In Love With A Cowboy (BWWM Romance) (8 page)

Because I liked him, that was why. Because I wanted to be able to sort out whatever the problem was that made him so uptight, so that I could keep seeing him. It was good for Keisha to see a man that could treat a woman right. I was nervous that if she kept seeing the example Dean was setting as a father and an ex-lover she would end up with an asshole just like I did. You couldn’t avoid what you didn’t recognize as danger.

“I’ll be there in ten,” he said finally, and I felt the iron fist in my stomach ease up just a little.

When he arrived he looked amazing, as always. He wore faded jeans that actually looked like he’d worn them a little. Faded sneakers and a light blue shirt, and his hat was on his head again. I wondered where he got the cowboy hat from. But I didn’t want to ask. His eyes were a wide, deep blue that invited me to fall into them, and when he looked at me his eyes smiled, even when his mouth didn’t.

“That’s smells amazing,” he said, stepping into the house and taking off his hat. Ever the gentleman.

“Tanner?” Keisha called from her room and ran down the passage with a smile so wide she looked like she was going to crack. “I heard your voice!” she cried out and he scooped her up and swung her around once before setting her down again. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Is the food almost ready?” Keisha asked when her feet were on the ground again.

“Almost. Go wash your hands, when you’re done we can start eating.”

When she left the room I turned to Tanner. I searched his face for any kind of clue, but he was carefully expressionless.

“You’re driving me crazy,” I said. “What is it?”

He smiled a soft kind of smile that I still couldn’t read, and shook his head. “We’ll talk after dinner, when Keisha goes to bed,” he said. I nodded because I couldn’t force him to talk to me now.

Dinner was beautiful and perfect, the way it should be when a family wasn’t broken. Keisha babbled away and Tanner indulged her, and it worked. It really worked. I wondered why I hadn’t thought that this could be a possibility for so long. And then wondered how on earth I could ever have believed that I could have had something like this with Dean. Letting him go had been one of the hardest choices of my life. But it had been the best. It had been detrimental to me and my state of mind, and no child deserved to grow up with a father who leaned towards alcoholism. I’d seen enough of Dean’s nasty drinking habits back then to know now I’d made the right choice.

I stared at Tanner as he spoke to Keisha, telling her in simple terms what he did. He was good at breaking it down for her, so that she understood the basic concept. He must have been just as good in court, breaking it down for the jury to understand. He must have been a hell of a lawyer to watch.

I was attracted to men whose jobs had something to do with the law, it seemed. Dean’s was… okay. He tried hard but being sheriff was more like an ego boost. Tanner’s was worth noticing. And at the same time they were so far apart I couldn’t even compare them.

He was the kind of guy I wanted for the rest of my life. Stable. Good to Keisha, kind to me. The kind of man where neither of us would have to sacrifice a bit of ourselves for the other’s happiness. Keisha and I have had to compromise before, and it wasn’t worth it.

My stomach tightened again when I thought about why Tanner was here. He’d wanted to talk, he’d said. And it had sounded serious.

We washed up, all three of us. I washed while Tanner helped Keisha dry. By eight o’clock she warmed up again so I gave her medicine and put her to bed. When I closed the door behind her, Tanner smiled.

“She looks much better,” he said.

“Thanks to you,” I added. His face drained of color a little. “What, you think I don’t know who gave me the money for the doctor’s visit?”

He looked a little sheepish. He pushed his hand into his sandy hair at the back of his head. “Well, I was hoping you would think it was someone else,” he said.

“No one walks around with cash like that around here. You’d be surprised to know how small-town we are, Tanner. It’s nothing like the big city.”

He nodded. “I know,” he said softly.

“And I know it wasn’t Dean. It’s just not in his nature to actually help us out with money like that. Not if he could spend it on alcohol.”

I walked to the lounge and he followed. When I sat down on one end of the couch, he didn’t sit next to me. Instead he chose the armchair instead.

“I wanted to talk to you about that, actually,” he said.

“About the money?” I was finally going to find out. It had been gnawing at me since he’d phoned.

He shook his head. “No, about Dean.”

Dean? I looked down at my hands.

“You want to know about our relationship?” I asked. I guessed he had a right to know if he wanted us to become something… more. Dean was Keisha’s father, after all. “To be honest, I don’t think he would kick up that much of a fuss if someone took over the role of being a father." I’d looked up at him while I was talking, and the look on his face stopped me in my tracks. A sick feeling started in my stomach and pushed up in my throat. Nausea that tasted like the spaghetti bolognese we’d had.

“Oh my gosh,” I muttered, buried my face in my hands. “You don’t want this. You don’t want any of this… I’m so sorry. I’m getting way ahead of myself. I’m so presumptuous. You’ve only been here a few days and here I’m thinking you wanted to get involved with me.”

“Jada,” he said but I shook my head.

“No. Please, don’t say anything. I was just… I’m sorry.”

“Jada, that's not what I’m trying to say,” he said. He was sitting on the edge of the armchair, leaning towards me. His fingers were interlinked with his elbows on his knees, and he gripped his two hands together something fierce.

“No?”  I shook my head and shut my mouth. I was just digging myself a hole, anyway.

“No,” he said and smiled. His smile looked pained, and still it made his face beautiful, the most handsome man I’ve ever looked at.

“What are you here for, Tanner?” I asked. I didn’t mean just tonight, what he wanted to talk about. I meant in general. What did a man like him, bachelor of the year, want with a woman like me? I was small town, with a child and no real qualifications or direction in life. But maybe he saw something more in me?

Tanner took a deep breath and it looked like he was preparing for the worst.

“Dean’s my brother,” he said. He looked at me with intense blue eyes. The words floated around me. I tried to make sense of them, but I couldn’t seem to make it fit. I knew what the words meant, each word separately, but I had no idea what he was trying to say to me.

“What?” I asked, scrunching up my face. A headache was starting to thump between my temples.

Tanner sucked air in through his nose and closed his eyes.

“Please don’t make me say it again,” he whispered.

“Your brother?” I asked. “I don’t understand…”

When he opened up his eyes again they were a dark, ocean blue. They looked deep and distant and he suddenly felt miles away, even though he hadn’t moved an inch.

“I grew up here. Well, in Cosmos Valley. We moved to Westham when we had some… family trouble. When our parents died I left for the big city.”

It looked like that sentence alone had been torture.

“Why didn’t he tell me about you?” I asked. Somewhere in the two years we were dating and the four years after we broke up he should have said something, right? “All I knew about his life was that his parents died in a car crash. He never mentioned you.”

“We’ve never gotten along very well, but I think that when I ran away I think he thought I was running away from him, too. In nine years we’ve spoken less than ten times. I didn’t know about you, either.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my hammering heart. Nothing made sense. I was suddenly lost in the dark, and even though I could hear Tanner’s voice I couldn’t find him, couldn’t find all the light and happiness that had blown into my life when he’d arrived.

“I don’t…” I dropped my head into my hands. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t working very well. I don’t understand it.”

Tanner didn’t get irritated with me or blow out his breath in exasperation or treat me like I was an some babbling fool. Dean did all of that all the time. But then, they were related. How was that possible? They weren’t the same at all. Except… Tanner had the build and the posture Dean had had when I’d met him. And the blue eyes, and the face. He’d felt like coming home when I’d met him.

I was starting to understand why.

“How long have you known that Dean and I were together?” I asked.

“Since you came to the station that one night.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t know how.”

I tried to piece together the timeline. “Wait a minute, the money, the dinner, the… sex? That was all after you knew?”

He looked like he didn’t want to admit to it, but he nodded.

I couldn’t sit down anymore. I stood up and started pacing. “What the hell, Tanner?” I said and my voice was rising. “What the hell? What am I supposed to do now? I can’t even get rid of Dean on a good day, and now I’ve been dating his brother?”

At the word dating Tanner smiled and looked down at his hands. But I wasn’t going to indulge him. Something suddenly occurred to me.

“Does he know?”

Tanner’s face dropped again, and he nodded.

I put one hand on my hip and one on my forehead.

“This is bad. This is very bad. He won’t just let this one go without a fight.”

“You just said he wouldn’t put up a fight,” Tanner said.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think that was right. He’s the sheriff. What would you do if you had power and you found out your brother was dating your sweetheart?”

Tanner shrugged and looked uninterested. “Well, why don’t we just look back at our past?” he said and his voice was flat. I got the feeling that I didn’t even have the slightest idea who Dean really was. But what I did know was that I knew at least some part of him. And things could get really ugly.

I closed my eyes, disappeared inside myself for a moment. I had to find the strength to deal with this, the strength to do what I was about to do.

“I’m sorry, Tanner,” I said when I opened my eyes again. I had my armor on, and my heart was neatly packaged away from danger. I could say it to him without batting an eye. “We can’t do this. This isn’t going to work.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked, looking incredulous.

“I’m asking you to walk away. Dean supports Keisha. I need him to help me out at least until I manage to get on my own two feet. If he drops me now I’m screwed.”

“I can take over. I can look after her if that’s what you need. I have more than enough money..."

“I don’t want your money, Tanner,” I said, cutting him off.

“But you’ll take his?”

“Dean is Keisha’s father. It’s his job. It’s not yours. And how am I supposed to explain any of this to Keisha? How am I supposed to even understand it myself?”

He looked angry now. The hurt had faded, replaced by rage, and I couldn’t believe the transformation. It was like Dean had walked in and replaced him. He looked nothing like the man I’d seen a moment ago. A small seed of fear throbbed inside me. If he was anything like Dean…

“If you don’t want me I’m not going to force you,” he said and his voice was calm. I’d expected him to scream and shout.

“It’s not about not wanting you, Tanner. You’re the best thing that’s happened in my life since Keisha. But I don’t know how to do this.”

“Together?” he suggested and his voice was warm. The fight left me for a moment, and I entertained the idea of us being together, a happy family. And what? Dean would come over for Sunday roast? He would sit in the café that he owned, watching his ex-lover with his brother? And what was Tanner going to do, move back to the middle of nowhere that he wanted to escape from in the first place?

“I don’t think so, Tanner,” I said and my voice sounded distant. Not like my own. Tanner looked at me like he couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. And then he shut down. He closed to me, and I couldn’t reach him anymore. He nodded silently, not making eye-contact.

“Thank you for dinner,” he said and walked to the front door.