How to Rope a Real Man (23 page)

“It’s really me. How ya been, Lanie?”

“Doin’ real good,” Lanie answered. “Hey, listen, it’s great to see you but you can’t be in here without a shirt on.”

Jenna’s mouth went dry. Shirtless? But . . .

“No shirt, no shoes, no service—is that right?” came Carson’s glib response. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to eat. Jenna, don’t play the coward. I know you heard me come in.”

She was vaguely aware of Matt watching her, Lanie, too.

Hands clutching her sides and her teeth chattering, she turned and looked into the steel-blue eyes of the last man on Earth she ever wanted to see again.

Carson was indeed shirtless, dressed in low-slung, faded jeans and wearing a hard, goading expression on his face. Behind him, café patrons stared blatantly at him. Or rather, they were looking at his back, whispering to each other.

It was a testament to how much Carson had changed that he was parading his scars in public, without care who learned his intimacies. Jenna couldn’t imagine what that would be like, living with such an ugly word carved onto her skin, unable to escape the memory of being hurt or the reminder of how hateful the world could be.

How many times as a Marine had Carson needed to defend himself against bigoted fellow soldiers and his superiors? How many times had he been forced to either deny who he was or come out to friends and strangers alike every time he took off his shirt, whether in the barracks showers or at a doctor’s office? Your past was always chasing you, no matter how badly you wanted it to leave you alone.

There was poetry in walking through the heart of Catcher Creek like that, turning the act of hate he’d endured into a fearless proclamation about who he was. She would have admired his boldness, if only she wasn’t so scared of what he could do to her or Tommy.

“I paid a visit to Bucky and Kyle last night. They’d already heard I was here. And they’d already heard why. I got the impression you had something to do with that.”

“Oh,” she answered in a quavering voice. What did you do to them? She wanted to ask. Did you hurt them?

Matt must’ve sensed her agitation because he wrapped a proprietary arm around her waist. He studied Carson, then pulled his face back, blinking. “Wait . . . Lynch?”

Carson looked Matt up and down, moving his head in a slow nod. “Right, I remember you. The champagne killer.”

Champagne killer?
“You two have met?”

“Yeah, we met.” He nodded in Matt’s direction. “When you said you had a girl to see, you didn’t mention it was Jenna.”

Matt shifted, his hold on her waist tightening. “I didn’t realize you two were close.”

“Jenna and I go way back. In fact, we got reacquainted on Sunday night, didn’t we?”

Jenna closed her eyes, grinding her molars together as anxiety set in. Of all the things Carson could’ve said to Matt.

Next to her, Matt stiffened and dropped his arm from her waist. “Sunday night?”

“Tommy wants to know if he can get a double scoop,” Rachel said somewhere behind her.

Jenna’s mouth flew open and she bit back a howl of fear at the sound of Tommy’s name in Carson’s presence. Light-headed, she couldn’t wrap her brain around the idea that this was happening—everything was crashing down around her at once. If they would all just go away, she’d have the breathing room to figure out what to do.

She pivoted toward the ice-cream counter in time to brace her hands in front of her as Tommy bounded up. “There are too many flavors to decide. Please, can I get a double scoop, Mommy?”

She fought to keep the panic off her face. Blocking Carson’s view of Tommy with her body, she tried to smile. “I thought you were set on bubblegum.”

His eyes widened in awe. “I was, but then I saw peanut butter cup.”

“That’s a difficult choice. Yes, you may have a double scoop. First, let’s go wash your hands.” Her heart hammered so hard that her ribs hurt. She reached for his hand.

He retreated, bumping into Vaughn’s legs. “But it’s our turn to order. Can we please buy our ice cream first? I promise I’ll wash afterward.”

Mechanically, she handed Vaughn a twenty-dollar bill. “Will you help him?”

But Vaughn was staring past Jenna, recognition settling on his face. “Carson Parrish. I got a tip that you’d come back to this town, but this is the first we’ve seen of each other. Where have you been hiding?”

A malicious grin spread over Carson’s face. “If it isn’t our old friend, the sheriff. Looks like you two are pals now. What’s up with that?”

She and Carson had been hell-raisers together, both of them drowning their sorrows and pain in mischief and chemicals. As many times as Jenna had gotten herself brought home in the back of Vaughn’s squad car, Carson had too.

“Yes. He’s going to be my brother-in-law soon.” Which was more proof that God had a soft spot for irony. Then again, Jenna could at least take some credit for Vaughn and Rachel falling in love seeing as how they’d first made eyes at each other across the doorway when Vaughn had delivered Jenna’s drunk, drug-addled self to Rachel nearly every week.

The revelation caught Carson’s interest. His eyebrows bobbed in a flash of surprise. “That must have cramped your style.”

It hadn’t occurred to her, not for one second, that Carson believed she hadn’t changed since the days they rolled together. If she could just get Tommy that ice cream, she knew she’d buy his compliance so they could escape without him throwing a fit.

She set the twenty on the counter. “Sweetie,” she said to Tommy, “order whatever you want.” She forced herself to meet Matt’s hard stare. “Do you want an ice cream?”

He leaned into her. “Sunday night?” His tone was a harsh whisper. “Was he why you didn’t want me to come over?”

She hated to lie to him, but what else could she say?
Yes, he was the reason, just not in the way you’re assuming?
She shook her head. “Just . . . let’s get Tommy an ice cream and get out of here. Please.”

Vaughn repositioned himself even with Jenna, his right hand resting on his gun holster. “You go by Lynch now?”

“You like it, Sheriff? Let’s just say I earned that nickname fair and square and leave it at that.” Though Carson was behind her, she could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Lanie already told you that you can’t be in here without a shirt on,” Vaughn said. “I suggest you leave before I make you.”

Jenna flicked a glance at Carson over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed and his grin disappeared. He rolled his shoulders forward, flexing his back muscles, then his biceps. “I learned a thing or two in the Marines, Sheriff Cooper. You can’t push me around like you used to. I’m the one who does the pushing now.”

Jenna swayed, dizzy.

“Mommy, look how big my ice cream is.”

She scooped Tommy up and tried to angle his face out of view of Carson. Everything had gone so horribly wrong, so fast. She never stood a chance.

“Who’s he?” Tommy pointed at Carson.

Bile rose in Jenna’s throat. She flattened her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tried to keep her soothing smile from faltering. “That’s . . . that’s Carson. He’s somebody Mommy knows from when she was a little girl. Come on, sweetie. It’s time to go.”

“Hold on a second.” Carson stepped sideways, blocking her progress. His focus was riveted to Tommy’s face; then he blinked. His jaw tightened. “This is your kid?”

“Yes,” Jenna breathed.

Carson paled, swaying as Jenna had not a few minutes earlier. “How old is he?” he ground out from behind clenched teeth.

The world seemed to freeze. Her heart beat loud in her ears and she stopped breathing. Then, as if someone had hit the
play
button again, her system jolted back to life. Panic gave way to steely resolve. Her vision tunneled and her mind cleared as her life came into stark focus. Everything she’d ever gone through, everything she held dear in her life, all boiled down to this one moment. Her sister didn’t matter, and neither did Matt. Not school, and not what happened to her next. Only Tommy.

She squared her shoulders, set her chin high, and stared Carson straight in the eye, confident and capable. “He’s four.”

A ripple of confusion—or perhaps dawning awareness—passed through Matt, Vaughn, Rachel, and the diner patrons listening in. In Jenna’s periphery, she watched Matt’s focus toggle between Carson and Tommy, his face falling like he’d figured out the truth behind her lie.

Jenna let the gawking stares roll off her like rain, but when her whip-smart son piped up to disagree, she shoved his ice-cream cone into his open mouth and marched him out of the café.

God, she wished she had her car there instead of being at Matt’s mercy to get them home. She nearly chickened out from facing him by getting in Rachel’s truck, but if she did that, if she turned away from Matt now, he might never forgive her. At least if she and Tommy rode home with him, he might give her a chance to explain. Not that she had the luxury to care about salvaging their relationship now. Like an elephant matriarch, she had only one job and that was protecting her son at all costs.

Thank goodness Matt hadn’t locked his car door. She didn’t raise her eyes once to check if anyone had followed them out of the café, but kept her attention solely on her son, strapping him into his booster seat, praying that Matt appeared before Carson did.

Before she had Tommy’s door closed, Matt was opening his. She could tell by the set of his lips in a flat line that he was upset. He didn’t talk to her, just slid into the driver’s seat and turned the engine over.

She took to her seat, keeping her face pointed straight ahead and her hands clasped in her lap to keep them from shaking too noticeably. She had no idea how to start a conversation with Matt, especially in front of Tommy, but it turned out not to be an issue because he never once looked at or spoke to her the entire drive to her cottage.

The tension in the car, coupled with the huge dose of sugar and a late bedtime, must’ve been too much for Tommy because, despite the massive double-scoop ice cream he held, his mood plummeted. What started as babbling questions about why Jenna had gotten his age wrong rapidly devolved into a tantrum about how fast the ice cream was melting all over his hands and pants.

Jenna passed back napkins from the stash in her purse and tried to console him that she wasn’t angry about his clothes getting messy because he’d be changing into his pajamas as soon as they got home, but all that did was turn his whining into out-and-out tears, complete with wailing. Matt had a death grip on the steering wheel and stayed silent, with splotchy red growing over the skin of his neck.

She couldn’t be mad at Tommy for the tantrum. Her heart was breaking for the little guy. His life had to be so confusing to his young mind right now, with their imminent move to Santa Fe, starting kindergarten, and Jenna and Matt’s new relationship. She wished more than anything that she could make it all stop and give him the stability he needed and deserved, but there was only one way through the upheaval to get to their new, peaceful life in Santa Fe, and that was to put their heads down and charge through it.

Matt pulled even with the walkway to Jenna’s front door and idled the car, his focus on the horizon.

Over Tommy’s whining, she said, “Please don’t leave yet. Give me just a minute. Please.”

His jaw rippled.

She nodded, unlatched her belt, and climbed out, then took hold of Tommy’s ice cream-sticky hand and helped him hop out. “I’ll be right in, okay, buddy? You can sit at the kitchen table and finish your ice cream, then play with your toys for a few minutes before you need to brush your teeth. Sound good?”

“All right.” Head down and sniffling, he dragged his feet, then tripped and fell flat on his face on the grass. His ice cream rolled away, ruined.

Screaming and so mad that his face was bright red, he stayed facedown, kicking and screaming and pounding his hands on the ground. Jenna had known Matt for eight months, and every time Tommy had had rough patches, Matt had stepped in to help. Tommy looked up to him and listened to him so much better than he listened to Jenna. He was an expert at getting Tommy through his tantrums. Not tonight.

She looked Matt’s way. His eyes were closed and he gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.

Jenna pushed a strand of hair out of her face and tried to ignore the tears of despair she felt coming on. Rather than trying to save her imploding love life, she had to deal with Tommy. She’d begged Matt to wait, but he hadn’t turned the SUV’s engine off. She half expected him to drive away at any moment, even though she recognized how insulting to his integrity it was to think that.

She stood over Tommy, who was still crying and thrashing on the ground, and raised her face to the night sky. She loved being a mom more than anything and credited Tommy with saving her life—shocking her into adulthood—but she just needed a few minutes to catch her breath. She needed to figure out what to do about Carson and Matt and all the stupid, unfair turns her life had taken in the past week.

Nausea roiled in her stomach and she knew an onslaught of crazy tears was coming soon if she didn’t calm down. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T, S—” A lump constricted her throat.

“Arcuepee, Mommy.”

She looked down at her son.

His face was red and streaked with ice cream, dirt, grass, and tears, but at least he’d stopped crying. “You looked like you didn’t remember the next letter in your backward game and it’s arcuepee,” he said between crying hiccups.

She dropped her knees next to him, a hand on his leg. “You’re right, buddy. R, Q, P. Thank you. Are you okay? Did you skin your knees or anything?”

He rolled into a butterball and stuck his knee up. It was scraped, but not badly.

“You want me to kiss it?”

“Maybe later. Right now I just want a Band-Aid and a new ice cream. We still have chocolate fudge Popsicles in the freezer, don’t we?”

“We do. Do you remember where we keep the Band-Aids?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m not four, like you thought.”

She fought to keep the sad smile off her face. “You’re right. You’re such a big boy. I made a mistake. Would you get yourself a bandage and an ice cream so I can talk to Matt alone?” She pulled out her phone and accessed his favorite game. “Here, for when you’re done with your ice cream.”

He stood, then took the phone with a glance at Matt’s SUV. “I think he’s mad at us.”

“Not you, sweetie. He’s mad at me. I messed up and I have to apologize.”

“You mess up a lot, Mommy.”

Sweet sundae, did she ever know it. She was doing the best she could as a mother. Falling short, but giving it her everything. Despite all her mistakes, despite everything that had gone wrong, Tommy was going to grow up to be a good, smart, kind person with a huge family of people who loved him. She took comfort in that, even if she’d never win a Mother of the Year award.