It Takes a Cowboy

EPILOGUE

BLAIR WATCHED with a wince as her nephew and her husband scrambled over rocks and limbs, skidding perilously on slick spots, stumbling in occasional holes, shouting challenges at each other. It was an all-out race to the vacation cabin, similar to the one they’d engaged in a year earlier and to many races since. She followed more sedately, picking her way carefully over the familiar path, slowed somewhat by the awkwardness of early pregnancy.

Scott had given her everything he had promised, she thought with a happy smile, resting a hand on her stomach.

Jeffrey won the race. He did so by slipping through a narrow crevice much too small for Scott to get through. By the time Scott went around the massive rocks Jeffrey had scrambled over, the boy was almost to the porch. He got there a full two seconds before Scott.

“I win!” he shouted, planting his boots and pumping the air with his fist. “I finally figured out how to win—even though your legs are still longer than mine.”

Scott grinned, looped an arm around the boy’s neck and gave him an affectionately rough hug. “Yeah, kid, you won.”

“I used my natural advantage. Just like you taught me,” Jeffrey said, grinning impudently at him. “But I will congratulate you on running a good race.”

Scott laughed and rubbed his knuckles against the boy’s head, initiating a giggling wrestling match.

Finally reaching the porch, Blair leaned against a post and sighed, shaking her head.

Scott looked at her, flashing his wicked, dimpled grin. “What are you looking at?”

“A couple of crazy cowboys.”

Her guys stood side by side, hands on their hips, smiling at her, and her breath lodged in her throat.

“Any complaints?” Scott asked, his voice a warm drawl.

“Not a one,” she answered with all her heart.

She’d come to realize that this cowboy had been just what she had needed all along.

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