Her Faithful Cowboy Read online

  Her Faithful Cowboy

  A Buttars Brothers Novel, Steeple Ridge Romance Book 3

  Liz Isaacson

  Contents

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  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

  One Month Later

  Sneak Peek! Her Mistletoe Cowboy - Chapter One

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  “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

  Isaiah 53:5

  Chapter One

  With only a few days until Christmas, Bonnie Sherman picked her way among the snow in the cemetery to her son’s grave. It had snowed a couple of days ago, and the weak December sunlight hadn’t made much of a dent in the precipitation. More fog and snow was predicted this holiday season, much to the delight of all who wanted a white Christmas.

  Bonnie arrived at the headstone bearing her son’s name. Only four when he passed, Jeff would’ve been rooting for the magic of snow on Christmas Eve. The thought brought a haunted smile to Bonnie’s face. She ran her fingers across the top of the stone, the chill of it radiating deep inside her soul.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she felt warm. Probably that summer day she’d taken Jeff to the sports complex to fly the kite her mother had given him for his birthday.

  Two minutes.

  She’d lost sight of him for two minutes.

  The next time she saw him, he was dead.

  She inhaled, the emotion she usually kept tucked away roaring to the surface. She had good days, and she had bad. Sometimes she’d be going along, busying herself in the third grade classroom where she worked as a teacher’s aide, and something would hit her that would release the floodgate on her feelings.

  A smell. A random thought. A smile of a student passing by with reddish blonde hair like her son.

  She tucked her own strawberry blonde hair behind her ear, wishing she’d worn a hat. Jeff’s grave sat in the far south corner of the cemetery, and she laid the denim blanket she’d brought on the ground so she could sit awhile.

  She didn’t cry, a feat Bonnie had been working on for seemingly ever. It had been five years since Jeff’s death, and she thought time should’ve done a little more healing by now. She started reciting the things she could be grateful for in her life, a strategy her mother had suggested when Bonnie’s husband had filed for divorce and left for Maine.

  “I have a good job,” she said to the silence in the cemetery. Maybe to Jeff. She wasn’t sure. She normally didn’t talk to him specifically when she came here. She didn’t believe he was there, listening.

  “I like my job,” she continued. “I know some people have good jobs they don’t like. But I like working with the kids at the elementary school. They’re good kids.”

  The wind tried to steal her scarf and get its icy tendrils down the collar of her coat, but she pulled the fabric against her skin.

  “I have friends. In fact, they’re expecting me tonight for dinner and a gift exchange.” Her lips curved the slightest bit as she thought about her forthcoming evening of fun, and food, and Christmas spirit.

  “My parents have a Christmas Eve dinner planned too.” Bonnie didn’t hate her life. A life that had been reduced to a few evenings out each month with her friends and remaining family. Most days, Bonnie didn’t mind. Some days, she did.

  She honestly didn’t know how she felt that day.

  Sometimes Bonnie simply felt nothing at all, and as the wind whipped up the top layer of dusty snow and attempted to throw it in her face, she couldn’t work out how she felt. So it was one of those days.

  “Well, my boyfriend is waiting.” She smiled at Jeff’s name on the headstone and hesitated before standing.

  A terrible crash sounded behind her and she turned to see what had caused it. A horse the color of midnight thundered toward her, his head down, his eyes clearly unfocused. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, the blanket tangling around her legs.

  Snow pushed up her pant leg and all she could see was white—with a huge horse barreling down on her.

  “Ho!”

  She heard a deep voice echoing in the sky, almost splitting it.

  “Over here!” someone else called.

  Someone whistled, and Bonnie blinked, trying to get herself to ignore the wild look in the horse’s eyes.

  “Come on, Bonnie,” a man said, latching onto her arms and pulling her out of the way. Pain shot through her body; her heart crashed against her ribs; Fingers and hands like iron kept her moving though her legs acted as dead weight.

  She landed in the snow on her back a few gravesites away just as the black horse trampled the blanket beneath his hooves.

  She breathed. Her lungs worked.

  The whistling started again. Men continued to yell to each other and at the horse.

  Bonnie looked up into the most handsome face she’d ever seen. It almost hurt to look at, and she recognized the man immediately.

  “Sam.” She tried to sit up, but he helped her anyway, the pressure of his hand on her back practically burning through the layers of her coat and clothes.

  Sam Buttars. Of course it had to be Sam Buttars with the beautiful face, the strong hands, who’d rescued her. The one man who had caught Bonnie’s interest. They’d gone out a few times last summer and into the fall, and then he’d just…disappeared.

  He stood and brushed slushy snow from his jeans and offered her his hand. She took it, trying to coach her body to contain the tremor threatening to explode across her shoulders. It didn’t work, and her skin tingled where it touched his.

  “Hullo, Bonnie.” He didn’t release her hand but squeezed it. His intoxicating brown eyes captured hers and she couldn’t look away. “Sorry about Thunder Mountain. He’s a real pain.”

  Bonnie couldn’t make her voice work, which was absolutely ridiculous. She was thirty-four-years-old, had been married before, had a child, had endured a funeral and a divorce. And yet the simple sight and touch of Sam Buttars stole her breath and rendered her mute.

  “Hey, you okay?” His cowboy boots shuffled him a little closer to her and he leaned down to peer at her.

  She wished he wouldn’t. Because now she could smell him, and though he’d clearly been working all day, the delicious scent of birch trees, leather, and horses accelerated her pulse.

  “I’m fine,” she managed to say though her legs trembled. “I’m—I just haven’t eaten in a while.”

  Sam finally dropped her hand and fell back a couple of steps. He ducked his head so the brim of his cowboy hat hid his expression. She hated that about him. He’d done it whenever they were talking about something he didn’t want to discuss any longer—like why he thought they couldn’t have a relationship.

  He’d tried to explain, got frustrated, and that was that. Cowboy hat down. Conversation over.

  “I need to go help my brothers get that horse,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, of course.” Bonnie moved to retrieve her blanket and brushed the snow and frozen dirt from it. She let her gaze linger on her son’s name for a couple of extra seconds before turning to go.

  Sam still stood there, and she paused.

  “Bonnie,” he said, and she wanted to hear him say her name every day. Soft and full of emotion, like the way he just had. In a normal tone, as he called up the stairs so he could ask her a question. In a panic, when he needed her help because the dog was muddy or the kitchen pipes had burst.

  “Better go get your horse,” she said. “It was good to see you, Sam.” She forced her feet to move her further from him.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he called after her.

  She froze and turned around. “What?”

  “Maybe we could go to dinner or something.”

  Chapter Two

  Sam Buttars couldn’t believe he’d just asked Bonnie Sherman to go to dinner with him.

  Or something.

  The way she blinked at him like he’d spoken Japanese showed that she couldn’t believe it either. Her fingers flitted around her throat, and Sam fantasized about kissing her against the pulse in her neck.

  Stop it, he told himself. Stop it now. And apologize. Walk away.

  His brain sent so many short commands, he couldn’t sort them all. Couldn’t do anything. The four dates he’d gone on with Bonnie a few months ago had been the best ones he’d been on in years. She was definitely the most interesting, prettiest woman he’d had the pleasure of meeting in Island Park.

  Island Pa
rk. That was the whole problem. He wasn’t going to be in town for very much longer, the reason he’d ended things with her in the first place. Ended wasn’t really the right word. Ignored worked better.

  So what was with Maybe we could go to dinner?

  He cleared his throat, the yells of his brothers in the distance urging him to hurry up and join them. It would take all of them to get Thunder Mountain contained again, the brute.

  “I can’t go to dinner tonight,” Bonnie finally said.

  “Oh, of course.” He stepped backward, his exit absolutely necessary now. “Merry Christmas.”

  “But I can tomorrow night.”

  A smile sprang to his face before he could figure out what the heck was going on. It wasn’t like his situation had changed. “I just want to explain some things,” he said. “I feel bad I never did.”

  As Sam spoke, he realized he needed closure. If he had to share a meal with beautiful Bonnie Sherman to make sure everything between them was okay, he’d do it.

  “I don’t have to work for a couple of weeks,” she said. “Would lunch work better for you?”

  “Whatever works for you.”

  She tilted her head slightly, swallowed, and said, “Dinner works best for me.”

  “Dinner then,” he said. “I’ll come get you around six?”

  “Six then.” Bonnie gave him one of her shy smiles, the kind she allowed to slip across her face as a mask. It concealed a whole range of emotions he knew teemed just below the surface. Though he’d only been out with her a few times, he’d catalogued her types of smiles, and this one meant she was glad she wouldn’t have to spend tomorrow night alone.

  She walked away and left Sam standing next to her son’s grave. He’d never come with her to visit the site, but she’d told him about it. He looked at it now, with the snow and dirt around it in complete disarray from Thunder Mountain’s hooves.

  Sam bent and brushed the debris from the headstone, cleared the mulch from the surrounding cement. Jeffrey Jones Sherman. He’d died when he was only four, and Bonnie had told Sam the whole horrific story on their third date.

  He’d hated the haunted look in her eyes and the ghostly sound of her voice. But afterward, she’d come alive again, and Sam adored the soft light in her eyes when she spoke of happier things. He’d caught her drifting between her normal self and the shell of herself several times since then, seemingly at random times.

  He walked away from the grave and right out of the cemetery, his cowboy boots slipping in the snow. He understood better than most what it was like to be going along, right as rain, doing work he loved, and then running full-speed into a brick wall of sadness. He thought of his parents—his sweet mom who’d taught piano and his hardworking and faithful father who’d worked the Wyoming land—and the less-alive version of himself crept forward.

  He caught up to Logan, Ben, and Darren, who had Thunder Mountain tethered to a tree with a single rope. Ben’s it looked like.

  “He’s chewin’ right through that,” Sam said.

  “I lost my rope somewhere.” Darren turned in a circle like he’d simply dropped the rope nearby.

  “I’m afraid I’ll miss,” Logan said.

  “Give your rope to Ben,” Sam said, as the youngest of them all could hit any target, moving or still. Sam released his own rope from his waist and started swinging it above his head. He went round once, twice, three times, and launched the rope toward the giant black head.

  He hit his mark and pulled the rope tight, taking his end quickly around another tree trunk. Ben used Logan’s rope to add another line to Thunder Mountain, and Darren approached the horse with slow, measured steps.

  “You got ‘im,” Sam said in whispered encouragement. He’d given this challenging horse to Darren to see if his brother could handle it. He’d been doing all right, actually. Thunder Mountain just liked to run free, and he wasn’t shy about making sure everyone knew it. Darren would break him soon enough, and then Sam could stop carrying a rope with him everywhere he went.

  Ben positioned himself next to Sam for the walk back to Steeple Ridge. “You talk to Bonnie Sherman?”

  Sam gave his brother a glare, but he didn’t put much malice behind it. Out of the four brothers, only Ben had managed to maintain a relationship of any kind. That had to mean he knew a little bit of how to date and keep a woman happy, right?

  A sigh escaped Sam’s mouth. “Yeah, I talked to her.” He slowed his steps so Darren and Logan, both of whom kept a tight grip on their lines, could get farther ahead. “I’m bein’ kind of stupid with her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I asked her to go to dinner with me.” Sam hated the darkness in his voice. Hated the embarrassment clawing its way through his stomach. “Why did I do that?”

  “You like her,” Ben said.

  Sam had never denied liking Bonnie. Everyone in Island Park knew that. “I’m moving to Wyoming in five months.”

  “Yeah, that was the reason you used for breaking up with her last fall too.”

  “It’s a good reason,” Sam said, glad Ben had stopped calling it an excuse. “Bonnie’s never gonna leave Island Park.” An image of her son’s grave blipped through his mind.

  Ben didn’t say anything, which only made Sam’s skin scratchier. “What should I do?” he asked his younger brother.

  His voice must have carried enough desperation, because Ben paused and looked Sam right in the eyes. “A lot can happen in five months. Look at me and Rae. Met, dated, fell in love, all in under five months.”

  A pinch started in Sam’s chest. The thought of falling in love that fast made him want to head for the hills. Right now. Not in May. He swallowed, thinking he should call Bonnie, apologize for asking her out, and then cancel.

  Ben started walking again, so Sam went with him. “We set a date, by the way. Rae and I. She just booked the church for September fifth.”

  “September fifth,” Sam repeated, but his mind lingered far from Ben and Rae’s forthcoming nuptials.

  Chapter Three

  By ten o’clock the following morning, Bonnie had cleaned her house from top to bottom and left to right. Since she lived alone, and only had herself to clean up after, it certainly didn’t take long to make sure her house smelled like bleach and lemons.

  By noon, she’d gone to the gym and showered. She took extra time curling her hair, as Sam had said on their final date that he really liked it curled. She’d thought things between them had indicated there would be a fifth date. And a sixth. And so many that she’d lose count until he finally asked her to marry him.

  Looking back, she realized how foolish she’d been. She hadn’t said anything to him, but men had a way of sensing a serious woman.

  She wrapped another piece of hair around the curling iron, her thoughts drifting to and fro. For the past few months, they always landed on Sam eventually, and they did this time too. They’d never kissed—at least outside of Bonnie’s mind. Could she kiss him tonight? What would he do if she did?

  He’d said he just wanted to explain some things. For a few weeks after he’d gone silent on her, she’d craved his explanations. Now, though, she wasn’t sure she wanted them. She didn’t want to hear why he didn’t like her, or why he thought they couldn’t be together.

  She already knew the man was moving to Wyoming. He hadn’t kept it a secret, and nothing stayed unknown in Island Park for long anyway. Especially not in a building with ninety-nine percent female teachers.

  By one, Bonnie had forced herself to eat an apple and was pacing from the front door to the back. Boyfriend, her, black, gray, and white mastiff watched her from his kingly position on the couch. She ruffled his head on every pass until he finally laid down and looked up at her with a doleful expression.