His Little Cowgirl

“Are you staying?” Jerry sat down in the lawn chair that Cody had unfolded and stuck under the awning of the RV.

“Planning on it.” Cody grabbed another chair out of the back of his truck and plopped it down next to Jerry’s.

“Think she’ll let you stay?”

“The way I see it, she doesn’t really have a choice.”

Jerry laughed at that, the sound low and rasping. Cody glanced sideways, noticing the tinge of gray in Jerry’s complexion. It couldn’t be easy for Bailey, having her dad this sick and handling things on her own. The condition of the farm pretty much said it all. The barn needed repairs, the fence was sagging and the feed room was running on empty.

“I like you, Cody, and I hope you’ll stick around. Let me give you some advice, though. Bailey isn’t a kid anymore. She isn’t going to be fooled. She’s strong and she’s independent. She takes care of this farm and she juggles the bills like a circus clown.” Jerry’s eyes misted over. “I worry that life is passing her by and she isn’t squeezing any joy out of it for herself.”

“I didn’t mean to do that to her.”

The older man shrugged shoulders that had once been broad. Cody couldn’t imagine being in his shoes, knowing that life wouldn’t last and that people he loved would be left behind.

“It wasn’t all you, son. I have more than a little to do with the weight on her shoulders.”

“Is there a way I can help?”

Jerry shook his head. “Nope. Others have offered. She’s determined to paddle this sinking ship to shore. She thinks she can plug the holes and make it sail again.”

“I’ve got money…”

Jerry’s gnarled hand went up. “Save your breath and save your money. She won’t take charity.”

“It isn’t charity. I’m the father of the little girl in that house.”

“Then I guess you’d really better tread lightly.”

Jerry stood, swaying lightly and balancing himself with the arm of the chair. Cody reached but withdrew his hand short of making contact. If it were him, would he want others reaching to hold him up, or would he want to be strong on his own? He thought that Jerry Cross wouldn’t want a hand unless it was asked for.

That made him a lot like his daughter.

“I’m going in to check on the young’un. Holler if you need anything,” Jerry said as he walked away.

The young’un. Cody sat in the chair and thought about the little girl. His daughter. For a long time he waited, thinking she might come out of the house. When she didn’t, he went to the barn.

Thirty minutes and two clean stalls later, a tiny voice called his name. Cody swiped his arm across his brow and peered over the top of the stall he had been cleaning. Meg stood on tiptoes peeking up at him. He hid a grin because she was still wearing her nightgown and yet she’d pulled on those pink cowboy boots she’d been wearing the previous day.

“I have kittens.” She chewed on gum and smiled.

“How many?”

“Four. Wanna see ’em?”

He wanted to see those kittens more than anything in the world. A myriad of emotions washed over him with that realization. He had never hugged his child. He hadn’t held her or comforted her. He hadn’t wiped away her tears when she cried. Five years he had missed out on loving this little girl with Bailey’s sweet face and his blue eyes.

“I do wanna see ’em.”

He opened the stall door and joined the little girl that barely reached his waist. Her hand came up, the gesture obvious. Cody’s heart leaped into his throat as his fingers closed around hers.

In that instant he knew he’d follow her anywhere. He’d give his life for her. And if anyone ever did to her what he’d done to her mother…

Regret twisted his stomach into knots. He couldn’t undo what he’d done to Bailey, but he could do something now. He could be a father. Or at least make his best attempt.

Doubt swirled with regret, making him wonder if he could. What if he couldn’t? What if he turned out to be his own father?

“The kittens are in there.” Meg pointed to a small corner of the barn where buckets and tools were stored. The area was dark and dusty, but a corner had been cleared out and straw put down for the new mother.

“How old are they?”

“One week. They don’t even have their eyes yet.”

Cody smiled and refrained from correcting her about the eyes. “I bet they love you.”

She shook her head. “Not yet, ’cause I can’t touch them or the momma kitten will hide them. She’s afraid they’ll get hurt.”

“Momma cats are like that.” He peeked into the corner and saw the mother cat and the four little ones.

“There’s a yellow tabby, a gray, one black cat and a calico. I like calico cats best.”

“I think I do, too.” Little fingers held tightly to his, and at the same time it felt like they were wrapping around his heart.

Meg led him from the area. “We can’t stay long or she’ll be mad.”

“We wouldn’t want to make the momma mad.”

“My mom is mad at you.”

Cody had never been fond of amusement-park rides. He could handle eight seconds on the back of a bull, but that up-and-down roller-coaster feeling was one he couldn’t hack. And this felt like a roller coaster.

“I’m sorry that she’s mad at me, Meg. Sometimes adults need time to work things out.”

He kneeled in front of his daughter. Her mouth worked her gum as she stared into his eyes. When she rested her hand on his cheek and nodded, his eyes burned and he had to blink away the film of moisture.

“I know you’re my daddy.” She nodded at that information. “My mom told me about your eyes when I was just a little kid.”

“Meg Cross, you’re about the sweetest girl in the world.” And he hoped he wouldn’t let her down.

As he was thinking of all the mistakes he could make, his daughter stepped close and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her head rested on his shoulder and he hugged her back.

He wouldn’t let her down. He wouldn’t let her grow up thinking that a dad was just the guy who sent the check each month. Whether he stayed in Gibson, or settled somewhere else, he would be a part of his daughter’s life.

The alarmed bark of Blue ripped into the moment. Cody hurried from the barn with Meg holding tightly to his hand. He scanned the yard, past his RV to the house. He saw the dog near the back porch and next to him on the ground was the still form of Jerry Cross.

Bailey didn’t feel like working. She felt like going home and being by herself. Not that she could be alone at home. And today would be worse because Cody would be there, wanting to talk.

Why in the world did he suddenly think they needed to talk things out? Had he been watching afternoon talk shows and learning about sharing feelings?

Or was it just a step in a program?

She sighed, knowing she wasn’t being fair and that God wanted her to give Cody a chance because grace was about being forgiven. She knew all about grace.

“Why do you look like someone messed with your oatmeal?” asked Lacey Gould, her black hair streaked with red, as she walked up behind Bailey, who was starting a fresh pot of coffee. The two of them had been unlikely friends for four years. They didn’t have secrets.

Lacey didn’t know who Meg’s dad was. That was something only God and Bailey’s dad knew. That was Bailey’s only secret from her friend.

“I don’t even like oatmeal.” Bailey poured herself a cup of coffee and reached for the salt shakers that needed to be refilled.

The Hash-It-Out had been busy nonstop for over an hour. Now the crowds had waned down to the regular group of farmers who gathered for mid-morning coffee and good-natured gossip.

Lacey grabbed the pepper shakers and started filling them.

“Rumor has it someone showed up yesterday driving a new truck and pulling an RV. And another rumor states that the truck and RV are still in town.”

“Rumor has it that the rumor mill in this town could grind enough wheat to feed a small country.”

“Cute. That doesn’t really make sense, but it is a little bit funny.” Lacey pulled ten dollars from her pocket and slid it across the counter top. “You had a four-top leave this the day before yesterday.”

Bailey knew better. She didn’t reach for the money. Lacey had a bad habit of trying to help by lying. She was a new Christian and her heart was as big as Texas, even if she didn’t always go about helping the right way.

“You keep it.”

“It’s yours.”

Bailey shook her head. “Good try, sweetie, but I didn’t have a four-top the other day.”

Lacey shoved the money into the front pocket of Bailey’s jeans. “Stop being a hero and let a friend help.”

The phone rang. Bailey glanced toward the hostess station and watched Jill answer. The older woman nodded and then shot a worried glance in Bailey’s direction, with her hand motioning for Bailey to join her.

“I’ll be right back.” Bailey touched Lacey’s arm as she walked toward the hostess.

“Honey, that was someone named Cody, and he said he’s taking your daddy to the hospital in Springfield.”

The floor fell out from under her. Lacey was suddenly there, her hand on Bailey’s. “Let me get someone to drive you.”

“I can drive myself.”

“No, you can’t.”

Bailey was already reaching for her purse. She managed a smile for the two women. “I can drive myself. Could you let Jolynn know that I had to leave?”

“Sure thing, sweetie, but are you sure you’re okay to drive yourself?”

Bailey nodded as she walked away from Jill’s question. At that moment she wasn’t sure about much of anything.

In a daze she walked out the door and across the parking lot, barely noticing the heat and just registering that someone shouted hello. Numb, she felt so numb, and so cold.

It took her a few tries to get the truck started. She pumped the gas, praying hard that the stupid thing wouldn’t let her down, not now. As the engine roared to life she whispered a quiet thank-you.

Springfield was a good thirty-minute drive, and of course she got behind every slow car on the road and always in a no-passing zone. Her heart raced and her hands were shaking. What if she didn’t make it on time? What if this was the end? She couldn’t think about losing her dad, not yet, not now when she needed him so much.

“What if he’s gone and I don’t get to say goodbye?” She whispered into the silent cab of the truck, blinking away the sting of tears.

She couldn’t think of her dad not being in her life. He had always been there for her. He had been the one holding her hand when her mother died, and the one who drove her to the hospital when Meg was born.

Her dad had been the one who hadn’t condemned her for her mistake. He had loved her and shown mercy. He had insisted that everyone makes mistakes. Without those mistakes, why would a person need grace?

Those who are healthy aren’t in need of a physician. In those months after she had returned from Wyoming, she had really come to understand the words Jesus had spoken and the wonderful healing of forgiveness.

Her dad had taught her to bait a hook, and to train a horse. He had taught her how to have faith, and to smile even when smiling wasn’t easy.

“Please, God, don’t take him from me now.”

Roots, this all felt very much like putting down roots. Cody’s mind swirled as he waited for Bailey to arrive.

In the last few years he hadn’t stayed in one place longer than a month. He usually spent time between events parked at the farm of a friend where he kept his livestock.

With Bailey’s dad sick and Meg in his arms, thoughts of leaving fled. He had never known how to stick. Now he didn’t know how he could ever think of leaving.

He knew himself well enough to know that before long the lure of bull riding would tug on him. Between now and then he would pray, hoping that when the time came he would make the right choices.

He knew enough to know that there wouldn’t be any easy answers.

The door of the ER swished open, bringing a gust of warm air from the outside. Cody shifted the sleeping child in his lap and turned. Bailey stood on the threshold of the door, keeping it from closing. She watched him with a look of careful calculation, her gaze drifting from his face to her daughter.

Their daughter.

He couldn’t stand up to greet her, not with Meg curled like one of her kittens, snuggling against his chest. She felt good there, and he didn’t want to let go.

Cody didn’t want to hurt Bailey. It seemed a little too late for that. Her brown eyes shimmered with unshed tears, and if he could have held them both, he would have.

Bailey crossed to where he was sitting. She looked young, and alone. She looked more vulnerable than the twenty-two-year-old young woman he’d known in Wyoming.

“Is he…”

“He’s alive.” He answered the question she didn’t have the heart to ask. “He had an episode with his breathing. They’re running tests. That’s all they’ll tell me because I’m not family.”

Bailey sat down next to him. “I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”

“He isn’t gone, Bailey.”

She only nodded. Shifting, he pulled a hand free and reached to cover her arm. With a sigh she looked up, nodding as if she knew that he wanted to comfort her. Her lips were drawn in and her eyes melting with tears. The weight of the world was on her shoulders.

He wanted to take that weight from her. He wanted to ease the burden. He wanted to hold her. He moved his arm, circling her shoulders and drawing her close, ignoring the way she resisted, and then feeling when she chose to accept. Her shoulder moved and she leaned against him, crumbling into his side.

“I won’t leave you alone.” He whispered the words, unsure if she heard but feeling good about the promise.

Time to cowboy up, Cody. He could almost hear his grandfather say the words to a little boy who had fallen off his pony.

The door across from them opened. A doctor walked into the room, made a quick scan of the area and headed in their direction. He didn’t look like a man about to give the worst news a family could hear. Cody breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ms. Cross, I’m Dr. Ashford. Your dad is resting now. We’ve given him something to help him sleep and moved him to the second floor. You should be able to take him home in a day or two.” He reached for a chair and pulled it close to them. “I’m not going to lie—this isn’t going to be an easy time, and it might be better if you let us send him to a skilled-care facility.”

“I want him at home. He belongs at home.” Her stubborn chin went up and Cody shot the doctor a warning look.

“The family always wants that, but you have to consider yourself. How are you going to take care of him? You work, you go to town, and he’s there alone.”

Bailey’s eyes closed and she nodded. Her face paled and Cody knew what she was thinking. She was blaming herself for not being there when her dad collapsed. She was thinking of all the ways she’d let him down.

“Bailey, you aren’t to blame for today. I was there. I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

“He isn’t your responsibility—he’s mine.” She moved out of the circle of his arm. “I should have been there for him.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Neither of you are to blame. Ms. Cross, your father has cancer. He isn’t going to get better. He’s going to get worse. You have to accept that you aren’t going to be able to give him the twenty-four-hour-a-day care that he needs.”

“But I want him home now, while he can be at home.”

“You have to think about…”

“He’s my responsibility,” Bailey insisted, cutting off the doctor’s objections. This time her tone was firm enough to stir Meg.

“Bailey, you have two choices.” Cody got her attention with that, and she glanced up at him. “You can either let me help or you can put your dad in a facility where he can be watched over while you’re at work.”

She shifted her gaze away, focusing on the windows that framed a hot August day and afternoon traffic. “I know. I just didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted him to get better.”

“He can’t, Bailey, not on this earth. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but sometimes the way God heals is by bringing a person home to Him, to a new body and a new life.”

Shock and then relief flooded her expression as tears pooled in her eyes and then started to flow. Cody shifted Meg and reached to pull Bailey back into his arms.

Her head tucked under his chin and her body racked with grief, he held her close and let her cry. He wondered if she had cried at all before then, or if she had been so busy taking care of everyone else that she hadn’t allowed herself to grieve.

He glanced up, making eye contact with the doctor, who was looking at his watch and starting to move. Bailey’s sobs quieted and she leaned against his side. Meg had awoken and was touching her mother’s face, her sweet little hands stroking Bailey’s cheek.

How had he gotten himself into this? Last week he had been a guy with a new faith in God and in himself, trying to make changes and making amends. And now he was here, holding Bailey and knowing he couldn’t leave.

Adjusting to the wild buck of a bull was easy compared with this. A bull went one direction, and a countermove on his part put him back in control, back in center. No such luck with this situation.

On a bull they would have called the situation, “getting pulled down in the well.”

“Bailey, I won’t let you go through this alone.”

She moved from his embrace, as if his words were the catalyst she had needed to regain her strength. The strong Bailey was back, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.

“I appreciate your offer to help, Cody. I really do, but I know that you have a life and places you have to be.”

He shook his head at what she probably considered was a very logical statement. To him it meant that she still didn’t expect him to stay. And it probably meant that she didn’t want him in her life.

“Bailey, we’ll talk about the future, but for now I’m staying and I’m going to help you with your dad and with the farm.”

He meant it, and she would have to learn that his word was good.

Chapter Four

Bailey looked out of the kitchen window and breathed in the cool morning breeze. She used to love lazy summer mornings, the kind that promised a warm day and not too much humidity. Two years ago she would have spent the morning doing chores and then packed a picnic to take to the lake.

This was a new day. Her dad was home from the hospital, but the doctor was certain they wouldn’t have him for long. How did a person process that information?

By going on with life, as if nothing was wrong? Bailey was trying. She was making breakfast, thinking about work on her to-do list and planning for Meg’s first day of school in two weeks.

School—that meant letting go of her little girl, and it meant school supplies and new clothes. In the middle of all of the normal life thoughts was the reality. Her dad was in bed, and Cody was living in an RV outside her back door.

How could she pretend life was normal?

Eggs sizzled in the pan on the stove, and the aroma of fresh coffee drifted through the room, mixing with the sweet smell of a freshly mown lawn. Bailey glanced out the window again, eyeing the mower still sitting next to the shed, and then her gaze shifted to the man who had done the mowing. He walked out of the barn, his hat pushed back to expose a suntanned face.

It should have felt good, seeing the work he’d done in the two days since her dad had come home from the hospital. Eggs frying and coffee brewing should have been normal things, signaling a normal morning on a working farm. Instead these were signs of her weakening attempts at keeping things under control. Make breakfast, do the laundry, dust the furniture, which would only get dusty again, the little things that signified life was still moving forward.

She reached into the cabinet for a plate and slid the eggs out of the skillet. A light rap on the back door and her back instinctively stiffened.

“It’s open.”

The screen door creaked and booted footsteps clicked on the linoleum. And then he was there, next to her, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Had she actually dreamed of this, wanted this to be her life—Cody in her kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee, sitting across from her eating breakfast?

If so, the dream had faded. Now she dreamed of other things, of making it, and of a stable full of other people’s horses to be trained, and money in the bank. Romance was the last thing on her mind, especially when she hadn’t even brushed her teeth this morning and her hair was in a scraggly ponytail.

It didn’t help that he smelled good, like soap and leather. Maybe romance wasn’t the last thing on her mind. This opened the door for other thoughts, the kind she quickly brushed away, reminders of his hand on her cheek and the way it had felt to be in his arms.

“Are you going to work today?” He turned and leaned against the counter, his legs crossed at the ankles and the cup of coffee lifted to his lips.

“I can’t work.” She answered his question as she flipped a couple of eggs and a few slices of bacon on the plate with already buttered toast.

“Can’t work? Why?”

“Because my dad needs me here. I can’t leave him alone with Meg.” She handed him the plate.

Cody set his plate down on the counter. He turned to face her, his jaw muscle working. Bailey shifted her gaze from the storm brewing in his blue eyes. She picked up the dishrag and wiped crumbs from the toaster off the counter. A strong, tanned hand covered hers, stopping her efforts to distract herself. She slid her hand out from under his and looked up.

“I’m here, Bailey. I’m trying to help you.”

“Why, why are you here now?”

“I want to be here.” He sipped his coffee and then set the cup on the counter. “I know I can’t stay forever, but I’m here and I want to help.”

How many people had tried to help and had accepted her refusal, and her insistence that she could do it herself? How long had she been holding on to the reins, telling herself she could do it all, while everyone called her stubborn? It wasn’t stubbornness; it was determination, and maybe a survival instinct she hadn’t recognized until recently.

It was a mantra of sorts. Keep going, keep moving forward, don’t slow down or you might not make it. She had become a horse with blinders, able to only focus on the job at hand. She didn’t want to lose focus.

“I ordered supplies to fix that north fence.” His carelessly tossed-out words jerked her back to the present.

“I didn’t ask you to do that. I can’t afford it right now.”

“I’m paying for the materials.”

“Cody, you have a career. You can’t let go of your place standing.” She let her gaze drift away from his. “And really, I don’t expect you to foot the bill around here.”

He mumbled under his breath and walked away from her.

“What about your breakfast?” she called out after his retreating back, noticing the dark perspiration triangle between his shoulders. He’d been up for a while, working.

“I don’t think that cooking my breakfast is your problem.” He turned at the door. “Bailey, you push me further than any woman ever has. On so many levels. Get in there and get ready for work. If you don’t, I’ll load you up and drive you myself.”

And then he was gone. The sound of his retreating footsteps sent a shudder up her spine. When she glanced out the window, she saw him walk into his camper, the door banging shut behind him.

“Sis, you’re going to have to let someone help—it might as well be Cody.”

Bailey turned, fixing her gaze on her dad. He had hold of the back of a kitchen chair, his knuckles white with the effort. She turned back to the normal thing, fixing breakfast and pretending her dad would be around for another twenty years.

“I know, Dad. I know that I need help, we need help, but I don’t know…”