How to Handle a Cowboy (17 page)

As Sierra followed Ridge into the dimly lit interior of the Red Dawg Saloon, she managed to tear her eyes from his backside long enough to nod hello to a few of her new neighbors. His jeans weren't tight, exactly, but they sure did fit. And he'd gone out to his truck and returned wearing a clean straw cowboy hat.

A clean hat should have been a good thing, but for some reason Sierra missed his bashed-in, stained, scarred, battered old felt hat. It fit better with his face somehow—and his personality. Ridge wasn't about the showy cowboy charm sold by Nashville singing stars; he was the real thing. A working cowboy.

Those Nashville stars might have money and fame and legions of groupies, but they weren't this rugged, or this masculine, or this
hot.
They didn't have that walk, the slight swagger a man could only get from long days in the saddle. Or the quiet self-assurance of a rodeo rider who's been tossed in the dirt by a hundred horses and bucking bulls and walked away every time—well, almost every time—with a tip of his hat. Certainly if you could subdue a bucking bull, you'd be pretty confident about everything else.

She struggled to still the crazy sparrow that seemed to be fluttering in her chest as she slid into a booth upholstered in red vinyl with a few duct tape patches. Why was she so nervous? She was only here because he bailed her out last night. Period. End of story.

“It's not exactly The Four Seasons,” he said, sliding into the other side of the booth.

“I've heard it's the best restaurant in Wynott,” she said.

“I don't know. The microwave burritos at the Mini Mart are pretty darn good.”

She glanced around and caught several other diners looking their way. Ed Boone, who had been armed and dangerous outside his hardware store the night before, had his deep-set eyes fixed on the two of them and a sly smile on his face. Mrs. Carson, who was having a silent but companionable dinner with her husband, averted her gaze every time Sierra looked her way. A few men at the bar were watching speculatively. Ridge had nodded at them as he walked in, so they must be friends or acquaintances.

“They'll quit staring after a while.” Ridge grinned. “Might be a long while, though. You're the most interesting thing to happen to Wynott in a long time.”

What did he mean? Interesting to everyone or interesting to him? Or both? Was it a reference to what had happened between them at the ranch? Or just a passing reference to the fact that she was the new girl, somebody a little different.

Why did that matter, anyway? As Isaiah would say, she was being such a
girl.

As she pretended to admire the Red Dawg's rustic decor, Ridge accidentally brushed her calf with the toe of his cowboy boot. There couldn't possibly be a more innocent touch, but it was like he'd pushed a button that started an old-fashioned Super 8 movie flickering in her mind. She saw snippets of their night together, disconnected pictures of the moments that mattered: their bodies intertwined, his rough hand cupping her cheek, his pale eyes looking into hers and seeing far more than she wanted to reveal. Then things got really heated and she saw the sculpted muscles of his thigh against hers, the bulge of his biceps as he lifted himself above her, the earnest concentration on his face as he closed his eyes and savored the sensation of driving into her, over and over and…

Stop.

She folded her hands on the table—partly to look poised but mostly to stop them from shaking. The waitress had stopped by, and Ridge had said something. What had it been?

She smiled and nodded vaguely, wondering what she was agreeing to. He could have asked her to cut off her left thumb and feed it to Sluefoot for all she knew.

When the waitress gave her an expectant smile, Sierra realized she hadn't so much as glanced at the menu.

“I'll have a cheeseburger,” she said. She could see the remnants of one on Mrs. Carson's plate and the fries looked good. “With fries and a Coke.”

“Rib eye,” Ridge said. “Rare. And a baked potato. Water to drink.”

Sierra fished around for a subject that didn't involve herself or Ridge or how they felt about each other.

“So how do you know Mike?” she asked.

“Mike who?”

“Mike Malloy. Your drinking buddy.”

He gave her a blank stare.

“The guy that runs Phoenix House, who thought you should teach the kids rodeo.”

“Oh. Him.” Ridge shook his head. “I actually don't know him. Shane met him in the beer tent at a rodeo once. The guy wouldn't leave Shane alone until he promised to get involved.”

“So you're not my boss's best friend after all.”

“I never even met the guy.”

“That's great.” She could hardly hide her glee. If Ridge and Mike weren't friends, she was free to…

Free to do things she shouldn't.

Ridge was watching her as if he could read her mind, so she fished around for a safe topic. Local history should be safe.

“Phoenix House was a group home before, wasn't it?” Sierra said.

Ridge nodded, grimacing. “They called it an orphanage then, but yeah, it was pretty much the same thing.” He stumbled over the words, as if this was a hard topic for him to talk about. “The woman running it was nothing like you, though. She was a lot older, for one thing.”

Sierra grimaced. She got comments about how young she was all the time. It was her size. It kept people from taking her seriously, and she was tired of it. She'd hit her limit in heel-height, and her posture was straight as a number-two pencil. The only way she could look taller was stilts, and they hadn't come into vogue yet.

She sat back as the waitress arrived, bearing heaping plates of food. Sierra's burger was big and juicy and deliciously messy, which would have been fine if she'd been eating alone.

“Anything else?” the waitress asked.

“Drinks?” Ridge smiled as the girl whirled and headed back to the kitchen.

“What was she like?” Sierra asked. “The woman who ran Phoenix House, I mean.”

Ridge huffed out a mirthless laugh. “She sure as hell didn't care about the kids like you do. She was just there to collect a paycheck. She scrimped on supplies, and she never lifted a finger to clean the place.”

“You know a lot about it,” she said. “Have you always been concerned about homeless kids?”

“Sort of.” Ridge toyed with his food, which made it all the more embarrassing that Sierra couldn't help attacking her cheeseburger like a hungry wolf.

“She never should have been given control over kids. Not anywhere.” Ridge was staring across the room, his eyes fixed on the wall as if he was seeing the skimpy meals and unwashed laundry himself. “She'd lock the kids in the basement, make them go without meals, you name it. That's what finally got the place shut down.”

“That's awful,” Sierra said.

“It was. It's so isolated here, you know? There was nobody for the kids to turn to. I think there were supposed to be state inspections, but nobody ever came.”

He was still staring blankly into the distance. The term “thousand-yard stare” was usually applied to combat veterans or post-traumatic stress sufferers. But if she didn't know better, she'd say that's what Ridge was doing now.

He seemed to take a lot of things about the home personally. Maybe it was a sad commentary on society that the level of his caring set off warning bells in her head.

Or maybe…

All the questions that had been lurking in the back of her mind since her first trip to the ranch surged to the forefront. Why didn't Ridge have the same last name as his father or his brothers? Why did the three boys look so different? And that picture…

She reached over the table, stopping just short of touching his hand. He jerked in his seat, as if he'd been dreaming and she'd woken him up.

“You seem to know an awful lot about this,” she said cautiously.

He shook his head, as if snapping out of a dream. “Yeah, well, I was there.”

She didn't know what to say. He
had
been there.

There.

He'd been one of the kids.

Pieces began falling into place—the way he understood the kids. The way he talked about the place.

She didn't know where to look or what to say. She'd heard how bad the place was back then. Mike had cautioned her that Phoenix House had a terrible reputation to overcome.

No wonder Ridge had trouble with relationships. No wonder he understood the boys so well.

He'd been a foster child himself.

Ridge's dinner with Sierra was not going according to plan. He'd figured on bringing up his past, but the picture he wanted to paint was of a man who'd experienced the foster system and had a positive outcome—not of a man who'd been through the worst the system had to offer. Now Sierra was looking at him with a mixture of horror and pity that didn't bode well for any rational discussion.

Maybe he should just give up on this. Why did he want to complicate his life with a kid anyway? He was no good with people.

But he
was
good with Jeffrey. The memory of the boy riding circled in his mind—the glow of his smile, the new confidence in his movements. Dammit, he remembered that feeling, that elation when you swung into the saddle and took control of a chaotic world. He wanted to give that feeling to Jeffrey, and maybe some other boys too. Not just once a week, but every day, the way Bill Decker had done for him.

“Ridge, I had no idea you were a foster kid,” Sierra said. “I'm so sorry. I hope I haven't said anything stupid. I mean, I had no clue.”

He waved away her pity. “I'm fine.”

She leaned forward, a french fry dangling from her fingers. “Well, you've done pretty well for yourself. I mean, I had no idea. How did you ever end up a cowboy, of all things?”

“When they shut the place down, they found homes for all the kids but three—the three nobody wanted. Me, Shane, and Brady. They gave us an emergency placement with Bill Decker, at the ranch where I live now.”

“And you stayed.”

“Best thing that ever happened to me. Bill Decker didn't plan on keeping us for long, but something just clicked for all of us.”

“Wow.” She sat back, staring at him with a mixture of wonder and pity in her eyes.

He wondered how to make her stop feeling sorry for him. He'd been through hard times, sure, but now he was done with that time in his life. Period. He was who he was, and that's what he should be judged on—not his past.

“Bill must have been quite a guy.”

“He was.” Ridge pictured his foster father, a wiry rancher tough as a strip of rawhide, with the energy of a Tasmanian devil, the tenacity of a wolverine, and a heart as big as all of Wyoming. “He and Irene treated us like we were their own.”

“It must have been an adjustment for you if you'd been in care that long.”

“I hate that phrase, ‘in care,'” he said. “Nobody ‘cared' for me until I got out of the system.”

“I'm sorry. I never thought of it that way.” She toyed with what was left of her food awhile before she looked up and met his eyes. “So that's why you're so good with the boys.”

“I hope so. It's also why I want to adopt one. Or two. Actually, I'd eventually like to take three. That's what worked for me and my brothers.” He thought of the conversation they'd had earlier about how well this whole group fit together. “But I could take more.”

She stopped as suddenly as if someone had hit a pause button, a french fry halfway to her mouth. Setting the fry down, she blurted out, “You want to be a foster father?”

Maybe the pity in her tone hadn't been so bad. It sure beat disbelief, which was what he was hearing now.

“Yes, me. Why? Is that so unbelievable?”

She gave him a critical look. “It just surprised me. You don't seem like the type.”

What did she care what “type” he was? He'd spent time in three foster homes in between his bouts in various state-run group homes, and nobody had seemed to care what “type” those foster parents were. His first placement was with a pair of lazy layabouts who wanted to take advantage of easy money from the state. He'd been six then, and they'd mostly used him to clean floors and bring them beers. His second foster parents were zealots on a mission to save the world by beating morality into the hides of innocent kids. The third family meant well, but they'd expected Ridge to love them unconditionally from day one. They'd given him back to the state three weeks after his arrival.

Obviously, nobody had checked to see what “type” they were.

“You don't think I can do it,” he said.

“It's not that. It's just a lot to take on, that's all.”

“You care about the kids, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then aren't you anxious to find real homes for them?”

She took a small bite, chewed, and swallowed.

“Anxious isn't a good word.” Patting her lips with her napkin, she looked thoughtful. “Just because they enter into a family living situation doesn't mean they're home free. Foster parents have to have an understanding of the issues these kids face and the difficulties they have adjusting to what we think of as a normal life. These kids can't just blend in with an existing family or create the kind of family most people hope for. It's different.”

He just stared at her. Did she think he didn't know this stuff?

“I know you have a good understanding of the problems they face, but you have to make sure this is a commitment you can stick with, because there's no going back.”

“I'm a rodeo cowboy, remember? ‘Sticking' is what I do. I don't quit.”

“For eight seconds.”

He wanted to argue, but she had a point.

She pointed a french fry at him. “You're a single man who's been on the rodeo circuit most of your adult life. You're used to change, to being on the road, right? I don't see how you could create a home for a child when you're always on the road.”

“I'm not going on the road anymore.” He'd been resting his bad hand on the table while he ate, but now he put it out of sight in his lap. This wasn't the topic he'd wanted to discuss.

She nipped off the end of a french fry. “But once they fix your hand…”

Damn it, he was going to have to say it out loud. He didn't mind discussing his injury with his brothers, but admitting defeat here, right in the middle of the Red Dawg, seemed so public. And that made his situation seem final in a way it never had before.

He lifted his hand from the table and showed how stiff the fingers were. “Can't.”

Damn.
Can't
was a word Bill had taught him should never be said. But in this case, it was true.

“You can't bend them?”

She reached over and took his hand, forming the fingers into a fist. They bent all right, but as soon as she let go the hand opened again. He felt like slamming it against the table. The doctors said the problem wasn't just in the hand; he had a neck injury that contributed to the problem. They'd tried to fix it with a spinal fusion, but it hadn't worked.

“Nerve damage,” he said.

She was giving him that pitying look again, and he quickly pulled his hand away.

“It's okay. It was time to quit anyway. I was the world champion bronc rider last year and the year before. That was my goal. I made it, and I'm done.”

There. Now she was looking at him with some respect. She'd never know that championship hadn't been his final goal—that he'd had to quit short of winning the All-Around.

Quit.
That was the other word Bill had outlawed. God, he felt like such a failure.

He knew it didn't make sense. It wasn't his fault. His hand had been caught fast in the rigging, and the horse, a bronc named Twister who'd ruined more than one cowboy, rolled over on him. Accidents happened in rodeo all the time. That day, it had happened to him.

But he still felt like he'd failed somehow.

Sierra reached over and put her hand over his good hand. Did she realize he couldn't eat now? He couldn't pick up a french fry with his bad hand, for God's sake. He shook her off.

“Sorry.” She seemed to realize she'd made a wrong move. Picking up her burger, she took a bite and eyed him warily, apparently unaware that the bun was dripping condiments onto her leg.

Wariness beat pity, anyway.

“I'm ready to move on,” he said. “It's time to do something new, something that does some good in the world.” He remembered what Shane had said. “Rodeo's good for learning toughness and try, and for building up your strength. It's a good world for a young man. But in the end, it's all about buckles and babes, and that's not enough anymore.”

He watched her tackle the end of her hamburger, licking up a drop of ketchup that threatened to drip out the back of the bun.

“Do you think you might be moving a little fast?” she asked. “It's a big change. Maybe you should—I mean, maybe it would be good to…” She patted her mouth with her napkin and took a deep breath. “Ridge, you don't seem to have a job. How are you going to support a bunch of kids? The state gives you money, and I know you've got the ranch, but is it enough to live on?”

He grinned. This was one problem he didn't have. “Well, for one thing, I have enough rodeo winnings in the bank to buy the ranch three times over, and it's a big ranch. For another thing, I'm pretty well-known around here as a horse trainer, so I can make a living with that.”

“Oh.” She bit into another french fry, contemplating him as she chewed. Once she'd swallowed, she patted her mouth again. He was starting to learn this was a signal that she was about to say something uncomfortable. “But won't you miss rodeo? Guts and glory, adoring women—all that stuff?”

He was starting to understand
her
issues. She didn't understand who he was. She couldn't see past the carefree athlete who lived on the road. She had no idea how disciplined he was, how goal oriented.

“No,” he said. “I know what I want. And once I take something on, I don't quit until I've succeeded. You don't have to worry about me changing my mind.”

“But there is no success in this. You know that, right? You can't just
fix
these kids.”

“Bill fixed me. And my brothers.”

She locked her eyes on his. “So you have no lingering effects from your childhood?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Do you?”

“We all do. Bill didn't flick a switch, and neither can you. If he were still alive—and I'm really sorry he's not, by the way—he'd still worry about you, wouldn't he? He'd still be your dad, taking care of you.”

Something about that phrase brought a lump to Ridge's throat, but he swallowed it down and moved on. He was a grown man now. He didn't need anybody taking care of him; it was his turn to take care of someone.

He thought of the old man's will. He'd left the ranch to all three of the boys, of course. But he'd left them more advice than money, page after page of close-typed text on how to live a good man's life. Nobody complained. Bill's wisdom had meant more to them than anything. More, even, than their home.

They used Bill's advice every day, so Sierra was right; they still needed him. The job was never done.

“I'm not saying you can't do it,” she said. “I'm just saying it's a lifelong commitment, one that's not always easy to deal with.”

“I can deal with it.”

She seemed to accept that answer—or at least, she went back to her french fries and ate with a little more enthusiasm. He went back to his too, although he sure wished he could have something to drink with it. Sierra was probably thirsty too.

“Hey, I'd go to the bar and get you something to drink, but that's Chrissie's dad.” He gestured toward the bartender. “Poor kid's always in trouble. Don't want to cause her more.”

“I'm fine.” Sierra smiled. “She's a cute kid.”

Ridge smiled. Shelley would've been up there at the bar, insisting on some sweet pink girlie drink and complaining about the service. Which would have made Chrissie even more of a wreck, and then she'd have screwed up their food too.

They ate for a while before he spoke again. “Look, I might not be perfect dad material. But I'll respect them, I'll protect them, and I'll teach them right from wrong.”

She smiled gently. “You forgot something.”

“That too. You know I—care about them.” He waited for her to point out that maybe a man who couldn't even say the word
love
wasn't capable of it. Shelley had always gone on about that. But Sierra just nodded. Maybe she understood that what you did was a lot more important than what you said.

“So how do I start?” he asked.

“Well, you'll need to fix up the ranch first.”

“What's wrong with the ranch?” He and his brothers knew the house needed updating, but none of them had been there long enough to do anything about it. Still, the place was comfortable. It might not be a mansion, but it was home.

“It has to pass a pretty rigorous inspection before they'll let kids live there. You'll have to bring it up to code. Wiring, plumbing—I'm betting that stuff's as old as the building or close.” He had to nod. “And there's one more thing.”

He waited for her to finish, but she seemed to be having trouble getting the words out.

“Go on,” he said. “What is it?”

She looked wary. “They generally don't approve single men.”

He should have realized that. With all the hideous cases of abuse in the papers lately, no man would be trusted with a child on his own. Never mind that the only people who had ever smacked Ridge around as a kid were women. In the minds of most people, it was men who couldn't be trusted.

“Hmm.” He thought a moment. “Maybe we ought to reconsider that relationship.”

She gave him an eye roll worthy of a sarcastic seventh grader. “I thought you were only good for one-night stands.”

“That was a slight exaggeration.” Even as he said it, he remembered what Shelley said.
You
don't need the things other people need. You think that makes you strong. But it doesn't. It just makes you alone
.

Maybe this wasn't something he could do. He'd learned the value of family from Bill and Irene, but he'd failed miserably at the only long-term relationship he'd ever attempted. He thought he could be a good parent, maybe even a great one. But husband? That word scared him.