I let him win. If he lets me win, then not so good most of the time.”

“What’re y’all fightin’ about this Sunday mornin’? Where Fiona is or isn’t?” Blake turned around and sat down on a hay bale.

“You heard anything about that flighty girl?” Truman stepped down from the slat and leaned against the stall.

“Not a word. Allie has sent a dozen messages and she called Sharlene. Neither she nor Mary Jo have seen her. I keep tellin’ Allie that Fiona is a big girl and she’s promised her mama she’ll run the store, so she’ll be home by tomorrow at the latest. And she’s supposed to go shopping with the ladies after church, so if she can’t make that, she will call.”

With every fiber of his being, Jud hoped his cousin was right. What if she was mad at him for stealing the car and putting those snow tires on it without waiting for her to help him? What if she’d planned something special for the evening and thought he was making excuses not to be with her?

“I expect we’d all better get on about the church business now. Dora June has to teach that Sunday school class, so we have to go earlier. I envy the lot of you that,” Truman said.

Blake shook his head. “Would you say that again? You envy the guys who bought the Lucky Penny? Never thought I’d see you on our ranch or hear you say that.”

Truman pushed away from the stall. “Maybe I was wrong. I’ll admit it if I decide I was.”

“Is that what you and God are in a fight over?” Jud asked.

“Hell no! That’s my decision, not God’s.”



A hard shiver awoke Fiona. Somehow during the night she’d kicked all the covers off her bed. She reached for them, but got the steering wheel instead. That popped her eyes wide open as the realization of where she was and what had happened washed over her like baptismal waters.

Sleet made little popping noises as it hit the roof of her car. She quickly brought her seat upright, started the engine, rubbed her cold hands together until the circulation was better, and shoved the gear stick into reverse.

The roads were clear when she started back south, but they were getting slick when she started climbing to the top of the canyon’s edge not far from Silverton. Even though the sky was gray, when she reached the tiny town, the sleet had stopped and the roads were clear again.

Her phone vibrated and she picked it up to find a dozen messages from Jud, five text messages from each of her sisters, and one from Sharlene asking why she’d gone out to have a good time and hadn’t invited her or Mary Jo to go along.

She knew she needed to call her sisters first, but she wasn’t ready to talk to them. So she sent Lizzy a short message: See you in church. Then her phone screen went blank and there were no more bars.

Lights were shining from a little restaurant on the north side of the street in Silverton, and she pulled the car into the parking lot. A cup of coffee was all she intended to buy, but when she stepped out of the car, a wave of light-headedness swept over her. That little niggling voice in her head said that if she didn’t eat something, she might see her sisters in church, but it wouldn’t be today and she’d most likely be lying in a casket instead of sitting beside them on the Logan pew.

At 5:00 a.m., she wasn’t surprised to find she was the only person in the café, so it didn’t take long for the waitress to bring out her order. She was busy cutting up her fried eggs when the waitress asked if she was just passing through or looking for a job.