Lucky Cowboy Read online

  Lucky Cowboy

  A Men of Stone Ridge novel

  Heatherly Bell

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Bonus Epilogue

  Prologue

  Let me make one thing perfectly clear. Far too many of you make fun of our acronym. But no, we do not call ourselves the ladies of SORROW because we’re sad. Far from it. We are the Society of Reasonable, Respectable, and Organized Women. We are a society, one of reasonable women, and…sure, okay, it’s too long to say the entire name. There.

  We’re simply everything the name of our society itself indicates. Respectable women, who appreciate the position we’re in. I’ll let you in on a little secret, dear: we run this town. Sure, sure. We’re in the minority but that has mostly worked out to be an advantage. Who wouldn’t love to be one of the few? The proud? Oh, wait. Never mind.

  For decades, Stone Ridge, Texas has been a town filled with a majority of men. We’re not exactly sure how this happened, but let’s begin with the fact that we’re a ranching town. Think cowboys. Cows. Lots of lakes for fishing and hunting. In other words, it’s like a huge man cave.

  But honestly, our lack of women also has something to do with the lack of jobs and services for us. We don’t even have a hairdresser in town for the love of Pete. My new daughter-in-law does my hair in her home every other Tuesday. But I digress.

  What we do have is a great deal of eligible young men around marrying age.

  I myself had seven suitors before I chose to wed my sainted husband, Lloyd. This is the place to be if a woman wants to feel special. We’re like Alaska, but warmer.

  Yes, thank you, I will get to the point. We need more women in our quaint town because we do have the men. Oh, do we have the men! Rodeo cowboys, ranchers, construction workers. Hard bodies, chiseled jaws, and all those things the young’uns like. So, of course, when the subject of a local primary school came up, as it does once every five or so years, Sadie Stephens was the first woman I thought of. Uh-huh.

  She left town for Baylor University a few years ago to get her degree in education. After graduation, for some reason unknown to me, she settled in the metropolis of San Antonio. Can you believe it? San Antonio! Sometimes, there’s just no accounting for taste.

  Honestly, she’s the sweetest girl in the world. Close to her family and her older brother, Beau. Never has a bad word to say about anyone. A pretty and petite blond with hazel eyes. No, I’m not giving you her measurements. By the way, there’s a rumor that her college boyfriend broke her heart, and she’s been a little shy of love ever since then.

  Suffice it to say, the men of Stone Ridge are above reproach. They know better than to hurt a woman’s feelings. Why, they’d rather break their own leg than any woman’s heart. We’re glad to have Sadie back. That’s right, she’s agreed to take the position as our new school’s first teacher.

  Yes, men of Stone Ridge. You are welcome. Sadie Stephens is back in town, and she’s single.

  Let the games begin!

  ~ Beulah Hayes, acting President of the Society of Reasonable, Respectable and Organized Women (SORROW), and author of The Men of Stone Ridge, tenth edition~

  Chapter 1

  No other twenty-eight-year-old woman in Stone Ridge, Texas could say this, but Sadie Stephens started the Tuesday after Labor Day with circle time.

  She stood in the old building that long ago served its purpose as the town’s original church. An old white clapboard building, with a steeple and a tone-less, broken belfry. It had seen better days, on or around the turn of the century. As long as Sadie could remember, everyone had worshiped at Trinity Church in the center of town.

  This morning, a small group of children ages five to eight sat in a circle inside of the old but newly cleaned and painted church. All the pews and the baptismal font were removed, and there remained one large room with a strip of carpet in the center over the hardwood floors. Small desks and chairs were flanked in groups around the room. In her class were fifteen boys and five girls. The classroom’s mix of boys to girls was just about right for Stone Ridge, Texas’s demographics, where men outnumbered women by about five to one.

  And Sadie would be the first teacher at Stone Ridge Elementary.

  “Boys and girls, you probably already know that my name is Sadie Stephens, but y’all can call me Miss Sadie.” She turned to write her name in large letters on the white board in bold black marker.

  Something tapped the side of Sadie’s head and she turned to see a paper plane at her feet.

  “He did it!” Ellie Monroe, one of her Kindergartners, pointed to Jimmy Ray, an eight-year-old.

  Sadie bent to pick it up from the floor. She didn’t want to start their day off in a negative way, so she turned it over in her hands and admired it for a moment.

  “Why, what a wonderful piece of engineering.”

  “You’re pretty,” said Jimmy Ray.

  How adorable. The cute kid grinned, showing two missing front teeth.

  “Ew,” said Bobby Joe. “She’s old.”

  “Is not!” Ellie scrunched up her little face.

  This brought about a general discussion between the boys and girls regarding who was old, such as one’s grandmother, but Miss Sadie was simply a grown-up. Ellie won the round with her impressive logic.

  “You guys are so smart!” Sadie took back control of the conversation. “What a lively discussion. Yes, Jimmy Ray, I’m twenty-eight, a bit old for you. But thank you for saying that I’m pretty.”

  “When’s snack time?” Bobby Joe raised his hand. “My mom said y’all would give me snacks if I’m good. I’m bein’ good. Where’s my snack?”

  “That’s a great question! We will have our snack soon. Ellie’s mom volunteered to bring it today. But I’m sure you just ate a big breakfast.”

  “I have a hollow leg,” Bobby Joe said with conviction.

  “Does not!” Ellie said, who would obviously become the classroom’s fact checker.

  “All right.” Sadie took a deep and steadying breath. “We’re going to get to know each other a little bit first. Some of you already know how to read, and others are just learning, so I need to find out more about you. This is going to be so interesting! I can’t wait to find out who can already read.”

  Nearly every hand raised, all except for Ellie, who pouted and crossed her arms.

  Oh, dear. Sadie probably shouldn’t have said that. “Wait. I didn’t ask you to raise your hands.”

  Little hands lowered.

  “The point is, soon you will all be reading.”

  Sadie ended circle time after each child said their name out loud and she’d pointed them to their assigned desk with their decorated name card. She could hardly contain her excitement and nearly rubbed her hands together. She would finally teach, and mold little minds.

  She’d dreamed about this day and it was finally here. And in her hometown, no less! How wonderful to influence the future generation of both the women and men of Stone Ridge. She would have a challenge, teaching the first class at different levels, but she’d created a plan. />
  Until recently many parents of grade school children homeschooled since Stone Ridge was a small remote town deep in Texas Hill Country. Older children were usually sent on a bus to the neighboring town of Kerrville, a forty-minute ride reach way. A long bus ride, one Sadie remembered well. She, her brother, Beau, and all their friends rode the bus for years. But now, local parents would have options.

  Thanks to Beulah Hayes’s efforts, they’d began the search for a location and a plan to raise funds last year, and wrangled support from the town’s residents. There would still be many fundraisers ahead of them to fully fund the effort.

  Because they didn’t yet have all their district certifications, they’d applied for a charter, and received some money from the state. They’d raised enough through Beulah’s pet organization, the ladies of SORROW, to pay for a year of Sadie’s abysmal salary.

  And while the ladies scouted for another, better location, they’d provided the old church so that Sadie could begin teaching this fall.

  Two hours into the school day, Sadie counted ten times she’d returned Jimmy Ray’s shoe to him, because he kept throwing it. She talked to him, but he didn’t seem to think he was doing anything wrong. On the eleventh time, she got wise and put it in her desk drawer, telling him he’d get it back at the end of the day.

  He then hopped around the classroom for a few minutes on one foot, earning lots of laughs. Sadie asked him to sit down, then handed out reading books, and while some of the kids took to reading them quietly, others fought over them.

  Ellie wanted Black Beauty because of the horse on the cover, but Jimmy Ray reminded her that she couldn’t read so she should go ahead and take the “baby book.”

  Ellie burst into tears. Sadie gathered the little girl into her arms and considered joining her. This day was not going well so far. She’d pictured an entirely different kind of experience, with well-behaved children eager to read a book and learn.

  “Jimmy Ray, I’m going to need you to apologize to Ellie. There’s no such thing in my class as a baby book.”

  “Baby, baby, baby!” Jimmy Ray laughed as again he hopped around on one foot.

  And Sadie could take no more. She rarely lost her temper and never with a child. But Jimmy Ray had just stepped on her last nerve. She would never tolerate cruelty among her children.

  “Jimmy Ray! How many times have I told you? Sit down. I mean it now,” Sadie said, and stomped her foot in emphasis.

  And went right through the bottom of the wooden floor.

  * * *

  “Termites can do a hell of a lot of damage,” said Riggs Henderson. “I’ve seen entire beams fall.”

  A local rancher, Riggs was also a foreman and worked odd construction jobs here and there. He managed the occasional renovation in town and sometimes worked with Sadie’s father. He’d been driving by in his truck when he saw the commotion gathered outside the old church.

  Many of the men who gathered stood eyeing the floor and the foot of crawl space under it. There were plenty of head shakes as an entire crew arrived and got to work. In their town residents came together in times of need. It took one call to the phone tree, started by Beulah Hayes herself this time, who’d walked over from the General Store nearby, which was owned by her husband.

  Sadie sat with the children outside on the porch steps, out of the way of danger until their parents could arrive. To say the children were fascinated was an understatement. Suddenly no one talked about snacks or reading levels. They’d just seen their teacher’s feet go through a supposedly solid wood floor.

  Jimmy Ray simply stared in horror when Sadie’s first foot went through the floor. He must have thought her to be “incredible cartoonish” mad. Not the case, but either she’d gained too much weight this summer, or these termites had feasted. For decades.

  Beulah Hayes shook her finger. “The inspector said it was fine. We tented for termites weeks ago.”

  “Who did you use?” Riggs asked.

  “I’ll have to look through my paperwork,” Beulah huffed. “But he came from Kerrville. Gave me a decent rate.”

  A general groan of consensus came out of the men, as if the good people of Kerrville couldn’t be trusted to know a termite infestation from a scorpion one.

  “Are you sure you don’t need a trip to the hospital, missy?” This was directed to Sadie from Lenny, one of their volunteer firefighters, a man about her father’s age.

  “It’s not like I fell far. My boot took the worst of it,” Sadie said. “I’m fine, but thanks.”

  “Miss Sadie went through the floor,” Ellie said. “I’m scared. There’s a monster down there.”

  “No monster,” Lenny said, bending. “It’s a teeny tiny little bug, you see, so small no one can even see it.”

  “You’re not helping,” Sadie warned.

  “Oh, they don’t eat children,” Lenny said with a chuckle and a wave. “But they eat through wood like a sumabitch.”

  “Lenny!”

  “My house is made of wood,” Ellie said with a hitch in her breath. “Will they eat my house, Miss Sadie?”

  “No, no, sweetie,” Sadie said, glaring at Lenny. “I’m sure they won’t.”

  A bevy of pickup trucks arrived one after the other, their tires crunching into the gravel as they pulled into the church parking lot. This would be the second wave of men, arriving to help, meaning they would have dropped everything they were doing on the ranch.

  Life wasn’t easy in Stone Ridge, as services were few and residents were forced to rely on each other. The fire department, for instance, all volunteer. As a former EMT, Sadie took her turn, too. They currently didn’t have a doctor or clinic, and no police, relying on the County Sheriff an hour away.

  There was no hairdresser in town, no clothing stores, no coffee shop, no movie theater, and spotty cell service and Wi-Fi. They did, however, have rolling hills, trees, rivers, lakes, and lots of great fishing. There was Trinity Church, a veterinary clinic (there were more animals in town than people), the General Store, and the Shady Grind, a bar and grill.

  But the best part of her hometown was the way the men of Stone Ridge revered their few women. They were held in high regard. Protected. This was just one of the reasons Sadie came home after getting her teaching degree. Here, she’d have a better than average chance of finding a husband.

  In fact, he could be here right now, wondering if he’d ever find a woman in this woman-scarcity town. Maybe he’d even bring his niece or nephew to the school one day for drop off or pick up. Ada Armstrong’s nephew was coming to visit, and she couldn’t talk enough about him. But Sadie wasn’t too excited because he sounded so desperate for a wife. In any case, with the right man, their gazes would meet across the tops of the children’s heads.

  She’d feel that little zip and zing. The jolt and kablammy that her best friend Eve Iglesias talked about. Sadie’s pupils would dilate, and bam! She’d fall in love. Once, she’d felt that zip and zing, and thought she knew just the right man for her. But that was years ago. She’d given up on him.

  As the trucks filed in one after another, Sadie noticed her older brother Beau’s truck, Wade Cruz, two more of the Henderson brothers, and of course, Lincoln Carver.

  Lincoln Carver.

  The man she’d wanted since she could remember having the slightest interest in boys. The one she’d finally given up on. A few years ago, Lincoln stopped speaking to Sadie and even though everyone else moved on from the feud that caused this, Lincoln still remained civil. But nothing more than civil. Then again, he was a loyal sort, one of his most attractive qualities.

  Followed closely by the long, brawny body, strong arms, chiseled jaw, and dimples. Sigh.

  He and the rest of the men went to work as if they did this every day, gathering tools and supplies from their truck beds.

  Lincoln walked by her first, nodding and tipping his Stetson. “Sadie.”

  “Hey there, Lincoln.” Her heart rate spiked the way it always did when he appeared
anywhere near her vicinity.

  “Hey, sis,” Beau said, as he walked up the steps next. “You okay there?”

  “I’m fine. Sorry to be so much trouble.”

  “What a first day, right?” Beau said and turned to the first crew of men. “What do we have goin’ on here? How can we help?”

  “We’re goin’ to need to move them to another location,” Riggs Henderson advised. “We’ve got to rip out all this wood and replace it. Should take a week or more. We should do a more thorough inspection. Walls, floors, roof. I wouldn’t feel comfortable having children in here otherwise.”

  Sadie closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Well, there went her teaching career. Maybe she could move back to San Antonio, get her old job, and come back and try this again next fall.

  “Now, now,” Beulah said as though reading Sadie’s mind. “I am sorry about all this, but don’t you despair. We’ll find another location for y’all right quick.”

  Except a centrally located empty building in the middle of town didn’t exist.

  The parents began to arrive for their children and were informed. They appeared well rested, even after the short school day. But Sadie had probably aged ten years in the last five minutes.

  Because it was still early in the day, she left the men to it, and headed two blocks down to the veterinary clinic where Eve worked as a veterinarian. Most of the time Eve was out on a large animal call, but Sadie caught sight of her old blue beat-up truck parked outside. She opened the door to an empty waiting room where Eve sat behind the receptionist desk. She and the other vet, Annabeth, couldn’t afford to hire an admin yet.