The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

“Of course!” She smiled at Aaron, who blushed. “It was a great game. Aaron was the star.”

“Really?”

“Scored the winning goal,” Aaron said, trying to be cool.

Oh, kid, Jeremiah thought, you kill me. You really do.

“Well,” Jeremiah said, beaming at Aaron, messing up his hair. “This calls for a celebration.”

“I thought Casey ate all grandma’s cake—”

“No. I was thinking pizza. In town.”

From inside the house Casey whooped and Aaron pulled his hockey bag from where it had been crammed in the Civic’s trunk.

“Sound good?” Jeremiah asked.

“Sounds great! You coming?” Aaron asked Lucy, his eyes alight.

“Ahhhh…” She glanced over at Jeremiah as if she, too, was aware of how every decision somehow changed the scales in their lives.

It’s just fun, Stone. Just some simple fun.

“Please,” he said. “It would be great to have you.”

She drummed her fingers against the roof of the car, her bracelets and rings making a tinkling music. “Okay.”

“Cool,” Aaron crowed and walked off, leaving Jeremiah in the twilight with Lucy.

“I haven’t been to the arcade in twenty years,” she said.

“It’s where I take all my dates.”

Her eyebrows popped. “Is this a date?”

“Hell yes. Meat lover’s pizza and three half-sized chaperones? This is top-shelf dating, Lucy. You better prepare yourself for some serious romance.”

“Oh, I’m prepared.” She tucked one leg back into the car, still watching him over the hood with her glittering eyes. “I’ll meet you there.”

When Lucy had considered having a fun affair with Jeremiah Stone, Pizza World and Arcade had not been a part of her vision. She sat at a table, waiting for Jeremiah and the boys, surrounded by neon lights and the bleeps and buzzers of video games.

Pizza World had not changed one iota since her youth. Maybe the games had been updated, but the booths, the red candles, the pictures of the town’s early days—still the same.

And for some reason, that made her happy. The whole world changed faster than she could get hold of, but right here, here it was the same. There was comfort in that. Comfort in knowing who she was here. Instead of trying to change to fit the world she lived in, she didn’t have to do anything to fit in here.

She just was.

It had been five long years since she just was. Since she hadn’t felt compelled to be more, to more people.

The lights flickered and beeped around her and she thought of a wide, thick collar necklace. Amber stones set in gold. The colors of California dust.

She jerked, the Coke in her hand sloshing over her fingers.

Before she even realized what she was doing, she reached for her purse, the notebook she kept there, but then she remembered there was no notebook.

That belonged to a different life.

Thrown by the inspiration, the creative thought, she didn’t notice Jeremiah standing in front of her.

“Hey,” he said, “you all right?”

“Fine.” It took her a moment, but finally she shook her head and smiled up at him. “Where are the boys?”

“I gave them each a roll of quarters and they scattered to the winds.” His long, lean body draped over the chair across from her. So elegant and controlled, graceful even. His body had been sculpted by work and life, and he wore his power easily. Her fingers twitched, her body purred.

He was gorgeous.

The teenage girl who’d brought her the Coke came back, blushing and tucking her hair behind her ears.

“Hey there,” Jeremiah said, grinning at the girl. “We’re gonna need a pitcher of Coke and a pizza. Large.” He glanced sideways at Lucy. “You don’t want anything crazy on your pizza do you?”

“Crazy? Like what?”

“Like vegetables?”

“Tomatoes are madness, aren’t they?”

“The Stone men don’t want vegetables touching their meat.”

She snorted, but he wasn’t kidding. He said meat with a straight face.

“Go for it. It’s your party.”

“Meat Lover’s,” he told the server. “Extra sausage, extra ground beef.”

“Oh my lord,” Lucy sighed, heavily appalled. “Add a side salad,” she told the server. “Ranch dressing on the side.”

The server nodded and walked away, joining her comrades behind the register who all whispered behind their hands while staring at Jeremiah.

“I remember being here when I was twelve years old and the servers stared at you from the cash machine. Nothing has changed.”

“If you clap your hands they’ll scatter like birds,” he said, turning toward her, his back to his audience.

“You think?”

He lifted his hands, clapped once and the girls split in four different directions. She howled with laughter.

“You should see what they do to Aaron. They practically stalk him.”

“I can imagine.”

“The first time we came here and I saw how the girls looked at him I freaked out, turned back home and gave him the talk.”

“The talk?”

“Straight up birds and bees.”

“How did that go?”

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe because I’m his uncle and not his mom or dad, I don’t know. But he asked questions and I tried to be as honest as I could. Gave him a handful of condoms—”