“It’s totally fine,” Evelyn Foster said to the woman on the other end of the line. “Not every first date goes well.” She often had to counsel her clients through a few dates before they could see what she saw.
Being a small-town matchmaker, where ninety percent of the men were cowboys, wasn’t an easy job. But Evelyn loved it, as she could make everything line up on paper like a dream. The women knew what she was doing, but the men…well, sometimes men just needed to get out of their own way.
And Evelyn provided a way for them to do that—and conveniently run into the woman of their dreams. They just didn’t know it yet.
And obviously, Tina didn’t know it yet either. “He’s perfect for you,” Evelyn assured her. “What happened that rubbed you the wrong way?”
“For starters, he wanted to take me to the big box store for a date.”
Evelyn could hear the eyeroll in Tina’s voice.
“But you persuaded him to do something else, right?” Evelyn asked, shuffling a couple of pages on the desk in front of her. The wind shook the windows of her office, and she glanced outside to see a dust storm had kicked up on the farm where she lived with her sisters.
Granted, they didn’t really use the two hundred acres they had, as that was a lot for three women to manage by themselves. Their father had retired a few years ago, and they mostly planted as much as they could and sold the hay to other farms and ranches surrounding Three Rivers.
“I did, yes,” Tina said. “But is that going to be my whole life moving forward? Me trying to persuade this guy to do what I want?”
“Let me look through a few more candidates,” Evelyn said, focusing on her papers again. May was an exceptionally busy time for her services, as well as around the Shining Star Ranch. While her oldest sister, Callie, ran most of what happened on the ranch, Evelyn had plenty of chores to do too. “And I’ll get back to you in a couple of days, okay?”
“Okay,” Tina said. “What should I do if Gideon calls?”
“You get to decide that,” Evelyn said, looking at Gideon’s one-sheet. “He really does seem perfect for you. Maybe he just didn’t want to commit to something as long as dinner.”
“I don’t know how that’s a plus,” Tina said dryly.
“Well, he’s met you once, for what? Five minutes at the dry cleaner? Somewhere I only knew he’d be because we got a last-minute phone call.” Evelyn never revealed her sources, but she had spies all over the town of Three Rivers.
With a population of almost seventeen thousand now, she certainly couldn’t be everywhere at once, or know where every eligible bachelor would be at any given time.
“And that was the first time he’d been there,” Evelyn reminded her. “So maybe give him a little slack?” She spoke as kindly as she could. After all, Tina was paying her, and she didn’t need to lose a client because the cowboy Tina had her eye on was out of his element.
“Okay.” Tina sighed. “But still look at a couple of other guys for me.”
“Anyone in mind?” Evelyn asked, because no one else on her list stood out for someone like Tina. She liked a through-and-through Texas cowboy, with a big hat, and the biggest belt buckle possible. Rodeo experience a plus.
While there were plenty of cowboys in Three Rivers, Tina wanted Cowboy Extreme.
“I’ve seen a man at church the last few weeks,” Tina said. “He looks new in town.”
Evelyn repressed a sigh and looked out the window again. She couldn’t see the trees she knew were only ten feet away. Alarms started sounding in her mind, and surprise darted through her that she hadn’t lost cell phone reception yet.
“I don’t know his name or where he lives,” Tina said.
“All right,” Evelyn said. “I’ll put out some feelers to find out who this guy is.” With that, the line crackled, and Tina’s words broke up. In the next moment, the service cut out, and Evelyn looked at her phone to see the call had indeed been severed.
“Great,” she muttered. Now she had to hunt down a mystery cowboy who was new to town. Maybe Patrick would know. Her boyfriend worked the meat counter at the grocery store, and he saw a lot of people—especially single cowboys coming to buy their steak dinners.
Of course, a lot of the cowboys around Three Rivers worked on farms and ranches, and they often got plenty of beef for free from their employers. So maybe Patrick wouldn’t know. But it couldn’t hurt to ask him.
He knew what Evelyn did for a living, and he often sent her texts with information on men she needed to know about. She couldn’t send him a text right then, as it seemed her provider had gone down with the crazy windstorm.
She left her office at the same time a horrible, glass-shattering sound filled the whole farmhouse. She screamed, hers matching her younger sister’s in the living room.
Callie burst in the back door with the words, “There’s a tornado headed this way. Come help me with the animals.” She spun away before either Evelyn or Simone could answer.
Thankfully, Evelyn already had shoes on, and she hurried after her oldest sister, saying, “The sirens haven’t even gone off. Maybe it’s just a windstorm.”
The moment she finished speaking, the chilling, distinct wail of the tornado siren filled the air.
She ran after Callie, who handed her a grease pen and a handful of fly masks. “Put our phone number on their sides. Put on the fly mask, and we’ll set them in the pasture.”
They didn’t have the hurricane clips or reinforced beams needed to tether the horses securely in the barn, and their horses were used to roaming in pastures.
“Maybe it’ll go north,” Callie said, her voice panicked. “Like that last one.”
The last tornado had been over two years ago, and it had indeed turned north before inflicting too much damage on Three Rivers. She handed Simone the same items she had Evelyn, and the sisters got to work.
“We have to go next door, too,” Callie said. “We’ll put our number on the animals at Fox Hill for the new owner.”
“Who is it?” Evelyn asked, glancing east though she couldn’t see more than five feet in either direction. Even Callie’s voice coming through the swirling dirt and dust felt eerie and otherworldly.
“Some guy,” Callie said vaguely, which meant she didn’t know either. “Last name’s Walker, I think. Mason texted a couple of days ago and said he’d be here this week, and that we could turn the keys over to him then.”
Mason Martin had lived and cultivated Fox Hill Ranch next door for years and years before deciding to up and move to Hawaii, of all places. He’d put the ranch up for sale, and contracted with the sisters to take care of the few animals he’d left behind. He had a staff of four still on the premises too, and Evelyn wondered why they couldn’t take care of their own horses.
“What about Orion?” she asked. “Can’t he turn the horses out to pasture over there?” It was at least a half-mile to Fox Hill, though their properties touched one another along a fence line on the east side of the ranch. Evelyn did not want to get caught out in the storm.
“They went into town this morning,” Callie said, finishing with her last horse, smacking it on the flank and saying, “Go on. Stay safe.”
With their own livestock numbered and protected as much as possible, the three sisters piled into Callie’s pickup truck and rumbled down the road. If anything, the wind blew stronger at Fox Hill, but Evelyn kept her head down and her fingers moving as she marked the eight horses Mason had left behind.
He also had two pigs, six goats, and a whole herd of chickens. The tornado would likely pick them up and carry them off, and she certainly didn’t know how to hold one long enough to write a phone number on feathers.
With all the animals marked that could be, Callie shouted, “We have to go inside!”
Exactly what Evelyn didn’t want to do, at least not here. But one look at the sky, and she knew she didn’t have a choice. Panic filled her, though she’d lived through tornadoes before. They weren’t super common in this area of Texas, but she’d had enough experience with them to know what to do in case of an emergency.
“Where’s Daddy?” Simone asked.
“He’s with Granny,” Callie yelled, holding her hat on her head as she ran for the back door of Mason’s homestead.
It felt strangely quiet inside, with the three of them panting as they sucked at air that finally wasn’t filled with debris.
“Come on,” Callie said. “He’ll have a tornado shelter.”
Evelyn had been to Mason’s house several times, and she knew right where it was. As Callie turned to go down a hallway, she said, “It’s over here, guys. He showed it to me once.” She hated that she wasn’t in her own home, protecting it and herself.
But just inside the living room off the front door, she swept aside the rug and pointed to the hatch door there. “Goes down into a cement foundation.”
“Get in,” Callie said as glass broke somewhere in the house. The tornado might not strike Three Rivers directly, but this wind was definitely wicked and causing some real damage.
Evelyn went first and turned on her phone’s flashlight. Callie followed and did the same, with Simone bringing up the rear. No sooner had Simone closed the door above them and come down the steps did it open again.
Callie shone her flashlight on the man sliding down the steps, pure fear in every line on his face. “Who are you?” she asked as Evelyn swung her light onto him too.
He bore a strong jaw and dark eyes—exactly the kind of man Evelyn would be interested in. You know, if she wasn’t already dating someone.
The stranger drew in a deep breath and spoke in an even deeper voice. “I’m Rhett Walker. This is my ranch.” He dusted himself off with a pair of big hands and added, “You must be the Foster sisters from next door.”
“Guilty,” Callie said, lowering her light so it wasn’t shining right in Rhett’s face. But Evelyn couldn’t do the same. His good looks and bass voice seemed to have frozen her to the spot, and all she could do was stare while her heart pounded wildly in her chest.
“Can you stop shining that in my face?” he asked, his voice a touch colder than before, and Callie put her hand on Evelyn’s arm to make her put the phone down.
“So,” he said with only the soft glow on his features now. He was somehow sexier and more beautiful than in the harsh light, and Evelyn wondered where in the world all these thoughts and feelings were coming from. “I guess the tornado is welcoming me to the Texas Panhandle.” He laughed, and Simone and Callie joined him.
Evelyn simply reveled in the sound of his laughter, thinking that if she weren’t with Patrick, she’d definitely be setting herself up with one cowboy Rhett Walker.
Callie started to detail what they’d done for his animals and why they’d come in his house instead of theirs, and Evelyn shied behind her sister so she could continue to simply stare at her new next-door neighbor.
