The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

While sketching the hammered gold ring, more ideas came to her. A wide white-gold band with a garnet in a thick circular setting. Medieval looking.

As if it were someone else doing it, she watched what appeared under her pen.

Five rings. Wedding bands for both the bride and the groom. One-of-a-kind pieces.

Meredith Van Loan, a boutique owner in Santa Monica, would love these, she thought. Too bad Meredith Van Loan wasn’t speaking to her after that mass-produced horseshoe necklace debacle.

“Lucy?”

She turned back to the bed and the cowboy sitting in pooled sheets. The moonlight filtering through the windows cast the muscles of his chest and arms in shadow, making him look as if he’d been dipped in silver.

She smiled at the thought. This was the way her brain used to work; everything was an extension of her work and her materials.

“You all right?” Jeremiah asked.

“I…I think I am. Or maybe I will be. I’m not sure yet.”

“You’ve lost me, Lucy.”

You found me, she thought, but didn’t say. Perhaps the argument could be made that all she’d really needed was a few weeks away from her work.

Away from that city that I never loved and that never loved me.

Perhaps the argument could be made that she’d only really needed to be home again. Back where inspiration had struck the first time.

But looking at the increasingly nervous cowboy on the bed she knew, in that secret heart of hers, that this man had somehow seen her back to herself. Like walking her to her front door after an absence.

I don’t love him, she thought. But I will. Soon.

She crossed the carpet to the foot of the bed and then, slowly, crawled up the messy sheets to him. At her approach, he grinned and leaned against the headboard, the muscles of his chest and stomach flexing and relaxing, standing in relief under his skin.

“You inspire me.”

“Me?”

She put a hand on his shoulder and it took very little pressure to get him to shift and roll over on his stomach. His back was split by the long surgical scar along his spine. He could have died. Lost the use of his legs.

“My scar?” He shot her a dubious look. “Inspired you?”

“All of you,” she said and kissed his scar. How do I bring you back to you? she wondered. How do I return you to your front door?

“Lucy,” he whispered and rolled back over. He looked pained and she let the matter drop, kissing her way across his chest, the beautiful muscles covered in silken skin, sprinkled with curly hair.

She pushed the sheet away from his lap, revealing his erection, the long, dusky length of it. He hissed though his teeth and the air became oddly charged with all of the things she wanted to say to him.

How beautiful he was, and kind and generous. How brave he was in the face of all he was up against, how courageous despite knowing he was failing in so many ways.

But he wouldn’t want to hear it.

So she curled herself against his legs and used her mouth in other ways.

15

Sandra heaved, every muscle straining, her feet slipping on the rug, and she still wasn’t strong enough to shift the mattress.

This was why women needed husbands. To lift things.

She’d spent twenty-four hours hiding in her room and she was done with that. What this room needed was to be cleaned. Top to bottom. The cobwebs and the ghosts and the regrets—all needed to be swept out.

“Good Lord, Sandra, what are you doing?” Walter’s voice startled her and she dropped the mattress, which knocked over the bedside table.

I shouldn’t have left that door open, she thought. She’d known he’d been prowling around his bedroom, had heard the shuffle and thump of his gait. Could feel him through the wood and stone—his concern. His…pity.

Walter rushed forward to set the table right and Sandra caught her breath, leaning against the footboard on her bed. She used to do this job no problem. Funny what a few extra years and a soft life in the city would take away from a woman.

Walter used his knee to push the mattress back onto the box spring as if it were made of air.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Leave, she thought, please leave. Go. I should never have said anything. I should have taken that secret to my grave. Just like A.J. did.

She turned to face him, ready to tell him to leave, but instead clapped a hand over her mouth.

Pink as a little pig, he was.

“You can laugh,” he grumbled, wincing as he pressed his fingers to his sunburned face. “It’s funny as hell.”

“That’s what you get for spending so much time outside.”

“No, that’s what I get for having spent too much time inside. What are you trying to do here?” He pointed to the bed.