Page 10 of Country Winds (King Creek Cowboys #9)

“ W hat were you doing yesterday, Elsa?” Greta McLeod asked Ellie in German. Despite living in the U.S. for over thirty years, her accent remained heavy.

Ellie’s mother insisted on calling her by her given name, Elsa.

Although she had wanted to be called Ellie at a young age, her family still slipped—or, in the case of her brothers, they sometimes did it to tease her, and she ignored them.

On the other hand, Greta stubbornly refused, and Ellie gave up on convincing her mother long ago.

“I went to a barn dance in Gold Canyon.” She responded in German as she took the plate her mother had washed and dried it with a kitchen towel. “A new client, Tucker Rawlings, invited me.”

“A real womanizer.” Tanner, Ellie’s twin brother, tugged on her braid as he jumped into the conversation in English. “Stay far away from Rawlings.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, and her mother handed her another clean plate to dry. “Like you can talk.” Her twin was trying to get a rise out of her, but she could give as good as she got. She set the dried plates in a stack. “I heard you dumped Jackie. What’s that, the third woman in a month?”

“Ha.” Tanner took the stack and put it in the cabinet. “She was the fourth, and it was only three weeks.”

Ellie laughed. Tanner wasn’t much for dating, and his relationships tended to last a while when he met someone he enjoyed being with. King Creek didn’t have a huge dating pool. “Tucker said he knows you and Jace.”

“For quite a while now.” Tanner took a dried serving dish from Ellie and put it effortlessly on the top shelf of the highest cabinet. All of Ellie’s brothers were six-two or taller. “He’s got a fine operation.”

The screen door squeaked, and Jace poked his head in. “Come on out. We’re ready.”

“Just a sec,” Ellie said. “Mom, Tanner, and I are almost finished.” Next time, it would be Braxton, her other brother, Jace, and Levi’s turn to clean the kitchen after Sunday supper.

“Get your butts in gear.” Jace disappeared from view before Ellie’s balled-up dish towel could hit him on the head.

Ten minutes later, the McLeod siblings and their dad, Hoss, gathered in the yard to play horseshoes in the sand pit to the left of the old mulberry tree.

Still beautiful and able to pass for forty while now in her early sixties, Greta sat on the double swing with a pad to keep score and a ruler by her side.

“Can’t let Ellie and Tanner win again.” Braxton, the second-youngest, picked up a pair of shoes. “They’ve always been double trouble.”

Jace nodded. “The twins shouldn’t be allowed to be on the same team. It’s rigged.”

Braxton stood at the back line of the pitching box, forty feet from the iron stake that had been there for some twenty-five years.

He lined up his first horseshoe, aimed, and tossed the shoe underhanded.

“That’s a point,” Braxton said when it landed within six inches of the stake.

He pitched his other, and it hit the ground a good foot away from the stake.

Levi, the oldest McLeod brother and Braxton’s partner, stood at the other end of the pit and threw his shoe in the opposite direction. He pitched his first and second shoes, and they both landed within a foot of the stake.

Their dad stood at the back of the pitching box. “Let me show you how it’s done, boys, and my little girl.” Hoss winked at Ellie. “He pitched, and the shoe hit the stake, spun around, and landed at the base. “There you go.” He straightened. “A ringer right off the bat.”

“Good job, Liebling.” Greta applauded as she called out the German endearment for “darling.”

After Hoss pitched his second shoe, which landed away from the stake, Jace took his turn. He did well with both pitches. At this rate, they would need the ruler to determine who scored the most points for the round.

Tanner and Ellie took their turns. Ellie didn’t do as well as usual for her first two pitches.

Her thoughts kept turning to Tucker, daydreaming about her time with him at the barn dance and the fun they’d had the day they met at the Ren fair.

She’d have to push the distraction aside to hold up her half of the team.

Fortunately, Tanner got a ringer, which canceled their dad’s ringer, and he got his second shoe closest to the stake.

Tanner squeezed Ellie’s shoulder. “Come on, kid. Get your head in the game.”

She nodded. “Next round, just watch me.”

He flashed her a grin. “There you go. That’s the sister I know.”

They played three rounds. In the second and third rounds, Ellie did better than she had in the first, but they still lost to her dad and Jace.

Tanner picked up horseshoes and put them into the nearby metal bucket with a lid. “We’ll take our championship back next time, Ellie.”

She smiled. “You bet.”

Greta got up from the swing. “Time for apfelkuchen.”

“You haven’t made your apple cake for a long time.” Ellie walked up the stairs to the front porch beside her mom. “It’s one of my favorites.”

Gretal smiled at her. “Seems to me that you say that about all of my pastries.”

Ellie shrugged. “That’s because they all are.”

Tanner held open the screen door. “Right this way, ladies.”

Ellie smiled at him and entered the house.

It wasn’t a traditional single-level ranch-style home.

It had a large ground floor with a front room that Greta called the parlor, a family room, a dining room, a kitchen, and Hoss’s study.

Upstairs were six bedrooms, including the master.

The smallest bedroom had been Ellie’s, but she hadn’t minded. It had been her little sanctuary.

When her father left the service and moved back to Arizona, bringing his new wife home from Germany, they started with a small ranch and a modest home. Years later, when the ranch had grown into a successful business, they built the house they now lived in, precisely what Greta had wanted.

Ellie sat around the dining room table with her family as they talked and ate the apple cake she adored.

Her mother made the best pastries. She loved being with her family, but her mind still wandered to Tucker and last night.

Just knowing she would spend the whole day with him next Saturday warmed her insides.

Tanner jolted her out of her thoughts when he said, “You’re daydreaming again. Don’t tell me it’s about Tucker Rawlings.”

Her cheeks warmed, but she came up with the first thing that popped into her mind. “Just thinking about my work. Myth Hunter comes out in a month.”

“I saw a display for the game in a game store window when I was in a mall in Phoenix last week.” Tanner stuck his fork in the last bite of his apple cake. “They’re really pushing it for preorders.”

“I’m nervous and excited about it.” She shook her head. “It’s the first game I’ve done voicework for, so I have no idea what to expect.”

Tanner swallowed the bite he’d taken. “You have nothing to be nervous about. Since you were little, you’d do voices for all your toys. I don’t think you could have found a better career.”

“That makes two careers for me.” She thought about her plan to hire someone.

“I’m playing phone tag with my friend’s younger sister.

I’m going to ask her to work for me part-time.

” Ellie sat back in her chair, her plate devoid of cake, a few crumbs remaining.

“If she’s not interested, I’ll have to find someone else. ”

“You might consider selling your business.” Tanner pushed his plate away from him and folded his arms on the table. “It’s successful, and you’ve built a big social media following.”

“I want my cake and to eat it, too.” She thought about all that she’d put into it. “I love what I do with my business. At the same time, voicework is fun, rewarding, and challenging. The income is fantastic, too.” She shrugged. “One of these days, I’ll have to decide which route I want to go.”

He nodded. “No need to rush it.”

“You’re right.” She blew out her breath. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Being a voice actor is like any acting career you can have—you don’t know when you’ll get your next offer.”

Tanner gave her a brotherly pat on the shoulder, and then Jace asked him a question. As he turned to answer, Ellie echoed Tanner’s words to herself. “No need to rush it”—but this time while thinking about Tucker and a possible relationship.

She had to get home and upload the chili cookoff and barn dance pictures to Tucker’s social media accounts.

Maddee had given her access to everything she needed—passwords and login IDs for the website, the social media accounts, and the emails attached to them.

Ellie would also email links to everyone identified as a client in the ranch’s contacts.

Ellie’s mom wouldn’t be happy with her having to leave the family get-together early, but work called. At least it was fun because it involved looking at pictures with Tucker in them and daydreaming the whole while.

“There you are.” Maddee sailed into Tucker’s large man cave, Grady Donovan at her side. Seemed his sister was spending a lot of time with the firefighter.

Grady looked around the room with an expression of approval while he rubbed Piper behind her ears. “I could use a room like this.”

Tucker liked the space—a smaller version of his family room but with team posters on the walls mixed in with some cowboy art. The wall with the big-screen TV had good sound and game systems that he sometimes played on with his brothers.

One wall was filled with books, most of which he had read—history and biographies, as well as fiction, like Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, and Lee Child. And, of course, some good old cowboy fiction with Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour.

“Come on in and have a seat.” Tucker shifted in his recliner and gestured to the couch. His cave had enough room to invite his buddies over. “Diamondbacks are playing the Mariners at Salt River Fields stadium. The game is just about to start.”