The Cowboy Next Door (5 page)

“She wants a bay.” Lacey was back, still smiling. She had changed into jeans and a peasant top that flowed out over the top of her jeans. Her hair spiked around her face and she had wiped away the smudged liner.

“Ready to go?” He handed the baby over, still unsure with her in his arms. And as he looked at Lacey Gould, she was one more thing that he was suddenly unsure about.

“I'm ready to go.”

He held the door and let Lacey walk out first, because he was afraid to walk out next to her, afraid of what it might feel like to be close to her when she smelled like lavender.

 

Lacey leaned close to the window, trying not to look like an overanxious puppy leaning out the truck as they drove onto the rodeo grounds. Stock trailers were parked along the back section and cars were parked in the field next to the arena.

She had been before, more times than she could count, but never like this, in a truck with a stock trailer hooked to the back and a cowboy sitting in the seat next to her. Riding with Bailey and Cody didn't count, not this way. If other girls dreamed of fairy-tale dances and diamonds, Lacey dreamed of this, of boots and cowboys and horses.

Not so much the cowboys these days, but still…

“Don't fall out.” Jay smiled as he said it, white teeth flashing in a suntanned face. His hat was on the seat next to him and his dark hair that brushed his collar showed the ring where the hat had been.

She shifted in the seat and leaned back. “I guess you're not at all excited?”

“Of course I am. I've been living in the city for eight years. Longer if you count college. It's good to be home full-time.”

“What events are you in?”

“A little of everything. I mainly team rope. But every now and then I ride a bull.”

“I want to ride a bull.” She hadn't meant to sound like a silly girl, but his eyes widened and he shook his head.

“Maybe you could try barrel racing?” He made the suggestion without looking at her.

“Okay.”

Anything. It was all a part of the dream package she'd created for herself. She wanted this life, with these people. For a long time she'd wanted love and acceptance.

She'd found those things in Gibson. Now she wanted horses
and a farm of her own. Jay wouldn't understand that dream; he'd always had those things.

“Lacey, we're not that different. This has been my life, but I came home to reclaim what I left behind.”

“And it cost you?”

“It cost me.” He slowed, and then eased back into a space next to another truck and trailer.

“Are you team roping tonight?” She looked back, at the pricked ears of the horse in the trailer.

“Yeah, and I think I have to ride a bull. Cody signed me up. He says he needs a little competition from time to time.”

“Because Bailey is keeping him close to home.” She bit down on her bottom lip and looked out the window.

The truck stopped, the trailer squeaking behind it, coming to a halt. The horse whinnied and other horses answered. From the pens behind the arena, cattle mooed, restless from being corralled for so long.

Lacey breathed deep, loving it all. And the man next to her…she glanced in his direction. He was a surprise. He had invited her.

And she had to process that information.

Time to come back to earth, and to remember what it felt like to be hurt, to have her trust stomped on. Lacey unbuckled the baby and pulled her out of the seat, a good distraction because Rachel's eyes were open and she smiled that baby half-smile. Drool trickled down her baby chin.

“Do you think Corry will stay?” Jay had unbuckled his seat belt and he pulled the keys from the ignition of the truck.

The question was one that Lacey had considered, but didn't want to. It made her heart ache to think of Corry leaving, not knowing where she would take the baby. Lacey shrugged and pulled Rachel, cooing and soft, close to her.

“I really don't know. I don't want to think about that.” She kissed the baby's cheek. “But I guess I should.”

“Maybe she'll stay.”

“She won't. She's restless. She's always been restless.”

“I understand restless.” He stepped out of the truck.

Lacey, baby in her arms and diaper bag over her shoulder, followed. She met up with him at the back of the trailer. The small glimpse into his life intrigued her. He'd never been open.

“You don't seem restless.” She stood back as he opened the trailer and led the horse out. Not his horse, he'd explained, but one he was training. The animal was huge, with a golden-brown coat that glistened.

He glanced at her, shrugging and then went back to the horse. He pulled a saddle out of the tack compartment of the trailer. Expertly tooled and polished, the leather practically glowed in the early evening light.

The lights of the arena came on and Lacey knew that the bleachers would be filling up. But she couldn't walk away because Jay had stories, just like everyone else.

“How could you be restless?” She pushed, forgetting for a moment that he was little more than a stranger.

“Why is that so unusual?” He had the saddle on the horse and was pulling the girth strap tight around the animal's middle. The horse, a gentle giant, stood still, head low and ears pricked forward.

“You don't seem restless.”

“Really? And what makes you think you know anything about me?” He straightened, tall and all cowboy in new Wranglers and worn boots. His western shirt was from the mall, not the farm store.

Contradictions. And she loved a mystery.

“So, tell me.” She waited, holding the baby in the crook of her arm, but dropping the diaper bag.

“I grew up on a farm in a small town, Lacey. I wanted to live in the city, to experience life in an apartment with close neighbors.”

“And you loved it?” She smiled, because he couldn't have.

He grinned back at her. “I did, for a while. But then the new wore off and it was just noise, traffic and the smell of exhaust.”

“So you came home because you got tired of city life?”

“I came home.” And he didn't finish, but she knew that he'd come home because of a broken heart. Sometimes she saw it in his eyes. Sometimes he looked like someone who had been broken, but was gluing the pieces back together.

“Your parents are glad.”

“I know they are.” He slipped the reins over the neck of the horse. “And Lacey, before you start thinking I'm one of those poor strays behind the diner, I'm not. Cindy didn't break my heart.”

He winked. For a moment she almost believed that his heart hadn't been broken. For a fleeting second she wanted to hold him. To be held by a cowboy with strong arms and roots that went deep in a community.

“I didn't…” She didn't know what to say. She didn't need to know? Or she didn't plan on trying to fix him?

“You did. Your eyes get all weepy and you look like you've found someone who needs fixing. I don't. I'm glad to be home.”

He was standing close to her, and she hadn't realized before that his presence would suck the air out of her space, not until that moment. Her lungs tightened inside her chest and she took a step back, kissing the baby's head to distract her thoughts from the man, all cowboy, standing in front of her.

He cocked his head to the side and his mouth opened, but then closed and he shook his head. “I need to find Cody.”

“Of course.” She backed away. “I'll meet up with you later.”

And later she would have her thoughts back in control and she wouldn't be thinking of him as the cowboy who picked up those silly dog figurines and put them back on the shelf while she swept up the pieces of what had been broken.

L
acey hurried away, ignoring the desire to glance over her shoulder, to see if he was watching. He wouldn't watch. He would get on his horse, shaking his head because she had climbed into his life that way.

She had no business messing in his life; she was a dirty sock, mistakenly tossed in the basket with the clean socks. She couldn't hide from reality.

Jay was the round peg in the round hole. He fit. He was a part of Gibson and someday, he'd marry a girl from Gibson. And Lacey didn't know why that suddenly bothered her, or why it bothered her that when he looked at her, it was with that look, the one that said she was the community stray, taken in and fed, given a safe place to stay.

The way she fed stray cats behind the diner.

“Hey, Lacey, up here.”

She looked up, searching the crowd. When she saw Bailey, she waved. Bailey had a seat midway up the bleachers, with a clear view of the chutes. Lacey climbed the steps and squeezed past a couple of people to take a seat next to her friend.

“I didn't expect to see you here.” Bailey held her hands out and took the baby, her own belly growing rounder every day.

“Long story.” Lacey searched the crowd of men behind the pens. She sought a tall cowboy wearing a white hat, his shirt plaid. She found him, standing next to the buckskin and talking to one of the other guys.

“Make it a short story and fill me in.” Bailey leaned a shoulder against Lacey's. “You okay?”

“Hmmm?” Lacey nodded. She didn't want to talk, not here, with hundreds of people surrounding them, eating popcorn or cotton candy and drinking soda from paper cups.

“Are you okay?” Louder voice now, a little impatient.

“I'm great.” Lacey leaned back on the bleacher seat. “My sister wrecked my house and she's passed out in my bed. The cowboy that lives down the lane treats me like an interloper. I'm living in his grandparents' house, and he doesn't want me there.”

“He brought you tonight.”

“He did. I'm a charity case. He felt bad because Corry broke my dogs.”

Bailey nodded. “He's about to ride a bull. But since you've sworn off men, I guess that doesn't matter to you?”

“I have a reason for swearing off men. I'm never going to be the type of woman a man takes home to meet his family.”

“Lance has problems, Lacey. That isn't about you, it's about him.”

“It is about me. It takes a lot for anyone to understand where I've been and what I've done. I'm ashamed of the life I lived, so why should I expect a man to blindly accept my past?”

“You're forgetting what God has done in your life. You're forgetting what He can still do. You're not a finished product. None of us are. Our stories are still being written.”

“No, I'm not forgetting.” Lacey looked away, because she couldn't admit that sometimes she wondered how God could
forgive. How could He take someone as dirty as she felt and turn them into someone people respected?

She worked really hard trying to be that person that others respected.

The bulls ran through the chutes. Lacey leaned back, watching as cowboy after cowboy got tossed. Each time one of them hit the dirt, she cringed. She didn't really want to ride a bull.

“Jay's up.” Bailey pointed. Taller than the other bull riders, he stood on the outside of the chute. The bull moved in the chute, a truck-sized animal, pawing the ground.

“I really don't want to watch.”

“It isn't easy.” Bailey shifted Rachel, now sleeping, on her shoulder. “It doesn't get easier. Every time I watch Cody ride, I pray, close my eyes, peek, pray some more.”

“Yes, but you love Cody.”

“True. The cowboy in question is just your neighbor.”

“Exactly.” Lacey laughed and glanced at Bailey, willing to give her friend what she wanted to hear. “He's cute, Bailey, I'm not denying that. But I'm not looking for cute.”

“Of course not.”

“I'm not looking—period.”

“But it is okay to look.” Bailey smiled a happy smile and elbowed Lacey. “There he goes.”

The gate opened and the bull spun out of the opening, coming up off the ground like a ballet dancer. Amazing that an animal so huge could move like that. The thud when the beast came down jarred the man on his back and Jay fell back, moving his free arm forward.

The buzzer sounded and Jay jumped, landing clear of the animal, but hitting the ground hard. The bull didn't want to let it go. The animal turned on Jay, charging the cowboy, who was slow getting up.

A bullfighter jumped between the beast and the man, giving
Jay just enough time to escape, to jump on the fence and wait for the distracted animal to make up his mind that he'd rather not take a piece out of a cowboy.

Jay looked up, his hat gone. His dark gaze met Lacey's and stayed there, connected, for just a few seconds. Warm brown eyes in a face that was lean and handsome. And then he hopped down from the fence and limped away.

“Breathe,” Bailey whispered.

Lacey breathed. It wasn't easy. She inhaled a gulp of air and her heart raced.

 

The rodeo ended with steer wrestling. Jay watched from behind the pens at the back of the arena, still smarting from the bull, and still thinking about Lacey Gould's dark brown eyes. He shook his head and walked away, back to his trailer and his horse.

“That was quite a ride.” Cody slapped Jay on the back as he untied his horse.

“Thanks. I'm glad it made you happy.”

“Oh, come on, you enjoyed it.” Cody leaned against the side of the trailer, his hat pushed back on his head. “You'll do it again next week.”

“I'm thinking no.” Jay tightened his grip on Buck's reins because the horse was tossing his head, whinnying to a nearby mare. “I think I'll stick to roping.”

“Yeah, I think I'm done with bull riding, too. I've got a baby on the way.”

“Right, that does sound like a good reason to stop.”

“Yeah, it does.” Cody smiled like a guy who had it all. And he did. He had the wife, a child, the farm and a baby on the way. Jay had a diamond ring in a drawer and a room in his parents' house. He had a box of memories that he kept hidden in a closet.

“Speaking of wives and babies, I'm going to find my wife.” Cody slapped him on the back again and walked away.

Jay pulled the saddle off the horse and limped to the back of his truck, his knee stiff and his back even stiffer. He tossed the saddle in the back of the truck and then leaned for a minute, wishing again that he hadn't ridden that bull. Bull riding wasn't a sport a guy jumped into.

He tried not to think about Lacey's face in the crowd, pale and wide-eyed as she watched him scramble to the fence, escaping big hooves and an animal that wanted to hurt him.

The horse whinnied, reminding him of work that still needed to be done. He walked back to the animal, rubbing Buck's sleek neck and then pulling off the bridle, leaving just the halter and lead rope. The horse nodded his head as if he approved.

“I'm getting too old for crazy stunts, Buck.”

“You stayed on.” The feminine voice from behind him was a little soft, a little teasing.

“Yep.”

He turned and smiled at Lacey. She wasn't a friend, just someone his mom had picked up and brought home. He had friends, people he'd grown up with, gone to church with, known all his life. He didn't know where to put her, because she didn't fit those categories. Someone that he knew? A person that needed help? Someone passing through?

He would have preferred she stayed in Jolynn's apartment, not the house his grandparents had built. Jamie's house. But she was there now, and he'd deal with it. He moved away from his horse and straightened, raising his hands over his head to stretch the kinks out of his back.

She was here tonight, in his life, because he'd brought her. He had been trying not to think about that, or why he'd extended the offer. Maybe because of the pain in her eyes when she'd looked at those silly dogs her sister had broken.

Who got upset over something like that?

Lacey took cautious steps forward. She held the sleeping
baby in one arm and had the diaper bag over her shoulder. She didn't carry a purse.

“You actually did pretty well,” she encouraged, a shy smile on a face that shouldn't have been shy. He had never seen her as shy. She was the waitress who never backed down when the guys at the diner gave her a hard time.

“I did stay on, but it wasn't fun and it isn't something I want to do again. I think I'll stick to roping.”

“You won the roping event.” She moved forward, her hand sliding up the rump of his horse. “Want me to do something?”

“No, I've got it.”

She stood next to him, her hand on his horse's neck. She didn't look at him, and he wondered why. Did she think that by not looking at him, she could hide her secrets?

“I'm going to put the baby in the truck.” She moved away and he let her go. Buck pushed at him with his big, tan head, rubbing his jaw against Jay's shoulder.

“In the trailer, Buck.” Jay opened the trailer and moved to the side. Buck went in, his hooves pounding on the floor of the trailer, rattling the metal sides as his weight shifted and settled.

“He's an amazing animal.” Lacey had returned, without the baby. He was tying the horse to the front of the trailer. “When you rope on him, it's like he knows what you want him to do before you make a move.”

“He's a smart animal.” Jay latched the trailer.

“Thank you for letting me come with you tonight.”

Jay shrugged, another movement that didn't feel too great. He stepped back against his trailer and brought her with him, because the truck next to them was pulling forward.

“I didn't mind.” His hand was still on her arm.

She looked from his hand on her arm to his face. Her teeth bit into her bottom lip and she shivered, maybe from the cold night air.

It was dark and the band was playing. Jay could see people two-stepping on a temporary dance floor. Couples scooted in time to the music, and children ran in the open field, catching fireflies.

Lacey smelled like lavender and her arm was soft. She looked up, her eyes dark in a face that was soft, but tough. He moved his hand from her arm and touched her cheek.

She shook her head a little and took a step back, disengaging from his touch. But that small step didn't undo the moment. She was street-smart and vulnerable and he wanted to see how she felt in his arms.

He wanted to brush away the hurt look in her eyes, and the shame that caused her to look away too often. Instead, he came to his senses and pulled back, letting the moment slip away.

“We should go.” Lacey stepped over the tongue of the trailer and put distance between them. Her arms were crossed and she had lost the vulnerable look. “Jay, whatever that was, it wasn't real.”

“What?”

“It was moonlight. It was summertime and soft music. It was you being lonely and losing someone you thought you'd spend your life with.”

“Maybe you're right.”

“I am right. But I'm nobody's moment. Someday I want forever, but I'll never be a moment again.”

He exhaled a deep breath and whistled low. “Okay, then I guess we should go.”

He felt like the world's biggest loser.

 

Lacey woke up on Sunday morning, glad that she had a day off. If only she'd gotten some sleep, but she hadn't. Jay had dropped her off at midnight, and wound up from the night, she'd stayed up for two hours, cleaning.

She rolled over in bed, listening to the sound of country life
drifting through the open window. Cows mooed from the field and somewhere a rooster crowed. He was a little late, but still trying to tell everyone that it was time to get up.

The baby cried and she heard Corry telling her to shush, as if the baby would listen and not expect to be fed. Lacey sat up and stretched. She had an hour to get ready before church.

When she walked through the door of the dining room, Corry was at the table with a bowl of cereal. Rachel was in the bassinet, arms flailing the air.

“Have you fed her?” Lacey picked up the tiny infant and held her close. The baby fussed too much. “Has she been to a doctor?”

“Give me a break. Like I have the money for that. She's fine.”

“She's hungry and she feels warm.”

“So, feed her, mother of the year.”

“I'm not her mother, Corry.”

Corry drank the milk from her bowl and took it to the sink. At least she did that much. Lacey took a deep breath and exhaled the brewing impatience. The baby curled against her shoulder, fist working in her tiny mouth.

“I'll feed her, you get ready for church.” Lacey held the baby with one arm and reached in the drainer at the edge of the sink for a clean bottle.