The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

“Fifteen years ago. And it was for luck.”

As if that made it reasonable, she thought.

For lack of a better place, she hung the cowboy hat in her hand over a hockey stick that was jammed into the cushion of a chair.

“It was the State football game.”

“It must have worked. He won that game, didn’t he?”

“Apparently my breasts have powers even I don’t understand.”

Huge points to Jeremiah, who didn’t glance down at her chest, didn’t in anyway ogle her or joke. In fact, he didn’t even look at her. He jerked a faded red, white and blue quilt off the back of the couch and draped it over his drunken houseguest, whose face was resting on a clean pair of little-boy superhero underwear.

“Thanks for bringing him back,” Jeremiah said again.

“I couldn’t let him drive.”

“I shouldn’t have let him go.”

Lucy glanced around the house, waiting for his sister to come out, wrapped in a robe, to give them all hell for being too loud. “Where’s Annie?”

Jeremiah cleared his throat, bending down to pick up the laundry he’d shoved off the couch. His tee-shirt slid up his back, revealing pale skin dotted with freckles over hard muscle. Just at the edge of his shirt she saw the snaky tail end of red scar tissue—a healed wound she didn’t want to think about. The faded denim of his jeans clung to that man like a faithful lover, and she had to wonder if the Hallelujah Chorus didn’t ring out every time he bent over.

“She died. Last spring.”

“What?” She tore her eyes away from his body, feeling like a degenerate. “Oh my God, Jeremiah…what happened?”

He stood up with a stack of small blue jeans in his hands.

“Cancer.” He threw the jeans into the overflowing laundry basket. “It was fast.”

“I’m so sorry, Jeremiah. I didn’t know—”

“It’s all right, Lucy. I don’t expect the world to keep up with all the Stones’ tragedies.”

“Where are your nephews?” she asked.

“Sleeping,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s ten o’clock at night.”

“Are you…” It was just so weird to think of Jeremiah Stone as the guardian of three small boys. Jeremiah Stone was a cowboy sex symbol. He got interviewed on ESPN, that footage of him getting trampled by a bull had been a YouTube sensation. He dated beautiful country music stars, and did not, definitely did not, fold superhero underwear.

He sighed and smiled as if he couldn’t believe it either. “In charge of the boys? Yep.”

Jeremiah ran a hand through those ebony curls and then set it on his hip, looking around the room as if it were the sight of a national disaster and he just didn’t know what to do next.

“I’m so sorry,” Lucy murmured, at a total loss.

“Yeah. Me too.”

The silence pulsed for a moment and she opened her mouth to make her exit just as Beyoncé started singing “All The Single Ladies” from her bag.

“Is that your phone?” Jeremiah asked.

“It’s really more of an anthem,” she said, avoiding the question and the phone call.

He laughed and the somber mood was broken.

“You want a drink?” he asked, cutting through the melancholy like a knife. He was smiling again, and a smiling Jeremiah Stone was a difficult temptation to resist. Like saying no to chocolate-covered potato chips or a clearance sale at Macy’s. And it wasn’t like she had a better offer.

“I’d love a beer.”

“Great.” He took a big step over the laundry. “Let’s hope Reese didn’t drink them all.”

She followed him into the kitchen, which was in about the same shape as the living room. Not dirty, really, just very messy. Cluttered.

Plates filled a drying rack and cups littered the sink. A round table at the far end of the room was covered in backpacks and school books. A plate with half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sat on chair.

Jeremiah was a daddy. The Sexiest Daddy on the Planet, but that still didn’t help get her head around it.

“Here you go,” Jeremiah said, handing her a beer. “Let’s have—” He turned to look at the table and winced. “It’s nice out. Let’s sit on the porch.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

He cranked open the sliding glass door and she tried not to notice the casual nature of his strength, the way the worn tee-shirt flowed like water over muscles that bunched and released every time he moved.

“Lucy?” Her eyes jerked to his and she caught him laughing. At her. What the hell, she thought, grinning back at him, the man had to be used to being stared at. Men who looked like him got stared at. It was a rule. “You coming?”

“Right behind you.”

The porch was a wide patio filled with more sporting equipment. Jeremiah sat down on one of the steps, his feet in the grass, and she sat next to him. The air was cool, finding her skin under the thin jersey she wore, but sitting close to Jeremiah was like sitting next to a sun-warmed rock.