The Widow's Faithful Cowboy

Chapter 1

South Texas

Lottie Wilkes inched her head up into the open window. A second later, a bullet whizzed past her ear.

She ducked away from the window and crouched low against the interior brick wall of her one-room house, clutching her rifle to her chest.

Blast it all. Vinnie and his men were still out there.

After the past hour of silence with only the occasional call of a hawk hunting in the waning evening, she’d hoped her neighbor had gone home.

No such luck.

She puffed out an exhausted breath, blowing at the listless blond strands that had come loose from the frayed ribbon she used to tie them back.

The men’s cotton shirt and corduroy trousers she wore were dirty and sweaty and stuck to her body.

She’d discarded her cowboy hat but hadn’t shed her cowboy boots in the three days she’d been in the shoot-out with Vinnie.

At the side window, Enrique was kneeling with his rifle.

The old vaquero—her faithful ranch hand—was taking a sip from his canteen, which was probably nearing empty.

Along with being deaf, Enrique looked ancient with his leathery skin, slumped shoulders, and bowlegs.

Thankfully, his eyesight was still keen, and he could shoot the cork off a bottle a hundred yards away.

If not for Enrique, she would have lost the Longhorn by now. The old cowboy had stayed and helped her fight for her ranch even when everyone else had deserted her, including Dray, her no-good husband.

Enrique met her gaze and raised a brow. “Should I shoot back?” he silently communicated with the hand motions he typically used.

She motioned back. “One shot.”

He nodded, then carefully edged his way up, positioning his rifle so he could take aim in the direction of one of Vinnie’s men.

Not only were she and Enrique running low on water, but they were also getting to the bottom of their stash of ammunition. They had to make each shot count.

If they could just make it through the evening, she suspected Vinnie would call off the fight and go home.

After all, he was a busy man with a ranch of his own to run and couldn’t harass her forever.

He’d probably wait a couple of weeks before coming over and trying to force her to sell to him again.

Enrique pulled on the trigger, and a shot rang out. It was followed by a yelp and a curse from one of Vinnie’s ranch hands.

She wished she could say she was happy another man was injured.

But the truth was, she didn’t like the danger or the bloodshed.

She wished there was a peaceable way to solve the conflict.

But Vincent Barker, her neighbor to the west, believed her ranch land—with its valuable spring—belonged to him, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he annexed it.

Except that the ranch was hers, and she had the deed to prove it.

Her father had willed it to her when he died seven years ago.

She’d been just eighteen at the time, but she’d been old enough to know the gift was generous .

. . and it had allowed her to move out of town and away from the shame of her past.

She’d run the ranch by herself with a couple of hired men for a year until Dray had come along. He’d been charismatic and handsome and charming, and she’d fallen for him all too easily because she’d been na?ve and young and foolish.

Vinnie hadn’t given her any trouble during the five years Dray had been on the ranch—even though his presence here had been sporadic.

However, once Dray had disappeared for good last year and then they’d gotten news of his death, Vinnie had started bothering her about selling to him, and he hadn’t stopped.

This was the second time he’d ridden over in recent weeks and tried to intimidate her with a show of power and gunfire. Tried. That was the key word. Because he hadn’t intimidated her.

She shifted to ease the cramp in her legs. Well, maybe he had intimidated her a little. She could admit that the last time he’d shown up a few weeks ago, she’d been scared of what he would do. He’d eventually left without any real harm.

She hoped the current standoff would end the same way.

If she didn’t have other people to think about, she wouldn’t care about the fights with Vinnie and his men. But she wasn’t alone.

Even as that thought passed through her head, one of the floorboards wiggled and lifted.

A little boy’s face peered out of the space.

The blond hair and blue eyes so much like hers belonged to Kace.

Although he’d just turned four, he considered himself the man of the family.

“Bo’s wondering if it’s dark yet and if we can come up. ”

“Not yet,” she whispered. “It’ll be about another hour.”

“Ah, shucks.” Kace’s expectant face fell. “Bo will be real sad.”

At three, Bo looked like Dray, with dark hair and brown eyes, but he took after Kace in every other way, so much so that the two brothers could almost be twins.

The first couple of days of playing in the underground cellar had been an adventure for them.

But today, the novelty had worn off, and they’d been restless and ready to resume their normal lives.

She didn’t blame her sons. She was restless and ready to resume life too.

But would she ever be able to live normally on her land? As a female rancher, would she always face men like Vinnie who thought ranching was for men and that she had no place out here on the Texas range?

Dirt streaked Kace’s forehead and cheek, and his little hands were covered in dirt too. No doubt the boys had been digging or crawling on the ground or heaven knew what else to occupy their time. Mimmi could only keep them busy for so long in the ten-by-ten-foot underground room.

Lottie was relieved the home had come with the safe room, probably dug during the early days of Texas when the conflicts with Natives had been fierce. Without the underground place to keep Kace and Bo away from the gunfire, she would have been tempted to hand the ranch over to Vinnie by now.

Fortunately, Vinnie and his men didn’t bother them at night. So she let the boys come up as long as they stayed in the house with Mimmi while she and Enrique crept out one of the windows and tended to the livestock as best they could in the dark.

“Tell Mimmi she can let you boys have the last of the maple syrup on your bread for dinner.”

A grin immediately lit up Kace’s face. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Bo, guess what!” Kace called down to his brother, forgetting to whisper.

Mimmi hurriedly shushed them, then the floorboard fell back into place.

Lottie sighed and tightened her grip on her rifle. What would she have done without Mimmi over the past seven years of living on the ranch? In fact, what would she have done without Mimmi being her nursemaid while growing up?

Without the dear woman’s care and influence, Lottie suspected Mother would have dragged her along to each new man she lived with or married.

What husband was Mother married to now? Her fifth?

Or was he the sixth? Mother had lived with just as many men—if not more—as their mistress, including Lottie’s father.

Father had hired Mimmi to be Lottie’s nursemaid shortly after her birth. At the time, Mimmi had just lost her husband, a steamboat captain for one of Father’s packet boats, in an accident. Since the captain had been a friend, Father had decided to help Mimmi by giving her work.

As it turned out, Mimmi had raised Lottie, and they’d lived in the house Father had provided for them in Turnersville.

Mother had already moved on to another man by that point and had occasionally come to visit Lottie over the years, usually when she needed a place to stay while she was between men.

Mimmi had also been the one to suggest to Father that he give a ranch to Lottie in his will.

Of course, Mimmi had known how desperate Lottie was to leave Turnersville with all its gossip and snubbing and spurning by proper society, who considered her beneath them.

Mimmi had realized Lottie needed to start a life someplace new, where people didn’t know who she was—the illegitimate daughter of Waverly Thorpe, owner of the Double T Ranch, one of the largest and wealthiest ranches in Texas.

The effort had been kind of Mimmi, and Lottie was grateful for the woman’s love and that she’d known what was needed even better than Lottie herself had.

Another gunshot rang in the air, followed by a bullet entering the window and cracking against the far wall—too close to Enrique.

He glanced at her and signed, “Last shot tonight.”

She signed back, “Hope you’re righ—”

Before her fingers could formulate the last letter, another gun blast rang out, this one from farther away.

She ducked, expecting a bullet to fly through the house. But only silence met her.

What had Vinnie and his men shot at if not her? Were they trying to kill her livestock?

She released a huff. If Vinnie was tired of the standoff, maybe that was his next tactic—shooting at the barn and trying to kill her chickens, goats, the dairy cow, and her few horses.

The herd of cattle she’d managed to save from Vinnie as well as rustlers was roped off in a vale near the spring. They had plenty of water and grass to tide them over until she and Enrique could ride out and check on them.

Another bang echoed in the evening, then several more.

She caught Enrique’s gaze. “What are they aiming at? The barn?”

Carefully, he rose and peeked out the window.

She cringed and waited for a bullet to zing through the house and hit Enrique.

Nothing came.

He motioned with his hands. “Not the barn.”

“Then what?” she signed back.

He edged higher, his sharp gaze scanning the few boulders and the brush along the edge of the ranch yard where Vinnie and his men had taken up residence.

More gunshots filled the air. But they weren’t directed at the house anymore. If the bullets weren’t going into the barn, then what was all the shooting about?

She wanted to peer out the window too. But she’d promised Mimmi and Enrique she would be careful and not put herself in more danger than she was already in. After all, she had Kace and Bo to think about. They were more important than anything else . . . even the ranch.

Leaning against the wall, she closed her eyes, weariness stealing through her.

She loved the ranch down to her soul. But even when Dray had still been on the periphery of their lives, she’d had to work so hard and shoulder the responsibility of so much on her own. She’d wanted to do it, had been driven, and had longed to succeed.

Now, after so many years of feeling beaten down, was it time to admit she’d failed? Time to pack up and move on? Time to find a new place, where no one knew about her mother and father? Was that even possible?

She shook her head. No, she couldn’t give up yet. She had to fight for what was hers and what would someday belong to her sons. That was all there was to it.