Meeting Her Match (4 page)

He should apologize.

Moving on, he rounded the bend toward his place and the horses waiting there. The work, the familiar. He was not familiar with watching what he said. Back in Idaho there wouldn't be any need to watch his words or any need for apology. He'd have been alone out there, working with the horses and taking care of his cows. Out there in the wide-open space and endless plains, he wouldn't have to worry about neighbors popping in un-announced demanding things. It was a simpler life. The kind of life suited for a man like him—a man who'd been raised to live by his own rules….

What was he doing?
Pace slammed on the brakes in
front of the horse pens. He was here to learn to live life by God's rules.

He hadn't come here to disappear. He hadn't come here to crave solitude and wish for things to go back to the way they'd been. But he did, and despite his determination to change, this longing for his old life wasn't easing up as the days passed. Especially with this building conflict with his neighbor.

 

Pace saddled his horse Yancy and rode out onto the open range. Clint's ranch was one of the largest in Texas, and back in the interior Pace could almost get the sense of the Great Basin. The terrain was sweeping and vast with hills and valleys rubbing up against rocks and ridges. It wasn't Idaho, but riding anywhere always helped him relax.

He was riding along the fence line, heading back toward his cabin, when he spotted Sheri jogging along the road. She was a long way from home and didn't look as though she was tiring at all. He had a feeling Sheri Marsh never tired out.

“Hey, cowboy,” she called the minute she spotted him.

Fighting off the urge to turn Yancy around and gallop off, he watched her jog up to the fence separating them. Standing there grinning, the sassy woman made him figure that a man with any sense would heed the warning and run. But Sheri drew him in like the most ornery filly in a herd always did. He was a sucker for a good challenge, and challenge radiated off his neighbor like flames from a burning building.

“You don't talk much, do you?” she said.

“Always been a downfall of mine,” he said, resting his hands on the saddle horn.

She kicked a rock, watched it skitter across the dirt. “I used to be that way.”

His disbelief must have shown because her grin widened.

“It's true,” she protested.

“I didn't say anything.”

“Oh, yes you did. I heard you loud and clear.”

“What happened?”

“Lacy Brown. Well, Matlock now. She just bullied the shyness out of me. Always dragging me around and forcing me to step up. She's a brute, that one.”

“Did Clint know this before he married her?”

“Oh yeah. Believe me, he tried to fight it, but she's contagious. Thank goodness. Now, I kinda like speaking my mind and getting noticed.”

“That's more than apparent.”

They studied each other until she lifted her eyes to watch a blue jay chase a sparrow out of its territory. “Bully,” she called as they zipped by, the sparrow doing evasive maneuvers, and the blue jay squawking in loud pursuit. Pace chuckled before he could stop himself.

She shot him an indignant look. “They are. They're always chasing something or griping about it.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Yes, you did. Don't forget, I can hear you, Pace Gentry. So, is it true that you're the best there ever was at bustin' a bronc?”

“Well, I don't know about that. I can get the job done.”

“Are you competing in the rodeo Mule Hollow is putting on at the end of the month?”

Behind him the sun emerged from a cloud and Sheri lifted a hand to shade her eyes, still squinting. She was cute, even with the awful-looking face she was making. It was easy to see why she was so popular with the cowboys.

“Are you?” he asked, causing her to double over with a laugh before springing back up, her eyes twinkling.

“Me?”

“Why's that so funny?”

“The only thing cowgirlish about me is my love of boots. I barely know which end of that horse you're on is which.”

Pace's lip curved up on one side. “Yancy might take that as an insult.” He liked the way her eyes lit up mischievously. “So you live in cattle country, but you're not a cowgirl?”

She gave a one-sided grin. “That'd be right, bud. I jog on my own two feet. I tried a horse once and fell off.”

“Were you wearing those red frog giggers?”

“Frog giggers! What's a frog gigger? Are you callin' my boots ugly?”

“If the shoe fits…”

She slapped her hand to her hip. “Hey, you better back up now. Calling a woman's footwear ugly is almost as bad as telling her she has an ugly baby.”

“Wouldn't want to do that.” He couldn't help his grin now. He'd smiled more in the last ten minutes than he'd smiled since making the decision to leave Idaho.

“Smart man.”

Not so much, he decided, realizing he was enjoying
her spunk just a little too much. He straightened in the saddle and pulled his head out of the clouds. “Well, I need to get back to work.” He tipped his hat and nudged Yancy forward, more than aware that she was surprised by his sudden departure.

He could feel her eyes on his back watching him leave. He didn't look back. The last thing he needed was to get ideas about his neighbor. He didn't need female complications thrown in on top of trying to build a business and figuring out what God wanted from him.

W
ell, so much for thinking they were making progress and having a decent conversation! The man had just closed up and rode off without so much as a
have a nice day.

“Hey, cowboy,” Sheri called after Pace. When he didn't bother to glance back at her despite the almost-pleasant conversation they'd had, Sheri felt her face grow hot. “You are about the rudest man I've ever met,” she shouted across the distance, making certain he heard her loud and clear.

He didn't nod his head, wave his hand or in any way acknowledge that she'd just insulted him. What a jerk.

Clamping her lips in a hard line, it took everything she had to hold back the smart crack begging to be let loose. Instead she forced herself to let him go as she resumed her jog. The man was impossible.

Maybe she needed to rethink involving Pace in her plan. Surely she could find someone else to fit the requirements. Even as she thought it she knew that—rude as he was—he was the right man for the job.

It was obvious the man would never marry—not with that mood disorder. Surely he wouldn't want the posse trying to fix him up, and that made him perfect.

Her conscience pricked thinking about it. All night long she'd told herself she had good reasons for trying to teach the ladies a lesson…but it was complicated and she wasn't certain even she could pull it off. She needed to believe in what she was going to do if she was going to be able to pull if off.

“I do believe,” she said aloud.

She was no math whiz, but she could add—unlike the matchmakers. If the Lord had intended for everyone to get married, then the ratio of men to women would be equal. Right?

Right. It might sound silly, but after watching her parents marry—and divorce—as many people as they could, it fit. It was disgusting.

Sheri recognized the truth. Fear of following in her parents' footsteps factored heavily in her reasons for not wanting to fall in love. And with good reason, she rationalized. She grew bored too easily. No matter how wonderful the guy was, her restlessness always ruined it. Clearly a genetic trait, with her parents' history and all.

It didn't take an Einstein to figure out some people just weren't marriage material. She'd recognized the truth about herself long ago and made peace with it. She simply wanted to go back to the way it had been. She'd always had fun dating the guys she wanted to date then moving on when the time came. Her surprise almost-commitment to J.P. had been a huge step for her. Now she recognized that it had been brought on by the
happily-ever-after atmosphere of Mule Hollow. It had invaded the water system, and it was in the air, too. Love. That had to be it. The love bug was floating around, and she'd caught it for a moment. That was the only excuse she could think of that would explain why she'd stepped over the line and found herself at the
almost
-commitment stage.

These feelings she was experiencing were a good lesson in why she'd been so cautious. Heartache. Not heartbreak, exactly, thank goodness. Still, she shouldn't have let her guard down. Really, from now on the joy she got from dating might be diminished for fear that she might be tempted to cross that line again.
Arrgggh!
It was frustrating. She was content with her life the way it was. She was.

And she would be again. There was life after J.P. She had her head on straight again, and she would choose not to ever live the way her parents had lived. She'd never bring a kid into a potential time bomb. That was her motivation, the fear that she had her parents' genes of discontent. Her mother's words rang through her head once more….
Some people just aren't good at being tied down.
That might be true, but knowledge was power, and Sheri would use that power to control her life.

This sudden fascination with Pace so closely after thinking she might have been in love with J.P. was a sure sign of things to come. There was only one way for someone like herself to avoid a string of divorces: avoid marriage like the plague.

That was the reason she was going through with this plan.

The posse needed someone to show them that they should respect people's choices. It hurt too badly as a kid to be yanked from Mom's to Dad's and back again, and it hurt too much almost letting her heart think it could have the fairy-tale happy ending.

She was going to make the ladies realize that pushing a person into something that wasn't right for them could get a person hurt. Moody Pace Gentry was just the guy to help her.

That's right. Whirling around, she jogged after him. He was perfect for this, and she was going to convince him to help her. No more misgivings about it. This was the right thing to do.

Plan halfway in place, Sheri jogged up Pace's driveway and went in search of him. She found him behind the house inside a round pen that sat off by itself. It was lined with thin, split tree trunks.

Hearing the sound of Pace talking, she moved toward the structure, found a crack to peek through and made like a statue. Pace stood about thirty feet from her. He was standing in front of a chestnut-colored horse.

She hadn't meant to spy on the guy, but couldn't very well interrupt him now that she could see he was working. She also couldn't stop her curiosity from getting the better of her. She was interested in how he worked. He was, after all, supposed to be the best.

So there she stood, rooted to the crack in the fence, watching and listening as he talked softly to the wary animal. Despite his surly manners, she got a kick and a half out of looking at him, probably because he re
minded her of the heroes from the movies she enjoyed watching. She was nuts about movies. Westerns in particular. Not that he looked like Gary Cooper or John Wayne, but somehow he possessed their essence….

Okay, her brain was gone. She was losing it, but she couldn't help herself. She remained quietly hidden, steadily watching.

In Pace's hand he held a coiled rope which he was rubbing down the torso of the horse as he spoke to it in a silky voice. She remembered this horse. It had raced off the truck first and stayed as far away from people as it could get. That Pace was able to get within ten feet of it surprised her. What a difference a few days could make. Or was it the difference Pace could make? He was so calm standing there letting the horse get used to him. The way she would treat a scared puppy.

Pace held the coil of rope up and let the horse see it. Then he touched the rope to the horse's neck, then its shoulder. She noticed that he used the coiled rope to push on the horse, too. She knew there was a reason behind every touch he administered.

His smooth as silk voice was so contrary to the gruffness he'd shown her that it startled her. Watching him in action, Sheri could totally believe he was the best. There was a gentleness she'd certainly never seen. Sheri watched for at least an hour. She couldn't help it. Time flew by. It was the most remarkable thing she had ever witnessed.

After a while, sanity returned, and she realized there wouldn't be an opportunity to talk without inter
rupting him. She finally backed away and walked down the driveway unnoticed. As she jogged her way around the bend toward home, she was filled with a quiet sense of awe.

It was a nice reprieve after all the turmoil she'd been experiencing.

Pace Gentry. What a contradiction. For as long as she lived, she didn't think she'd ever see anything more extraordinary than the look on his face as he worked with that horse.

It wasn't the tight scowl he wore outside the round pen. It was an expression of total contentment. He was at home within the boundaries of that circle. He was relaxed and in control. It was clear as day that Pace had been born a bronc buster.

She paused in her driveway and walked beside the sweet-scented honeysuckle vine that wound around her mailbox and ran down the length of the fence among her brightly colored birdhouses, her own mini Mule Hollow. She smiled, listening to her wind chimes singing softly in the breeze and studied her flowers as she passed.

What Pace did was lead the horses to an understanding. Exactly! His gift was that he worked with the animals until they chose to wear a saddle. He mesmerized them until they said, “Throw that saddle on up there and hop on, cowboy.”

It seemed almost laughable, yet that was exactly what it looked like.

Now she knew his secret.

Pace Gentry was like a Dr. Dolittle when it came to
horses. He could practically talk to the animals. He just couldn't talk to people!

Or, he chose not to talk to people. Or maybe just not to her.

Hmm, the man was more perplexing and interesting than any man Sheri had ever encountered.

She kind of liked that.

 

The salon was busy the next day. Sheri had arrived at work distracted. She hadn't slept well the night before, and it was her neighbor's fault. Instead of sleeping she found herself thinking about what would make a man like him leave behind a life he loved. As she worked on Edith Musgroves's toes, she forced herself to focus on her reasons for wanting to acquire his help in executing her plan. They weren't personal, she reminded herself, this was business. She needed to keep that in mind. At any other time dating him for real would have been a done deal. She'd have been all about seeing what he was about.

But for the purpose of achieving her goal all these thoughts about Pace Gentry's personal life really needed to stay out of the mix. They could only complicate things. She'd chosen him because he fit the profile. He was a man who, like her, appreciated his freedom. It was obvious. Though she didn't have this on authority, from what she'd observed and what she'd heard of the man her assumptions made sense. Now all she had to do was convince him to help her.

As the day ended Lacy finished her haircuts first and headed home, leaving Sheri to close up shop. Intent on
approaching her neighbor again, Sheri had just locked up and was climbing into her Jeep when an overall-clad Norma Sue came barreling across Main Street from Pete's Feed and Seed, holding on to her straw hat as she ran.

“Sheri, hold up there a minute,” she called.

Sheri went ahead and climbed into her open-topped vehicle, noticing some jokester had used his finger to write the words
Wash me
in the dust-covered red paint.

“Cute,” she muttered, wondering which cowboy had left his mark as he'd passed by.

Dust in August was a way of life out here, especially when one lived on a dirt road as she did. Even so, she loved Texas in August. Sheri had always been infatuated with the outback of Australia, but she was afraid of heights and hated flying. Flying that far was out of the question, so the dry heat of western Texas in August was as close as she'd get to the real outback.

Enjoying the heat, she breathed in the dry air and watched Norma Sue hustle toward her, sweating as she came. Sheri got a picture in her head of the posse hog tying her and tossing her on the first plane to Australia in an attempt to fix another aspect of her life if they knew she had a fear of flying.

“Whew-ee! This heat is about to fry me whole,” Norma Sue said, fanning herself with her hat as she slid to a halt beside Sheri. “I just wanted to invite you to church tomorrow. We've been missing you something fierce lately.”

There you go, Sheri thought grudgingly. This was one more thing they were set on fixing about her.

“Norma Sue,” she sighed, “we've been through this.”

“Sheri, you haven't come to church since you and J.P. broke up. You can't take what happened out on the Lord.”

Sheri was not taking it out on the Lord…well maybe a little. But that was between her and Him. It wasn't Norma Sue's concern that she'd had about all the secondhand blessings she could take. Still, she wasn't about to tell Norma Sue that she was feeling forgotten by God. It was childish but true, and Sheri honestly couldn't explain her feelings. She just knew that lately when Sunday morning rolled around she didn't have the desire to get up and go to church. After all, what had the Lord done for her lately?

It had become a subtle issue between her and Lacy, too, but Lacy had backed off, and Norma Sue and the posse were going to have to do the same. After having lived in Dallas for so long, Sheri was having trouble with the fact that in a small town like Mule Hollow everyone knew her business. If she missed church everyone knew it and thought their input was welcomed.

It wasn't that she didn't love the people of Mule Hollow. She did, but there were boundaries that needed to be established.

“I'll come when I'm ready, Norma Sue,” she said firmly. “Right now, I'm not.” Her conscience pricked her a bit as she heard her biting tone, but she was tired of this.

“Then how about coming to my house on Monday night for a little Bible study we're starting up?”

“I don't think so.” Frustrated, Sheri turned the ignition and listened as the engine coughed then started up.

Norma Sue smacked her hat back onto her wiry, gray hair and placed both hands on her robust hips. “Then promise me you'll at least think about it.”

Sheri slumped slightly, her hand tightening on the gearshift. “
Okay.
I'll promise you that, but I'm not promising you anything else.”

Norma Sue smiled. “Fair enough.”

Sheri backed the Jeep onto Main Street.

“I know your heart is broken, Sheri,” Norma Sue called, “but God is on your side and so are we. You just give it some time and everything is going to work out fine.”

Sheri refused to let her mouth drop open! Instead she rammed the gear into Drive and pressed the gas too hard. The Jeep shot down the street as though it were a race car doing zero to sixty in four seconds flat—all right, ten seconds….

Though four wouldn't have been fast enough to suit Sheri.

Knuckles white, hot wind in her hair, Sheri glanced at herself in the mirror. “Pace better get on board pretty quick—that's all I've got to say.”