Second Chance With a Cowboy (The Lassiter Ranch #3)
Chapter 1
Chapter One
“A second chance isn’t about starting over…it’s about continuing the story you were always meant to tell together.”
C hevy Lassiter had no idea the surprise he was in store for as a blast of cool air and the scent of coffee and freshly baked pastries hit him as he grudgingly pushed through the door and into the coffee shop at the end of Main Street. He’d spent the last two hours on the tractor bringing in hay from the north pasture, so the air conditioning should have lifted his mood, but he still felt cranky for having to leave the ranch and make the trip into town.
He wouldn’t be here at all if he hadn’t lost a bet to his brothers. He was way too cheap to pay six dollars for a cup of coffee, when he could make a pot of Folger’s at home for less than a nickel a cup.
He looked around and had to admit the space was nice—hardwood floors, soft gray walls, and ambient lighting. A long butcher block-topped bar ran the length of the back of the shop with pastry cases on one side and a huge chalkboard with a hand-lettered menu hung on the wall behind it. The back wall was open on either side, indicating office or storage space behind it.
Everything was either gray, white, or wood-toned with subtle pink and blue accents in the wall art and comfy throw pillows scattered around the furniture. The room was spacious with several small tables and chairs, but the two gray loveseats and a couple of comfy chairs turned toward each other in one corner gave it a cozy homey feel.
He nodded at Judy Fitzgerald, the County Clerk who was tucked into the corner of one of the loveseats and had looked up from the book she was reading to offer him a smile and then gave a wave to Will Perkin’s oldest kid—he couldn’t remember his name—who was pecking away at his laptop, a huge cup of coffee and a half-eaten Danish on the table beside the computer.
In a town of less than fifteen hundred people, it was rare that Chevy walked into any business and didn’t recognize at least some of the people inside.
His phone buzzed as he headed toward the counter, and he pulled it out to see the promised text from his younger brother, Dodge, with their coffee orders.
A copper-haired girl—she looked about fifteen—stood behind the counter and greeted him with a braces-filled smile.
Chevy smiled back. He couldn’t remember her name either, but he assumed she was a Johnson—the red hair and freckles giving her away. A person couldn’t throw a rock in Woodland Hills or the surrounding county without hitting one of the fair-skinned ginger clan.
“Welcome to Mountain Brew,” the girl said, her perky attitude not enough to change Chevy’s annoyed one. “What can I get you?”
“My brothers sent me in. I need some coffee,” Chevy said, tapping at his phone to get to Dodge’s message.
“You’ve come to the right place then,” she said, her smile firmly in place as she reached to pull a plastic cup from a stack on the counter. “How many drinks do you need?”
“Four, I guess.” As long as he was here, he might as well get one for himself too.
“Hot drinks or cold?
“Hot.” It was midmorning and already pushing eighty outside, but as far as he was concerned, coffee was meant to be drank hot.
She grabbed a marker and held it poised over the side of the cup. “And what’s the name on the first order?”
“Chevy.”
She spelled his name out in neat block letters before setting the cup on the counter and reaching for another one.
“Dodge,” he told her then waited a beat as she wrote his younger brother’s name then reached for another cup. “The next one is Ford.”
She lifted the marker and planted the hand holding the cup on her waist. “Is this a joke?”
He assumed she was referring to the names of himself and his brothers. This wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last, time he’d been asked that question or taken a ribbing for his and his siblings’ names. Their mother, presumably in a drunken state, since that’s the state she was usually in, had named him and his two half-brothers after the trucks their dead-beat dads had driven away from her in.
Yeah, Brandy Lassiter, was a real peach. She was also a dirty blonde, a decent singer, and a drunk, who had deposited her three young sons at her parent’s ranch and never come back for them. Ford had been used to seeing their mother in an inebriated state—he and Dodge had been too young when she’d left—but now they had no idea what state she was in. But they knew it wasn’t Colorado. Not in Woodland Hills, at least.
They hadn’t seen, or heard from her, in years.
She used to send occasional birthday cards, usually a few weeks after their birthdays, and sometimes with a crumpled five or ten-dollar bill inside. Although one year—he’d probably been eleven or twelve at the time—he’d gotten a card with a twenty. He’d split the money with his brothers since Ford’s last card had come with three singles inside.
“Not a joke,” he assured the puzzled barista. But these coffee orders surely had to be. He glanced up at the menu board and saw several similarly named items before reading the ones in his brother’s message out loud to the girl. “It says Dodge wants a Purple Unicorn Volcano with an extra shot of caffeine, Ford wants a Dragon’s Breath Espresso, and Duke wants something called a Caramel Crappuccino.”
The girl wrinkled her nose as she wrote each order down on a slip of paper by the register. “I don’t recognize these. But I’m pretty new here, and lots of people have specialty drinks.” She chewed on her bottom lip as she scanned the orders again. “I think I need to get my manager.”
Great. Now this fool’s errand would take even longer. Where had these guys even come up with these drinks? He scanned the menu board behind the counter and didn’t see the ones they’d named.
The Johnson girl leaned her head around the back wall, presumably calling out to someone with more coffee drink experience. “Hey, can you come out here for a minute? This guy just ordered a Purple Unicorn Volcano and a Caramel Crappuccino, and I don’t know how to make either one.”
“A Caramel Crapp -uccino? Was he serious?” a voice asked from behind the wall.
Everything inside Chevy froze—every muscle, every nerve. His heart might have stopped beating as well.
Even though he hadn’t heard it in ten long years, he knew that voice. Knew it as surely as his own.
“Leni?” he tried to say, but it came out as a horse croak.
She walked around the corner—her long, dark hair pulled up in a messy bun and secured with two coffee stir sticks—and his stomach pitched as if he’d just gotten the wind knocked out of him.
She looked almost the same. Although the teenage body of Eleanor ‘Leni’ Gibbs—which he also knew almost as well as his own—now held the lush curves of a woman. Curves that had him forcing a swallow as his mouth had gone as dry as the hay bales he’d been hauling that morning. She wore a navy apron over a pink polo shirt with the logo of the coffee shop across the breast pocket, white low-top tennies, and ankle-length jeans that hugged her generous hips.
Her eyes were still the same gorgeous, hazel green and for just one second—long enough for him to feel it to his core—they held the old tenderness he used to see there.
Then it was gone. Replaced with a sharp snap of anger.
He knew that look too.
It was the one she’d given him the night he’d told the biggest lie of his life and said he didn’t love her anymore.
He closed his mouth, which had fallen open at the sight of her, then opened it to speak, then closed it again as no words formed. He tried once more, and this time her name came out as a whisper. “Leni?”
Just as quickly as time had frozen for him, it suddenly sped up as blood surged through his veins, and his heart thundered in his chest, like the galloping of a herd of wild stallions. Even his hands started to shake, and he crammed one in his front pocket and gripped his phone tighter with the other.
“Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Chevy Lassiter.” Her voice held a note of casualness, but he noticed her hand shot out to steady herself against the counter.
Good to know seeing him was having at least some effect on her as well.
She jerked her thumb at him as she spoke to the Johnson girl. “Is this the guy with the idiotic drink orders?”
The red-haired girl nodded.
Leni’s eyes flashed another spark of anger. “Did you come in here to poke fun at me for working as a barista in a coffee shop?”
Chevy stepped back, his gut aching as if she’d physically punched him in it. “What? No. Of course not. Why would you even think that?”
“Because you just ordered a Purple Unicorn and a Crappuccino.” She jutted out one hip and planted her fist on it. “Is this your lame idea of a joke?”
He hadn’t made a joke, but he was beginning to see that he’d been the butt of one. “No, really, it was my stupid brothers. I lost a bet and had to buy coffee—those are their idiotic drink orders. Not mine. I didn’t even know you were in town.”
“Yeah, right. I saw Dodge here just a few days ago. You’re trying to tell me he didn’t blab to you that I was here?”
“No. He didn’t say anything. I swear.” But he was going to say a few choice things to his baby brother when he got back to the ranch. “Really. I had no idea you were back.”
“I’m not back . I’m just filling in here for a few weeks for my sister.”
Leni’s sister, Lorna Gibbs, now Williams, owned the coffee shop. She’d been a couple of years younger than them in school. He was pretty sure she’d been in Dodge’s class, but had seemed older because she’d dated, then married, Lyle Williams, an upperclassman. The two had broken up about nine months ago—it had been ugly with Lyle making an ass of himself then leaving town with the administrative assistant at the insurance company he worked for.
Lorna was left behind with a five-year-old son, a cute kid named Max, and a baby on the way, but she was better off without that jerk in her life.
“Oh yeah, I heard Lorna had a baby girl,” Chevy said. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s fine.” Leni’s voice was flat, monotone.
“How are you doing? I mean, how is your life? Are you happy?”
Are you still single? Please God, don’t be married.
His heart wouldn’t be able to take it if she were. He snuck a glance at her hand—no ring—and let out a sigh of relief.
“No. You don’t get to ask me about my life ,” she said, all monotony gone from her tone, now replaced with a sizzle of anger. “You made it quite clear that you didn’t want anything to do with me or my life. So, you don’t get to waltz in here looking all cute and charming in your favorite cowboy hat and start asking questions about my life.”
“I didn’t mean to do anything. I just came in for some coffee.”
“Well sorry,” she said, stacking the cups with their names printed on them and tossing them in the trash. “There’s no coffee.”
“Wait. What?” The Johnson girl gestured to the large carafe. “I just made a fresh pot.”
“It’s not for him,” Leni told her. “In fact, we’re closed.” She came out from behind the counter and shooed him with her apron, as if he was a sheep, and she was a border collie herding him toward the corral gate.
The kid at the table in the corner looked up from his laptop. “You’re closing?”
“No—not for you,” Leni told him, gesturing him back to his computer. “You’re fine.”
“What about me?” Judy asked, looking up from her book.
“You’re fine, too. Everyone can stay. Except him.” She pointed at Chevy then at the front door. “We are closed to you and anyone else named Lassiter.” She frowned. “Except for Duke. He can come in. You know, I’d do anything for Duke.”
Yeah. Most everyone in town would do anything for his grandfather—including Chevy and his brothers. Duke and June hadn’t even hesitated to take in the three boys after their mother had gone to work at the diner one day. It must’ve been a helluva long shift because she never came back.
“What about the coffee?” Chevy asked, not knowing what else to say. He hadn’t expected her to physically push him out of the shop.
“Get it from the gas station,” she said, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on his bare forearm as she propelled him out the door. “Tell Duke I said hi,” she said as she pulled the door shut and flipped the sign hanging from it to Closed . She gave him a little finger wave as he backed toward his pickup.
What the heck had just happened? He’d imagined running into Leni Gibbs again a hundred different ways, but it had never gone like that, with her closing down a business and shoving him out the door so she wouldn’t have to even talk to him.
Still, she was back in town. Close enough that he could figure out how to casually run into her again.
She’d said she was only here for a few weeks to help Lorna, but maybe that was long enough for him to convince her to give him a second chance.