A Maverick's Heart (17 page)

Cowboy in Charge

by Barbara White Daille

Chapter One

Spending his afternoon at a kid’s first birthday party normally wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Jason McAndry’s to-do list. As this party was in honor of his buddy’s little girl, he didn’t have a choice.

From his seat on one of the windowsills of the screened-in back porch, he rested his beer bottle on his knee and looked through the sliding glass doors into the house.

Near the crowded dining table, the proud papa hugged his birthday girl, who was all dressed up in pink ruffles with a tiny bow in her nearly nonexistent hair. After one last kiss to her cheek, Greg handed the star of the show over to her mama.

Jason tried for a smile. The man sure did dote on his daughter.

In the three years since they’d met, he and Greg had put in a lot of miles traveling on the rodeo circuit. Back in those early days, they had both been single and fancy-free till Greg had first gotten roped by a woman, then hog-tied into becoming a daddy. Yet his buddy didn’t seem to see things that way.

From that point on, their trips included frequent slide shows as Greg thumbed through the latest photos his wife sent to his cell phone.

Jason shoved his hand into the back pocket of his jeans. His fingertips brushed the edge of his wallet. He had no photos on his phone, carried no pictures except his own on his driver’s license. But in that wallet he’d tucked a now worn and permanently creased copy of another child’s birth announcement.

Greg stepped out onto the porch and slid the glass door closed behind him. He frowned. “What are you doing out here, guarding the beer locker?”

He had left the house to get some space, some breathing room. But he couldn’t say that. “Just came out for a refill.”

Greg nodded at his half-empty bottle. “Doesn’t look like you got one. Or are you ready for another already?”

“No, this one’s still good. And I’ll be driving soon.” He moved to sit in one of the wooden porch benches and set the bottle on the wide arm. “Take a load off. All this master of ceremonies stuff must wear you out.”

“Never.” Greg took a nearby chair. “I’ve got lots of lost time to make up for.”

He meant his absence this season when they had been on the road, competing in rodeos across the country. Mere weeks away in total, while by comparison, Jason hadn’t been back to his hometown in years. He didn’t want to consider why or how he’d left Cowboy Creek. Yet, lately, both had been taking up too much space in his thoughts.

“We’re talking about me hanging up my spurs,” Greg said quietly.

“Giving up rodeo?” He might have done the same at one point. Now he couldn’t imagine making that choice. But Greg had his family to come back to. He had...himself.

Inside the house, both sides of Greg’s family had gathered around his wife and little girl, all of them making too much noise for them to overhear this conversation, even with the windows wide-open on this mild January day. But, like his buddy, he kept his voice low. “You really want to leave your share of the winnings to me?”

Greg laughed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind. You’re welcome to them. I don’t want to miss out on any more of my daughter’s life. And we want more kids. Soon, not down the road.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer, then continued, “Do you ever regret what happened with you and your wife?”

He stiffened. The question had come out of nowhere. Sure, he’d told Greg a long time ago that he’d gotten divorced before he’d hit the rodeo trail. What he hadn’t told him was that had come to pass partly
because
of his refusal to hang up his spurs. That was only one item on a long list of his ex-wife’s grievances.

After that lone conversation, he and Greg had never discussed it again. He had a feeling he knew why his buddy had brought it up now. “Listen, you may be settling into a rut as an old married man, but don’t go getting any ideas about me joining you in the trenches.”

“There’s a lot to be said about having a family to come home to.”

“Yeah, and there’s a lot I
don’t
need to say about that.” On that long-ago night over a few too many beers, he had told Greg all about the girl he’d left behind. The high-school-sweetheart-turned-wife who’d turned against him after their last rip-roaring fight. The wife who had wound up kicking him out of their apartment, the only place that had ever felt like home to him. He should have known better than to expect that to last. “Best day of my life, when I started following the rodeo.”

“I thought that, too, once upon a time.”

He rolled his eyes and exhaled heavily. “And if you’re planning to practice your storytelling skills on me, I may just take off again right now.”

“Can’t do that. We haven’t even had the cake yet.” Greg glanced into the house at the crowd around the table in the direction of a leggy redhead, one of his wife’s friends. “How’d the hot date go last night?”

Jason glanced at her, too, then away again. “It went cold fast,” he said shortly. He took another swig from his nearly empty bottle, partly to get the last mouthful of beer but mostly to distract Greg from more questions.

When he’d rung the doorbell of the woman’s apartment last night, she had come to the door dressed to kill. Her shiny blouse wouldn’t have needed more than a touch to slide right off, but the skintight leather pants sure would have required some assistance. Of course, considering her friendship with Greg’s wife and the fact it was a first date, his run around those bases would have happened only in his dreams.

“That was our first and last date,” he said firmly to Greg.

His interest had worn off quickly when she stepped out into the hallway. She began to pull the door closed so abruptly, she would have crushed her little boy in the gap—if Jason hadn’t yelled a warning at her. In her defense, the kid had appeared out of nowhere. And that’s just where she had sent him off to again.

The boy looked about five, not nearly old enough to be left alone, Jason knew. He’d been seven the first time his mother left him on his own, and even that wasn’t old enough. But after the first half-dozen times, he’d toughened up fast.

Yet this woman simply gave the boy an order to step back before she closed the door. No goodbye kiss or cuddle, not even a last-minute rumpling of his hair. And without a sign of anybody else in the house.

“You want to settle him in before we leave?” he asked while they still stood outside her apartment.

“Don’t worry about him. I’ve got a sitter.”

Her offhand care of the child left him wanting to shake his head in wonder. And then to cringe in shame. Who was he to criticize? And yet, the incident had left a sour taste in his mouth. Their evening had gone downhill from there, ending in an early night. When he arrived at the party this afternoon, they had nodded at each other as if they’d just met, then went their separate ways. No problem there. He’d become an expert at moving on.

Greg eyed him. “Don’t you think it might be time to forget about your ex and—”

“Long forgotten already,” he said firmly.

“—find yourself another woman? This time next year, you could have a little girl or boy of your own.”

“Already got one.”
Dang
. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. He owed the slip to his unease over last night and to the months Greg had been preoccupied with his baby. Thoughts of his own child had been on his mind so often lately, the words had come out almost naturally.

Greg stared at him. “Well, listen to this. You picked up a woman and never said a word to me?”

Yeah, he could go with that story and continue to keep his secret to himself.

No, he couldn’t. Greg wouldn’t rest until he’d learned every last thing he could about someone who didn’t exist. Sighing, he admitted, “Not a woman. I meant I’ve got a little boy.”

The other man’s jaw dropped for a moment. Then he grinned. “You’re kidding. How old?”

“Three.”

“I don’t believe this. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had a son, and you never thought to tell me a word about him? Not even after I started bragging about becoming a daddy?”

“Guess not.”

“Obviously not. Why didn’t you say something, man?”

Inside the house, Greg’s little girl gave a high-pitched giggle. He could picture her a year ago in the photo on Greg’s phone, all wrapped up in a pink-and-white baby blanket. He could see other views of her as she grew bigger, sprouted a little more hair, cut a couple of teeth.

Ages and stages he’d never gotten to see with his son. Thoughts he’d never had until a few months ago. Memories he’d never missed until Greg started with those danged photos.

Those memories had hit him hard last night, when his date had walked away from her child without a second look.

Her action was too similar to the thoughts he’d been dwelling on for months now. Too close to what
he
had once done to leave him in any mood for enjoying the evening. When he had left his hometown, he hadn’t been a daddy yet. Hell, he still wasn’t. Not in the full sense of the word. But he’d known the baby was on the way. And still, without once looking back, he’d walked away from his unborn son.

Shrugging, he looked at Greg. “What’s there to say?”

“The boy’s name, for starters. Who he takes after. When he was born, and where he is now.”

“Back in Cowboy Creek.”

“You’ve seen the boy?”

He shook his head.

The look on Greg’s face made him wish he hadn’t refused another beer. Giving his buddy the chance to play host might have derailed this entire conversation. “My wife was pregnant when we split up. I left town, and we never kept in touch.”

Greg sat looking at him as if he’d just sprouted a second pair of hands. “That’s not you, man. What the hell happened?”

He shrugged. “It was almost four years ago. You weren’t you then, either. We’ve both changed since then. Both grown up. Back then I was young and stupid,” he admitted, “and still too focused on the wrong things. Like having a good time and hanging out at the Cantina in Cowboy Creek with my friends. Like getting drunk and getting laid. And to hear my ex tell it, like funneling our cash reserves into any rodeo that ever happened by.”

He had his reasons for wanting to enter those rodeos, for needing to win, but Layne saw the cash going toward entry fees and believed only that he was wasting money they needed for other things. “She didn’t appreciate any of that, especially when she sat at home dealing with morning sickness.” He laughed, trying to shrug off his guilt. “How the heck can they call it morning sickness when it seems to last all day?”

“You got me there. But that still doesn’t tell me why you walked.”

He grasped the neck of his beer bottle in both hands. All these years later, the memory of that last fight still made him tense like a spring-coiled wire. “I didn’t walk, at least not at first. Not until my ex threw me out.”

I’d be better off without you
. Layne’s voice had cracked on the words but she’d stood firm, her arms crossed over her chest and her chin held high. Her eyes were bright, not with the softness of tears but with the hard flint of anger.

“We’d gotten to the point we couldn’t say good morning without it leading to a fight,” he admitted. “When she told me to leave, I decided I was doing the right thing by going.”

“And your boy?”

Again, he shrugged. “She was only a few months pregnant. I’ve never laid eyes on the kid.”

“But you took care of him? You sent money home?”

“Sure, I did. Every month. And every month the envelope came back marked ‘return to sender.’” And the sight of Layne’s handwriting on every envelope that came in the mail acted like acid on an old burn, opening up the same wound.

You’ve left me alone one too many times
, she had said the night he’d come home to find she’d piled his packed and travel-worn duffel bags outside their apartment door.

Then those envelopes had come back to him one too many times, and he’d finally given up sending them. Given up hope. Given up thoughts of ever seeing his son.

He shoved his hand into his back pocket again, grazing his wallet and running the details of the newspaper clipping inside it silently through his mind.

Scott Andrew Slater.

Born not to Layne McAndry but to Layne Marie Slater. She’d taken back her maiden name and put not one mention of his in the birth announcement. She had very likely wiped his memory from her mind.

Just as he’d forced himself to do to her for all these years.

* * *

J
ASON
RAISED
HIS
fist in front of the apartment door, flinched as second thoughts hit him, and lowered his arm again.

Removing his Stetson, he scrubbed his forehead with one hand and assured himself he was doing the right thing. Close contact with two kids within two days last week had to mean something.

Yeah, something like fate deciding to rear up and head-butt him in the face, the way Burning Sage had almost done in that final ride in Cheyenne. The bull had wanted to take him down. Fate most likely just wanted to knock some sense into him.

Too late for that. He was here.

He raised his fist again and rapped on the apartment door. The wood sounded hollow, just the way his chest felt—if you didn’t count his heart banging against his ribs.

Inside the apartment, a television’s volume dipped, then a little boy’s voice cried, “Mommy!” in stunned outrage. A second later, the doorknob rattled. The door swung open, and he stood staring at the girl he’d left behind.

The
wife
he’d left behind.

She looked like hell warmed over twice.

Her beautiful golden-brown hair had been pulled up and stuck every which way by a couple of plastic combs. Her skin was paler than he remembered, her nose glowed as red as the taillights on his truck, and her sky blue eyes looked as glassy and bloodshot as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

Those eyes... In this situation, most folks’ eyes would have widened in surprise. Instead, she blinked once and went blank-faced, the way she had always done when confronted with something that shocked or alarmed her. Right now, he imagined she had received a double dose of both.