The Cowboy's Baby Blessing. Deb Kastner

her friend.

      The guy was good-looking. If he was hoping to get a date out of this, he deserved to have that chance—but not with her. She would not embarrass Seth by being the high bidder when clearly there were any number of pretty young ladies spread out over the green seeking his undivided attention in far more interesting ways than anything she could offer.

      She was confident he wouldn’t want to be stuck with a woman who had long since exited the dating scene and who had nothing more on her mind than getting her play equipment recertification-ready.

      The bidding war on Seth, who had passed the hammer back to Jo and was currently amusing the crowd by walking on his hands, was inching up in twenty-five-dollar increments. Her daughter had, thankfully, stopped participating in the back-and-forth volley, letting the younger women who really wanted social time with Seth fight it out between them. Rachel had brought her hard-earned cash with the intent to bid on one of Serendipity’s best handymen or weekend do-it-yourselfers, most of whom were old or married or both, and she was fine with that. Better than fine—even if none of them had been the one who’d built the playground in the park. She definitely didn’t care that none of them could hold a candle to Seth’s youthful good looks, even an upside-down Seth whose blood was rushing to his face.

      When the bidding finally passed the $300 mark, the knots in Rachel’s shoulders relaxed. He was officially out of her budget now, so there’d be no more nonsense about Seth Howell. She would wait and bid on another man who would be willing and able help her spiff up her day care without putting crazy romantic ideas into her daughter’s and best friend’s heads.

      Now that she was legitimately out of the running for Seth, she was beginning to enjoy watching the excitement the young, eager women were currently bringing to the auction. It was kind of cute, actually, seeing the hope and excitement in their expressions as they bid.

      Eventually, the bidding stalled at $375. A happy seventy-five dollars more than Rachel could afford, thankfully.

      “Going once,” Jo announced. She bobbed her head so her red curls bounced and hovered her gavel over the makeshift podium. “Going twice.”

      Jo paused, her gaze spanning the green. She had just raised her gavel for the crack of a sale when Zooey spoke up.

      “Four hundred,” she announced brightly.

      “Wait, what?” Rachel said aloud.

      Zooey knew perfectly well how hard Rachel had had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for the $300 she’d collected to bid, and even then only because the need for a senior center was so great and because she could justify the remodeling work as a business expense.

      And now she was going to be out another hundred? She didn’t want to be stingy when the money was going to such a good cause, but she was on a tight budget.

      Her home day care kept a roof over her and Zooey’s heads and food on the table, but there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room for extras—like bidding on a goofy young man doing flips and handstands just because he was cute.

      “Sold, to—” Jo paused as Zooey pointed both hands toward Rachel “—Rachel Perez.”

      Even with everyone’s eyes on her, Rachel balked for a moment and then caught her daughter’s elbow. “That hundred dollars is going to come out of your allowance.”

      Thankfully, Rachel had enough spare cash in her wallet to cover the difference, but that wasn’t the point. Her daughter had taken her decision right out of her hands.

      “I know it will,” Zooey agreed cheerfully. She reached into the pocket of her blue jeans and withdrew a wad of five crumpled twenty-dollar bills. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered. I’ve been saving up. You don’t even need to worry about paying me back. Now take the money and go up there and rope yourself a Cowboy Charming.”

      Rachel momentarily considered withdrawing the bid, but she didn’t want to humiliate herself—or Seth—in a public venue.

      How would it look if she backed out now? Would everyone think she was too flighty to know her own mind? Or that she didn’t think Seth was good enough?

      At least he had the skillzzz, as Jo had phrased it, to repair the playground equipment for the day care, which, at the end of the day, was all that really mattered.

      She could deal. She would deal.

      She huffed and snatched the money from her daughter’s grasp, then threaded her way through the crowd to the staging area. She was well aware of what she would be required to do as the winning bidder and her face flushed with heat as she handed off the cash in exchange for a lariat.

      Lovely. Now all she had to do to get this over and done with was make a public spectacle of herself, thanks to her incorrigible daughter and her best friend. She supposed she would have ended up on the platform being required to throw a lasso to “rope” the man she’d won either way, but she doubted that with all the silly antics Seth had demonstrated, he would make this easy for her.

      Not to mention the fact that she’d never thrown a rope before. Despite that she lived square in the middle of the country, she’d never even visited a ranch or ridden a horse, much less roped a cow.

      How was she supposed to lasso a guy who couldn’t stand still for more than one second at a time?

      Yeah, that was so not going to happen.

      Seth’s bright blue eyes met hers, full of impetuousness and humor. It took her aback for a moment. She’d forgotten what it felt like to be that lighthearted and carefree.

      Maybe she’d never been.

      “You’ve got this,” Seth assured her, gesturing for her to throw the rope. Despite his grandstanding before, he was ignoring the audience now to smile supportively at her—a purely kind gesture that left her feeling a bit flustered.

      “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

      Seth’s smile turned into a toothy grin. “Why don’t you toss that thing and we’ll see?”

      Good grief. It was probably better for her to throw the rope and be done with it. She had no idea what she was supposed to do when she missed, because up until this point in the auction, all the men had been successfully roped, one way or another. Sometimes the cowboys had to be artful in getting that rope around them, but so far every single one of them had managed.

      Rachel was bound to disappoint everyone with her pathetic attempt at lassoing Seth. Hopefully, the crowd would just let her retreat gracefully off the stage with her “prize” when she failed.

      Releasing her breath on a sigh, she aimed the loop like a Frisbee and threw her lariat in Seth’s general direction.

      As she knew it would, it didn’t even come close to flying over his head.

      More like waist high.

      How humiliating.

      But before she could so much as blink, Seth dived forward, over and into the lariat, rather than under it. She gasped in surprise as he tucked his body and somersaulted to his feet, the lariat successfully tightened around his waist.

      He offered his hand and gestured toward the platform stairs with another cheeky grin.

      “Ready for lunch?”

      Rachel couldn’t find her voice, so she merely nodded as the crowd applauded them both.

      Great. Her first thought of Seth being half man, half monkey was apparently not that far off the mark.

      He might be well able to come to her rescue where repairing the playhouse was concerned, but she had major doubts about how easy he would be to work with. He seemed like a nice enough man, but he didn’t appear to take anything too seriously.

      Would he go off swinging through the trees when he was supposed to be building playground equipment?

      She glanced over to Zooey and Lizzie, expecting to see smug looks on their faces, but they’d