Page 32 of Nashville Cowboy
“I can see that, and I don’t understand why. But I’ll leave you alone. Promise.” A beat later, he spoke again. “As long as you answer one question.”
“What’s that?”
“What happened at A&M? I know something must have.”
A stone of anxiety lodged itself in her windpipe and she would swear her oxygen had been cut off. “I’m not ready to talk about that.”
“When do you think you will be?”
“I…don’t know.”
“That’s all right. We have time. I’m not going anywhere.”
She sucked in a breath. “I thought you were going back after the wedding.”
“Maybe I’m not leaving until we resolve this between us. It’s gone on long enough.”
Lillian heard laughterfrom the kitchen, and then the muffled sounds of two people talking. Good. Talking was good. Progress.
Enough spying on those two for now.
“Woman, what in tarnation are you up to now?” a deep and crotchety voice said from behind her.
Oh no. Not her dead husband again. She used to write him letters before he’d appear. Now, her arthritis was too bad, and Albert only showed up to haunt her when he sensed she was about to step into a little bit of trouble. But it wasn’t as if Lillian sawghosts. Just Albert. He’d been dead for years, but the old cowboy just couldn’t hang up his spurs. The therapist she’d visited shortly after she’d first started seeing Albert, wondering if life on the range had finally driven her completely insane, assured her that she wasn’tcrazy. As long assherealized that Albert’s visits were a figment of her active imagination, and served only to bring her comfort, all was well.
However, the jury was still out oncomfort.
Albert sat on her reading chair, booted feet propped on the edge of their bed.
“What are you doin’ here? Haven’t seen you in weeks. Still haven’t found the light? I’ve told you over and over again: go into the light.” She waved her arms, as if pushing.
“And I’ve told you: I can’t find no dang light.”
“Oh my Lord, as usual, you’re too lazy to look for it. You put the ‘tub’ in stubborn! Just leave me to my plans. I’m still among the livin’ unlike you, and when I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”
“I can see what you’re up to now. Leave them two alone. I mean it. Haven’t they both been through enough? Jackson and Eve will find their way back to each other if it’s meant to be.”
She sighed loudly. “That’s easy for you to say.”
Albert hadn’t been alive to witness Eve return to Stone Ridge, as broken as Lillian ever saw anyone. And she’d witnessed plenty in sixty-plus years on a ranch. Life had kicked Eve something fierce. Someone literally beat all the hope out of that beautiful girl and Lillian wouldn’t stand by and just watch her suffer no matter what she’d done to her grandson. Call her foolish, but the good Lord put her on earth to be useful. And she was going to be just that until it was time to join her ornery cowboy.
“You got lucky with Lincoln and Sadie. That don’t mean you’re a matchmaker.”
“Ha! Lucky? You call that luck? I call it incredible skill and a little bit of good timing.”
Feeling responsible for his younger siblings hadn’t left Lincoln a whole lot of time for serious relationships. It wasn’t until Lillian started Phase One of her attempts to get those two together that he noticed Sadie had grown into a beautiful young lady. Now he wouldn’t know how to live without her and there would soon enough be Carver babies. Hopefully girls.
And it was all thanks to her.
Next up, Jackson and Eve. Those two had been apart far too long. Last, she’d take care of finding the perfect man for Daisy. No more of those no-good rodeo cowboys intent on leaving a young woman a widow. Her ornery granddaughter would need a strong man.
“Gettin’ a little too cocky, you ask me,” Albert said.
“I didn’t ask.”
He held up his arms in an “I give up” gesture and in the next moment he vanished from Lillian’s imagination. Good thing. Her occasional flights of fancy with Albert were distracting.
Her plan was put into place the moment she’d realized that Lincoln and Sadie announced their marriage. Originally, her grand plan involved asking Eve to help her with various chores for the wedding, keeping her at the house often so she’d be forced to run into Jackson over and over again. She didn’t actuallyplanon breaking her arm in three places, but what a godsend that was! It gave her the perfect excuse to move Eve into the house and help that girl pay off some of her loans without having to straight out give her the money.
