Cowboy in Charge
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Barbara White Daille
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HarlequinChapter One
Spending his afternoon at a kid’s first birthday party normally wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Jason McAndry’s to-do list. As this party was in honor of his buddy’s little girl, he didn’t have a choice.
From his seat on one of the windowsills of the screened-in back porch, he rested his beer bottle on his knee and looked through the sliding glass doors into the house.
Near the crowded dining table, the proud papa hugged his birthday girl, who was all dressed up in pink ruffles with a tiny bow in her nearly nonexistent hair. After one last kiss to her cheek, Greg handed the star of the show over to her mama.
Jason tried for a smile. The man sure did dote on his daughter.
In the three years since they’d met, he and Greg had put in a lot of miles traveling on the rodeo circuit. Back in those early days, they had both been single and fancy-free till Greg had first gotten roped by a woman, then hog-tied into becoming a daddy. Yet his buddy didn’t seem to see things that way.
From that point on, their trips included frequent slide shows as Greg thumbed through the latest photos his wife sent to his cell phone.
Jason shoved his hand into the back pocket of his jeans. His fingertips brushed the edge of his wallet. He had no photos on his phone, carried no pictures except his own on his driver’s license. But in that wallet he’d tucked a now worn and permanently creased copy of another child’s birth announcement.
Greg stepped out onto the porch and slid the glass door closed behind him. He frowned. “What are you doing out here, guarding the beer locker?”
He had left the house to get some space, some breathing room. But he couldn’t say that. “Just came out for a refill.”
Greg nodded at his half-empty bottle. “Doesn’t look like you got one. Or are you ready for another already?”
“No, this one’s still good. And I’ll be driving soon.” He moved to sit in one of the wooden porch benches and set the bottle on the wide arm. “Take a load off. All this master of ceremonies stuff must wear you out.”
“Never.” Greg took a nearby chair. “I’ve got lots of lost time to make up for.”
He meant his absence this season when they had been on the road, competing in rodeos across the country. Mere weeks away in total, while by comparison, Jason hadn’t been back to his hometown in years. He didn’t want to consider why or how he’d left Cowboy Creek. Yet, lately, both had been taking up too much space in his thoughts.
“We’re talking about me hanging up my spurs,” Greg said quietly.
“Giving up rodeo?” He might have done the same at one point. Now he couldn’t imagine making that choice. But Greg had his family to come back to. He had...himself.
Inside the house, both sides of Greg’s family had gathered around his wife and little girl, all of them making too much noise for them to overhear this conversation, even with the windows wide-open on this mild January day. But, like his buddy, he kept his voice low. “You really want to leave your share of the winnings to me?”
Greg laughed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind. You’re welcome to them. I don’t want to miss out on any more of my daughter’s life. And we want more kids. Soon, not down the road.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer, then continued, “Do you ever regret what happened with you and your wife?”
He stiffened. The question had come out of nowhere. Sure, he’d told Greg a long time ago that he’d gotten divorced before he’d hit the rodeo trail. What he hadn’t told him was that had come to pass partly because of his refusal to hang up his spurs. That was only one item on a long list of his ex-wife’s grievances.
After that lone conversation, he and Greg had never discussed it again. He had a feeling he knew why his buddy had brought it up now. “Listen, you may be settling into a rut as an old married man, but don’t go getting any ideas about me joining you in the trenches.”
“There’s a lot to be said about having a family to come home to.”
“Yeah, and there’s a lot I don’t need to say about that.” On that long-ago night over a few too many beers, he had told Greg all about the girl he’d left behind. The high-school-sweetheart-turned-wife who’d turned against him after their last rip-roaring fight. The wife who had wound up kicking him out of their apartment, the only place that had ever felt like home to him. He should have known better than to expect that to last. “Best day of my life, when I started following the rodeo.”
“I thought that, too, once upon a time.”
He rolled his eyes and exhaled heavily. “And if you’re planning to practice your storytelling skills on me, I may just take off again right now.”
“Can’t do that. We haven’t even had the cake yet.” Greg glanced into the house at the crowd around the table in the direction of a leggy redhead, one of his wife’s friends. “How’d the hot date go last night?”
Jason glanced at her, too, then away again. “It went cold fast,” he said shortly. He took another swig from his nearly empty bottle, partly to get the last mouthful of beer but mostly to distract Greg from more questions.
When he’d rung the doorbell of the woman’s apartment last night, she had come to the door dressed to kill. Her shiny blouse wouldn’t have needed more than a touch to slide right off, but the skintight leather pants sure would have required some assistance. Of course, considering her friendship with Greg’s wife and the fact it was a first date, his run around those bases would have happened only in his dreams.
“That was our first and last date,” he said firmly to Greg.
His interest had worn off quickly when she stepped out into the hallway. She began to pull the door closed so abruptly, she would have crushed her little boy in the gap—if Jason hadn’t yelled a warning at her. In her defense, the kid had appeared out of nowhere. And that’s just where she had sent him off to again.
The boy looked about five, not nearly old enough to be left alone, Jason knew. He’d been seven the first time his mother left him on his own, and even that wasn’t old enough. But after the first half-dozen times, he’d toughened up fast.
Yet this woman simply gave the boy an order to step back before she closed the door. No goodbye kiss or cuddle, not even a last-minute rumpling of his hair. And without a sign of anybody else in the house.
“You want to settle him in before we leave?” he asked while they still stood outside her apartment.
“Don’t worry about him. I’ve got a sitter.”
Her offhand care of the child left him wanting to shake his head in wonder. And then to cringe in shame. Who was he to criticize? And yet, the incident had left a sour taste in his mouth. Their evening had gone downhill from there, ending in an early night. When he arrived at the party this afternoon, they had nodded at each other as if they’d just met, then went their separate ways. No problem there. He’d become an expert at moving on.
Greg eyed him. “Don’t you think it might be time to forget about your ex and—”
“Long forgotten already,” he said firmly.
“—find yourself another woman? This time next year, you could have a little girl or boy of your own.”
“Already got one.” Dang. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. He owed the slip to his unease over last night and to the months Greg had been preoccupied with his baby. Thoughts of his own child had been on his mind so often lately, the words had come out almost naturally.
Greg stared at him. “Well, listen to this. You picked up a woman and never said a word to me?”
Yeah, he could go with that story and continue to keep his secret to himself.
No, he couldn’t. Greg wouldn’t rest until he’d learned every last thing he could about someone who didn’t exist. Sighing, he admitted, “Not a woman. I meant I’ve got a little boy.”
The other man’s jaw dropped for a moment. Then he grinned. “You’re kidding. How old?”
“Three.”
“I don’t believe this. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had a son, and you never thought to tell me a word about him? Not even after I started bragging about becoming a daddy?”
“Guess not.”
“Obviously not. Why didn’t you say something, man?”
Inside the house, Greg’s little girl gave a high-pitched giggle. He could picture her a year ago in the photo on Greg’s phone, all wrapped up in a pink-and-white baby blanket. He could see other views of her as she grew bigger, sprouted a little more hair, cut a couple of teeth.
Ages and stages he’d never gotten to see with his son. Thoughts he’d never had until a few months ago. Memories he’d never missed until Greg started with those danged photos.
Those memories had hit him hard last night, when his date had walked away from her child without a second look.
Her action was too similar to the thoughts he’d been dwelling on for months now. Too close to what he had once done to leave him in any mood for enjoying the evening. When he had left his hometown, he hadn’t been a daddy yet. Hell, he still wasn’t. Not in the full sense of the word. But he’d known the baby was on the way. And still, without once looking back, he’d walked away from his unborn son.
Shrugging, he looked at Greg. “What’s there to say?”
“The boy’s name, for starters. Who he takes after. When he was born, and where he is now.”
“Back in Cowboy Creek.”
“You’ve seen the boy?”
He shook his head.
The look on Greg’s face made him wish he hadn’t refused another beer. Giving his buddy the chance to play host might have derailed this entire conversation. “My wife was pregnant when we split up. I left town, and we never kept in touch.”
Greg sat looking at him as if he’d just sprouted a second pair of hands. “That’s not you, man. What the hell happened?”
He shrugged. “It was almost four years ago. You weren’t you then, either. We’ve both changed since then. Both grown up. Back then I was young and stupid,” he admitted, “and still too focused on the wrong things. Like having a good time and hanging out at the Cantina in Cowboy Creek with my friends. Like getting drunk and getting laid. And to hear my ex tell it, like funneling our cash reserves into any rodeo that ever happened by.”
He had his reasons for wanting to enter those rodeos, for needing to win, but Layne saw the cash going toward entry fees and believed only that he was wasting money they needed for other things. “She didn’t appreciate any of that, especially when she sat at home dealing with morning sickness.” He laughed, trying to shrug off his guilt. “How the heck can they call it morning sickness when it seems to last all day?”
“You got me there. But that still doesn’t tell me why you walked.”
He grasped the neck of his beer bottle in both hands. All these years later, the memory of that last fight still made him tense like a spring-coiled wire. “I didn’t walk, at least not at first. Not until my ex threw me out.”
I’d be better off without you. Layne’s voice had cracked on the words but she’d stood firm, her arms crossed over her chest and her chin held high. Her eyes were bright, not with the softness of tears but with the hard flint of anger.
“We’d gotten to the point we couldn’t say good morning without it leading to a fight,” he admitted. “When she told me to leave, I decided I was doing the right thing by going.”
“And your boy?”
Again, he shrugged. “She was only a few months pregnant. I’ve never laid eyes on the kid.”
“But you took care of him? You sent money home?”
“Sure, I did. Every month. And every month the envelope came back marked ‘return to sender.’” And the sight of Layne’s handwriting on every envelope that came in the mail acted like acid on an old burn, opening up the same wound.
You’ve left me alone one too many times, she had said the night he’d come home to find she’d piled his packed and travel-worn duffel bags outside their apartment door.
Then those envelopes had come back to him one too many times, and he’d finally given up sending them. Given up hope. Given up thoughts of ever seeing his son.
He shoved his hand into his back pocket again, grazing his wallet and running the details of the newspaper clipping inside it silently through his mind.
Scott Andrew Slater.
Born not to Layne McAndry but to Layne Marie Slater. She’d taken back her maiden name and put not one mention of his in the birth announcement. She had very likely wiped his memory from her mind.
Just as he’d forced himself to do to her for all these years.
* * *
JASON RAISED HIS fist in front of the apartment door, flinched as second thoughts hit him, and lowered his arm again.
Removing his Stetson, he scrubbed his forehead with one hand and assured himself he was doing the right thing. Close contact with two kids within two days last week had to mean something.
Yeah, something like fate deciding to rear up and head-butt him in the face, the way Burning Sage had almost done in that final ride in Cheyenne. The bull had wanted to take him down. Fate most likely just wanted to knock some sense into him.
Too late for that. He was here.
He raised his fist again and rapped on the apartment door. The wood sounded hollow, just the way his chest felt—if you didn’t count his heart banging against his ribs.
Inside the apartment, a television’s volume dipped, then a little boy’s voice cried, “Mommy!” in stunned outrage. A second later, the doorknob rattled. The door swung open, and he stood staring at the girl he’d left behind.
The wife he’d left behind.
She looked like hell warmed over twice.
Her beautiful golden-brown hair had been pulled up and stuck every which way by a couple of plastic combs. Her skin was paler than he remembered, her nose glowed as red as the taillights on his truck, and her sky blue eyes looked as glassy and bloodshot as if she hadn’t slept for a week.
Those eyes... In this situation, most folks’ eyes would have widened in surprise. Instead, she blinked once and went blank-faced, the way she had always done when confronted with something that shocked or alarmed her. Right now, he imagined she had received a double dose of both.
“Jason?” Her voice came out in a croak. She reached up to rest her hand against the gaping neckline of her fuzzy blue robe.
The ragged tissue she held couldn’t hide the sight of creamy skin patterned with a few small freckles. The vision did more for him than a slip-sliding blouse or skintight leather. It also triggered memories and feelings he forced himself to push aside. This conversation would be hard enough. He didn’t need his body following suit. To combat the reaction, he took another deep breath and let it out. “Layne.”
She covered a rattling cough with her forearm. “What do you want?”
Though he should have expected it, he was taken aback by the belligerent tone. He hadn’t been ready for the question, either. Despite the long drive from Dallas, Texas, to Cowboy Creek, New Mexico, he hadn’t prepared much for this meeting. Big mistake. He sure couldn’t tell her he’d come back to make certain his son was in good hands. “I know it’s been a while—”
“A while?” She coughed again, then shook her head, most likely in annoyance at him. “It’s been almost four years since we’ve seen each other, and we’ve had no contact except filing for the divorce—”
“And—”
“—which made the split permanent.”
“I know it did, but—”
“Legally permanent,” she said heavily, leaning forward as if to emphasize her point.
He frowned.
She kept coming. The quick glance he caught of her suddenly greenish pallor clued him in. She was halfway to unconsciousness and ready to drop.
As he caught her to him, the door behind her swung open. A little boy stood just inside the frame. And somewhere in the apartment behind the kid, a baby let out an earsplitting screech.
* * *
LAYNE DID THE best she could with toothbrush and mouthwash and comb, but it wasn’t much. And it was quick.
The symptoms she had been battling for two days now had gotten worse instead of better, and the short time on her feet showed her just how shaky this flu had left her. She gave thanks that when she had gone to answer the door, she hadn’t been holding the baby.
The last thing she remembered before passing out was the look of alarm on Jason’s face. When she had come to, she found herself cradled like a baby herself in his arms. She had fainted for only a second, he assured her. Still, ignoring her protests, he carried her into the small living room and deposited her on the couch.
Moments later, her stomach had heaved and she had bolted and here she was now, hiding in her bathroom the way she and her friends had hidden in the girls’ room at school when they wanted to exchange gossip about the boys.
The only boy she’d ever had eyes for was Jason.
She heard her son’s footsteps as he marched down the hall. He came to a stop in the bathroom doorway. As awful as she felt, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him. He and Jill were the lights of her life. Suddenly, he frowned, his eyebrows bunching together. She inhaled sharply, which led to another bout of coughing. Scott had her blue eyes and brown hair, but his frowning expression was pure Jason.
“Mommy sick?” he asked.
“Mommy’s better,” she said. She just didn’t know how long that would last.
“I’m hungry.”
The thought of food made her stomach quiver. “No problem, honey. How about—”
“Soup?”
She nodded. Luckily, she had made chicken soup a few weeks ago. The surplus she had stored in the freezer had gotten her through these past couple of days. She still had a large bowl of the soup in the refrigerator.
“Yes-s-s. Es-s-s. Soup for Scott for supper,” he chanted in a singsong, laughing. He was learning the alphabet from his babysitter, who ran a day care from her house. To reinforce his lessons, here at home she played sound and word games with him. The sentence game was his favorite, and she had been so proud of him the day he’d created that sentence all by himself.
“Yes, soup for Scott for supper,” she repeated in a singsong. “That sounds super, sweetie.”
He laughed again. “That man will have soup, too?”
She froze. No, that man will be long gone by suppertime. “I’m not sure about that.” She looked at the small clock she kept on the bathroom vanity and realized it was time to wake her daughter from her nap. “Come on, let’s go get the baby and start that soup.”
“Start soup for Scott for supper,” he chanted, his voice fading as he went back down the hall toward the living room.
She tightened the long belt of her fuzzy robe and took one last look in the mirror. The teenage girl who had once fallen for Jason cringed and longed to reach for her makeup bag. But the woman she’d become lifted her chin and nodded at the reflection in the mirror.
Let him deal with her just the way she was now. It served him right for showing up unannounced after all this time.
She wasn’t about to recall the way her heart had pounded and her head had swum and a tremor had run through her when she had opened the door to find him standing in the hallway. They were all simply reactions to the flu—and anyone could have passed out after getting hit with all those symptoms.
She also wasn’t about to dwell on the past or worry about the intervening years or feel embarrassed by what had happened just a few minutes ago. She was going to get rid of Jason. Again. And hope this time he stayed gone.
As she turned to leave the bathroom, Scott began to yell. “Help! Help! You’re not my daddy! Leave my sister alone!”
Every single word he screeched made her heart sink faster. She hurried down the hall and burst into the living room.
The baby lay in her playpen on the opposite side of the room, closer to the kitchen. Her beet-red face and gleaming eyes were sure signs she had woken up cranky and crying.
And, lost in thought, her mommy hadn’t heard a peep.
Scott had taken a stance with his back to the playpen and his arms outstretched toward Jason as if holding a wild animal at bay. Jason stood a couple of feet from him, his hands patting the air presumably to calm her son.
Fighting another wave of dizziness, she put her hand on the door frame. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
