The Rancher's Second Chance
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Leigh Riker
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Chapter One
THE LAST THING he’d expected today was a visitor. This one, in particular.
“I see you’re still alive,” she said, as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
Cooper Ransom shifted in the recliner where he’d been watching TV. Months ago, the movement would have made him groan from his injuries. He still wasn’t 100 percent, but Cooper refused to show Nell Sutherland any kind of weakness.
He hadn’t seen her in fourteen years, but without warning Nell had shown up at the old Moran farm, where he was staying with friends till he was fully recovered. He shouldn’t have been surprised Nell had appeared; she still lived outside Barren, and sooner or later they were bound to run into each other. But there’d been a time when he believed he’d never see Nell again. And he couldn’t find a reason for her to be here now.
“Did you think I was dying, or what?”
Barely glancing at him, she strolled over to the living room window. Her voice shook. “I left a bunch of wandering cows to see for myself that you’re not about to cash in your chips—as my grandfather might say. Don’t make me regret my charitable impulse.”
Nell looked through the window at the April day, slightly warmer in Kansas than it was in still-frigid Illinois. But he’d left that all behind now, thanks to a spray of bullets during a gang ambush there.
He studied her. In her scuffed boots, well-worn jeans and blue-plaid Western shirt, she still exemplified what she was—a born cowgirl. Nell looked taller than he remembered but she continued to stand with a proud set to her shoulders and the familiar tilt of her head as she gazed out at the horses in the nearby pasture. Her glossy sheet of hair, the same lighter brown it had always been but with newer streaks of blond running through like fingers of sun, tumbled in a waterfall down her back. Cooper couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew them well—the clear green of emeralds. He’d once given her a necklace with a tiny chip of the gem nestled in gold, all he could afford then. The last time he saw her, Nell had thrown the necklace back in his face.
She must still hate him, if that wasn’t too strong a word. “You were worried about me,” he said anyway.
Nell turned and, to his surprise, he saw in her eyes—were those tears? That was more like the Nell he knew. She’d always acted tough, but it masked her vulnerable heart. Long ago, she’d been willing to share it with him.
“Worried I’d never get another chance to tell you what I think of you,” she said, “that’s all.”
“And what do you think?”
He saw a well-remembered glint in her eyes, but her expression had softened. “For now, I’m just glad you’re still breathing.”
The largest, still-raw scar across his abdomen proved he had, indeed, almost died, and that high-caliber bullet—not the only one to hit him—had plowed through his stomach, then ricocheted inside all over the place, causing more havoc as it spun. Cooper wouldn’t say so, but he wondered if he’d ever be whole again. Most of the damage, covered by a white T-shirt and black sweat pants, wouldn’t show now. But did she feel sorry for him?
He repeated her earlier words. “So you had to come see for yourself.”
Their history wasn’t one he cared to dwell on. As teenagers, they’d been inseparable—until his dad had been forced to sell his adjoining ranch to Nell’s grandfather, yet another episode in a generations-long feud between their two families over land. Nell had taken her grandfather’s side, and Cooper had vowed to get his family’s ranch back, destroying their relationship in the process.
She worried her bottom lip. “I heard from Finn you were here,” she said, then glanced away. “He’s still worried about you.”
Maybe she’d only wanted to see him brought low again. Cooper followed her glance at the shabby living room with its worn furniture, the old kitchen sink under the far window and the clean but cracked linoleum floor. Other than the fresh paint on the walls, and his friend Finn’s new sofa, the place needed work. But Finn was proud to be the owner of these five original acres, plus the hundreds more he’d recently bought, and he seemed happy to belong in the local ranching community, as well as being sheriff. Barren was the county seat.
“Got to love small towns,” Cooper said, where news certainly traveled fast. Here, he’d already lost the anonymity of living in a big city, and he didn’t appreciate Finn, his former partner in Chicago, spreading the word.
“Your hometown too,” Nell pointed out and Cooper flinched.
Instead of one day taking over his family’s spread, at nineteen he had been torn out by his roots, deep ones that went back five generations. The Ransom ranch, with the very house where he’d grown up, sat between the towns of Barren and Farrier, its acreage now part of the NLS, the Sutherland ranch.
In the hospital, Cooper had had plenty of time to think. Life, he already knew as a cop, could be short, but now that included his life. He wouldn’t wait any longer.
He didn’t suppose Nell wanted to hear what he had in mind—he was here for his ranch.
WHY HAD SHE mentioned their hometown? Cooper’s eyes had closed, his lashes like dark fans above his cheekbones. Was it a cue for her to leave? Seeing him now as if no time had passed—those gray eyes, his sunny hair still the same—threatened to be her undoing. Cooper reminded Nell of two things: his obvious resentment over losing the ranch and her long-ago wish that their version of puppy love might lead to something forever.
He was still the most attractive male she’d ever seen, but he wasn’t the boy who’d once broken her heart. Their relationship—her first real star-crossed romance—had ended when that moving van pulled away and headed north for Chicago. If they couldn’t talk without disagreeing, she should leave. Frankly, she wished she hadn’t come.
“How long were you in the hospital?” she asked.
“Too long,” he said but with a faint smile. “People poking me day and night. Nurses waking me every five minutes to do the same things all over again. And have you ever seen daytime TV?” He shot a glance at the set across the room. “Torture. It’s a wonder anyone makes it out alive.”
“But you did make it out.”
“Yeah.” A silence grew between them as if neither of them knew of a safer topic. “How’s the NLS?” he asked.
“Couldn’t be better.” Considering his long-ago quarrel with her grandfather, he’d probably be happy to learn she was in over her head with the ranch, which she told herself, and mentally crossed her fingers, she was not.
“Ned’s away?” he asked. “Finn mentioned him going to visit his brother.”
Nell fought the urge to roll her eyes. Talk about a worse subject. “If those two manage to survive, I’ll be amazed.” In spite of her current irritation with her grandfather, her fears for him were never far from her mind. “PawPaw’s health isn’t that good.”
Cooper’s gaze sharpened. “I heard about his stroke.”
“And let’s not forget the car wreck he got into last October. He spent another week in Farrier General then, but there’s more to that story.” Nell cleared her throat. “Anyway. I was mostly in charge of the NLS while he was laid up, but he was at least able to make decisions with me then. Now it’s all me. Unfortunately, he and his foreman don’t agree that I should be el jefe now.”
“La jefa,” Cooper murmured as if to remind Nell she was a woman.
“Hadley Smith and I have been tangling ever since PawPaw left for Montana. And really, few of the NLS cowhands are more enlightened.” Nell did roll her eyes then. “Feminism and the women’s movement haven’t reached the NLS.”
It had taken her less than a week after her grandfather left to realize she was wasting precious time over Hadley, the NLS’s foreman. This could be the chance she’d been waiting for. All her life, Nell’s dream had been to inherit the vast ranch, and while PawPaw was gone, she intended to prove she could oversee it. No matter what Hadley might say.
“They don’t believe you can do the job,” Cooper said for her.
Nell flicked a strand of hair from her eyes. “Even my mother thinks the NLS is too hard a life for a woman—considering the outdated macho attitudes there.” Her parents had never liked the ranch, and although her dad had tried to fit in and help his father, when Nell was twelve they’d given up, moved to the city with her brother and never looked back. Nell, who loved the ranch, had stayed to finish growing up with her widowed grandfather.
But if she didn’t pull this off now, she could lose her right to the NLS for good. She knew PawPaw intended to redo his estate plan when he got home.
Cooper said, “So you’re having trouble with...Smith?”
“Hadley Smith.” His very name made her cringe. Normally, he was conscientious and did his job well when he wasn’t trying to test or irritate Nell, but he still rubbed her the wrong way. “He reports everything to my grandfather. It’s as if he wants me to fail.” Hoping to change the subject again, Nell looked at Cooper. “Being a cop in Chicago must be hard too.” Even harder than ranching, but she wouldn’t say that. “And certainly more dangerous.”
“It was never boring,” he agreed, “but since I couldn’t take over Dad’s place...”
Nell had never understood his decision to join law enforcement. Just as she didn’t want to be anything but a cowgirl, Cooper on a horse had been poetry in motion. He could ride even the meanest of the mean and make it look easy. Why hadn’t he come back after he finished college, bought some land in the area and started over? But a light bulb glimmered in her head. “You said was,” she reminded him.
His gaze flickered. “Yeah. Before I came to Barren, I quit the force.”
Her pulse pounded. So far, she’d avoided firing Hadley, but Cooper knew their land as well as she did. “Then you’ll need a job soon,” she said, “and I may need a foreman. If I had a replacement, I’d fire Hadley in a heartbeat.” She looked at him pointedly.
“Me? You serious?” Cooper said. “Does Smith know about this?”
“Not yet.” And she’d worry about her grandfather’s reaction later too.
She watched the emotions play across his face. Surprise, then temptation and even yearning? Her instincts had been right. Whether or not he’d admit it, she sensed Cooper was still a cowboy at heart.
Then he finally said, “No. Sorry.”
His flat statement set her back on her boot heels. Disappointment ran through her like water down a drain. Had she asked simply because she needed a foreman who wouldn’t undermine her at every turn? Or because she’d never gotten Cooper out of her system? Don’t go there.
“Anyway, I have other plans,” he said. “I need to tell you—warn you, maybe—” he took a breath “—the reason I’m here isn’t just to finish healing, or because I quit my job or to visit Finn.” He paused and Nell’s pulse kicked into a higher gear. “You said it yourself. This is my hometown too, and when Ned gets back, I’m going to make your grandfather an offer he can’t refuse.”
“What offer?” She had a bad feeling she knew what he would say though.
“To buy the land my father lost to him.”
“That’s almost half of the NLS now!”
His mouth set. “Which should belong to me. I’m taking it back, Nell—like I promised. I’ve had plenty of time to save up the money, to invest what my dad left me when he died... It’s the least I owe him.”
“And you let me rattle on when all along you meant to start another range war—”
“That’s not how it has to be.”
“Oh, yes, it does,” she said, and turned on her heel.
Nell was out the door before Cooper opened his mouth to say anything more.
And to even think of picking up where they’d left off. That would only show her grandfather she wasn’t capable of taking over the NLS, that she needed a man. Long ago, she’d decided to put her focus where it belonged. Nell prided herself on being independent, even tough, and most of the time the facade hid her vulnerability, but all her life people had underestimated her. A romance would only get in the way of proving herself as boss of the NLS. La jefa.
She’d given up on love years ago when Cooper Ransom left the state. And now that he’d come home, nothing had changed.
