Free Have Cowboy, Need Cupid by Rita Herron

to keep this place going.”
    Suzanne sipped the sweet iced tea and reached for another cookie. “You’ve never thought of moving someplace where he wouldn’t have to work so hard?”
    Mrs. McAllister laughed. “That boy grew up here, ranching’s in his blood. He wouldn’t know how to do anything else.” She dusted powdered sugar from her dress. “God rest his soul, my husband sure didn’t know anything else, either. Some men are just born to live off the land.”
    Suzanne grew quiet, studying the green leaves on the magnolia tree. Another month and the white flowers would bloom, celebrating another year for the tree and honoring Rafe’s birthday.
    The same month the developer for the mall project wanted to break ground.
    “Those tulip buds out there remind me of my mother,” Mrs. McAllister said softly. “Lordy, she loved tulips. And that oak tree by the pond, why that was where Frank and I said our vows. We didn’t have a fancy wedding, just family, but I can still see him standing under that tree wearing his suit and tie.” She swiped at a tear pooling in the corner of her eye. “Sometimes when I sit out here in the evenings, I can hear his voice whispering to me through the pines.” She gave Suzanne a beseeching look. “It’s almost as if he’s still here. Every time I smell Old Spice, I break down and cry.”
    Suzanne nodded. She had tried so hard not to think about her mother, not to miss her, to be strong and move on, that she had never really felt her presence. Emotions converged inside her, though, and she fingered the cross dangling between her breasts, remembering the sadness in her mother’s eyes as she’d handed it to her on her deathbed.
    She tried to remember her mother’s face, to see her eyes and hear her voice. To remember the perfume she’d worn.
    Instead, she envisioned that awful metal hospital bed that sat like a big claw holding her mother’s emaciated frame in the dark corner of the den. She smelled the scent of alcohol and antiseptic and fear that had nearly choked her when she’d entered the room. She heard the wheezing sound of the oxygen mask when her mother had gathered pain-filled, frightening breaths. And the drip of that IV—she used to wake up sweating, dreaming about that sound.
    Maybe that was the reason her father had sold their house so soon after her mother had died. So he wouldn’t see her mother everywhere he turned, so he wouldn’t hear her voice whispering to him at night or hear that haunting drip. So he wouldn’t have to look at the place where that horrid hospital bed had sat, the place where her mother had died.
    “Well, it’s so good to have you visit,” Mrs. McAllister said, drawing her from her reverie. “I think we’re going to be good friends.”
    Suzanne smiled and squeezed her hand, guilt suffusing her. She would like that, she thought. Except the kind old woman might not like her so much if she knew the real reason Suzanne had come to the Lazy M.

    R AFE HAD WORKED all afternoon replacing rotten fencing out on the edge of the west pasture, hammering and digging post holes, grateful for the physical labor to work off his tension. While his mind zigzagged from thoughts of Suzanne Hartwell to the committee that had been formed to explore the pros and cons of the new development proposed for the town, he struggled for other ways to increase his income. Hopefully, he’d take in some horses to board soon. And if worse came to worst, he’d agree to lease some of his property to his neighbor, Harold Landon, who’d been wanting to increase his herd for the past year, although that would be a last resort. He didn’t like Landon or his methods of breeding, and despised the fact that his father had owed him money. The fact that Landon knew Rafe was in financial trouble made things worse. The developer hounding him was bad enough, but Landon had offered several times to buy the Lazy M.
    It would be a cold day in July before Rafe sold his land to