The Rancher's Homecoming. Arlene James
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Winning the Widow’s Love
Rex Billings hires young widow Callie Deviner as a housekeeper to help care for his ailing father and rambling home. He only intends to run Straight Arrow Ranch temporarily—soon enough he’ll head back to the city he loves. But there’s something about Callie—and it’s not just her delicious cooking and adorable baby daughter. Callie is drawn to her good-looking and protective boss, too, but her overbearing dad already has a new husband picked out for her. Can she stand up to her father, and make Rex see that her future lies within his arms?
“Bodie can sleep on the ride back.”
“Let me take her,” Rex offered. “The brim of my hat will give her some shade.”
Callie looked down at her sleepy baby. “All right.”
He tightened the cinches on the saddles again while Callie fashioned a sling for her daughter. Bodie whimpered a mild protest as they slung her sideways against Rex’s chest, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, but then she reached up a little hand and laid it against his throat, as if feeling the beat of his pulse was all she needed to lull her to sleep.
Callie heard herself whisper, “She loves you.”
“I love her, too,” Rex said softly. He looked up then, his blue eyes as pale and warm as the summer sky. “I’ll miss the two of you if you leave the ranch.”
If, not when. Confused, Callie dared not reply to that. Anything she said would lay bare her heart, and that simply was not wise.
ARLENE JAMES has been publishing steadily for nearly four decades and is a charter member of RWA. She is married to an acclaimed artist, and together they have traveled extensively. After growing up in Oklahoma, Arlene lived thirty-four years in Texas and now abides in beautiful northwest Arkansas, near two of the world’s three loveliest, smartest, most talented granddaughters. She is heavily involved in her family, church and community.
The Rancher’s
Homecoming
Arlene James
But when you do a charitable deed,
do not let your left hand know what your
right hand is doing, that your charitable deed
may be in secret; and your Father who sees
in secret will Himself reward you openly.
—Matthew 6:3–4
In memory of my dad, William Fred “Bill” Roper, who taught me that country men are strong, resilient, capable, patient, accepting, funny, interesting, knowledgeable, talented, intelligent, clever, kind, neighborly and loving. I miss you.
Contents
Never let it be said that God did not answer prayers. Callie Deviner’s answer walked into the War Bonnet Café on the morning of the last Thursday in May, ordered breakfast, which he wolfed down with three cups of black coffee, then calmly announced to all within hearing distance that he was looking for a live-in cook and housekeeper.
Callie set aside the heavy metal spatula she was holding and pushed a wisp of fine blond hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist before speaking to the freckle-faced teenager at the grill beside her.
“Fill this next order. I have to go out front.”
The teen boy gaped at her. Johnny had been working at the café for more than six months and knew his way around a grill, but the regular cook, Chet, who was out with a toothache and as set in his ways as her father, still hadn’t trusted the kid to do more than dish up fries and make toast. Callie ignored the youngster’s sputtered assurances and moved toward the swinging metal door that separated the kitchen from the dining room, sweeping the hated net from her short hair as she did so.
Tucking the hairnet into the pocket of her apron with one hand and fluffing her bangs with