Sassy Cowgirl Kisses by Kathy Fawcett

Chapter 3

Riding in Tig’s truck back to town, Sassy looked out the window and privately recalled the boy’s face. Seeing how Tig was using the speaker in her truck to talk to her mechanic, pleasantries were not required.

Her mysterious shepherd was gorgeous—and a gentleman, Sassy had to admit. Even while trying to keep the flock from loitering in the middle of the road. He didn’t leer at her in her bathing suit, or stare while she added a layer of clothes.

She liked the way he turned his tanned face away, but not before flashing a hint of a smile. He was amused by the predicament, she could see, but also bashful. It was refreshing and slightly disarming. She might have felt comfortable enough to ride in his truck, and may have if he’d asked a second time.

Freda talked about cowboys as if they all adhered to a code of honor, but Sassy wasn’t willing to accept this as the gospel truth.

“That’s a broad paint brush,” she told her roommate skeptically. However, this young cowboy could very well be one of the good ones.

But she didn’t travel all the way from Illinois to Wyoming for cowboys. They were just an oddity to Sassy, like buffalo grazing along the road, or herds of antelope bouncing among the rocky sagebrush. The men and the wildlife were trying to figure her out, too, she noticed.

Good luck!

She wouldn’t be in town long. Sassy was on a mission—personal business—and it was delicate. It might take a few weeks or months to do it right, and then she’d be gone again. Back to the Midwest where she belonged. Before the antelope started to migrate, Sassy would be on her way back home, to figure out her future.

Her task, once accomplished, wasn’t going to change her life. It was just something to cross off her list. Even her own mama didn’t know why she was here; why she insisted on an internship in Wyoming. There was only one other person who knew and he was gone. It was the one thing her daddy asked of her in his last days, besides keeping an eye on her mother.

That he’d been too cowardly to do this errand himself made Sassy very sad. She always saw her father as big and brave, like a fearless knight. The fact that he turned out to be flesh and blood was an unfortunate dose of reality at a time when she was fresh out of heroes. But losing him was hard enough without being angry, so Sassy tried to focus on the good times and not his failings.

Her dad worked hard setting she and her mom up for a financially generous life. Through the years, it was his number crunching that forged the bond, and it was the reason she’d gone into accounting.

“What are you doing?” Sassy would ask at a young age, bounding into her dad’s home office.

“Well, I’m taking care of you, baby girl,” he’d say.

“Doesn’t look like it,” the child would pout, and he’d set her on a chair nearby and show her his computer screen.

“Then let me show you,” he’d say.

For years, it made little sense, until she became much older. By then, his calculations and his efforts came together for Sassy, like pieces in a puzzle. She began to understand the concept of savings accounts and interest, and investments; accounts payable and accounts receivable. When she was an adolescent, he explained the trust funds he set up for her, and how they would affect her future.

“Now some say that a young person won’t work hard if they know they have money waiting for them in the bank,” he told her more than once, “but I believe in you, Sassy. You’ll work hard no matter what. Right?”

“Right,” she agreed with a smile. She’d agree to anything for her beloved father, but on this he was right.