Page 41 of Eighteen Bowties and Counting

“That’s a lot of Glovers,” Charlotte said, letting herself sparkle as much as possible. She shook all of their hands, and listened while they introduced their wives.

Charlie, Dot, and Sammy. They had little children with them, and by the time those names were said, they’d started to blur in Charlotte’s head.

She did know one thing, though. “You play games with Preacher and Ace,” she said.

“Yeah.” A smile bloomed on Beau’s face. “He’s around here somewhere, I’m sure.”

“He went to get a gluten-free tortilla wrap,” Bear said. “As if they’d run out of those.”

A beat of silence followed, wherein Charlotte wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or if he’d literally just growled the words.

Then Sammy said, “Don’t be a grizzly, Bear.”

“I’m just sayin’,” Bear said. “No one’s going to take a gluten-free tortilla when there’s a perfectly glutened one available.” He took a little girl from his wife, and the child softened the cowboy considerably. He even smiled at her.

Preacher started to laugh, as did Beau, and Charlotte decided it was okay to smile too.

Beau stepped back to expand the circle as more cowboys arrived. “Hey, you.” He grabbed onto one of them, the one with the darkest features, darkest hair, deepest eyes.

“Charlotte,” he said. “This is Jeremiah Walker. The Walker boys own Seven Sons Ranch.”

“Great to meet you,” Charlotte said, shaking his hand. And he had six brothers. The families here…she’d never seen so many of them.

She and Beau managed to talk to at least fifty people before they got food, and then she sat down at a table with Bennett and Ellie, Rhett and Evelyn Walker, and Ace and Holly Ann Glover.

A feeling of acceptance streamed through her, and she noted that she was at this party as part of a couple—and she liked that. She glanced at Beau, who pressed a kiss to her temple before he turned back to his food, looked across the table, and picked up his non-gluten wrap.

“So,” he said. “Rhett, you workin’ on any cases right now?”

Before he could answer, a man said into a mic, “Thank you, everyone, for coming out to Three Rivers tonight.”

It took a couple of seconds for the chatter to die down, and Charlotte took a bite of her wrap as she located Squire with the mic in his hand. Kelly stood next to him, an anxious look on her face, and Finn stood beside her.

Libby, Mike, and Sam—the rest of the Ackerman clan—stood there with them, and Squire looked down the row of his family, and Beau settled his arm around Charlotte’s shoulders.

He leaned in close and whispered, “This is hard on them.”

“I can see that,” she said.

“Squire served in the Army for a handful of years,” Beau said. “You’ve seen his limp, right? His tank got hit.”

Charlotte had seen the man’s limp, and she’d actually taken strength from it. No one treated him differently. No one told him he couldn’t do something.

And she realized that out here, on this ranch, no one was limiting her either.

A week or so later, once Finn had left and ranch life had settled back to normal, Charlotte pulled up to her brother’s house. While it looked like a very large farmhouse on the outside, she knew it was a high-end mansion on the inside. She sighed heavily, the weight of the secrets she carried keeping her in the driver’s seat.

She hadn’t been off Three Rivers Ranch and back here for Sunday dinner since she’d moved out, and it had been five weeks now. Felicity had been calling and texting a lot more this past week, so Charlotte had driven herself to church instead of going with Beau, and she’d made the quick drive southeast of town after the sermon.

She did miss the kids, and she laughed as the front door opened and all four of them came spilling out. That got her to get out of the SUV, and she hurried toward them, gathering them all to her the way a mother hen welcomed home her chicks.

“My babies,” she said. “How are you? What have you been doing? Are you ready for school to start?”

They all talked over one another, and Charlotte seemed to be able to hear each of them and their concerns and excitement. School started tomorrow, in fact, and she suddenly remembered she’d gotten gifts for each of them.

“Oh, Ella, grab that brown bag off my back seat, would you?”

The teenager went to do that, and Charlotte herded the rest of the children up the steps. Felicity waited for her on the porch, and she pulled Charlotte into a hug. “Mm, it’s so good to see you.” She stepped back and held her at arm’s length. “To know you’re alive.”

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