The Cowboy's Unexpected Family

“I apologize for dumping that on you,” she said, slightly formal, as if she, too, was aware of how the atmosphere between them was suddenly riddled with storm clouds.

“It’s all right. I’m dumping Ben on you.” He thought about the stress she must be under. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, it sounds like you’ve got enough on your plate.”

“I don’t have anything on my plate.” She laughed. “That’s the problem. Trust me, Ben will be a welcome diversion.”

“All right.” He sighed and pushed himself up to his feet. She followed, the foot of distance between them crackling with awkward awareness. “So...Thursday.”

“Sounds good.”

He felt like he should hug her but it seemed strangely forward and she held herself so stiffly, but when he held out his hand to shake she lifted her arms as if to hug him and then dropped one just as he lifted his arms to hug her.

They laughed awkwardly, like strangers after a one-night stand.

And then, she lifted her palm and smacked his hand. A high five. They sealed the deal like they were in junior high basketball.

God, he thought as he walked away. Could that have been any worse?

That could not have been any worse, Lucy thought. If one of them had spontaneously burst into flames, that would not have been any more uncomfortable or strained.

A high five? Really?

She tried not to watch Jeremiah walk away, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. The wind blew his shirt against his skin, outlining the muscles fanning up from his lean hips out to wide shoulders, caressing the thick dip in the middle as if to tease her. One big na na na boo boo, you can’t have this.

She’d taken care of that sweet attraction, the electric awareness, and replaced it with a graceless disdain.

And that, she told herself, feeling sick with her own shame, is why you aren’t telling anyone about closing down your company. She already felt like a failure; she didn’t need everyone in her life confirming it.

“What were you thinking?” she asked herself, bending over to pick up the water bottles. She scattered the strawberries in the columbine.

That moment of weakness on her part had been inspired by his moment of weakness. When he’d admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing with Ben and that he needed help, she’d turned to pudding.

His vulnerability, that heart-wrenching honesty that he wore so painfully, so terribly uncomfortably, had unlocked her.

As if his grief had been a key to all of her secrets.

She kicked the mud and dirt off the soles of her Doc Martens, brushed off the shovel and clippers she’d found in the barn, and headed back inside to tell her mom about Ben.

She could do this. The knowledge was a little seed in her gut. And she was going to protect that seed, feed it. Not just for her own sake. But for Jeremiah.

The guy needed a break as much as she did.

The cell phone in her pocket rang and she dug it out. Joey. Again. On a Sunday afternoon.

She answered the phone. “I’m on my way.”

7

The dark was a welcome embrace to Sandra as she sat in the corner of the couch, wrapped in her mother’s thin red shawl that always made her think of fresh tomatoes and God.

The fringe at the corners was worn—she’d been running the silk through her fingers like the beads on the rosary for over twenty years.

It was Tuesday night and she sat in the dark and tried—with all the power of her prayer and the grace of her faith—to control her hate. It was hard with the sweetness of her memories growing bitter on her tongue.

And that bitterness was turning to an anger that churned in her belly.

Mother used to tell her, when Sandra was a girl and came home from school with scrapes and black eyes and skinned knuckles, that the only way to get rid of her anger was to pray.

Mother forced prayer upon her: daily mass, Catholic School, special meetings with the priest.

But sometimes prayer didn’t work. And sometimes a person needed a fight to vent their anger.

This house she’d cared for with her own two hands—baptizing the floor and the stove, the kitchen and every meal made here for twenty-five years with her blood, sweat and tears—this house was strange to her now.

And Walter just broke her heart. She knew Walter loved her, could feel it in the desperate way he looked at her, as if he were drowning and she was his only chance at survival. Walter’s wife had been right in her worry, on Walter’s side. Not Sandra’s.

He was not a man for love. Not for her, anyway, maybe not for anyone. Well, except A.J. A.J. had loved Walter when the rest of the world had thrown their hands at the heavens on his behalf.