Rich Rancher's Redemption. Maureen Child

and plenty of noise to be found when you didn’t. People were friendlier, less cynical. Jillian already knew more people in Royal after two weeks than she had known in Vegas after five years of living there. It was a different sort of feeling in small-town Texas and it was just what she wanted for her daughter. Mac would grow up in a place where people would know her, look out for her. She’d have friends and a home and a mother who would always be there for her.

      It had been a big day so far. A new apartment—that would be fine once she fixed it up—and a job interview that she really hoped would work out. And now, she was back on a ranch staring at a cowboy who turned her insides to mush. Jillian’s thoughts dissolved when a delighted squeal pierced the air. She fixed her gaze on the big man walking beside her baby and that horse. Jesse had one strong hand on her little girl’s back, steadying her, while he held the horse’s reins in the other hand, keeping the animal just as steady, Jillian hoped.

      “Don’t be worried. My kids are all great with horses.”

      Jillian turned to watch Cora Lee Sanders walk up to join her at the fence. In her sixties, Cora Lee was about five feet three inches tall, had thick, wavy, shoulder-length gray hair and sharp, grayish green eyes. Today she wore dark blue jeans, a yellow shirt beneath a black jacket and black flats. She also boasted a silver belt buckle at her waist that glinted in the afternoon sun. Cora Lee was every inch a matriarch. There were lines in her face, of course, but they were etched there by laughter, tears and years of living that had made her the woman she was today.

      “It just makes me nervous,” Jillian admitted. “That horse is so big compared to Mac.”

      Cora Lee smiled, laid her forearms on the top rail of the fence and watched her son walk slowly around the corral. “I can understand that. As mothers, we all will do whatever it is we have to to watch out for our children.”

      “True.” She looked at Cora Lee and saw a woman who’d been through her own trials and had triumphed. Just as Jillian planned to.

      “But in this case,” the older woman said, “worry is unnecessary. That horse? That’s Ivy. Sweet mare. She was one of Lucy’s first rescues. Would you believe when the vet first brought her here, you could count her rib bones, poor thing. Someone tied her up in a barn and then moved, never telling anyone Ivy was there.” Cora Lee’s mouth turned into a tight frown. “If it hadn’t been for one of the Stillwell boys cutting across the property taking a shortcut home from school and hearing her, she’d have died there, too.”

      “That’s terrible.”

      “It really was. Nothing on this earth should be treated with such vicious neglect. But with a lot of love and good food and time, she’s healthy now and even pregnant for the first time.”

      Jillian smiled, looking at the horse with new admiration. Ivy hadn’t let her past get in the way, either.

      “She’s the most gentle animal on the face of the planet. And lazy with it, if truth be told. Likes nothing better than standing still under a shade tree and avoids running as if it would kill her.”

      Jillian’s lips twitched. “Well, that’s good then.”

      Cora gave her a quick look. “And not only that, but Jesse’s a good hand with children. Patience. He got that from his father, not me.”

      Glancing at the woman beside her, Jillian waited, sure there was more. She wasn’t disappointed.

      “His biological father, I mean. That was the most patient man on the face of the planet.” She chuckled, then added, “Now, Roy Sanders, the man who raised Jesse and Lucy and was their father in every possible way, was as impatient as I am.” She laughed a little harder, gave a sigh and shook her head. “It’s a wonder the two of us got along at all. But my, we had some good times. Some wonderful fights, too.”

      “Wonderful fights?” Even Jillian could hear the doubt in her voice. But she had too many memories of her own parents before they’d abandoned her, indulging in shouting matches that had terrified her.

      “If you’re arguing with the right man, yes.” Resting her chin on her hands, Cora Lee said, “My own mother used to say, don’t fight in front of your children. But Roy and I figured that wasn’t healthy, either. Children grow up expecting everything to be sunshine and roses all the time and then they’re never happy. But your kids see you arguing, then see you hugging and making up, they know you can disagree without the world crashing.”

      Jillian smiled. “I never thought of it like that, but I think you have a point.”

      Nodding, the older woman said, “You kids today don’t know how much good a clearing-the-air fight can do for a marriage. Keeps things hopping, that’s for sure.”

      The only fights Jillian had experienced were blurry memories of raised voices, tears and drama, with one or the other of her parents vowing to leave and never come back. There’d never been any hugging and making up. Maybe if there had been her parents wouldn’t have left.

      “There you are, Mom,” Lucy called as she and Brody walked up to the fence to join the party. “We went to your cottage because Brody said you’d have cookies.”

      “You bet I do,” Cora Lee said, scooping her grandson up onto her hip. “Who’s my favorite four-year-old in the whole world?”

      “I am!” Brody shouted and threw his arms around his grandmother’s neck.

      “Displaced by Grandma and her cookies,” Lucy mused.

      “Must be nice,” Jillian said without really thinking about it, “to have your whole family right here on the ranch.”

      “Oh, it is,” Lucy agreed. “But thank God we don’t all live in the same house.”

      “Thank God,” Brody parroted.

      “That’s enough of that, little man,” Cora warned and shot her daughter a hard look.

      Lucy just grinned. She pointed to where a small, English-style cottage sat amid a stand of oak trees. It had dormer windows, a stone chimney and a bright red door behind the snowy white porch railings. Roses, dormant now, climbed a trellised arch just in front of the porch.

      “That’s Mom’s place. She moved in there once we were grown, said the big house should belong to Will.”

      “It was only right,” Cora Lee said. “Time for my kids to build their own lives and they didn’t need their mama watching their every move.”

      “There wasn’t any point trying to talk her out of it, either.” Lucy nodded and swung around to point toward another house not far away. “That’s Jesse’s place.”

      Jillian turned her head to study it for a long moment and decided it suited the man to a T. The building was low and long, with a stone front porch that seemed to run around the perimeter of the place. There were two stone chimneys jutting into the sky from a slate gray metal roof and a wide set of double front doors in the center. The house itself was wood and glass and managed to look masculine and cozy all at the same time. There were chairs, rockers and swings dotting that porch and she could imagine sitting there in the evening, watching a sunset. With that image came another of her and Jesse sitting on one of those swings together, and the instant she realized what her brain was up to, Jillian shut it down fast. Thankfully, no one else seemed to notice that her imagination was working against her.

      “There are three guest cottages along the back of the big house,” Lucy was saying, “so whoever’s staying there has easy access to the pool and—”

      “What’s that house there?” Jillian pointed to what looked like an oversized bungalow with chimneys on each end of the house. Again, a wide front porch graced the building, but here, there was a balcony on the second floor, too.

      “That was my house,” Lucy admitted. “Mine and my husband’s.” Her voice dropped and a small sigh escaped her. “We were in the process of building it when Dane’s accident happened. When he died, I just stayed at the main house. I didn’t want