Second Chance Ranch: a Hope Springs novel (Entangled Bliss) Read Online Free PDF Page B

like he went into town all the time. But if she were going to be here for more than a week or so, it’d be impossible to avoid her.
    It doesn’t matter , he told himself. I moved on from that girl years ago. Only his insides felt like they’d been tied in a knot, and little moments from their past were flashing through his mind again like a happy forgotten slide show.
    He focused on the end of their relationship, on the night she’d told him she couldn’t marry him. A week later she was gone, almost as if his question had caused her to flee as fast as possible. And now everyone in town was going to be buzzing about it, stopping him to ask what he thought of Sadie being back, watching every word and movement so they could add it to their theories, and he didn’t have time for that.
    He rubbed the back of his stiff neck. “Well, I’ve got to get to work.”
    Mom nodded, took a step toward the cabins, then abruptly stopped. “It was hard enough to find the time to drive Oscar into town, but since we’re shorthanded, and I still need to have individual meetings with each kid, I was hoping you could maybe pick him up?”
    He hadn’t even broken the news to her about how she was practically legally bound to stay on the land until he found help, and he didn’t want to unless he absolutely had to. “You just want him to scratch and bite me instead of you,” he teased. The cat was named Oscar after Oscar the Grouch, and he lived up to his name.
    Mom smiled. “Sometime before the clinic closes, which is five thirty.”
    “I’ll squeeze it in. I’ve been meaning to see if anyone from the office wants a side job anyway. Maybe that’d be enough help to get us by for now. In the meantime, we can make Mister Bad Attitude clean out the stalls. Maybe shit shoveling will teach him some manners.”
    Mom pointed a warning finger. “One, you owe a dollar to the swear jar, and two, you be nice and give the kid a chance.”
    Royce shook his head but couldn’t help cracking a smile. Mom and her swear jar. And her belief that there was a nice shiny person inside everyone, even if you had to dig to find it. Admittedly, he had seen a lot of pretty miraculous transformations, but there were a few now and then who left with the chips on their shoulders still fully intact, mostly because they absolutely refused to engage. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sure we’ll be great buds by the end of his stint.” Maybe if he ever got enough sleep that his patience wasn’t so stretched thin it was practically nonexistent, it’d help.
    Still, sometimes he thought he was the worst possible choice to be in charge of the camp.
    …
    “Sadie Hart, is that really you?”
    Sadie barely restrained herself from dropping the swear word on the tip of her tongue. You know the type of girls who make high school miserable? Who turn everything into a competition and manage to insult you but make it seem like they don’t realize it’s an insult? Well, the pretty brunette staring at her was one of those girls.
    “Gracie Walker. Hey.”
    “I heard you were back in town.” The twangy accent was thick with this one. “Whatever happened to Nashville? Last I heard, you were part of some cute girl band.”
    See? An insult wrapped in a package with a big ol’ bullshit bow. “I’m back home for a while.”
    “So you’ve given up on the singing thing? That’s a shame. I remember all those times you sang the national anthem. I bet they’ll let you perform again at the ball games and such. You better ask real quick about the Fourth of July rodeo, ’cause it’s comin’ up pretty soon, and they might’ve already booked someone else.”
    This was her ninth—or was it tenth?—stop. Most of them had gone about like this, with slightly less passive-aggressiveness. She’d filled out several applications and handed out résumés, even though everyone had claimed they weren’t hiring. When she’d stopped at the diner to eat lunch, she’d asked there, too, but they