Her usual type was a guy with a ready smile, easygoing attitude, and no thought of the future. Unfortunately, that combination usually came with a dearth of ambition and a wandering eye.
Regardless, she would never lose her heart again to a man as cold and arrogant as Ty Martin. Six months. That wasn’t enough of a reason to do it, and there were 180 reasons, called cohabitation, not to do it.
“What are you worried most about?”
“Losing Prescott. That’s all that matters to me.”
“Well, why not go with the marriage and at least lessen the odds of selling? And there’s always the potential for using womanly wiles to change the course of events.” Shelia cocked her head to the side and winked.
“Shouldn’t marriage vows be taken seriously? I never thought you’d encourage me to be a loose woman, Mom.”
“I’m just trying to be practical about this.”
Mandy rose and hugged the papers to her chest.
“Would you place your cup in the dishwasher?” her mother asked.
Mandy dutifully complied. Returning to the table, she gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and caught a whiff of her mother’s Channel No. 5. “I best be going. They’re leaving at seven.”
“I know. I’m coming with you,” Shelia announced.
“To see us off?” That would explain why her mother was so put together at this ungodly hour.
“No, I’m coming to Greenville with you.”
Mandy leaned her thigh against the table. “Why?” Sheila hadn’t come on a rodeo excursion in the two years since Mandy had returned from grad school.
Her mother bit her lip. “Because I want to. Because Harold wants me to.” Her mother brushed a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.
“What does Harold have to do with this?” Mandy said, crossing her arms and pressing the papers to her chest.
“Harold and I are…well, we are a couple. Have been for a while.”
How many shocks could she stand? “Come again.”
“While JM was alive, we were discreet. But now, well, there’s no reason to be.”
Mandy felt like the floor had shifted under her boots. Discreet? She hadn’t had a clue. And apparently, neither had her grandfather. “Grandfather wouldn’t have approved?”
Sheila lifted her chin. “Neither Harold nor I wished to cause him any consternation on that score. He was good to both of us. I think, on some level, he may have suspected. But I never wanted him to think I wasn’t in love with your father. I always will be. Just, Harold has a place in my heart too. We plan to marry after the season.”
Her mother and Harold? “He’s so different from Daddy.” Her father had been a hard-charging stockman with focus and determination. Harold was laid back, content to be second banana.
Sheila shrugged. “At this time in my life, maybe I need a man for whom I’m the center of his world, and not some rodeo company. Not that your father wasn’t good to me. He was. And at that time, I was happy to raise our children and be his wife. But now, well, I’m happy to have a man who thinks I’m everything—and who wants to be the center of my world too.”
Mandy gulped and tried to process. “Does Tuck know?”
“Yes, dear. He…well, let’s just say he found out. I’d planned to tell you once we’d decided to marry, but…well, then your grandfather took a turn for the worse, and it seemed best to wait a bit. Now that we’ll be staying together in Greenville…”
Her mother and Harold shacking up in a hotel room. Mandy blocked that thought as Sheila stood, rubbing her hands over and under each other, hope in her eyes.
If Harold made her mother happy, who was she to interfere? “You deserve a good man, Mom. And Harold is one.”
A smile beamed across her mother’s face, creating a warm glow. There obviously was real love there. Who knew?
“Thank you, honey. That means a great deal to both of us. And you deserve a good man. Better than that tie-down roper Mitch Lockhart.”
Given Mitch had chosen her grandfather’s funeral to dump her because he needed “breathing room,” code for dating other women, she couldn’t disagree. He’d used her for sponsorship money, and she, if she was brutally honest, had used him for sex.
“Give Ty a chance, Mandy. You might be surprised.”
Her mother had no idea how wrong she was.
*
Walking around the outskirts of the arena, Ty looked out on the sizeable Greenville rodeo grounds and listened to the tinny sounds of work that permeated the early morning air. He’d flown his plane, a Cirrus Gold, down to Greenville, Colorado, so he could arrive early, before Mandy and the crew.