Her Texas Rodeo Cowboy

He got the impression she wasn’t as okay with not being able to do more as she claimed.

Part of him didn’t want to know, but a stronger part made him ask, “Phoebe and Brent, what are their stories?”

Next to him, Sloane sighed. “Both in foster care. Phoebe’s parents died in a car crash when she was two, and there weren’t any members of her family willing to take her. Brent...” Sloane paused, and Jason would swear he could hear the lump in her throat. “His mother was a drug addict. She overdosed and died in their house when he was four. By the time the police found him, he’d been in the house with his mom for three days.”

Jason cursed. The boy’s words about never seeing Jason again took on a new, horrible significance. No wonder the kid was quiet and withdrawn. How much did he remember about what he’d gone through? Did it haunt him?

“How do you do this, sending them back?”

“No choice. All I can do is give them a break from their lives.”

He shifted his gaze from the van to Sloane. “You do more than that. You show them that a different life is possible.”

Sloane looked shocked at his words. He was equally surprised she hadn’t come to that conclusion herself.

“You’re pretty damn amazing, Sloane Hartley.”

* * *

JASON’S COMPLIMENT STUNNED Sloane so much that she found herself at a loss for how to respond. “Um...nothing really amazing about trying to help out where I can.”

“I disagree. The world is full of people who don’t care enough to do something like this.”

Part of her knew he was right, but she’d also crossed paths with plenty of people who were giving, too. She didn’t have to look any further than her adoptive parents.

Thankfully, the van making its departure drew Jason’s attention away. The combination of his words of praise and the way he’d been looking at her, as if she was some sort of saint, made her uncomfortable.

The kids had their faces pressed up against the windows, waving at them. Sloane made herself smile and wave back, maintaining the positivity for them right up to the last moment they could see her. Jason was right about one thing. It was damned hard to send the kids back after getting to know them, especially if she thought about what many of them would face when they returned home.

Best not to dwell on it, however. It wouldn’t make any difference in their lives and only serve to invite depression into her own. She’d been down that road and she never wanted to travel it again.

“Well, where you headed next?” she asked.

“According to your mom, dinner with your family.”

Of course her mom had invited him to dinner. That didn’t mean he had to accept.

“Don’t feel obligated. She’s always inviting people to dinner. She has this compulsive need to feed people.”

“I thought about leaving, but I was informed by your dad and brothers that if I bailed they would never hear the end of it.”

Inside her head, she growled. If everyone in her family was joining forces to set her up, she was going to have a sudden need to be elsewhere. She glanced toward the house and took a calming breath. The best way to handle the situation was probably to act as if she didn’t care. Maybe she could even convince herself of that.

“Well, you’re in for a treat. My mom is the best cook in Texas.”

“Lucky me.”

She didn’t look at Jason as she turned to go inside, unwilling to seek out the answer to whether his response was about more than his taste buds’ good fortune. As he followed her across the threshold of the front door, she headed for the kitchen, leaving Jason to navigate his own way through the sea of Hartleys.

Her mom looked up at her entry. “Where’s Jason?”

Sloane pretended she didn’t notice the unspoken question about whether Jason had already left. Instead, she made a vague gesture over her shoulder. “In the living room.”

Normally, she’d have some faith in the male members of her family to run off any potential suitors. But from what Jason had said, it sounded as if they were on board with her mom’s matchmaking efforts. And there was no mistaking that her inviting Jason to dinner was exactly that.

“Oh, good. He’s such a nice guy, so good with the kids.”

Play it cool. “Yeah, this was a good group. Easy to interact with them.” All of which was true, but she hoped it also made the point that Jason wasn’t anything special.

Except what if he was? She’d been envious of how easily he’d fit in with the kids, how quickly they’d come to adore him. She told herself that was a good thing, that the point was for the kids to have a good time. So what if she was the one who’d started the camps? The person who did most of the legwork? That she’d dreamed of making the camps a reality for years before she’d been able to launch them and still had hopes of expanding and helping even more kids?

She roped her runaway thoughts, remembering that she needed to be realistic. Someday she’d reach her lofty goals, but it was necessarily going to be a slow build because of the time, manpower and, most of all, money available. She wasn’t the most patient of people, so it was hard to think about how long it was going to take her to reach her goals. But she had to be thankful she was able to do anything at this point, especially with the financial hits the ranch had taken in the past year. She already struggled with the guilt of being a drain on the collective resources when her siblings were working on ways to bring in more streams of revenue.

“You okay?” her mom asked, making Sloane realize she’d gotten lost in her tangle of thoughts.

“Yeah, just thinking about ways to improve the camps.”

“Maybe convince Jason to help out with each of them. The kids seemed to love him.”

Sloane engaged her best pivot by saying, “I saw an article about an elephant sanctuary that sells paintings done by the elephants. It’s not so much that it’s good art but rather a way people can connect and get something unique while supporting a good cause. Maybe we could sell hoof paintings by the cows and horses, have them step in paint and then walk over the paper.”

“That might work.”

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