The Cowboy's Faith

Instead of Leah’s words being encouraging to Nicole, they only seemed to make Nicole’s face scrunch up, like she was trying not to tell Leah exactly what she thought of her sisterly advice. But then, just as quickly as the anger filled her face, the fake smile returned.

“I’m letting him train my horse, aren’t I? As for why, I don’t care. I just want to get my horse trained, and then both Fernando and I can move on with our lives. Separately.”

Fine by him. It wasn’t like he and Nicole had a future together. And the more she reminded him of it, the less tempted he was to wish his life were different.

“Whatever you want,” Fernando said. “I’m only trying to help. I’d leave now, except that I want to work with Snookie. Can we call a temporary truce for her sake?”

Crazy to think that a horse would be the thing they could find common ground on.

“Fine.” Nicole turned and glared at Leah. “But don’t think this means anything.”

Leah was obviously happy with Shane, and from what he knew of Leah losing her first husband, Fernando was glad to see her get a second chance at love. Hopefully, Leah’s example would show Nicole that not all men were like Brandon, and that she, too, could find happiness.

Except, instead of that thought making Fernando feel good for Nicole, it made his heart hurt a little bit at the thought of her with anyone else. Crazy, since he couldn’t have her for himself. He wanted her to be happy. And he prayed for the man who could do it.

Shane cleared his throat. “There’s also the small item of payment. While you said you were happy to do it for free, it wouldn’t be right for us to not pay you.”

Not this again. They’d already argued about it in the kitchen, and Fernando thought it was the end of things. But obviously, Shane had another plan. Which, by the expression on Nicole’s and her sisters’ faces, was exactly where this conversation was going.

“I agree,” Erin said. “We’ve budgeted for horse training.”

Then Erin sighed. “Probably not what you’re used to getting, but...”

“I’m not used to being paid for working with horses,” Fernando said. “I do construction for a living.”

Nicole gave him a funny look. “That’s right, you do. Why are you going to Salida? Isn’t that where your creepy uncle lives? Adriana once told me that you wouldn’t work for him for a million dollars.”

That was when he had a good job and he thought they valued him, despite his record.

“I got laid off,” he said quietly, grateful they’d at least done that for him. The uncomfortable silence made him wish he hadn’t said anything, but he didn’t want to lie, either.

Finally, Shane said, “Training Snookie isn’t going to be a full-time job for you. Since you’re in construction, maybe you could help with some of the things around here. I’ve been doing what I can, but with my own ranch, I can’t do as much as I’d like.”

“Yes,” Leah added. “We also have money in the budget to pay for some of the repairs, but getting anyone to come out here is really tough.”

He studied Nicole’s face, trying to gauge her reaction. She already didn’t want him here.

“It would keep him out of my hair,” she said.

There were worse answers, he supposed.

“And we still haven’t gotten that chicken coop fixed,” Erin added. “It’s too smelly to breathe in there.”

Nicole giggled. “So basically, give him all the stuff we don’t want to do?”

If she thought cleaning up a bunch of chicken manure was going to scare him away, she obviously hadn’t heard enough stories about his uncle from Adriana. The only stories Adriana probably hadn’t told Nicole were the ones about him. His entire family was ashamed of his time in prison, and all they ever told anyone about his seven-year absence was that he was off finding himself.

He had found himself. In a lot of unexpected ways. It just hadn’t been the youthful lark everyone made it sound like. He might have been young and stupid, but at eighteen, he’d been legally an adult and paid adult consequences.

“I’d be happy to,” Fernando said. “I can tell this place needs some improvements, and I’m familiar with the work. It won’t be a problem. Just give me a list, and I’ll take care of it.”

They discussed his wage, and while it was more than reasonable, Fernando couldn’t help wishing they’d found a way to disagree. But he couldn’t, in all fairness, ask for more, which would have been the only way they wouldn’t have come to an agreement.

Shane looked over at Fernando. “Why don’t you come with me? Leah and I were talking about the apartment over the barn. I stayed there when I first came to Columbine Springs years ago, and it hasn’t been used since. We were going to fix it up as guest quarters.”

He looked apologetic, but then shrugged. “It needs some work, but it’s habitable.”

Fernando nodded at the man’s thoughtfulness, but he looked over at Nicole to see how she felt about the idea. Her face was expressionless, which was a good sign, considering the hostility she’d once had toward him.

“Thanks. I was going to go look for a hotel or something. But if it’s not too much of an imposition, that would be great.”

Shane chuckled. “There isn’t much in Columbine Springs. We had some city folks try to establish a B&B, but they didn’t last long. There was an old hotel, but it’s been closed now for at least ten years.”

He liked Shane. He hoped they could be friends, but just as he had the idea, he dismissed it as being stupid. He didn’t want to establish ties here if it would cause Nicole more pain. Yes, she had to deal with her grief. But he knew he was walking a fine line, and he wasn’t going to insert himself into her life any further than was healthy for her.

Or for him.

It wasn’t just Adriana’s actions he didn’t understand but Brandon’s. Despite her obvious faults, his sister had been a great person, but in a way, Nicole was even better. She represented everything he wanted in a woman. She was smart, funny, kind to children and animals, and she had a zest for living that had always inspired him. How could Brandon have treated her so badly?

Maybe that’s why he’d been trying so hard to help Nicole. He’d always admired her, and seeing how bitter she’d become bothered him.

No, he didn’t think he stood a chance at her heart. No woman should be stuck with a guy like him. As an ex-con, he couldn’t give any woman the kind of life she deserved. Especially someone as wonderful as Nicole.

Or at least as Nicole had been.

Was that woman still inside?

As Shane led him out to the barn, Snookie neighed, reminding him of the other reason he was here.

Snookie was where he had to stay focused. He could help the horse. Nicole—that was something he had to leave alone.

Chapter Three

Nicole went into the small apartment above the barn, carrying some linens Leah had asked her to bring over for Fernando. After everything that had been said earlier, she didn’t really want to talk to him, but her sisters had made it clear she had to stop running from the pain. She still wasn’t sure what to say to him.

The apartment wasn’t what you would call luxury lodgings, but Fernando had said he didn’t mind and had even promised to help fix it up. Which made Nicole feel like even more of a jerk for not welcoming him with open arms. He’d done everything he could to be nice, and she kept shoving him away.

But how did one welcome the reminder of your biggest mistakes with joy? He didn’t answer her knock on the door, and she remembered hearing that he’d wanted to take a walk later. When she let herself in, she saw him sound asleep, sprawled out on the bare mattress. She looked down at the bundle of sheets and blankets she’d brought. Moving as quietly as possible, she carried them to the dresser. But as she set them on top, Fernando yelled, “I didn’t do it! Leave me be.”

She turned, but Fernando was still fast asleep, tossing and turning on the bed.

“I didn’t tell. It wasn’t me! I promise, I didn’t help.”

He was having a bad dream. And from the way he thrashed about, it was a terrible one.

“Please. I beg you. Don’t do this. It wasn’t me.”

Should she wake him? She took a step toward him, and the board creaked.

Fernando sat bolt upright. “What?”

He seemed wide awake now.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just brought you some linens.”

He nodded slowly as he looked around the room.

“It’s all right,” she told him, wanting to comfort him like she did her nephews when they had nightmares, but not feeling so generous as to want to give him a cuddle the way she did with the boys.

Then he looked at her more closely. “You look like you just saw something terrifying. Was I talking in my sleep again?”

Nicole nodded slowly. “I wasn’t afraid of you, though. I was afraid for you. It seemed like you were having the most awful dream.”

He ran his fingers through his hair as he nodded. “Sí. I mean, yes. What did I say?”

He looked so out of sorts, it seemed almost impossible to withhold compassion.

She walked over and sat on the edge of the bad, near him, but not next to him. “You can use Spanish around me if you want. Adriana did sometimes, and she was trying to teach me a few words.”

Then she shook her head. “I don’t know why I just said that. That was dumb of me.”

Especially the part about Adriana. She’d done her best to forget about her former best friend, and it was weird the way the memory came back up so quickly. Part of why she hadn’t wanted Fernando around in the first place. She didn’t need the reminders. But he was here now, and she had to deal with it.

He shook his head slowly. “Thanks. I don’t...”

Fernando seemed unsure of himself, hesitant. And she didn’t blame him. After all, she’d done everything she could to make him feel unwelcome, and now that he was clearly in the middle of something disturbing, he wouldn’t find her very comforting. And honestly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be that person for him.

“I’m sorry.” She stood, then gestured at the blankets. “I was going to try to soothe you or something, but I can’t imagine that you would feel comforted by me. I haven’t been very nice to you, and I don’t exactly have warm feelings toward you.”

Even as the admission came out, she knew there was one more thing she had to do. Not that she liked it much.

“My sisters say I owe you an apology,” she said.

“But you disagree.” There was no judgment in his voice, no anger. Just acceptance.

She shrugged. “Obviously.”

He nodded slowly as he yawned, then ran his hands over his face.

“Sorry. I guess I was more tired than I thought.” He stood, then came next to her. “Listen. You don’t owe me anything. But we do have to get to a place where we can stop rehashing the fact that you’re angry with me for not telling you about Adriana and Brandon and move forward to a place of understanding. I know forgiveness is hard, and I’m not asking you to do it right away. But it has to happen at some point, even if only for your own peace of mind. You know the quote about unforgiveness being like drinking poison while waiting for the other person to die?”

Factually, she knew all of this to be true. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that she was only hurting herself by not forgiving him. That God wanted her to forgive him. But there was so much injustice in the situation, and it didn’t seem right that no one had been held accountable to her for their actions.

“I get that. I do, I promise.” He’d been nothing but nice to her. Even Leah, who had always been angry on her behalf, was warming to him because of how nice he was.

“You just have to understand,” Nicole said. “I didn’t find out until I was on my way to the church to be married. The perfect man, the perfect friend, all at once, they were lost to me. And they died before I could even ask them why. Before I could confront them and tell them what a terrible thing it was that they did to me.”

“So you took it out on me instead.”

“It’s all I had.”

Her confession was more cathartic than she’d thought it would be. But she still needed answers.

“Even though we sort of agreed not to rehash this, in all the apologies you’ve given me, you’ve never told me why. Why didn’t you tell me about Adriana and Brandon?”

He looked down at the ground, then back up at her. “I didn’t think it was my place. I talked to Adriana, and I tried convincing her to do the right thing. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think she meant to hurt you. I think that’s why she wouldn’t tell you.”

He let out a long sigh, and for the first time, she recognized the torment on his face.

“Your niece had recently died, and so shortly after your brother-in-law’s death. Adriana told me that she didn’t think you would be able to handle it. She asked me to trust her. That she would take care of things, but I needed to be patient. I didn’t know what that meant. But where I come from, you stay out of other people’s business. Trust me when I say that butting in has cost me a lot in my life.”

She looked down at the ground, then back up at him.

Because she’d always refused to meet him, or even talk to him about this, she’d never seen this look of regret on his face. Never heard the pain in his voice.

All the times she’d hung up on him, refused to take his calls, raged against him, she’d missed seeing his level of brokenness. She’d never realized that as much as she had been hurting, he had been hurting, too.

Suddenly, Fernando’s decision to keep Adriana’s secret didn’t seem so awful. Just really unfair that she had to be the victim.

“I get it,” Nicole said. “You were caught in the middle. Between someone you loved and doing the right thing.”

He nodded slowly. “Keeping secrets is a terrible burden, but so is knowing who and what to tell. My only hope is that in time, you can forgive me, forgive them, and move on with your life.”

It should be easy for her to just say, “I forgive you,” but it wasn’t that simple. She could say the words, but she was a long way from feeling that peace in her heart.

“I’m not there yet,” she said, hoping that honesty was the best policy here. Of all the things she’d wished since she’d found out about Brandon and Adriana, her greatest desire had been for people to just be honest with her. It seemed like everyone danced around the truth, afraid of hurting people. And maybe the truth did hurt sometimes, but it always came out, and it seemed to hurt far more having it hidden so long.

“They make it sound easy in church, don’t they?” Fernando looked at her sympathetically, like it didn’t bother him to hear forgiveness wasn’t going to come easily. But considering she’d told him she’d hate him forever several times, he probably wasn’t expecting even this.

She nodded. “Yeah. And even though Jesus tells us that we should forgive seventy times seven, I’m really struggling with just once. But it makes me feel good to know that you’re willing to be patient with the process.”

Even that was a breakthrough for her, considering that until now, she hadn’t wanted to forgive him.

He walked over to the dresser and picked up the sheets. “Thank you for bringing these. And thank you for letting me stay. If there were any hotels in town, I’d have stayed there.”

“Nearest one is about thirty minutes down the road. But I wouldn’t let my worst enemy stay there.”

He gave her a smile that made her tingle down to the very bottom of her toes. “Well, at least I have that going for me. You don’t like me, but I’m not your worst enemy.”

The few times that she’d met Fernando when he was with his sister, she’d thought he had a nice sense of humor, a good smile, and was a lot of fun to be around. She’d liked him even then, and had, for a brief period, thought they were friends. But either she had been mistaken in her beliefs about him, or neither one of them understood what friendship really was.

Still, it was weird, feeling this warming toward him. It wasn’t just the sympathy she’d felt for him upon coming to see him in the room; it was almost like attraction. But that was crazy. She couldn’t be, wouldn’t be, attracted to someone who’d done so much damage in her life.

Fernando unfolded one of the sheets. “Can you take the other end and help me?”

When she reached to take the end of the sheet out of his hands, her fingers brushed his, and she felt that same weird jolt she had earlier with the horse. She jumped slightly, and Fernando looked at her.

“Static electricity,” she said. It had to be. There couldn’t be any other explanation.

She turned to Fernando and smiled as she smoothed the sheet over her side of the bed. “So that nightmare. It seemed pretty bad. Do you have it often?”

Fernando kept his attention on the bed. “Often enough. Nothing to worry about. Thank you for asking. Why don’t you tell me about the ranch, why you’re here, your plans for it?”

* * *

When Nicole launched into the story of inheriting a ranch from her former stepmother, Fernando breathed a sigh of relief. Though part of him appreciated Nicole’s compassion and the indication of her softening toward him, deep inside, he was shaking.

They’d just gotten to a place where she was beginning to warm to the idea of forgiving him. How would that change when she knew about his past, which was what he’d been dreaming about?

He was so tired of the inevitable rejection that came with his admission of having gone to prison. No one looked at him the same, and no matter what he said in his defense, people shut down at the word felon.

He took a deep breath and focused on Nicole as she spoke. The light in her that he remembered from before her failed wedding had returned, and he couldn’t help thinking about what a beautiful woman she was.

Even though the apartment above the barn had plenty of windows, suddenly the space felt too confining. It wasn’t good for him to sit here, thinking about all the things he liked about her.

“Why don’t you show me around,” he said, standing and holding his hand out to her.

Nicole stood but didn’t take his hand. He hadn’t expected her to, but it had seemed right to make the gesture. She led him outside.

It felt good to be out in the open air, where he could breathe. That was one of the things he’d loved about being in the horse training program in prison. The chance to be outside, in nature, with horses.

He followed Nicole to a run-down chicken coop.

“I really want chickens,” she said. “We got some when we first came, but the coop isn’t very secure, and a fox got in. Plus, Shane says that we should clean it out in case of disease.”

As he entered the coop, he pulled his shirt over his nose. Erin hadn’t been joking about the place being smelly. He could definitely see why Shane wanted it cleaned out before getting more chickens.

“It sounds like Shane has been really helpful,” he said.

“I know I sounded cranky about him earlier, so I should apologize. I have nothing against Shane. He’s wonderful, and he has been a big help. But more than that, he makes my sister happy, and the boys love him.”

Nicole kicked a rock. “I guess I’m just frustrated sometimes that this was supposed to be our adventure—mine and my sisters’—and then Leah had to go and fall in love. I’m happy for her, but I really was looking forward to the three of us rebuilding the ranch.”

After latching the coop back up to prevent anything else from getting in, Fernando turned to her. “But maybe that is the adventure. Bringing new people into your lives to share it with.”

He gestured around at the property in general. “This is so big, I can’t imagine anyone doing it alone. It’s good that you have help. Why are you fighting it?”

Nicole shrugged, then shook her head. “I don’t know. It was probably stupid of me to say anything. Let me show you where I want to put the goats.”

Once again, she was shutting down and shutting him out. Part of him regretted saying anything, except that it gave him another peek into her heart. It was like she was afraid of being vulnerable, and in some ways, he didn’t blame her.

As he followed her, he made note of the other things that were in need of repair. He’d put together his own list, then talk to the family about it. Based on what Nicole had said about being unprepared for chickens, and as well as her decision to buy a horse against Shane’s advice, he was fairly certain that they would need help prioritizing projects.

“It’s great that you have so many plans,” he said when they finally stopped at a large, ramshackle barn. “I remember you saying that you’ve always wanted animals, but I never saw you as the type to move to a ranch in the middle of nowhere.”

The smile she gave him was warm and genuine. “When I was a kid, I used to always play farm. But because we moved around so much for the Colonel’s job, it wasn’t practical to have pets. Then real life happened, and still, no animals. I managed to have a few in my preschool classroom—fish, hamsters, even a snake once. But I’ll admit that our field trips to the petting zoo were more fun for me than they were for the kids.”

“The Colonel? Who is that?” He thought he knew about Nicole’s family, but he hadn’t heard mention of the Colonel before.

“Our father.” Nicole let out a long sigh. “He was in the military and ran his household like it. We were his troops, not his children, and we took to referring to him as the Colonel when we got older. I know that sounds disrespectful, but he wasn’t much of a father.”

He reached out to touch her arm in comfort, but she jerked away.

“I don’t want your pity. It’s fine. My sisters and I accepted long ago that we were all each other had. I know you think you’re trying to be there for me, but I have them, and that’s all I need.”

And yet, she did need him. At least for her horse.

“I’m sure you can take care of yourself, but it doesn’t make you weak to let others in,” Fernando said.

“Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I spent most of my life knowing that the only people I could count on were my sisters. And the first time I took a risk in trusting someone new, I found myself burned beyond recognition.”

She reached forward and touched his arm gently. “I can tell you want to help, and I appreciate the gesture. I’m grateful that you’re willing to train my horse. I’m also grateful that you’re willing to help fix things around here. We tried hiring laborers, but it’s hard to compete with the larger ranches who can pay more.”

He knew the but was coming even before the expression hit her face and the words left her mouth.

“But that’s all I want from you. I got the answers I needed. You don’t owe me anything else. So please stop trying to be my friend and asking me questions beyond what you need to know to do your job.”

Nicole’s brow furrowed, like she realized that she’d been a little too harsh with him.

“It’s just too confusing for me right now to talk about personal things,” she finally said. “I don’t like this angry version of myself, but when I’m around you, I can’t help it. I let my guard down, and then I remember that I’m still mad at you, even though I’m trying to get past it. The emotions that take over are hard for me to handle. I’m sorry.”

Her admission made him realize that maybe he’d been pushing her too hard. All this time, his need for her to forgive him was all about him making things right. Even though he’d assumed that the right thing for Nicole was to let go of the past, he hadn’t taken the time to understand her actual needs. He’d assumed a lot on her behalf, starting with when he’d decided to keep Adriana’s secret from her, continuing to now.

“It’s okay,” Fernando said. “I know I’ve been pushing you hard. You’ve been asking me for space, and I haven’t given it to you. I’m sorry. I’ll do better in the future.”

She nodded slowly, and he could see her posture relax slightly.