A Cowboy's Calm Strength (Sweet View Ranch Western Christian Cowboy Romance book 6) An opposites at

Chapter 1

Phoebe tapped her finger on the metal bar. She had been curious about a lot of things in her life, but one of the things she had never wondered about was what life looked like from behind the vertical, cold steel bars of prison.

She had found out anyway.

“Rich, how much longer?”

“You know you’re like a two-year-old on a car trip, right?” Rich said from where he sat behind the big corner desk, his feet propped up on the one spot that wasn’t covered with papers, old take-out wrappers, and bottles of pain pills. He held a steaming cup of coffee in one hand with his other hand hooked on his belt loop, his fingers resting lightly over the radio clip there.

“I’m sorry. If you hadn’t taken my watch, I wouldn’t need to ask.” Phoebe felt like a petulant child. She understood that the lock-in was supposed to simulate real life. When she agreed to do it for the Sweet Water High fundraiser, she figured it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, and neither did she expect that.

Originally it was supposed to be on a Friday night, but the jail had been too crowded, so it had been moved to a weekday. She appreciated that. But it was almost time for her to be let out, and she didn’t want to stay one second longer than what she had to. She’d signed up for twelve hours, found ten people to pledge ten dollars an hour, and had raised twelve hundred dollars for the high school. But twelve hours was it.

Rich was not the kind of guy who was going to be early or even super concerned about letting her out on time. It was up to her.

“We don’t allow regular prisoners to keep their watches, so why would we let you keep yours? This is supposed to be the real deal.”

“I know. I won’t ask again, if you’ll just let me know how much longer.” She made that promise, hoping she could keep it. Surely it had been at least an hour since she’d asked the last time, and at that point, she’d had one hour and twenty-seven minutes left.

“You promise?” Rich said with a brow raised.

“I do.”

“And if you break your promise, what do I get?”

She almost huffed out a breath. She was thirty-six years old and not exactly the kind of person who inspired romantic interest in men. She’d figured that out a long time ago, back in her twenties when she was raising her siblings and no one was interested in her.

She’d given up the idea that she would ever get married. And maybe, after what her twin had gone through with her marriage, it had been a good decision. Although she would have liked to have had a husband and children. She wanted that. But it seemed like God had her serving her own family, her brothers and sisters, and stepping in after her parents had died. She mostly accepted that and didn’t long for a family of her own.

Much, anyway.

“What do you want?” she asked with resignation.

“You ask me again, and you’re gonna watch my kids next Friday night while I go on a date.”

“Done,” she said easily. Yeah, she didn’t think he was actually going to want her to do anything with him. Just watch his kids.

So, one night in the lockup hadn’t changed anything in that regard.

She waited while he pulled his phone out of his front shirt pocket and tilted it so it kicked on, trying not to be impatient.

He said the time, and she calculated in her head that she had twenty-three minutes left.

Monday night had been a good choice, since there hadn’t been any other...prisoners? Patrons? What was it called when a person was put in jail?

Anyway, she had been alone all night, which had been just fine with her, although she wouldn’t have minded keeping her phone at the very least. She could read a book or something. As it was, she’d occupied herself by staring at the cell wall while trying not to think about how dirty the mattress was behind her. Or how many other people had slept on it.

It wasn’t that the jail was filthy, because it wasn’t. Not really. Not compared to their barn on the ranch. But she figured out that she was a little claustrophobic and more of a germaphobe than she wanted to admit. At least when it came to prison cells. Who knew?

Sighing, she turned away from the bars, walked back over, and sat down on the mat where she’d spent most of the last twelve hours. Drawing her feet up, she leaned back against the wall. She hadn’t slept very well, and she was tired, but she had a full morning’s worth of work to do when she got released.

Her family had been working hard to make their dude ranch a success, and they’d decided to host a rodeo this year. It would draw people in, let people know about the ranch, and hopefully get them some bookings for next spring and summer. If not this fall. Cold came to North Dakota early, but fall was still a beautiful time of year here.

Winter was pretty too, and they were thinking about getting some draft horses and doing sleigh rides at least through the holiday season.

But Phoebe had been put in charge of the rodeo.

Her, along with a new guy that they had hired just for that...to coordinate the rodeo and help them run it. They were planning on keeping him on as a full-time employee afterward, if things went well.

Tillman Snyder was the man’s name, and he was supposed to show up at the ranch first thing this morning.

Phoebe didn’t know much else about him other than he had been her brother’s college roommate and her brother, Ezra, had asked her to work with him to get things organized. She was known as being particular and meticulous in recordkeeping, plus she would organize the food and games and prizes as well as the decorations and the arrangements on the ranch, while he took care of all of the things that she didn’t really know much about—the events themselves, getting the temporary corrals and everything else set up, and she didn’t even know what all else.

But hopefully, Tillman and she would be able to combine their strengths and make the rodeo a smashing success. To say that the future of their ranch depended on it wasn’t an overexaggeration.

She tapped her hand on her leg, figuring that twenty-three minutes had gone by long ago, but she’d promised she wasn’t going to ask again.

Stealing a glance underneath her lashes at Rich, she wondered if he was deliberately not telling her her time was up so that she would ask again, so he’d have a free babysitter Friday night. She wouldn’t put it past him.

Finally, she got up, and while she wasn’t much of a pacer, she walked over to the end of the jail cell and back. She hadn’t realized that she was claustrophobic. Last night had told her that much. That was probably the reason she wanted out more than anything. She had been trying to keep her mind occupied, thinking about other things, paramount among those the rodeo, but now that she knew her time was surely up, the walls felt like they were closing in, and it drove her crazy that she couldn’t escape.

Not to mention, she had to use the bathroom, and she was absolutely not using the urinal that the cell provided.

She supposed she could probably complain. Surely there were discrimination laws that stated that a female prisoner needed to have facilities that suited her physiology. And privacy as well.

But considering that it was only twelve hours and that her time was up, she would be happy if Rich would simply let her out.

She went over and stood as close to him as she could get, trying to remind him that she was there, and it was time for her to leave.

He pretended not to notice.

She knew he was pretending, because she saw his eyes glance up and his lips quirk a little, and then he looked back down at the iPad that was balanced above his knees after taking a sip of his coffee.

Smelling the coffee made her stomach rumble and her mouth water. She usually started the day with at least two cups, but no one had offered her coffee. Or food of any kind.

Not that she had expected anything. After all, the jail was allowing them to do this as a matter of public service and kindness; she didn’t want to cost the county any extra money.

She drew a breath in through her nose and blew it out her mouth. She was not going to say anything. And then she thought, why not? Did it really matter if she went to wherever Rich lived and watched his kids for an evening? It wasn’t like she was typically super busy on Friday night. But she wasn’t going to if she didn’t have to.

“Rich?”

His head drew up slowly, and there was a small smirk, arrogant and irritating, that turned up the corner of one of his lips. “Are you asking me what time it is? Because, you do remember our deal, correct?”

“Correct. I remember. And you’re right. I’m not asking, but if you happen to check...”

He gave her a look, knowing that now that she’d mentioned it, he could hardly continue to keep her past her time. With a put-out sigh, he uncrossed his legs and dropped them to the floor, grabbing the large key that worked the lock. She had expected everything to be electronic. Although, she hadn’t really thought about whether or not the jail in Rockerton, North Dakota, would have entered the twenty-first century. If she had thought about it, she would have expected there to be some kind of electronic locks. But there wasn’t.

“Aren’t you going to look at your phone?” she asked.

“Don’t need to. The timer on the desk that they set when the kids locked you in here last night went off twenty minutes ago.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

“That’s because I shut it off before it could go off.”

“You did it on purpose?”

“Yeah?” he said, not bothering to try to hide his smirk. “You have no idea how expensive babysitters are nowadays.”

She wanted to say something about the word sucker being stamped on her forehead and she didn’t know it, but she didn’t. She also tried to push away the thought that when a man looked at her, he saw sucker and babysitter, not siren and kissable, or any other romantic words, which showed how pathetic she was. She didn’t even know any romantic words that she could use to describe herself.

Instead, she waited while he opened her cell door, then kept her irritation in check when he asked for her phone number—in case he needed a babysitter, a paid one—and programmed it into his phone.

“I’ll give you a call at some point to see if you can watch the kiddos for me.”

She nodded, then as she was sticking her phone back in her pocket, she said, “I could be a serial killer, you know.”

He laughed. “I watched you for the last twelve hours. I definitely trust my kids with you. You’re harmless and more than a little boring.” He grinned. “No offense. That’s actually a compliment, since I’m thinking about hiring you to watch my children.”

She nodded, not liking the way her life had turned out, exactly, but laughing to herself that he had pinned her so correctly. She was serious, responsible, and, yeah, boring.

But at least she had made twelve hundred dollars for the Sweet Water high school. Even if she did end up with a babysitting gig she really didn’t want because of it.

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to have time to babysit, not if they were going to get the rodeo planned now and set up in two short months. She could always say no when he called.

She had to admit, as she stepped out of the jailhouse and started down the steps, that it felt great to be outside. Hopefully the little bit of claustrophobia she felt while locked up was not something that was going to erupt into a full-blown issue.

Maybe she’d been cooped up for too long, or maybe she was hungrier than she thought, because as she stepped down the steps, lifting her eyes to the sky and taking a deep breath of the warm late spring air, she lost her balance and started tumbling down the steps.