Page 34 of The Cowboy and the Baby

I could almost remember the ingredients. The dry grit of flour, the sound of salt pouring into metallic spoons.

There.

Grandma’s rolls.

Not biscuits, nor sourdough. Her yummy dinner rolls, slightly underbaked, and bouncy with perfection. The right blend of firm and chewy with light and fluffy. She’d long perfected the art, the time, the recipe. I lifted the aged paper.

Of all her recipes, this had to be the most tattered, loved, wonderful. Memories of standing at her side, slinging food into her cracked porcelain bowl, gave me something to stand on that was entirely Noelle.

That Noelle.

“Grandma . . . please help. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know if I can raise a little girl and mourn my sister. I’m in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, with a man I don’t really know, raising Lily because Naomi is gone. Please. Please help me find solid ground.”

13

CADE

“Let it go, boys,” I commanded hours later, probably around midnight. “It’s good enough. We have the outer hole sealed; the rest will wait for tomorrow.”

Cody swiped his forearm across his forehead. Wyatt frowned at the wall. Bits of dust and cobwebs filled his hair. He shoved a hand through it, clearing the debris, and shook his head.

I shared his disbelief. The already exorbitant list of repairs had just tripled, but I could barely consider that. I shooed them out. They trudged into the kitchen, and conversation picked up. Noelle was still awake. I thought I had heard her puttering out there, but I’d been too absorbed in these strange revelations to focus on it. Now, I could hear the knuckleheads’ voices, but not her replies.

Outside, the storm whipped around. Wyatt and Cody would use shovels to clear a path to the barn as they returned to their rooms, which would help them have less to do in the morning, particularly if it iced over. The only sensible idea left was to get some sleep and figure the rest out later.

Then I smelled the food.

Yeast, butter, and a hint of magic crept into the hallway. I turned into the kitchen in time to see Wyatt shove an entire dinner roll in his mouth. Was that butter gleaming off the golden top and sides? My hungry stomach groaned. It smelled divine.

Noelle shot me a bright smile. Wyatt and Cody didn’t seem to have noticed the redness or swelling in her eyes, but I didn’t miss it. I wouldn’t bring it up around them, either. Not that it was my business.

Was it?

Wasn’t it?

The definition of my relationship to Noelle seemed to blur with each passing day. Acquaintance, but friend. Friend, but like family because I’d inherited her ancestral ranch. Not to mention landlord, because she lived on my property now, and friend again because . . . well . . . who wouldn’t want to be friends with a woman like Noelle?

“What smells so delicious?” I asked.

Cody attempted a reply, but couldn’t speak around the half-masticated dough in his mouth. I glared at him.

Noelle spoke for him. “Dinner rolls.”

She held up a basket that, I guessed, had once been brimming with them. Wyatt helped himself to another one. His tenth, probably, knowing what I did of his endless hunger cycle.

“My grandma’s recipe. Supposedly passed down through all generations of my family, since the flood.”

I snorted at her wry humor, particularly after such a peculiar evening. I cracked the buttery top open and revealed a steaming interior ready to be devoured. My stomach protested when I did not shovel it in my mouth like a cartoon character.

“Thank you. I hope you didn’t stay up just for this?”

“Not only for this,” she replied lightly, and I wondered if whatever else haunted her was also connected to her poorly hidden tear streaks. She had mentioned Lily being her sister’s baby, but nothing more. I wondered if whatever she’d cried over had something to do with that situation.

Wyatt swallowed loudly, thanked Noelle for the delicious second dinner, and gave into her encouragement to take one for the road. He took five, with one in his teeth. Cody trudged behind him, a roll in each hand and one in his mouth. They demolished almost the whole stack. I called to their backs.

“Shovel out as you go!”

They slammed the door in reply. How they’d shovel with fistfuls of food, I had no idea, but they could be inventive.