And so it continues. The unused prologue to The Cowboy’s Baby by Gretchen Lee Rix.

“You don’t need the money, of course, but it’s a good offer and this county needs a resort like this to bring in some business, new people, new money.” He stopped to take breath. The interested expression had come back into Cassie’s face. “Resort,” he repeated. “That’s the word I was looking for.”

Cassie grimaced. She knew she should care about the community of Creighton. Hundreds of them had come out to search for Joseph, some still searched for her son, sending her notes to tell her so. But two years of anguish had changed her.

“There’ll be a fence?” she asked. “They won’t be getting on my property?”

“There will be a big fence.”

She had another thought that stopped her hand in mid-signature. “What if I don’t like what the Hubbard people do? What if they tear down all the trees or something?” 

Cassie had spoken her reservations, but immediately she waved her lawyer quiet. “I don’t know why I opened my mouth,” she said. “I don’t give a damn, anyhow. They can put in a Texas Disney World next door just as long as they leave me alone. And I hope you know I’m doing this for you,” she told him. She had the momentary satisfaction of seeing him blush.

She flourished the pen, signed and acquired a new neighbor that day in the Creighton Lakeview Resort to be. The fence that abutted the land she kept for herself went up the next month. That was when the community of Creighton started calling Cassie Lennon the Sleeping Beauty, behind her back, or course, alternately bemused and appalled at the quantity of thorny rose bushes she had trucked in and planted to keep pace with the fence construction.

TO BE CONTINUED… Copyright by Gretchen Rix

Photos by Roxanne Rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.

THE COWBOY’S BABY available  http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC  http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix  http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235