Seventy-some-odd years on this earth had taught Jedediah Garland what made life most worth living—and it was the one thing he wanted more of to call his own. Not property. He owned plenty of that, between the Hitching Post Hotel and the ranch it sat on. Not friends. He had a sufficient number of those, too, and wouldn’t give up a single one of them. But the most important thing...family.
That’s where his life fell far short.
Paz came into the dining room toting his breakfast. The hotel business had quieted down some lately—heck, it had up and gone to Tahiti—and he and his cook had the room to themselves. She set the platter on the table in front of him.
“Chile relleno okay with you for tonight, boss?”
He shrugged.
She put her hands on her hips. “What? All of a sudden you don’t like what I make for you?”
“It’s not that.” He shifted the cutlery on his napkin. “I’m off my feed today. It’s Thom’s birthday.”
“Yes.”
He thought of his eldest son, now long gone, and the rest of his small family, mostly scattered across the country. “I never thought things would come to pass the way they have. And I don’t know what I would do without you and Tina here.”
His youngest granddaughter was also Paz’s only grandchild. Tina and her four-year-old son were the only members of his family to live under his roof. “You know, Mary and I always thought we’d have our kids around us, if not on the ranch, then at least settled somewhere within hailing distance of Cowboy Creek. And we’d expected to see all the grandkids growing up in the area.”
“Yes, I know. But the girls plan to visit. You can spend time with them soon.”
“A week? Two weeks? That’s not enough.” He slapped his palm on the table. “And if the granddaughters I’ve got are all I’m going to have—well, I’ll learn to live with that. But they need to get busy and give us more great-grandkids. Heck, they all need to get married. Besides...” Frowning, he resettled the napkin beneath the cutlery at his place. After a long moment, he muttered, “I don’t like seeing my girls unhappy.”
“You think they’re not happy?”
“Of course they’re not. How can they be? One’s traipsing all over the world with not a chance of settling down. Another’s trying to raise two kids by herself. And then there’s Tina, on her own with Robbie. You want her married, too, don’t you?”
“Yes. But Tina’s very proud...”
“And we’re proud of her.” His youngest granddaughter had studied hard in school, then gone on to get her degrees. Now she kept the books for him and helped manage the hotel. Yes, they were both so proud of her.
Paz stared down at the tabletop.
He frowned. “I know what you’re thinking, and you know it makes no difference to me that our kids never got married. Tina’s just as much my granddaughter as Jane and Andi are.”
“Yes, I do know that.”
“Then tell me, flat-out straight, what’s bugging you?”
“Tina. She’s so independent.”
“Yeah. Too independent for her own good. Something’s got to be done about her, Paz. About her and my granddaughters, too.”
She said nothing.
He sighed and rubbed his chin. The rasp of a few whiskers he’d missed shaving that morning sounded loud in the silence. “I stopped in at SugarPie’s the other day.” Sugar Conway ran a combination bakery / sandwich shop / gossip parlor in the center of Cowboy Creek. “Sugar didn’t have any details yet, but the word is, Cole Slater may be headed back to town.”
Paz dropped the serving tray, which knocked against the saltshaker, spewing salt across the bare wooden tabletop. “Oh, I’m sorry, boss.” With hurried, jerky movements, she brushed the loose salt into her palm.
He frowned. “Something wrong?”
“No. Why should there be anything wrong?”
But she didn’t meet his gaze. He frowned at her bent head and eyed the silver strands threaded through her once-dark hair. Paz had worked for him for twenty years and more, and he could spot something odd about her with his eyes closed. “It’s not like you to drop things in the dining room. Or the kitchen or anywhere else for that matter.”
“I’m just rushing because I’m running late.”
He eyed her. “No later than normal. So I’ll ask you again, what’s up?”
“I was speaking with Sugar this morning,” she said with obvious reluctance.
“Must be some good scandal flying around to warrant a call this early.” He sat back in his chair without asking for details, knowing full well Paz would fill him in. And why not? As one of the town’s business owners, he had a right to know what happened in Cowboy Creek.
“Sugar said Layne just confirmed it this morning,” Paz said in a low tone. “Her brother will be here next week.”
“Will he? Well, it’s about time. It’s—what?—five years now he’s been gone.” He’d thrown that last comment out offhandedly, but to tell the truth, he knew down to the hour when Cole Slater had left town. “It seems to me Tina mentioned his name quite a bit in their school days.”
“Because their teachers had them work together.”
“Right. Now you say that, I do recall. And now he’s coming back, I’ve had another idea. There’s no reason those two shouldn’t work together again.”
“Oh, boss, I don’t think...”
“There’s nothing you need to think about. This idea’s got some strong possibilities, too, and I’m just the man to put it in place.” He smiled. “Don’t you worry, Paz. None of these kids will have a clue as to what’s going on.”
Two weeks later
To Cole Slater, walking into the Hitching Post Hotel felt like coming home...which probably didn’t mean much, considering he’d hated the home he had grown up in and hadn’t stayed in any one place since leaving it.
He stared around him in awe. Everything looked the same as it had the day he’d shown up here as a high-school senior, as raw as any wrangler could have been, to start a job on Garland Ranch. In those early days, he’d ridden the line between a determination to prove himself and the stomach-clenching certainty he was in way over his head.
Exactly the way he’d felt since his return to Cowboy Creek.
Pushing the thought aside, he turned to Jed, who hadn’t changed much, either. His white hair was combed neatly into place, as always, and he wore the same string tie and belt buckle Cole had never seen him without.
“Glad you could drop by,” his former boss said.
“I appreciate the invitation. As the saying goes, you’re not looking a day older, Jed. And things around here don’t seem to have changed a bit.”
Jed beamed. “We try to keep the place up.”
“You’ve done a good job of it.”
Years of polishing had buffed the hotel’s registration desk to a high sheen. The brass foot rail encircling it gleamed. Even the knotty-pine walls and flooring of the reception