Winning the Rancher's Heart Read online

  “Mom, that’s not going to work. So far, nothing I’ve done has even irritated him, let alone sparked his temper.”

  “Then you aren’t handling this correctly. Promise me that you aren’t giving up. Promise me! For your brother.”

  Jeri closed her eyes. “I’ll do my very best, I promise.”

  “Of course you will,” Dena said, calming at her agreement. “You loved your brother. He deserves justice, and you’ll see that he gets it. Then we can move on, you and I, just the two of us.”

  Just the two of them. When had it ever really been the two of them? Sometimes, it felt as if this grudge against Ryder was the only thing she and her mom had in common.

  More and more, Jeri found herself envying the Smith family. The brothers shared a rare and special bond, and they’d drawn Tina, Kathryn and the boys into it with apparent ease and total acceptance. She and Bryan had been close, but they’d led very separate lives. Once, she’d approached him about traveling with her and helping her on the road, but he’d just laughed and said that wasn’t for him. Her stepdad had put her on her first horse and supported her ambitions fully, but she hadn’t started seriously competing until after his death. Since then, her mom had attended only those few events that were within easy driving distance and conveniently scheduled. Jeri didn’t expect that to change. Ever.

  Thoroughly depressed, she reminded her mother that she would be leaving soon for Sioux City and the first rodeo of the new season.

  “Do you have to?” Dena pressed sourly. “I mean, is that really where your priorities should be?”

  “Yes,” Jeri insisted. “I have to come out of this with my career intact. Besides, I need the income. I do plan to start a horse breeding program, you know, and I’ve spent so much of my savings on private investigators and lawyers.”

  “For your brother!” Dena insisted. “He’d have done it for you.”

  It’s not for him, Jeri thought. He’s beyond my help. I’m doing this for you.

  Sadly, Jeri was starting to wonder if it was even possible to give her mom closure on this. She now suspected that Ryder Smith would never stand trial for murder or even manslaughter. If she—who had come here so certain of Ryder’s guilt—was now having difficulty believing that Ryder had intentionally killed her brother, others unaffected by Bryan’s death would never believe so. Her best hope now was simply to get at the truth, but would her mother be satisfied with that outcome? Dena was so heavily invested in seeing Ryder punished that Jeri feared her mother would never be satisfied with anything less. In fact, Jeri feared that her mother would not be satisfied ever again. Nevertheless, Jeri would try.

  “Okay, Mom. I’ll keep digging and miss this one contest, but that’s it. I’ve got Denver and Fort Worth this month, too. Besides, we’ve waited this long. If we have to wait a while longer, so be it. I can only do what I can do.”

  Feeling defeated and uncertain, Jeri resorted to prayer as soon as she got off the phone.

  Lord, please show me how to handle this. Please help me get at the truth and set my mother’s mind at ease.

  Maybe then she could make her own peace with her brother’s death and concentrate on the future.

  Chapter Six

  Jeri stayed in her room until dinnertime. Kathryn had warned that the meal would be a light one because the family attended the midweek prayer service at Countryside Church on Wednesday evenings. A light meal seemed perfect to Jeri, given that she’d had a late and substantial lunch. To the Smiths, however, a light meal apparently consisted of huge bowls of homemade chicken noodle soup, hot crusty rolls, a variety of cheeses and a surprisingly beautiful fruit salad.

  “I need to freshen up before we leave,” Kathryn said after she was done eating, rising to begin clearing the table.

  Wyatt stopped her, taking dishes from her hands. “Leave this. I’ll take care of it.” Because Tina had to stay in bed, he would remain at home with her.

  Kathryn hesitated, so Jeri added her voice to Wyatt’s. “I’ll help clean up. You go on and get ready.” To Jeri’s surprise, Kathryn shook her head.

  “Oh, I hoped you’d go to prayer meeting with us.”

  Jeri didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t considered accompanying the family to church.

  “Yeah, you should come,” Ryder urged. “You’ve got a big decision to make. When I’m wrestling with a decision, I always ask God to make His pathway straight for me.”

  Jake smiled and nodded encouragingly. “It can’t hurt. I mean, who can’t use prayer? Right?”

  “Right,” Jeri agreed, deciding to attend the meeting. If nothing else, it would give her more time with Ryder.

  As if he approved of the idea, Ryder reached out and briefly clasped her hand.

  A jolt of something shot through Jeri, robbing her of breath and scrambling her thoughts. She managed to maintain a calm demeanor, but her mind raced. Part of her suddenly wanted to hide in her room until she could leave here, but the saner part realized that she needed prayer now more than at any time since her brother’s death. Sanity won.

  “How soon are we leaving?”

  Jake checked the time on his phone then looked to Kathryn. “Twenty minutes?”

  “Sounds right.”

  “What should I wear?”

  “I’m just going to change my blouse,” Kathryn said.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Jeri hurried up to her room, pinned up her hair and dashed through a quick shower before donning clean jeans and a fringed, long-sleeved suede shirt. She reached for the matching hat, then thought better of it and simply brushed out her long hair before adding a slender headband beaded with turquoise. She chose a pair of turquoise earrings and hurried downstairs. Ryder sat at the table in a clean shirt, fresh jeans and polished black boots, his hat at his elbow, watching Wyatt load the dishwasher. Jeri just looked at Wyatt, and Ryder shook his head.

  “Wouldn’t try it, if I was you. He doesn’t want any help.”

  “That’s right,” Wyatt said. “I’ll be through here in another ten minutes. It’s not like I haven’t cleaned many a kitchen in my day.”

  “And messed up a few, too,” Ryder teased.

  “I never noticed you showing any desire to cook for us,” Wyatt retorted.

  “Is that what you were doing, cooking?”

  Shooting him a pointed glare, Wyatt said, “Yeah, you definitely look like I starved you.”

  Ryder chuckled and winked at Jeri. “What he doesn’t know is that I used to eat at home and then go over to my friend Dave’s house and eat with them.”

  Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? Dave’s mom and I used to coordinate our menus to get some vegetables into you.”

  Ryder’s mouth dropped open. “You’re making that up.”

  “Nope.”

  Ryder shook his head. “And I thought I was pulling one over on you.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  Ryder laughed. “I pity Tyler and the twins. You’ve had more training than the average new dad. I’m going to have to apologize to them.”

  “Just don’t give them any ideas,” Wyatt said, his stern countenance cracking. “Like, for sure, don’t show them how to build bicycle ramps taller than the car or give them the idea to jump off the carport roof with a blanket as a parachute.” He shook his head. “How did you get through childhood in one piece?”

  “God’s grace,” Ryder replied, grinning.

  “Now, there’s the truth,” Wyatt agreed, pointing at him. Turning to Jeri then, he added, “He was always so quiet you never knew whether he was dreaming up some harebrained scheme or pondering the great mysteries of the universe. Or both.” He looked to Ryder again. “I give you this, you never did things impulsively. You always thought them through, even if they were ridiculous.”

  Ryder shrugged. “Sometimes, even when I think thin
gs through, I get them wrong.”

  “Don’t we all?” Wyatt asked, going back to loading the dishwasher.

  Ryder said nothing to that.

  Maybe he had thought through that sparring session with Bryan but then had gotten the moves wrong, Jeri thought. Maybe, if they became friends, he would just tell her what had happened the day her brother had died. The thought brought both hope and guilt. She didn’t want to be unfaithful to her brother’s memory or abandon her mom in the midst of her turmoil, but she simply couldn’t hate Ryder, not without solid proof that her brother’s death was more than an accident.

  Kathryn came into the room wearing a beautifully embroidered tunic over jeans.

  “That’s gorgeous!” Jeri gushed.

  “She made that,” Jake announced proudly, following on Kathryn’s heels. He had Frankie and Tyler by the hands.

  While Kathryn herded everyone toward the door, Jake regaled Jeri with a list of Kathryn’s talents and accomplishments. Kathryn blushed a deeper shade of pink with every disclosure, but she was smiling. Jeri felt the sharp sting of envy, both for Kathryn’s abilities and for the praise that her husband heaped upon her.

  When was the last time anyone close to her had praised her?

  She had buckles and prizes aplenty, but her mom—and to an extent, her brother, too—viewed those as more fluff than accomplishment. Maybe that was why she worked so hard to excel at her sport.

  Now, with only her mother left to notice, Jeri knew better than to hold her breath until she heard her own achievements praised.

  * * *

  Glancing around the auditorium at Countryside Church, Ryder nodded at several friends. Pleased that Jeri had so easily joined the family for the midweek service, he’d introduced her to everyone in the pews around them as “our newest guest.” Ann Billings Pryor came from across the room to make Jeri’s acquaintance. She had obviously heard about Jeri from her sister, who was married to Stark Burns.

  “You’re just as cute as Meri said,” she told Jeri.

  Cute? Ryder silently scoffed. Cute was for puppies and kittens. Jeri was more than cute. She was more than pretty. The girl was downright beautiful.

  Jeri accepted the compliment, tepid as it seemed to Ryder, with a big smile. “Why, thank you. That’s awful sweet of you both.”

  Ann laughed. “You’re from Texas, right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  Ann pointed at Ryder. “You sound just like him.”

  Jeri seemed surprised. “Really? We’re from two very different parts of the state.”

  Ryder tried to remember if he’d mentioned Houston to Jeri but couldn’t recall, not that it mattered. Anyone in the family could have done so. What mattered was that she wouldn’t have been in Houston during the uproar over Bryan’s death, so she likely knew nothing of it. He hoped she wouldn’t find out, at least not until she knew him better.

  The women chatted a few moments longer before Ann rejoined her husband, Dean. Ryder followed Jeri into the pew and waited for her to sit before taking the place next to her.

  “So whereabouts in Texas are you from?” he asked carefully.

  “Abilene.”

  “Ah.” Relieved but a little puzzled, he smiled. “Isn’t there good horse pasture around Abilene?”

  She rocked from side to side as if trying to get comfortable. “There is, but it’s just about in the center of the state. I drive all over the country. Moving north will cut hours off my travel time for rodeo events.”

  “That makes sense. You could be even more centrally located in someplace like Missouri, though. I hear there are lots of rodeo cowboys living in Missouri because it gives them easy access to all areas of the country.”

  Again, she rocked. “Well, they probably don’t have widowed mothers in the Abilene area.”

  “Gotcha. Guess she wouldn’t want to come here to be close to you.”

  “Not a chance. We live barely thirty minutes apart now, and she acts like we’re on different planets.” Jeri looked down at her hands. “Then again, I don’t get over to see her nearly as much as I ought to.”

  “Must be tough when you’re always traveling.”

  “Exactly.” After a moment, she asked, “So, what was it that brought you and your brothers here?”

  He considered telling her the whole story, but he hadn’t told anyone, not even his best friends here. If he wasn’t going to discuss it with folks like Stark Burns, Wes Billings and Dean Pryor, how did he justify telling someone he’d known only a couple days?

  He wasn’t even sure where the impulse to tell Jeri about Bryan had come from. Sometimes her behavior troubled him, but she was a young woman under a lot of pressure, a top competitor in her field with weighty ambitions and important decisions to make. During her light, easy moments, she pulled him like a magnet, but then she’d go dark, as if a shadow had settled over her. He couldn’t help wondering what that was about, and increasingly he wanted to bring the light back to her beautiful eyes.

  He wondered what that said about him. Was he so pathetically lonely that he’d fixate on any pretty woman who came into his life? Or was Jeri Bogman truly special? He was beginning to think it was the latter.

  Since Jake and Kathryn had married, his brothers had pushed him to date, so he’d taken out two different women. The dates had been pleasant enough, but the idea of either of them learning about his past had appalled him. He just couldn’t imagine a woman who wouldn’t have some doubt about him after she learned what had happened. How could he expect any woman to trust him once she knew he’d caused another man’s death? Yes, he had been legally exonerated, but the fact remained that Bryan had died while sparring with him. If he couldn’t get past that, how could he expect anyone else to?

  He kept his mouth shut about Bryan, saying only, “We spent our summers at Loco Man, so our uncle left it to us.”

  He absently passed Jeri the typed prayer list, those needs and requests that were repeated weekly and kept on the list long-term. Then he reached for a prayer card in the back pocket of the pew in front of him. Though he knew that Jake would verbally request prayers for Tina and the twins, Ryder wrote a request to have Tina and the babies placed on the prayer list long-term.

  As the pianist began to play the opening song, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and asked God to help him accept that his life was forever altered by what had happened the awful day Bryan had died.

  * * *

  The family of Bryan Averrett.

  The words shouted at Jeri from midway down the typewritten list of prayer requests. For an instant, her heart stopped.

  The family of Bryan Averrett.

  She couldn’t believe her eyes. Who had made this request for prayer? And why? She shook her head. It couldn’t have been Ryder. Could it? More likely it had come from one of his brothers. Or maybe one of his sisters-in-law. Even if what they were told wasn’t the whole truth, they would know that Bryan had died. Still, seeing those words made no sense to her. Why would they make this public and risk the story coming out locally when they didn’t have to?

  The family of Bryan Averrett.

  Rocked to the core of her being, Jeri tried to think. The family of Bryan Averrett was her and her mother, but the Smiths wouldn’t know that without extensive searching. Dena had taken great care to hide their identities by immediately hiring an attorney to represent them and having only a death notice published, rather than an obituary. At one point, Ryder had asked their attorney for an opportunity to speak to them personally, but Dena had refused.

  Jeri couldn’t believe that Bryan would have chatted much about his family. He’d been at a rather self-absorbed phase of his life when he’d traipsed off to Houston to make his mark on the world. Even if he’d mentioned his mother and sister, she doubted he’d have talked about them by name. For one thing, he disliked that Jeri’s last name was dif
ferent from his and that her first name made everyone think he had a brother rather than a sister. Besides, if Bryan had made specific mention of her, wouldn’t Ryder have at least remarked on the similarity of her name and that of Bryan’s sister?

  Jeri wished she’d paid closer attention to all that had been going on at the time of Bryan’s death, but distance and scheduling had kept her out of the loop prior to the event—and after, everything had been blurred by a fog of mourning. She’d had to depend on her mom for information, and Dena didn’t always make sense. Her anger and grief too often got the better of her.

  All Jeri could think to do was to ask about the prayer request, but she had to do it obliquely. She nudged Ryder with her elbow and leaned close to share the list with him. Her nerves jangled like charms on a bracelet, but she kept her voice low and soft as she pointed to the top of the list.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Oh, that’s one of our deacons. He shattered his leg and has had multiple surgeries.”

  “Poor guy. And this?”

  “An elderly lady in hospice. Been sick a long time.”

  They went on down the list. She learned about a little boy with diabetes and a girl with epilepsy, a couple who had lost their home... When they came to the pertinent request, Ryder gulped twice, before speaking in a strained voice.

  “Bryan was a good friend of mine. Died much too young.”

  She studied Ryder’s face, struck by the depth of his sadness. He looked as if he might weep. She realized that she had just stumbled on her best opportunity to hear his version of her brother’s death, but she had to tread carefully here. If she pressed him on this would he become angry or clam up? She knew she had to try, but she was strangely reluctant. Then the opportunity passed when the music minister stepped up to the lectern and asked those in the congregation to rise to their feet.

  Jeri couldn’t deny the relief she felt, but she couldn’t join in the singing. She had a rock in her gut and a lump in her throat, and her mind was whirling like a top. Throughout the remainder of the meeting, she struggled to concentrate on the spoken requests and prayers. All she could think about was how to bring up this subject again.