The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

And what are you doing? she asked herself. Hiding like a girl scared of her shadow? What happened to your fight? She’d been thinking about A.J., lying in bed counting her lonely moments like a rosary.

With the kind of belligerence born of being thwarted and embarrassed, she threw some ham and cheese between two pieces of wheat bread and slapped it on a plate.

It wasn’t like she knew what she was angry about. Or what she wanted to fight for. She just knew she was angry. And that was enough to send her outside and across the parking area to stand in front of him, scattering stones with the heels of her boots.

He glanced up at her and his knife slipped.

“Damn,” he muttered and lifted his thumb to his mouth.

“Did you cut yourself?” She put the sandwich down on the ground and reached for him but he shook his head.

“I’m fine. Just a knick.” He smiled around his thumb as if to convince her.

Her heart thudded hard in her chest at that sweet smile of his and she dropped her hands.

“Didn’t mean to spook you,” she said.

“Don’t worry none.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, furtive and searching all at the same time.

She liked it.

All of those men at her church in LA—widowers and divorcees, asking her out for coffee or ice cream after prayer group, handsome men, devout and reliable, some of them even rich—and they’d left her cold. Unmoved.

Why this man? she wondered.

“I brought you a sandwich.” She pointed to the sad sandwich beside his foot.

“It’s nine a.m.,” he pointed out, and she actually willed herself not to blush.

“Thought you might be hungry.”

He pulled his thumb from his mouth and she saw the thin trickle of blood leak from the pad. “You don’t have to do that.”

“You need a bandage.”

“I’m fine, Sandra. I’ve had worse cuts in my life.”

The silence stalled and sputtered around them. “What happened with Carla?”

“She left.”

Sandra laughed before she could help herself. “Any idea why?”

“I told her to.”

Sandra nodded as if that made sense. As if that were the wisest course of action. “They’re running out of people willing to come out here and meet you.”

“Good.”

“You mean to make it hard on them?”

“I mean to not have a babysitter.” He went back to his wood, the knife in his hand, despite the fact that he was bleeding. Despite the fact that his hands trembled half the damn day, despite the fact that she was standing right in front of him. Itching. Absolutely itching for a fight.

“It’s so simple for you, isn’t it? Damn what everyone else wants or needs.” She was nearly yelling and Walter gave her one astonished look before glancing back down at the wood in his hands.

The impulse to rip that wood out of his hands startled her.

I’m so damn tired of being ignored by the men in my life.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Sandra.”

“Then what do you want?”

His eyes glittered, hot and then cold, and she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even begin to talk.

Yes, she thought, this is it. The beginning of something. Anything.

“Thank you.” He attacked the wood as if it had attacked him. “For the sandwich, for taking care of this ranch like you have all these years. We are in your debt. I…am in your debt. But please—” His eyes held worlds of sadness. “Leave me alone.”

You said you were going to fight, but you avoid me.

You love me and you can’t even look at me.

I don’t know how to do this. How to feel this way and not be ashamed.

But I am not going to leave you alone.

“No.”

“I hurt you, Sandra. Put hands on you.”

“You thought I was Vicki.”

“Doesn’t matter. A.J. would skin me alive.”

A.J. A.J. It always came back to A.J. For her, for everyone around her, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t keep up the act anymore. Years of the dutiful wife and she was sick unto death of it.

Enough, the tiger of her temper roared. Enough.

“A.J. didn’t love me.”

Walter nearly dropped the knife. “What…what are you talking about? Sandra, you were married for thirty years. He worshipped you.”

She laughed, unable to stop it. “Worshipped? What a funny word to use.”

“Sandra. You’re confused, you’re—”

“Do. Not. Tell me what I am,” she said. “He didn’t love me. Not…not like a husband should.”

“He was a hard man, quiet.”

“It was more than that, Walter.”

“What…what are you talking about?” He stared at her, a lost kid, confused.

Oh, what was she doing? Why was she going to inflict this secret on Walter?

Because I am stuck behind it.

Lost behind it.

Tired of carrying it.

She couldn’t admit she wanted this man, this damaged but determined man. She certainly couldn’t fight for him when the whole world believed she and A.J. had been happy.

“What are you saying, Sandra?”