Was she kidding? A scene from a musical? No way was that going to happen. Cole and Tessa had first met—first kissed—performing a scene from a musical. And they had broken up at the June BBQ. The beginning and the end of their relationship.
Cole had no intention of helping those kids do anything, musical or otherwise. Working with delinquent teenagers wasn’t even in his skill set. Besides, he wasn’t going to the barbecue, much less participating in it.
“Why don’t you ask Marcus?” he suggested through gritted teeth. “He’s the boys’ counselor, after all. He ought to be the one leading this thing, don’t you think?”
Jo barked out a laugh. Even Tessa chuckled.
“Honey, that man cannot carry a tune for a second, much less an entire musical number. He’s as tone-deaf as a rock. As I recall, you have a beautiful baritone voice. Surely you’ll step up and share your talent for the good of the community—and the teenagers.”
Jo was goading him—and she was good at it. He remembered all the many times growing up when she’d set him on the right path. Part of him instinctively reacted as if he were still a child, but he was a grown man now, and he had no intention of being pushed into a situation that would be nothing but trouble for him, and for Tessa, too.
Why wasn’t she speaking up?
“We’ll see what we can do,” Tessa said.
What?
“Great! Can’t wait to see what you two come up with.” Jo scuttled away before he gave his own answer—which would have been a no. He didn’t even have the opportunity to raise another objection, not that Jo would have listened to it.
Cole leaned into Tessa’s personal space, meeting her emerald-eyed gaze square on. “What are you thinking?” he demanded. “You know as well as I do that we can’t do this.”
“I admit it’s not ideal.”
“Not ideal? It’s plain crazy.”
Tessa sighed. “We would have given in eventually. You know Jo. I just saved us having to scrap with her.”
He hated that Tessa was right. Jo would have won in the end, stubborn woman that she was. But how could they get over...everything...to work together in such a capacity? At the moment he couldn’t even go there in his mind.
“I can’t see how this is going to work,” he muttered crossly.
“That makes two of us. But it has to happen, Cole. We have to put our differences aside for the sake of the teenagers. They deserve the chance to do something good and to experience the community’s positive response to their actions.”
Honestly, his mind wasn’t on the teenagers. It was on himself and his own discomfort. Was this the Lord’s design to give him the opportunity to step out in faith—and completely out of his comfort zone? If it was, it was way, way out.
Right out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.
Tessa straightened her color-coordinated file folders, one for each of the incoming teenagers, and laid them atop a lavender-colored three-ring binder, in which she kept all her additional notes. At the moment, she was the only one sitting at the Haddons’ dining room table.
Early as usual.
She usually took the extra time before the meeting to pray for the incoming teenagers and quiet her heart so she would be open to whatever new challenges lay ahead, but after what had happened earlier in the day at Cup O’ Jo’s, she couldn’t get her mind or her emotions to stop buzzing around like a hive of angry wasps. Unlike bees, which stung once and died, wasps had the capacity to sting over and over again.
Cole was a single father.
While that explained a lot, it still filled her with confusion. No wonder he’d returned to Serendipity. He was bound to need the help of his family and friends to raise Grayson. She imagined it was hard to go it alone. He was blessed to have his brother Eli and sister Vee and their spouses living close by. Plenty of aunts and uncles to spoil little Grayson.
She couldn’t help but wonder how the whole single dad part of it had come to be. That wasn’t the sort of information a man shared with an ex-girlfriend, especially one with whom he’d had such a conspicuous breakup.
Single mothers, as heartbreaking as they were, were a dime a dozen given the current society. One mistake and they were the ones left holding the baby, the ones whose whole lives were forever changed in an instant. The men—they could walk away. It might be wrong, but that’s how it was. They could choose whether or not to be responsible for their child.
Cole, apparently, had made that noble decision.
Her first instinct would be to think he was a widower, but that wasn’t what he’d said. He’d said he wasn’t married. Not that he had been married, or that he was divorced. He wasn’t married.
Which meant what?
She didn’t know, and really, she shouldn’t want to know. She needed to keep her attention where it belonged—on her career and her incoming charges—and mind her own business where Cole was concerned. She wasn’t even close to being ready to work with Cole on the musical number with the teenagers, so she pressed that problem as far back in her mind as she could force it.
She scoffed and flipped open the hot-pink folder on the top of the pile, then glanced down and read the name on the file. Kaylie Johnson. Fifteen. Had been picked up for underage drinking and arguing with a police officer. Obstructing justice. Not a smart move, but a fairly typical case. Most of the teenagers came to the ranch with a chip on their shoulders. It was her job to provide the tough love that usually turned the kids around—a combination of counseling and good, hard physical labor. Redemption Ranch was the perfect place to keep teenage hands and minds busy.
And if God was gracious, Tessa hoped her own mind would be likewise occupied. She longed to be too tired to think, to drop into bed at night without any dreams. Busy enough for the ever-present thoughts of a blue-eyed cowboy to be overshadowed.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t get away from him in her thoughts or in person, because Cole arrived a moment later, hat in hand, his thick blond hair windswept and messy. She was a little surprised to see him arrive early to the meeting. She remembered him as being chronically late to class and church when they were in high school.
Their eyes met, and Tessa noticed something she’d overlooked when she’d seen him at Cup O’ Jo’s. The pitiable man had dark circles under his eyes and a rough-lined, haggard expression that suggested he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. Had he been keeping late nights with the baby?
“Does Grayson have his days and nights mixed up?” she asked, gesturing to the chair opposite her. Any discomfort that she might feel being alone with him was offset by how thoroughly exhausted he looked. The kind thing for her to do would be to hold off on the snark she usually used in defensive mode. She really did feel sorry for him—a little. Besides, Marcus and the Haddons couldn’t be far behind. A glance at her watch told her there were only five minutes to spare.
Cole groaned as he slid into his chair. “We had Grayson pretty well set on a schedule in California, but the move messed him up again, poor little guy.”
Tessa’s breath caught. “We?”
“The folks I stayed with while I worked