How to Wrangle a Cowboy (14 page)

And then he was gone.

She opened her eyes and realized he’d stepped away, leaving her standing there like an idiot.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She bent and picked up her barrette, then turned away, fixing her hair as if she kissed cowboys every day.

“That was probably a bad idea,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Rage warred with a fierce desire to ensure there’d be more kisses like that in the future. He was such a contrary, frustrating man that she figured she’d better not let him know what it had meant to her. Which wouldn’t be hard, because she wasn’t sure herself.

“It felt like a pretty good idea to me.” She smiled and stepped away, brushing off her clothing, lingering on the slope of her chest and the curve of her hips so he’d have to think about touching her.

It worked. He was practically cross-eyed with frustration, and she realized she felt better than she had since Adie had handed her that letter. Maybe she ought to keep Shane Lockhart around.

“Yeah, well, you can mess around like that because you don’t have a kid to worry about.”

He might as well have slapped her. She flinched, thinking of Daniel. She remembered what Grace had said—how he’d love the ranch—and tears stung her eyes. Shane hadn’t hurt her on purpose, but the random arrow had found its mark, burying its painful point deep in her heart. She wondered if he went through life like this, clumsily hurting people with his blunt remarks.

The door to the big house slammed and it was his turn to flinch. He glanced over his shoulder to see Cody running toward them.

“He’s all hopeful you and me will get together,” he said. “I don’t want to encourage that.”

“I don’t want to either, because I’d have to disappoint you both.” He’d hurt her, and she needed to hurt him back somehow. It wasn’t fair; he didn’t know she’d once had a little boy, a child she’d treasured and loved and lost. But it hurt too much to let the insult stand. “I’d heard so many things about cowboys, but I have to say your skills are greatly exaggerated.”

“Trust me, I’m not disappointed at all.” He scowled. “I know you’re out of here as soon as you get your money.”

She tilted her chin up and gave him a hard glare. “I’m leaving when I’m good and ready.”

He stared back, making the air between them shimmer with heat until Cody raced up and broke the tension. “Grace wants to take a nap. Can we ride now?”

“Sure, Son.” He set his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and another arrow found its mark. She envied that casual touch so much; she’d have given all she owned to touch her own son. Even now, when she owned the land she’d loved all her life.

“Go check your girth, okay? Make sure it hasn’t gone loose.” As the boy ran for his horse, he turned back to Lindsey. “Do what you want. It’s your ranch. But I can’t run it without cattle.”

“Point taken. I’m glad you realize it’s not your decision to make.” She adjusted her posture, doing her best to look down on a man who topped her by at least four inches. “It seems to me you’ve been making the decisions around here for much too long.”

Lockhart stalked off to join his son without a word, and she put her fingers to her lips as she watched the two of them ride away. Why was that kiss still warming her, even as her heart ached with sorrow for her lost boy and raged against the man’s high-handed assumption that his plans for the ranch trumped her own? It was obvious Lockhart didn’t even like her. The attraction should worry her.

But the kiss had been a reminder of what mattered in life, of those surprises Grace had mentioned. The memory of it curled up inside her like a cat settling into a comfy chair, plump and purring and sated with cream in a home where it fully expected to stay.

Chapter 17

Shane stood at the corral behind the bunkhouse at Decker Ranch and watched a boy in too-short jeans and pink cowboy boots lope a flawless figure eight on a tall palomino. The boy was his nephew, Jeffrey; the horse was Moonpie, an animal that had seemed possessed by some demon when Ridge had bought him at a local auction.

The brothers had ribbed Ridge mercilessly about the beautiful but apparently useless horse, who had kicked, bit, and stomped every human he encountered until Jeffrey came along. The boy was one of Sierra’s foster kids before she and Ridge adopted him, and it seemed as if some common pain from the past became a bond between the troubled boy and the temperamental horse.

Over time, the boy had transformed the horse into a potential winner under his father’s guidance. Ridge had promised Jeffrey that Moonpie would be his if he could win a junior reining championship on him. Not that he’d ever take the horse away, but it was better for a boy to earn things than to have them given to him. He’d remember all his life the way he’d won his first horse.

Isaiah, who would be Brady and Suze’s son once his paperwork cleared, watched his soon-to-be cousin with his arms folded across his chest.

“Huh,” he said. “That Jeffrey thinks he’s hot stuff. Wait till ol’ Moonpie sneaks up and bites him on the butt, like he did me. Then he won’t be so in love with that stupid horse.”

Sierra smothered a smile. “I think Jeffrey would love Moonpie no matter what he did.”

“That’s stupid,” Isaiah said.

“Maybe. But sometimes you promise to love someone no matter what.”

“Like Brady and Suze are gonna promise me?” The boy’s face brightened, his dark brows lifting to reveal warm brown eyes that combined with his upturned nose to give him an elfin charm.

“And like you’re going to promise them.”

The brows lowered again while the boy chewed on that thought awhile. “So if Brady and Suze say I can’t go see my friends or I can’t watch an R-rated movie, I have to love them anyway?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.”

Shane smothered a chuckle. Sierra was infinitely patient with these boys, but it seemed like Isaiah had put that patience to the test from day one. The boy would never find a flaw in Sierra’s love, though, no matter how he poked and prodded.

Shane didn’t understand how the woman could offer her heart so freely to so many difficult kids. Some of them were only in her life for a week or two before they were returned to homes where they might be beaten, starved, or worse. Some turned up again, a little the worse for wear but relieved to be back in Sierra’s care. Others disappeared and were never heard from again.

He looked down at Cody, who echoed his posture, resting his arms on the second rail just like his dad’s rested on the top one. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could do anything but love a child of their own—or any child, for that matter.

One of Sierra’s other kids, a slight boy wearing glasses, approached shyly. Glancing at Cody, he rested his arms on the same rail and propped one foot, clad in too-big cowboy boots, on a lower rung. He stood there awhile, trying to catch Cody’s eye.

Finally, he squinted up at his face, giving a great sniff and showing his front teeth like an asthmatic rabbit while he wrinkled his nose. This exhibition was followed by a grubby finger shoving his glasses into place. Judging from the fingerprints on the lenses and the smudges between the boy’s brows, he did this often.

“You want to play?” he asked Cody. “I’m building a ranch.” He gestured toward the roots of an old cottonwood tree, where he’d arranged a collection of sticks into a God’s-eye view of Decker ranch, with its complex network of corrals and pastures. Stones of various colors occupied the fenced-off areas. Judging from their placement, Shane guessed they represented horses and cattle.

“Sure,” Cody said.

“How ’bout you, Isaiah?” the boy with the glasses called. “You want to play ranching with us?”

Isaiah looked down at their little project, and for a moment, Shane was afraid he was going to kick the carefully constructed ranch to pieces. But he only sneered.

“No way,” he said. “That’s baby stuff.”

The boy shrugged as if he was used to Isaiah’s scorn and turned his attention back to Cody. “I’m Josh.” He gestured toward his sticks and stones. “And this is the ranch.”

“Which one?” Cody dropped down on his knees beside his new friend.

“Decker Ranch.” He set a reverent palm on the dirt. “This one.”

“Okay. Let’s build my dad’s ranch too.” Cody began gathering his own hoard of twigs, rocks, and pebbles.

“Your dad has a ranch?”

The boy’s admiring tone made Shane ache to be the kind of man who actually owned a ranch, instead of just working on one.

“No,” Cody said. “But he runs one, for a movie star lady.”

Shane felt the corners of his mouth quirk into a smile. Grace must have already regaled Cody with some of what she called her “tales of misspent youth.” To cover his grin, he took a long swig from the cold can of root beer he’d set on a fence post and prayed she’d left out the spicy parts.

“She says he will own it, real soon, ’cause he’s marrying into the family.”

Shane missed the fence post by a mile when he tried to set the can back down. Coughing and spluttering, he didn’t even notice the root beer foaming over the toe of his boot before it disappeared into the thirsty, arid earth.

Chapter 18

It turned out root beer coming out of your nose felt just as bad as any other substance that made that unexpected journey. Shane didn’t know if he was laughing or choking, but Brady was definitely laughing when he came up behind him and thumped him on the back. Shane started to speak, but Brady hushed him, pointing toward the boys, his eyes dancing with humor.

“Your dad’s gonna marry a movie star?” The boy with the glasses was lost in admiration.

“No.” Cody sounded indignant. “She’s old. That’s how come she’s ranching, instead of being in the movies.”

“Oh.”

“He’s gonna marry the old lady’s granddaughter. She’s really pretty and nice.”

“Wow.” Josh looked longingly over at Sierra, who was shouting encouragement to Jeff as he rode. “You’ll get to have a mom, then.”

Shane’s heart ached again, this time for an entirely different reason. He’d felt terrible for Cody when Tara had dropped him off, but at least Cody knew his mother. And as Tara said, at least she’d tried. This cute little kid, with his blond hair and freckles, his glasses and his grubby hands, probably didn’t even know who his mother was, or whether she was alive or dead. That was the situation for most of the kids in Sierra’s care.

Shane knelt down beside the boys. His original intent had been to let Cody know that he wasn’t going to marry Lindsey Ward, not under any circumstances. That he could earn his own ranch and didn’t need to marry anyone to get one.

But correcting Cody seemed cruel when he’d just made what might be his first friend at his new home. Shane wanted Cody to have deep, lifelong friendships—the kind you carried into adulthood. As a foster kid, he himself had moved around too much to form those lasting bonds.

“Why don’t you invite Josh to come over to our house sometime?” he asked.

“Well,
first
of all, ’cause I barely know him.” At least Cody was honest. “And
second
of all, because I don’t even know if he likes
me
. But if you think I should…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, kid, you want to come over to my house sometime?”

The “kid” crinkled up his face again, then shoved his glasses up his nose. “Okay.” This time, his nose crinkled with a toothy grin.

“Well”—Cody sighed as if they’d just settled a real-estate bargain for a million-dollar mansion, or agreed to terms of executive employment—“that’s settled. Now let’s play. This is where my dad’s cabin is.” He set a large rock on the ground in front of him. “And these are the trees that separate it from the big house.”

While he was sticking twigs in the ground to represent trees, Josh’s eyes widened. “You live next to a
jail
?”

Shane smiled. The boys had different frames of reference—luckily for Cody. Not so luckily for Josh.

Leaving the kids to sort out their imaginary ranches, Shane returned to the corral, where his brother Ridge was giving Isaiah a riding lesson.

“Watch your feet,” Ridge said. “Heels down, remember? And keep your hands up.”

“How’m I supposed to watch my feet?” Isaiah grumbled. “I gotta watch where I’m goin’, don’t I?” But he lowered his heels and picked up his reins.

“How’s it going at the Lazy Q?” Ridge asked Shane.

“Not good.” Shane turned and spit into the grass.

“Don’t let Sierra catch you doing that in front of the kids.”

“Sorry. Just had to express how I feel about the situation.”

“That bad?”

“That bad. She’s going to sell, I think. Says she has to. But first, she’s going to sell the herd.”

Ridge looked as if he’d like to spit, himself. “Doesn’t she know it’s July?”

Shane shrugged. “She says she needs the money.”

“Money? She just inherited a million-dollar ranch.”

“I know.” Shane leaned against the fence and toed a line in the dirt with the tip of his boot. “I don’t know what her problem is, and I don’t care. All I know is I need to start looking for work.”

Ridge gave his brother a long look, then shook his head and looked away.

“What?”

“Thought you were set on staying there for Cody’s sake. And what about Grace?”

Shane scowled. He’d frowned so much lately that his face fell into those lines with ease. His father, a shady memory from a foggy past, had been like that, scowling all the time. He’d have to do something about all this negativity, if only for Cody’s sake.

“I guess you guys were right. Cody’ll have to adapt. As for Grace, what can I do? She’ll hire somebody to take care of her, I guess.”

Ridge shook his head. “It’s not right.”

“I know.” Shane kicked at the ground, scuffing the toe of his boot. “The woman just doesn’t understand what family means, how much it’s worth.”

“Most people don’t.” Ridge glanced over at Sierra. “We have a unique vantage point. When you go without something, you value it more.” He paused to point at Isaiah. “Heels.”

With a grunt of frustration, Isaiah adjusted his feet again. “Didn’t think you were paying attention.”