Epilogue
From the Saddle Peek…
Well, well, well, Saddle Creek. Pour yourself a coffee—light and sweet, if the rumors hold—because your favorite town square has developments.
The lucky lady? Newcomer and our resident massage therapist over at Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, Miss Hope Bailey. She’s only been here for six months, and she’s already responsible for the softening of the hardest jaw in Bluebonnet County.
We're told the romance bloomed the night of the big flood, when the good sheriff got himself trapped out at the Bailey place and ran the entire county emergency response from her kitchen table. Heroic. Swoon-worthy. Very rugged.
Reports have indicated that the couple has been seen shopping for rings right on Main Street.
Unconfirmed Rumor: A certain young deputy—initials T.T.
—may have mentioned to a certain someone at the HEB that when he finally reached his boss that night, the Sheriff of Bluebonnet County was, and we quote, “wearing a lady's bathrobe with ducks on it.” While we cannot confirm this, we have it on good authority that T.T.
got the information while getting a complimentary neck massage.
Also Unconfirmed: The sheriff's station has reportedly been swimming in homemade baked goods since said flood. Deputies are said to be “not complaining.” One imagines they wouldn't dare.
In related news, retired Sheriff Caleb Burton was overheard at Ace's telling anyone who'd listen that he and his wife inadvertently played matchmaker to the new couple. Evidently it was Madison’s old watch that Hope had been wearing and those direct alerts sent to the sheriff’s phone was a left-over setting from when the Burtons had been trying to start a family.
And finally—a little bird tells us Miss Bailey's foster sister, one Jules Wheatley, is planning an extended visit to Saddle Creek now that the couple's gone and gotten all cozy. We're reliably informed she is loud, unimpressed by cowboys, and completely uninterested in romance.
We give her a month.
Stay nosy, Saddle Creek.
— The Peek
***
I hope you loved Griff and Hope’s story. Please consider leaving me a review.