The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

Before she could make any kind of response, Ben came up to the table. “I need more quarters.”

“Hello to you, too,” Jeremiah said.

Ben glanced sideways at her. “Hey.” He turned back to Jeremiah. “Can I have more quarters?”

“I told you when we came in that roll was all you got.”

“That sucks.”

“Ben.” Jeremiah didn’t yell but his tone was stony. Implacable. She wondered what Jeremiah would do if he knew how Ben had been swearing at her the other day.

“Sorry,” Ben muttered and slid down in the seat opposite her, his eyes on the edge of the table. Utterly and totally disengaged.

What will bring you back? she wondered.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask how things went last Friday,” Jeremiah said, stretching his arm out across the back of the seats, his fingertips inches from Ben, as if he wanted to touch him but knew what his reception would be.

I should tell Jeremiah, she thought. Tell him the truth. That it was awful. That Ben wasn’t doing anything she asked. That she was failing, even at this. That things weren’t better, not like he thought. Not like he wanted.

But Jeremiah was looking at her, the creases between his eyes gone, the heavy weight of responsibility off his shoulders. He was relieved things seemed to be going well between her and Ben. She couldn’t burst that for him, not yet.

But after the things he’d told her, what happened between them, lying to him felt…utterly wrong. They could be the bad guy together, maybe. Share this load.

Telling him was the right thing to do.

Inwardly, she braced herself. “Jeremiah—”

“Fine.” Ben lifted his eyes and looked right at Lucy, as if daring her to contradict him. Daring her to tell the truth. “We worked in the garden and stuff.”

What was this kid doing? she wondered, trying to find his angle.

“Yeah?” Jeremiah asked, looking pleased.

The silence stretched and she found herself too intrigued and maybe too cowardly to set things right.

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed and Ben grinned at her. “Things are going fine.”

13

Thursday morning through the kitchen window Sandra watched Mia and Carla, the latest applicant for housekeeper and nurse, approach Walter where he sat in the sun near the barn doors.

If anyone were to ask Sandra, and no one ever did, after Walter’d chased away the last two, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with this applicant. Carla looked mean. Looked like the kind of woman who overcooked meat and didn’t like kids. Might pinch her mother when she moved too slow.

Maybe that’s the kind of person Walter needs, she thought. Someone who wouldn’t care what he thought of them. Would only care about him as long as she was paid.

Would let him sit out there and whittle all damn day. Turning big sticks into little sticks.

The interview was brief. Mia said something, smiling in that big way of hers that meant she was trying real hard to be pleasant when pleasant didn’t taste good.

Walter didn’t look up, but seemed to be saying something. Mia hung her head, defeat in every line of her body, and after a second Carla made a vulgar gesture, turned around and walked to her car.

Leaving.

Mia was saying something to Walter who only shrugged, like some kind of spoiled, surly teenager. Mia threw up her hands and left, getting into her truck and driving away, kicking up dust.

Walter looked up, watching Mia drive away, and then, as if he knew she was watching him, he looked at the house. Right at her.

Like a schoolgirl caught peeping, she whirled and ducked out of the way.

Ridiculous, she thought, her hand on her hammering heart. You are ridiculous.

Since the touch of his lips on her wrist, she’d been rattled around him. As if a layer of skin had been removed and every glance, every breeze, made her all too aware of her nerve-endings.

Sixty-two years old and she felt like a girl.

She used to feel this way about A.J. before they got married. Every touch of his hand as he passed her the hymnal at church would send her into ecstatic contemplations. Fevered daydreams.

Before it all went cold.

Stupid, she told herself. It was a kiss. On her wrist. From a man she didn’t much like. Had she totally lost her mind?

But it wasn’t just the kiss. Not totally. I will fight, he’d said in that detox-induced nightmare. And her spirit, wayward and sleeping since childhood, liked that.

I will fight.

And he was making good on that promise. He wasn’t going to be cared for and tended like a child. He made his own breakfast these days, forced her out of the kitchen when it was time to do the dinner dishes.

“You’ve done enough,” he’d said quietly last night, loading the dishwasher.

He was chewing up and spitting out all these housekeepers coming to apply. And it was rude, but he was not going to be pushed around and she respected that. Liked that. Was…proud of him.