The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

“You gonna be okay?”

If he was a dad worth his salt, he’d stew on that phone call for the remainder of the night.

He harrumphed. “Yeah. If this kid ain’t the death of me first. Twelve’s a hard age as it is. Just wish I knew how to reach him. Feel like I’ve tried everything. He needs a momma, and I ain’t it.”

“Twelve was a hard age,” Heart muttered, remembering that shy twelve-year-old and the chaos surrounding the accident, the blinding, flashing emergency lights, the EMTs shouting, “Found a pulse! Watch her neck! Other one’s gone! DOS!” the static of their walkie-talkies, her weak whimpers, police dashing to and fro, the jostling of the ambulance, the pain…excruciating pain, so excruciating that the chaos seemed warped and bleary, as if seen from within a fish bowl. The empty hospital room bathed in moonlight. “Add on top of that, he doesn’t have a mother. He probably feels cheated.”

Heart owed Tyler that story in return for his confidence in her, but now didn’t feel like the right time, and her story didn’t have a happy ending. He might have alluded to a contentious relationship with his dad after spinning donuts, but everyone in the Dixon brood seemed to be alive and well. His kids, even, had survived a harrowing experience. Monarch had never gotten that future. Heart would never continue the family line. And as he talked about his kids, that realization that she’d never have kids, would never know what it felt like to feel a baby growing within her belly, ached.

This was why distress wasn’t her M.O. She couldn’t change the past. Only make peace with it. Which was easiest done with cheap hookups, transient work, and the wind in her hair. She just wished making peace with it wasn’t a constant emotion she had to negotiate.

“After Seth, we tried one last time to make a go of it. Ended up with Stevie. In hindsight, it only made it worse.” Deep breath. “She didn’t want ’em,” he whispered so softly, it was as if he was trying to unravel a thread from a spool.

“Seth probably knows.” Heart’s thumb traced circles upon his navel.

“There’s no way he could—”

“Trust me,” she interrupted solemnly. “He doesn’t need to hear the words to know he wasn’t wanted.”

Tyler’s arm tightened on her. As if she was the one deserving comfort. She nearly scoffed, her hand tightening upon his belly, resuming soft caresses over that steel grate beneath his T-shirt. Then he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small piece of paper, and held it to her.

“I got this for you. Almost forgot. They had ’em at the concessions in the prize machines.”

She took it. A gift? Oh, he was straying far from the no-attachments agreement, but then again, so was she, promising exclusivity and attempting to be his shoulder to lean on… Her eyes fell to it. Her fingers holding it trembled. It wasn’t a piece of paper. She swallowed hard.

Why the hell was this man making her feel so much? She traced her finger over the butterfly sticker’s wings. Felt him watching her.

“You had one on Buford,” he said. She cracked a smile at the twist of his lips at the name of her old truck, in spite of the mist dampening her eyes. “Figured your new truck needed one, too.”

Her eyes lifted to his. For all his brooding, this man was beyond sweet. He was definitely going to be a heartbreaker. “Thank you.”

“You sure you’re okay?” His eyes furrowed at the sight of her unshed tears, his voice reverberating through his chest against her ear.

She nodded. Choked out a laugh. “I’m fine. Just me, being weird.” She bobbed her head back and forth. “Which shouldn’t surprise you by now.”

His mouth pulled up into a grin. He pecked a kiss to the top of her head and nestled her closer like she was a stuffed animal, slouching in the seat to get comfortable, and propping his foot on the emergency brake so his knees straddled the steering. His eyes fixed on the screen.

“I think I like your weird, Tie-Dye. You’re different.” His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on her shoulder, the movie action flashing across his face as another roar rumbled through the bass. “You’re like a breath of air I didn’t know I needed.”

Her breath caught. Arm tightened upon him. Fingers tightened on the sticker. Butterflies always remind me that I’m where I belong.

“I think we’re beyond attachments, Ty,” she whispered, listening to his heartbeat.

His hand slid off her shoulder to palm her head, sifting his fingers into her locks and cupping her to his chest.

His lips pressed to her hair. “I know.”

*

Heather lay onher stomach as his fingers traced her butterfly tattoo, her back gloriously naked.

How long had Seth known his mother’s name? Would his son try to find her? Should he reach out to Isabella and warn her so she’d know he hadn’t violated her gag and that Seth was sleuthing her out on his own? It had been easier to open up to Heather than he’d thought it would be. He’d blatantly broken rule number two after definitely breaking rule number one, and Toby had been right. It meant something that he was crossing all these lines. He’d opened up about his kids, and he supposed, deep down, he had wanted to know how she’d handle it.

Heather might not think she was mom material, but he wondered… She ran this kids’ program, was a godmom to Charlie’s daughter, and even in his anguish at the drive-in, he’d seen her natural ease playing with the toddler. He sensed a longing in her whenever she looked at his boys’ clay art projects. Her family wasn’t close, and he didn’t know why, but he sensed she needed family she didn’t have. Needed roots to ground her, but was skittish. Instead, flitted from one sensation to the next. Treating herself as… Discardable. Because she doesn’t feel valuable.

Could Heather ever become someone more? If so, his kids would be a big part of her life.

Her computer lay open and asleep on the opposite bedstand, her notebook sat out, abandoned when he’d distracted her with a palm sliding up her thigh. He’d been propped back on pillows reading a legal journal and working on sorting through the courthouse documents he’d picked up in town the day before when she’d come to bed. She’d turned on soft classical on her phone and slouched back, preparing one of her adjunct course syllabi. They’d worked side by side in amicable silence as soft Corelli played on her Pandora, knees and feet idly touching, as if they always sat up in bed in lamplight beneath the blankets working, like a married couple, he thought. He’d never felt such comfortable silence. Isabella had never shared the space with him like that.