Three sisters face their biggest challenge yet in this heartwarming story of family and forgiveness by the New York Times bestselling author of Daisies in the Canyon.
Bonnie Malloy never really knew the meaning of home. She and her mom moved around so much when she was young that she was never able put down roots, and she got to the point where she never wanted to. But now she has a chance to run her very own Texas ranch, and she just discovered two half-sisters she never knew about. The three women couldn't be more different, but Abby Joy and Shiloh have shown Bonnie how it feels to truly be part of a family. The only catch is that to inherit the ranch, Bonnie must stay there for a whole year. Worse yet, she has to live with cowboy Rusty Dawson-and he thinks the property is rightfully his. Each becomes determined to drive the other out . . . until they realize just how much they enjoy being together. But is the woman known for going wherever the wind takes her really ready to settle down once and for all?
Release date:
July 7, 2020
Publisher:
Forever Yours
Print pages:
87
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The song echoed through Bonnie’s head, but it brought about a good memory. Her mother had read that book about the little monkeys to her so many times that Bonnie had memorized it before she was three years old and knew when Vivien left out a single word. Maybe the memory was so strong because her mama soon left off reading to her, and there weren’t many other books in their trailer house.
Bonnie smiled as she picked up her bottle of beer and took a long drink from it. “Three sassy sisters livin’ on a ranch,” she singsonged. “One got married and went away. Two sassy sisters livin’ on a ranch, one got married and went away. One sassy sister livin’ on a ranch”—she paused—“it’s mine now. All I have to do is sit still for another six months and it’s mine, and then I can sell it and go wherever I want. Whatever I decide I’ll never have to get up at five o’clock in the morning to feed cows in the cold or heat again. Do I go east or west? Both have a beach. All I need is a sign to point me in the right direction.”
The sun dipped below the crest of the Palo Duro Canyon, leaving streaks of purple, red, pink, and orange in its wake. Black Angus cattle grazed in the pasture between the Malloy ranch house and the horizon. A gentle breeze wafted the scent of red roses and honeysuckle across the porch.
The sun set every evening. Cattle roamed around the pastures in search of green grass every day. Flowers bloomed in June in the panhandle of Texas. Not a single sign in any of that.
“Hey, we’re here,” Abby Joy and Shiloh yelled at the same time as they came around the end of the house.
Bonnie looked up toward the fluffy white clouds moving slowly as the breeze shifted them across the sky. “Is this my sign?”
Six months before, the three half-sisters had showed up at the Malloy Ranch to attend Ezra Malloy’s funeral. He was the father they’d never met, the one who’d sent each of their mothers away when she’d given birth to a daughter instead of a son. Then he’d left a will saying that all three daughters had to come back to the Palo Duro Canyon and live together on his ranch for a year if they wanted a share of the Malloy Ranch. If one of them moved away for any reason—love, misery, contention with the other two sisters—then she got a small lump sum of money, but not a share of his prized two thousand acres of land at the bottom of the Palo Duro Canyon.
With both sisters now married and moved away in the last six months, Bonnie was the last one standing. All she had to do was live on the ranch until the end of the year, and every bit of the red dirt, cactus, wildflowers, and scrub oak trees belonged to her. If she moved away from the ranch early, for any reason, then the whole shebang went to Rusty Dawson, the ranch foreman and evidently the closest thing to a son that Ezra ever had. Unless that cowboy had enough money in his pocket or credit at the bank, he could forget owning the ranch, because Bonnie had full intentions of selling it to the highest bidder.
She’d liked Rusty from the first time she laid eyes on him. He’d taught her and her sisters how to run a ranch—at least what he could in six months. At first, he’d seemed resigned to the fact that one or all of Ezra’s daughters would own the place and had voiced his wishes to stay on as foreman at the end of a year. That had been the fun Rusty. After Abby Joy had married and left the ranch, Bonnie had seen a slight change in him—nothing so visible or even verbal, except for a hungry look in his eyes. Now that Shiloh had married Waylon and moved across the road to his ranch, he had changed even more.
Tall and just a little on the lanky side, he had dark hair, mossy green eyes that seemed even bigger behind his black-framed glasses, and a real nice smile. It didn’t matter how handsome he was, he was out of luck if he thought he could get rid of Bonnie and inherit the ranch. No, sir! She’d already given up six months of her life and was willing to give up six more to have the money to reclaim her wings. She’d never planned to stay in this god-forsaken place to begin with, and now that her sisters were gone, she and Rusty were about to lock horns when it came to the ranch.
Abby Joy sank down into a chair and tucked a strand of blond hair back up into her ponytail. Even pregnant, she still had that military posture—back straight as a board, shoulders squared off.
Shiloh, the only dark-haired sister in the trio, headed off to the kitchen. “Got lemonade made?”
“There’s a pitcher in the refrigerator. There’s also cold beers and a bottle of wine. Take your choice,” Bonnie answered.
“Lemonade for me please,” Abby Joy yelled.
Shiloh brought out two tall glasses filled with ice and lemonade. She handed one to Abby Joy and then sat down in a lawn chair on the other side of Bonnie. “Everything sure looks different now than it did last winter when we got here, doesn’t it?”
“Are we talkin’ about Abby Joy’s big old pregnant belly?” Shiloh teased.
“I think she meant the ranch,” Abby Joy shot back. “I thought I’d dropped off the face of the earth into hell when I drove past Silverton that day. This was the most desolate place I’d ever seen, and I’d done tours in Afghanistan. If I hadn’t been so damned hungry, I wouldn’t have even come up here to the house after the funeral, but I heard someone mention food.”
Bonnie laughed out loud. “I was starving too, but I sure didn’t want y’all to know that.”
“Why not?” Shiloh asked.
“I thought you’d look down on me even worse if you thought I was so poor I couldn’t even buy food,” she answered, “but I was.”
Abby Joy took a sip of her drink and nodded. “I looked down the row at y’all at Ezra’s funeral and figured I’d outlast both of you, but I got to admit that I was just a little scared of you, Bonnie. You looked like you could kill us all with that stone-cold stare of yours.”
“I felt the same about y’all, and now you’ve both moved away.” Bonnie drank down part of her beer.
“Yep.” Abby Joy smiled. “I was the smart one. I left when I figured out right quick that love meant more than any money I would get from staying on the ranch.”
“That old bastard Ezra treated all of our mothers like breeding heifers, not wives,” Shiloh chimed in. “I’ve come a long way toward forgiving him, but he’ll never be a father to me.”
Abby Joy shook her head. “He’s more like a sperm donor, isn’t he?”
“That’s kind of the way I feel, so why would I want this ranch?” Bonnie asked. “If he’d done right by us, or any one of us, then the ranch would mean something, but he didn’t, so why shouldn’t I just sell the damned place and get on with my life. I’m not like you two. I didn’t get to settle down and grow up in one place. Mama moved whenever the mood struck her, so I’m used to traveling.”
“You’ve got six months to decide what you want,” Abby Joy said. “Give it some time. Don’t rush into anything, but if you ever do decide you don’t want your name attached to anything that Ezra had, you can come live with me.”
“Are either of you sorry that you left?” Bonnie asked.
“Not me!” Shiloh turned up her glass of lemonade and took . . .
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