The Cowboy's Sweetheart
She didn’t go far, just to the edge of the building. He stood behind her as she leaned, gasping deep breaths of air.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Stop.” She kept her face turned, resting her forehead against the old concrete block building. “I must have caught something from Joy’s kids when I stopped in Kansas. One of them was sick.”
“I could take you home,” he offered quietly, because he had a feeling she didn’t need more questions at the moment.
“I’m fine now. I would just hate to make the girls sick. They don’t need that.” She turned, smiling, but perspiration beaded along her forehead and under her eyes. She was still pale.
“No,” he agreed, “the girls don’t need to get sick. I don’t think I could handle that.”
“They’re just little girls.”
“Yeah, and I’m not anyone’s dad. That’s Wyatt’s job. He’s always been more cut out for the husband and father gig.”
And saying the words made him feel hollow on the inside, because he remembered standing next to Wyatt at his wife’s funeral. He remembered what it felt like to stand next to a man whose heart was breaking.
Ryder hadn’t ever experienced heartbreak and he didn’t plan on it. He enjoyed his single life, without strings, attachments or complications.
“You’re good with the girls,” Andie insisted, his friend again, for the moment. “Just don’t slip into your old ways, not while they’re living with you.”
“Right.” He slid his hand down her back. “I’ll be good. So, are you okay?”
“I’m good. I’m going back inside.” She took a step past him, but he caught her hand and held her next to him.
“Andie, I don’t want to lose my best friend. I’m sorry for that night. I’m sorry that I didn’t walk away…before. And I’m sorry I walked away afterward.”
She didn’t look at him. He looked down, at the ground she was staring at—at dandelions peeking up through the gravel and a few pieces of broken glass. He touched her cheek and ran his finger down to her chin, lifting her face so she had to look at him.
“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered. “I just don’t know how to go back. We’ve always kept the line between us, Ryder. This is why.”
“We don’t have to stop being friends,” he insisted, hoping he didn’t sound like a kid.
“No, we don’t. But you have to accept that things have changed.”
“Okay, things have changed.” More than things. She had changed. He could see it in her eyes in the way she smiled as she turned and walked away, back into the Mad Cow.
A crazy thought, that he had changed, too. He brushed it off and followed her into the diner. He hadn’t changed at all. He still wanted the same things he’d always wanted. Some things weren’t meant to be domesticated, like raccoons, foxes…and him.
When they got home, Andie changed into jeans and a T-shirt and headed for the barn. She was brushing Babe, her old mare, when Etta walked through the double doors at the end of the building.
“What’s going on with you?” Etta, arm’s crossed, stood with the sun to her back, her face in shadows.
The barn cat wandered in and Etta stepped away from the feline.
“There’s nothing wrong.” Andie brushed the horse’s rump and the bay mare twitched her dark tail and stomped a fly away from her leg. “Okay, something is wrong. Caroline is here. I don’t know what she wants from me. I don’t know why she expects to walk into my life and have me happy to be graced with her presence.”
“She doesn’t expect that.”
Andie stopped brushing and turned. “So now you’re on her side.”
“Don’t sound like a five-year-old. I’m not on her side. I’m on your side. I want you to forgive her. I want you to have her in your life. I have to forgive her, too. She broke my son’s heart. She broke your heart.”
Andie shook off the anger. Her heart hadn’t been broken, not by Caroline or anyone else.
“I’m fine.” She brushed Babe’s neck and the mare leaned toward her, her eyes closing slightly.
“You’re not fine. And this isn’t about Caroline, it’s about you and Ryder. What happened?”
“Nothing. Or at least nothing a little time won’t take care of.”
Etta walked closer. “I guess it’s too late for the talk that we should have had fifteen years ago,” she said with a sigh.
Andie swallowed and nodded. And the words freed the tears that had been hovering. “Too late.”
“It’s okay.” Etta stepped closer, her arm going around Andie’s waist.
“No, it isn’t. I messed up. I really messed up. This is something I can’t take back.”
“So you went to church?”
“Not just because of this. I went because I had to go. As much as I’ve always claimed I was strong, every time I was at the end of my rope, it was God that I turned to. I’ve always prayed. And that Sunday morning, I wanted to be in church.”
“Andie, did you use…”
Andie’s face flamed and she shook her head.
“Do you think you might be…”
They were playing fill-in-the-blank. Andie wanted option C, not A. She wanted the answer to be sick with a stomach virus. They didn’t want to say the hard words, or face the difficult answers. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old kid. Funny, but until now she had controlled herself. She hadn’t made these choices. She hadn’t gotten herself into a situation like this.
She was trying to connect it all: her mistake, her relationship with God, and her friendship with Ryder. How could she put it all together and make it okay?
“Maybe it’s a virus. Joy’s kids had a stomach virus.”
“It could be.” Etta patted her back. “It really could be.”
And then a truck turned into the drive. Ryder’s truck. And he was pulling a trailer. Andie closed her eyes and Etta hugged her close.
“You’re going to have to tell him.”
“I don’t know anything, not yet. I don’t know if I can face this. I’m trying so hard to get my act together and I can’t pull Ryder into this.”
“Soon.” Etta kissed her cheek.
“When I know for sure.”
Ryder was out of his truck. And he was dressed for roping, in his faded jeans, a black T-shirt and nearly worn-out roper boots.
“You going with me?” He tossed the question before he reached the barn. His grin was big, and he was acting as if there was nothing wrong between them. Andie wished she could do the same.
“I don’t know.”
Etta’s brows went up and she shrugged. “I’m going in the house. I have a roast on and it needs potatoes.”
Andie watched her grandmother walk away and then she turned her attention back to Ryder. He scratched his chin and waited. And she didn’t know what he wanted to hear.
“Come on, Andie, we’ve always roped on Sunday evenings.”
It was what they’d done, as best friends. And they hadn’t minded separating from time to time. She’d go out with James or one of the other guys. She’d watch, without jealousy, when he helped Vicki Summers into his truck. No jealousy at all.
Because they’d been best friends.
But today nausea rolled in her stomach and she couldn’t think about leaving with him, or him leaving with Vicki afterward. And that wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.
“I can’t go, not tonight.”
“I don’t want to lose you.” He took off his white cowboy hat and held it at his side. “I wish we could go back and…”
“Think a little more clearly? Take time to breathe deep and walk away?” She shook her head. “We can’t. We made a choice and now we have the consequences of that choice.”
“Consequences? What consequences? You’re the one acting like we can’t even talk. It’s simple. Just get in the truck and go with me.”
“I can’t.” She tossed the brush into a bucket and the clang of wood hitting metal made Babe jump to the side.
Andie whispered to the mare and reached to untie the lead rope from the hook on the wall. “I can’t go with you, Ryder. I’m sick. My mom is here. I’m going to go inside and spend time with Etta.”
“Fine.” He walked to the door. “I’m going to be pretty busy in the next few weeks. Wyatt and the girls are going to need me.”
“I know.” She watched him walk away, but it wasn’t easy. She’d never wanted to run after a guy the way she wanted to run after him, to tell him they could forget. They could go back to being friends, to being comfortable around each other. But she couldn’t go after him and they couldn’t go back.
She stood at the gate and watched as he climbed into his truck and slammed the door.
Ryder jumped into his truck and shifted hard into first gear. He started to stomp on it, and then remembered his horse in the trailer. Man, it would have felt good to let gravel fly. If only he could be sixteen again, not dealing with losing his best friend to a one-night mistake.
Why couldn’t she just get over it and go with him? This was what they did, they went roping together. They hunted together. They got over things together.
As he eased onto the road he let his mind drift back, to the night in Phoenix. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. They’d both been hurting. He’d been upset by Wyatt’s situation. She’d been hurting because her twin sister had arrived in town, bringing back the pain of being a kid rejected by her mother.
And then his thoughts made a big U-turn, shifting his memory back to the Mad Cow and Andie’s pale face.
He was an idiot. An absolute idiot.
Consequences. He caught himself in time to keep from slamming on the brakes. He eased to the side of the road and stopped the truck. He sat there for a long minute thinking back, thinking ahead. Thinking this really couldn’t be happening to him.
He leaned back in his seat and thought about it, and thought about his next move. A truck drove past and honked. He raised a hand in a half wave.
Glancing over his shoulder he checked the road in both directions and backed the trailer up, this time heading the way he’d come from, to Etta’s and to Andie.
As he turned into the driveway, she was coming out of the barn. She stopped in the doorway, light against the dark interior of the barn, her blond hair blowing a little in the wind. She sighed, he could see her shoulders rise and fall and then she walked toward him. And he wondered what she would say.
He parked and got out of the truck, waiting because he didn’t know what questions to ask or how to face the consequences of that night. It would have been easier to keep running. But this would have caught up with him eventually. It wasn’t as if he could run from it.
When she reached him, they stared at each other. The wind was blowing a little harder and clouds, low and heavy with rain, covered the sun. Shadows drifted across the brown, autumn grass.
“You’re back a little quicker than I expected.” She smiled, and for a minute he thought it might have been his imagination, her pale skin, the nausea.
He rubbed his face and tried to think of how a man asked a woman, a friend, this question.
“I came back because I have to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.” She slipped her hands into her front pockets.
His gaze slipped to her belly and he didn’t even mean for that to happen. It was flat, perfectly flat. She cleared her throat. He glanced up and her eyebrows shot up.
“I have a question.” Man, he felt like a fifteen-year-old kid. “Are you, um, are you having a baby?”
Chapter Four
The question she hadn’t even wanted to ask herself. Ryder, her best friend for as long as she could remember, was peering down at her with toffee-brown eyes that had never been more serious. He wasn’t a boy anymore. She wasn’t a kid.
And she didn’t want to answer this question, not today. She didn’t want to stand in front of him, with her heart pounding and her stomach still rolling a little. She looked away, to the field across the road. It was nothing spectacular, just a field with a few too many weeds and a few cattle grazing, but it gave her something else to focus on.
“Andie, come on, we have to talk about this.”
“Like we talked two months ago? Come on, Ryder, admit that neither one of us want to talk about this.”
He took off his hat and brushed his arm across his forehead. He glanced down at her and shook his head. “No, maybe this isn’t how I wanted to spend a Sunday afternoon, but this is what we’ve got.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not today.”
“So you are…?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down, at dusty, hard-packed earth. At his boots and hers as they stood toe-to-toe in that moment that changed both of their lives. He was just a cowboy, the kind of guy who had said he’d never get married.
And she’d claimed his conviction as her own. Because that’s what they had done for years. She had never been one of those girls dreaming of weddings, the perfect husband or babies. She didn’t play the games in school with boys’ names and honeymoon locations. Instead she’d thought about how to train the best barrel horse and what it would take to win world titles.
Babies. As much as she had wanted to pretend otherwise, her feminine side had caused her to go soft when she held a baby or watched children play. When she watched her friends with their husbands, she felt a little empty on the inside, because she shared her life with Etta—and with Ryder—but Ryder never shared his heart, not the way a woman wanted a man to share his heart.
“Andie, I’m sorry, this shouldn’t have happened.” He touched her cheek and then his hand dropped to his side and he stepped back a few steps.
“I definitely don’t want you to be sorry.” She looked up, trying her best to be determined. “Like I said, I don’t know. It could be that I caught the stomach virus some of the kids in Kansas had. When I know for sure, I’ll let you know.”
“Let me know?” He brushed a hand through his hair and shoved his hat back in place, a gesture she’d seen a few too many times and she knew exactly what it meant. Frustration.
Well she could tell him a few things about frustration. But she wasn’t in the mood. She wasn’t in the mood to spell out for him that this hadn’t been in her plans, either. He hadn’t been in her plans, not this way.
“Yeah, I’ll let you know. Look, whatever happens, whatever this is, it isn’t going to change anything.” She was glad she sounded firm, sounded strong. She felt anything but, with her insides quivering. “You’ve always been my friend and that’s how it’ll stay.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m not going to tie you down or try to drag you into this. It doesn’t change things.”
“I have news for you, Andie Forester, this changes things. This changes everything.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
He shook his head. “Are you being difficult for a reason, other than to just drive me crazy? If you’re pre…uh, having a baby, it changes a lot, now doesn’t it?”
She wanted to smile, because even the word brought a bead of sweat across his brow and his neck turned red. But she couldn’t smile, not yet.
“I’ll let you know when I find out for sure.”
“Fine, you let me know. And we’ll pretend that this isn’t important, if that’s what you really want.” He turned and walked away, a cowboy in faded jeans, the legs worn and a little more faded where he’d spent a lot of time in the saddle.
He waved as he climbed into his truck and started the engine. She waved back. And it already felt different. She’d been lying to herself, trying to tell herself it wouldn’t matter.
She watched him drive away and then she considered her next move. Go inside and face her mother, or stay in the barn and hide from reality. She liked the hiding plan the best. Facing Ryder and her mother, both in the same day, sounded like too much.
In the dark, dusty interior of the barn she could close her eyes and pretend she was the person she’d been two months ago. But she wasn’t.
A lot had happened. She turned over a bucket and sat down. She leaned against the stall door behind her and closed her eyes. Everything had changed. Most importantly, she had changed.
On a Sunday morning in a church service at the rodeo arena she had changed. It had started when she walked out of her horse trailer, a cup of coffee in hand, and she’d heard the couple who led the service singing “Amazing Grace.” She’d walked to the arena and taken a seat on a row of bleachers a good distance from the crowd.
During that service, God had pulled her back to Him. She had been drawn back into a relationship that she’d ignored for years. And it hadn’t been God’s fault that she’d walked away. It had been about her loyalty to Ryder.
She opened her eyes and looked outside, at a sky growing darker as the sun set. The days were cool and growing shorter. She wasn’t ready for winter. She definitely didn’t know how to face spring, and seven months from now.
How did a person go from turning back to God, to making a giant mistake like the one she’d made with Ryder? And what about God? Was He going to reject her now?
She’d had experience with rejection.
It had started with her mother. She squeezed her eyes shut again, and refused the tears that burned, tightening in her throat because she wasn’t going to let them fall.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, wanting peace, something that settled the ache in her heart and took away the heaviness of misgivings.
She stood and walked into the feed room to look at the calendar tacked to the wall. It recorded dates and locations of rodeos. She thumbed back to the month of the Phoenix rodeo and tried to remember. She leaned, resting her forehead against the rough barn wood.
For two months she’d told herself there wouldn’t be consequences, other than a little bit of time when they’d be uncomfortable with each other.
But she’d been wrong. There were definitely consequences, and this wasn’t going away any time soon. She picked up the pencil she used to mark the calendar and she went through the next few months, marking through events she’d planned to attend, but now wouldn’t.
Things had definitely changed.
Roping hadn’t taken Ryder’s mind off Andie and the possibility of a baby. His baby. He didn’t need proof of that fact because he knew Andie. As he drove through Dawson after loading his horse and talking for a few minutes with friends, his mind kept going back, to better choices he could have made. And forward, to how his life would never be the same.
Ryder drove through Dawson. It was Sunday night and that meant there wasn’t a thing going on and nothing open but the convenience store. A few trucks were parked at the side of the building and a few teenagers sat on tailgates, drinking sodas and eating corn dogs. Big night out in Dawson.
He turned left on the road that led out of town, to his family farm, and on past, to the house where Andie had grown up with Etta. He considered driving there and talking to her, trying to figure out what they were going to do. He didn’t figure she’d be ready to talk.
Instead he pulled into his drive and drove back to the barn. As he got out, he noticed Wyatt in the backyard with the girls. Wyatt was sitting at the patio table, the girls were running around the yard with flashlights. They were barely more than babies.
And Wyatt didn’t know what to do with them. That thought kind of sunk into the pit of his stomach. Wyatt had always been the one who seemed to know how to do this adult thing.
Ryder stepped out of the truck and walked back to the trailer to unload his horse. The big gelding stomped restlessly, ready to be out and ready to graze in the pasture.
“Easy up there, Buddy.” Ryder unlatched the back of the trailer. He stepped inside, easing down the unused half of the trailer to untie the animal and back him out.
When they landed on firm ground, Wyatt was there. Ryder smiled at his brother and got a half smile in return. The girls had stopped running and were watching. They weren’t used to horses. Wyatt had taken a job as a youth minister in Florida and they had lived in town.
“Long night?” Wyatt stepped back, watching.
“Yeah, kind of.” How did he tell his brother? Wyatt had always held it together. He’d held them together as best he could.
“What’s up?” Wyatt followed him to the gate, opening it for Ryder to let the horse out into the pasture.
“Nothing.”
“Right.”
Ryder pushed the gate closed and latched it. The horse reached for a bite of grass, managing to act like he hadn’t eaten in days, not hours. Horses were easy to take care of. They could be left alone. They didn’t make requirements. They had to be trained, but he was pretty sure they were a lot easier to train than a child.
He ranched. He raised quarter horses and black angus cattle. He didn’t raise babies.
Until now.
The girls ran up to them, tiny things, not even reaching his hip. He closed the gate and turned his attention to Molly and Kat. And boots. They were wearing his boots. The good ones that had cost a small fortune.
He glanced up, pretty sure that God was testing him. This was a lesson on parenting, or patience. He didn’t know which. Probably both.
“We like your shoes.” Molly grinned, and he was happy to see her smiling. But man, she was wearing his best boots.
The look he gave Wyatt was ignored.
“Boots.” Kat giggled. The pair she was wearing covered her legs completely.
“Yep, boots.” He scooped up Kat and snuggled her close. She giggled and leaned back. She looked a lot like her mom. That had to be hard for Wyatt. Kat had Wendy’s smile, her dimples, her laughter.
And she was a dirty mess. Mud caked her, and his boots. From the tangles in her hair, he guessed it had been a couple of days since it had seen a brush.
“You need a bath.” He held her tight as they headed toward the house.
Kids needed things like baths, and their teeth brushed. They had to be tucked in and someone had to be there for them. They didn’t need parents who drank themselves into a stupor and made choices that robbed a family of security.
He didn’t drink. He had one thing going for him.
Anger knocked around inside him. The past had a way of doing that, and a guy shouldn’t get angry thinking of parents who had died too young.
“If you need to talk…” Wyatt followed him up the steps to the back door, and then he shrugged. They’d never been touchy-feely. Sharing was for afternoon talk shows, not the Johnson brothers. They’d always solved their problems, even dealt with their anger, by roping a few calves or riding hard through the back field.
Every now and then they’d had a knock-down-drag-out in the backyard. Those fights had ended with the two of them on their backs, staring up at the sky, out of breath, but out of anger.
Talking about it didn’t seem like an option.
“Yeah, I know we can talk.” Ryder put his niece down on the floor and flipped on the kitchen light. Kat stomped around in his boots, leaving dirt smudges on the floor he’d mopped last night. “Did you guys eat?”
He looked around. There was an open loaf of bread on the counter and a jar of peanut butter, the lid next to it. He glanced down at Kat. She had a smear of peanut butter on her cheek. He twisted the bread closed.
“Did you feed the girls?” Ryder asked again when Wyatt hadn’t answered.
“Molly made sandwiches.”
“And you think that’s good?” A three-year-old making sandwiches. Ryder screwed the lid on the peanut butter because he had to do something to keep from pushing his brother into a wall to knock sense into him. “Girls, are you hungry?”
Kat grinned and Molly looked at her dad. Ryder exhaled a lot of anger. He didn’t have a clue what little kids ate. Wyatt should have a clue. If Wyatt couldn’t do this, how in the world was Ryder going to manage?
“Tell you what, I’ll make eggs and toast. Do you like eggs?” Ryder opened the fridge door.
“I can do it.” Wyatt took the carton of eggs from his hands.
“You girls go play.” Ryder smiled at his nieces. “I think there’s a box of toys in the living room. Mostly horses and cowboys.”
His and Wyatt’s toys that Ryder had dug out of a back closet the night before.