The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

“He’s eleven!”

“I know, but apparently kids are doing it in kindergarten these days!”

“Come on—”

“I’m barely exaggerating. He doesn’t look eleven, and eleven-year-old girls don’t look eleven. And it’s not like I think he’s going to have sex tomorrow, I just…God, I just want him to be safe.” Jeremiah ran his hands through his hair, the black curls looping around his fingers like rings.

“You’re a good man,” she whispered.

Don’t, she tried telling herself. Do not fall for this man and his doubt and worry and heartbreaker’s grin.

But she worried that in many ways it was too late. It would be so easy to fall for him, she worried it was already done. She’d fallen and didn’t even realize it.

“Because I gave an eleven-year-old a condom?”

“You care for those boys.”

He carefully organized the cutlery into a tidy square in front of him, not looking at her. “Then why won’t Ben talk to me?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know how you feel.”

He leaned back and stared at her as if she’d suggested he take off his clothes and dance on the pinball game. “They know. Of course they know. I’m here, aren’t I?”

She’d touched a nerve. A terrible nerve. But she couldn’t back down. Her investment in this family was too great. “Maybe they need to hear you say it.”

He was blank-faced, and it was obvious that the thought had never occurred to him. So well-intentioned but lost that she couldn’t resist him. She reached over for his hand, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles until he twisted his hand around and clutched her fingers. His fingers slid between hers and she felt the ripple and tremble across her skin, like a stone thrown into still waters. She was disturbed, restless at his touch.

“My parents—” He cleared his throat. “My parents were really private people. Annie, too. Ben comes by it honestly, all this silent brooding. Words…important words don’t come easy for us.”

Carefully, not wanting to startle him, or stop him talking, but unable to resist, she reached up and touched the hair falling over his forehead. The silky curl twined around her fingers, her own ring.

“You know Annie didn’t even tell me she was sick until it was too late?” His pain was obvious, needles buried deep under his skin that were painful to pull out. “It’s not like I could have done anything, but…you know, I could have been there. Supported her and the kids. But that’s the way she was. It’s the way we all are.”

“Maybe the boys need something different.”

“What if I don’t know how to do that?” he asked.

“Then maybe you need to learn.”

He sighed deeply, as if sucking down all these thoughts, burying them back where they’d come from. Obliterating them as if they’d never been.

Don’t, she thought, you need to deal with this stuff.

But then he smiled and the moment was over.

“Thanks for coming out,” he said. “The boys appreciate it.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” She laughed, pointing to the empty seats.

“Well…I appreciate it.”

His knee pressed hers under the table and they were curved toward each other, two parts of a circle connected at the knees and hands.

The other night rushed back in sensory bites, the rough warmth of his hands on her stomach, the sound of his zipper in the quiet, his voice groaning “Baby” in her ear.

Her heartbeat pounded between her legs.

“My question,” Jeremiah said, cocking his head, studying her, “is that if you’re a woman who has only dated three men, what were you doing flashing your breasts at Reese McKenna?”

She laughed, not breaking contact.

“It was the State championship, Jeremiah. I had to do my part.”

“How…how is it a woman like you is single?” He asked it as if he were truly mystified and she preened under his compliment. She was quite a catch, if she did say so herself.

“I’m driven. Or was.” She pulled her hands away. “Once it got to a certain point, no matter how hard I fell in love, it always felt like I had to make a choice. My career, my work, or marriage. I couldn’t be fully committed to both of them.” The flirtatious gleam in his eyes had vanished and her stomach dropped. “Too deep for you, Stone? You hyperventilating?”

“No, no…I was thinking I know exactly what you mean. With the boys. I could have a relationship, or I could be there for the boys. I can’t have both. I can’t be pulled in two directions.”

Funny, but when he said it she saw the ways in which that wasn’t totally true. How the right person, the right relationship, wouldn’t make him feel like he had to make a choice. The right relationship would feel like support. A team.

She’d never seen it that way in her own life. And it felt as if someone had turned on a light in a room she’d never realized was pitch black.