Cowboy Comes Home

Cowboy Comes Home

Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Anna Fleming was sure no one could see her.

She stood in the back of Good Shepherd Church in a dimly lit corner and watched the wedding ceremony. It was everything she had ever dreamed of for herself and the embodiment of all the dreams she had lost. A sad little sigh escaped her, but almost at once she lifted her chin and reminded herself not to wallow. It was always wiser to count one’s blessings.

She was a mousy woman, small and bland looking in a shapeless brown dress and sensible shoes. Her dark hair was drawn back severely, and her wide brown eyes peered at the world from behind gold-rimmed glasses. Those glasses were the most flamboyant part of her apparel, but they were nothing out of the ordinary.

And that was how she liked it, she told herself as she watched Sheriff Tate’s daughter marry the policeman from Los Angeles. No one noticed her, no one at all, and in her invisibility and anonymity, she found the only safety she had ever known.

Reverend Fromberg, a gentle man in his late forties, read the vows in a sonorous voice that reached the back of the church without difficulty.

Anna listened to the words and wondered what it would be like to trust someone enough to make those promises. She couldn’t imagine it. Trust, she had long ago learned, was more likely to be betrayed than fulfilled.

Stifling a weary sigh, she turned quietly and slipped out the side door into the vestibule, where she descended the stairs into the church basement. The room was brightly lighted and decorated for the reception and supper to follow the wedding. Anna walked swiftly around, checking to be sure that everything was in order. The caterers were putting last-minute touches on everything, and it wasn’t really her responsibility, but she checked anyway. This was her church, and she was secretary to Reverend Fromberg, as well as leader of the youth group. She couldn’t help but feel that whatever happened on church property reflected on her employer, and upon herself.

Satisfied, she darted back toward the stairway, planning to vanish back into the shadows in the church above, but found her way blocked by the looming bulk of the man known to everyone as Cowboy. He wasn’t a large man, but he was solidly built, with dark hair and dark eyes, and a face that looked as if it had seen a great deal of hardship and sorrow. Anna was scared of him for no other reason than that she didn’t know him, or anything about him, really.

Being caught by him like this, all alone—she completely forgot the caterers at the other end of the basement—startled and unnerved her. She jumped back and stumbled.

His arm shot out as swiftly as a striking snake and caught her elbow, steadying her.

Anna froze, looking up at him, uncertain what would happen next. Part of her realized he had just saved her from falling, but mostly she was aware that he was touching her. She hated to be touched. Suddenly, freed from her paralysis, she shook off his hand.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice slow, deep and steady. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I…” Suddenly embarrassed by her reaction to him, she felt she needed to say something. But what?

He gave her a half smile. “It’s okay. I saw you come down here and wondered if maybe you were sick or something. People don’t usually run out in the middle of the wedding vows. I thought you might need help.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I didn’t know all these other folks were down here.”

Before she could think of a single thing to say, Cowboy turned and climbed the stairs. Anna stared after him, her eyes full of unspoken fears and wishes.

Hugh Gallagher, known far and wide as Cowboy for some damn reason he’d never been able to figure out, took his place at the back of the church and watched Janet and Abel Pierce pose for photographs with the wedding party. A steady stream of guests began to make their way to the rear of the church, toward the stairs that led down to the church basement.

There would be laughter and food and many more pictures taken before the day was over, but Cowboy turned toward the door, getting ready to leave.

He was invited to the reception—hell, the sheriff had invited damn near everyone in the county to one or another of the parties he was throwing to celebrate this event—but he wasn’t a party person. Crowds still made him uneasy, and the basement itself was too confined a space to make him comfortable, even when it was empty.

He hesitated, though, thinking of mousy Miss Fleming, the church secretary, and how startled she’d been to run into him on the stairs. He didn’t like it when people reacted to him that way. It reminded him of things better left forgotten.

If he made himself go down there, maybe he could talk to her a bit, get her over her fear. He didn’t want her reacting that way when she saw him again. On the other hand, if he went down there he was going to have to deal with his damn claustrophobia and all the other phobias that he preferred to leave undisturbed as much as possible.

Hell.

He hesitated a few moments longer, then decided to head outside and smoke a cigarette. Forcing the issue wasn’t going to make Anna Fleming any more comfortable with him. He would just have to bide his time until a better opportunity came along.

Outside, the October twilight was already fading into night. The air was chilly but still, not too uncomfortable. Besides, he was used to far worse after wintering in the mountains in lean-tos and tents. He stepped off the walk onto the grass and lit a cigarette, inhaling with real pleasure. He ought to quit, and knew he was going to have to if he ever got his dream of a youth ranch off the ground, but for now, he savored every puff.

He wasn’t the only one who sneaked out for a smoke. A couple of minutes later the double doors opened to disgorge a group of laughing men. He recognized them all—with only five thousand people in this county, it was hard not to learn to recognize most of them—but he stepped around the corner so that he was out of sight. People tended to regard him uneasily, as if he were a time bomb, and while he didn’t exactly blame them, he resented the hell out of it.

Besides, he didn’t much feel like being sociable. The only reason he was here was that he didn’t want to offend the sheriff and his family. They’d been too good to him.

The group out front stayed where they were, and Hugh let the deepening night wrap comfortably around him. Unlike most people, he always felt safer at night. At night he could be invisible. At night he could vanish.

The basement was a madhouse. Everyone was drinking, laughing, talking. The noise level was almost deafening in the confined space, and the temperature was soaring, even with all the windows open to let in the fresh air.

Anna was beginning to feel claustrophobic, as well as far too hot in her wool dress. She had always hated large crowds and was able to tolerate Sunday worship only because everyone was so orderly. They were not at all orderly right now, and the champagne was making everyone a little bit raucous.

She was, she realized, afraid of being grabbed. It wasn’t so much the crowding as the smell of champagne that was affecting her. The scent of alcohol had preceded some of the worst experiences of her life. As soon as she felt she decently could, she grabbed her jacket and slipped out the side door.

She was hurrying, not wanting to be stopped by anyone, and had her head bowed as usual. She didn’t see Hugh Gallagher until she plowed right into him.

He reached out swiftly to keep her from falling to the cold, hard ground. She felt his arms close around her and heard him say laughingly, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

In an instant, panic flared in her. She flailed against his restraining arms, and as soon as he released her, she backed up quickly, nearly falling again in her haste to escape him.

Some portion of her mind was screaming, “No! No!” even while another part was recognizing that he wasn’t coming after her. That in fact he had stepped back, as if recognizing her terror and wanting to soothe it.

She stood there staring at him with huge eyes, breathing in helpless gulps, and sanity hit her as suddenly as panic had, filling her with miserable humiliation.

The man called Cowboy stared at her, his mouth opening as if he wanted to ask but thought better of it. Finally he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his nylon jacket and took another backward step. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.

“It’s not you,” she managed to say shakily but honestly. “Not you…” Her voice trailed away, a forlorn sound like the whisper of the wind on a frigid night. “I was just startled,” she added, afraid that he might ask her what had scared her so.

After a moment, he nodded. “You’re running away, too?”

Her heart slammed. How had he known? “Running away?”

“From the party. Stupid as it is, that basement gives me claustrophobia, and with all those people in there, I’d probably lose it.” He shrugged as if it were an unimportant thing, but Anna felt something inside her respond to his honesty.

“I know what you mean,” she managed to say, and wondered why she suddenly felt as if some little patch of ice inside her had thawed.

“You, too, huh?” He waited, but when she failed to respond he continued. “Are you leaving?”

“I thought I’d just go home. No one will miss me.” The words admitted more than she wanted to, but it was too late to take them back.

He nodded as if he understood. “No one will miss me, either. I’ll walk you to your car.”

Another flare of panic. “I didn’t bring a car.”

“Then I’ll walk you home.” He hesitated.

“You’re safe with me, but with most of the sheriff’s deputies at this shindig, I’m not sure you’d be safe on the streets.”

She hadn’t thought of that, and the night suddenly looked so big and empty. Frightening. Bad things happened at night. Weighing her options, she finally said, “Thank you.”

They headed east down Front Street, past some of the town’s most elegant homes. Anna’s little house, rented from the church, was farther out, in a less prosperous neighborhood–although it was far better than some of the neighborhoods she had lived in.

“Do you always walk to the church?” Hugh asked her.

“When it’s warm enough. It saves wear and tear on the car.” She kept her head down, studying the sidewalk ahead of them. Some dried leaves stirred on a breath of breeze and for a moment danced ahead of them.

“I hear you,” he said. “I walked myself.”

“Oh. Where do you live?” She wished she hadn’t asked. She didn’t want to sound interested. But surely he would take it as a polite question.

“The other way, over toward Snider’s Crossing.”

Near the railroad tracks, she thought. One of the least pleasant neighborhoods in Conard City. But Sheriff Tate and Reverend Fromberg both liked this man, she reminded herself. They wouldn’t feel that way if he was a bad person.

“Not a very good neighborhood,” he said as if reading her mind. “But it’s cheap. I’m saving every dime I can make to put into the ranch.”

“The ranch?” She felt him glance down at her, but she didn’t look up. It had been a very long time since she had felt comfortable meeting a man’s gaze.

“I bought a piece of land out by Conard Creek, up near the Morrison spread. It’s not much for raising cattle for profit, but it’s good for what I want.”

“And what’s that?”

“Well, I really haven’t discussed it all that much with anybody except Nate and Dan.” Nate and Dan being the sheriff and the minister respectively. “But I’m hoping to open a ranch for troubled kids. A place where they can get out of their lousy homes and neighborhoods and start getting it together.”

“That would be really nice.” She meant it sincerely. It was not at all what she would have expected from this rough-looking man with his uncertain background. “Did you grow up in a bad neighborhood?”

“Oh, yeah.” He gave a little laugh. “I just moved from one war zone to another when I joined the army.”

“I never thought of joining the army.” Once again she had spoken without thinking, and wished she could snatch the words back. They revealed far too much.

“You, too, huh?” He let it go. “Well, with all the work you do with kids, you probably see how much trouble at home affects them.”

“I certainly do.”

“So…well, I kinda figure that if I can give them a place away from those problems and influences, most of ’em would straighten themselves out.”

“A lot of them just need an opportunity.”

“Exactly.”

“Would you take only children from around here?”

“Maybe at first. At first I wouldn’t expect to be able to take too many. I mean, there’d just be me, basically, and maybe a couple of other people. Gotta start slow.”

Anna nodded, her gaze still firmly fixed on the sidewalk. “I know of a few who could sure use a place like that.”

A car beeped cheerfully as it drove by, and they both looked, waving when they recognized Emma and Gage Dalton.

“They’re leaving early, too,” Hugh remarked.

“Gage’s back is giving him fits lately,” Anna explained. “He says it’s the change in the weather.”

“Most likely. And boy, did it change fast. Here we were having this incredible Indian summer, and now it almost feels like winter is coming.”

“It is.”

He laughed quietly. “That it is, Miss Anna. That it is.”

She flushed a little, realizing she had stated the obvious in response to his jesting remark. The tendency came from dealing with children so much of the time. In addition to her work with the church youth groups, she tended the church nursery during services. After a while with children, you got to taking everything literally. “I’m sorry. I get so used to talking with children.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’re just so all-fired serious, it’s hard not to pull your leg.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. She didn’t think of herself as being serious, but she supposed she was. There wasn’t a whole lot in life worth laughing at or getting overjoyed about. Life was a serious business.

“Anyway, the sheriff thinks the ranch is a good idea. I figure maybe we’d start with a half-dozen kids and see how it goes. I’d like to be able to take girls, too.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Everybody gets so concerned about all the crime caused by boys that girls get overlooked. They don’t commit as many crimes, but they have just as many problems at home and on the streets. Somebody needs to look out for them, too.”

“But won’t making it coeducational cause problems?”

“Not if I do it right.”

They had reached Park Street and turned right, heading toward her house two blocks down. Most of the driveways were empty, since nearly everybody was partying.

Hugh spoke again. “I don’t know how Nate is going to be able to afford to marry off so many daughters if he invites everybody in the county to the shindig.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? But he knows everybody. And he’s not doing sit-down meals, so maybe it’s not as bad as it could be.”

“Maybe.”

They reached her house at last, climbed the porch steps and stopped at her door.

“I’ll just wait while you get inside, Miss Anna,” he said. “You have a good evening, hear?”

She stepped inside, turned on the light and locked the door behind her. Then she ran into the darkened living room to look out the window to watch him walk away. He had a slow, easy stride, like a man who’d walked many miles and was in no hurry to get to his destination.

She envied him his calm confidence and steady determination. She wished that once, just once, she could feel as comfortable with herself as he seemed to feel. And it must be wonderful to be able to walk down a dark street and not feel a nagging need to look back over your shoulder.

She let the curtain fall over the window and turned on another light.

She was home and she was lonely.

Nothing new. It was a fact of life. Loneliness kept her safe.

She had the nightmare again that night. It had been years since the last time, but it was still all too familiar when she woke up in a cold sweat, shaking with terror. The night-light she couldn’t sleep without glowed softly in the wall socket, but suddenly it wasn’t enough. Even the shadowy shapes of the furnishings refused to resolve into familiarity by its light.

Sitting up quickly, she reached for the switch on the bedside lamp. It came instantly to life, then, with a flash, burned out. Shaking, shivering, breathing raggedly, she desperately fought her way out from beneath the blankets and ran as fast as she dared into the kitchen. There, the flick of a wall switch cast immediate normalcy over the night.

The refrigerator hummed softly, as it always did. She could smell the very faint odor of gas from the range and realized the pilot must have gone out. Searching for matches gave her something to do, something ordinary and real. Something to drag her out of the consuming depths of her dream.

The matches were where she always kept them, but she dropped the box twice just trying to get it out of the drawer. She waited a moment, taking deep, steadying breaths, then lit the pilot light under the range cover. The match slipped from between her fingers into the drip pan, but she left it.

It could stay until she was steadier.

She poured herself a glass of milk and tried to ignore the phone on the wall, but it was as if her eyes were attached to it by rubber bands. No matter how many times she jerked her gaze away, it snapped back.

He might be dead by now. The thought was seductive and wouldn’t go away.

It had been years since she had called, and he would have to be in his sixties now, wouldn’t he? So maybe he was dead. God, she hoped he was dead.

But she didn’t want to hear his voice. What if he answered the phone? Then she would know for sure he wasn’t dead, that he was still out there. It was better not to know.

She sipped her milk and shivered again, this time from a chill. It was four in the morning, and while the house wasn’t cold, her body thought it ought to be in bed under the covers. But she couldn’t go back to sleep. Not now. She would only have the dream again. Once it came, it just kept coming back.

She wandered through the house, turning on lights as she went, refusing to worry about the cost. She sat in the big, overstuffed chair she had bought secondhand last winter and tried to read a paperback crime novel. She turned the pages four times before she realized she hadn’t absorbed a single word.

Giving up, she tried to turn her thoughts back to the wedding. Back to how nice Hugh Gallagher had been to her. And he had been nice. As threatened as most men made her feel, it was really surprising that he had managed to make her feel safe enough to let him walk her home.

There was a gentleness in his manner, she realized. Something that had reassured her. The slow way he talked, the easy way he held himself, the quick consideration of her feelings had all combined to make her feel she could trust him at least that far. Only Nate Tate and Dan Fromberg had been able to get so far past her defenses.

Deep inside her, she was astonished to realize, was a barely born hope that she would see Cowboy again.

As soon as she recognized it, she felt panic begin to build in her. No. No, she told herself. No. It was too dangerous. There were too many secrets. Too many horrible things in her past. Even if she could trust him not to hurt her, she couldn’t trust herself not to hurt him.

It wasn’t just the fact that she was terrified of men that kept her away from them; she was terrified of what her past could do to her relationships, to her entire life, if anyone found out about it.

Solitude was her fortress, and she kept herself inside it of her own free will. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of that.

But the phone kept beckoning her. He might be dead. It would be nice to know that he was.

The thought upset her, it seemed so evil, but the man had done evil things to her. She didn’t exactly wish him dead, she assured herself. It was just that she knew she wouldn’t be free of him until he was gone. Then she would have only the horrible things she’d done herself to be worried about. By comparison, her own deeds seemed paltry. She could handle that guilt.

She looked at the phone beside her chair and knew that she was going to call. She didn’t want to. She couldn’t stand the thought of hearing his voice again, but she had to know. Ever since she could remember, she had been doing things she didn’t want to because of that man, and she longed to break his hold over her.

But she couldn’t stop herself. As if watching from a distance, she saw her hand reach out for the receiver, watched her own fingers punch in a number she would never forget. Then, holding her breath, she waited while the phone rang. It was two hours later back there, and if he wasn’t up already, he would be getting up soon.

On the sixth ring, a groggy male voice answered. “Hello?”

She slammed down the receiver immediately, disconnecting the call. Her heart hammered wildly, and she could scarcely catch her breath.

He was still alive. Still sleeping in her mother’s bed as if he’d never done anything wrong. She would bet he never had nightmares about what he’d done to her. Never. He probably slept like a baby.

And suddenly, unable to help herself, Anna burst into tears and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.

Chapter 2

“Anna, you have to rescue me.”

Anna looked up from her desk as Reverend Daniel Fromberg stepped in from the brisk day outside. She made a point of always getting to the office ahead of him, and he had to insist in order to get her to leave before him.

Daniel Fromberg was a pleasant-looking man in his late forties.

Just average in height, he had a slight build that sometimes made people underestimate his backbone. As Anna had learned during the past five years, Daniel Fromberg had a backbone of steel when it came to what was right.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling a smile curve the corners of her mouth. With two teenage children and a pair of unexpected two-year-old twins, Dan Fromberg was often in need of her help. It usually involved finding him a baby-sitter so he could save his wife’s sanity.

“The dogs!” he said with an exaggerated groan as he dropped into the chair facing her desk. Eight weeks ago, the Frombergs’ Irish setter had given birth to four adorable little pups. “They’re driving me nuts. They’re driving Cheryl nuts. They’re into everything! Piddling all over the place, making little piles behind the couch, the TV, the bed—you name it!”

“So get a gate and lock them into one small area of the house.”

He shook his head. “I tried to. Clearly you do not know my children.”

She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “They let them out, huh?”

“All the time. The older ones finally got the message, but the twins…!” He shook his head. “They just love to release the catch. Cheryl tried using a twisty-tie to stop them, but Dan junior figured it out.