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Would he still love her...if he knew?
Tanner Hayes smashed Claire’s life to pieces when he chose the rodeo over her ten years ago. And now he’d wrecked her truck! Fantastic. She’d lost her husband, the family ranch was mired in debt, her father was recuperating from a stroke and her son was being bullied. Why not throw a reckless bull rider into the mix?
All she’d wanted was a safe, stable life. But with Tanner back in town—and staying on her ranch—nothing was safe, or under control. Not the feelings she’d fought so hard to forget. Not the son she was determined to protect. And certainly not her long-held secret...
A man wearing a cowboy hat hunched over Claire, his features blurred.
“I called the dispatcher,” he said. “The fire department’s on the way.”
She heard a wail in the distance and Claire wanted to shriek with it.
Her special day. Her anniversary. The last one spent cruising her hometown roads before they moved. Ruined. No. Demolished by this...this...
She squinted upward and focused. A dark swirl of hair brushed across the tall man’s forehead; a light scar zigzagged down his square jaw.
It couldn’t be...
“Tanner?”
“Hello, Claire.” His mouth went up, just a fraction—the same ready-for-anything smile that had once undone her.
She closed her eyes, heart thudding. Ten years since she’d vowed never to see him again...and now here he stood, two for two in wrecking her life.
Dear Reader,
I have a confession. I almost flunked kindergarten. Had it not been for my “Tiger Dad” who insisted I really was smart, I would have started my schooling with a mark against me.
Why did I nearly fail? I couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t sit still. Or pay attention for long...or at all. Nowadays, they have a label for it and medication that works: ADHD and Ritalin. Back then, we had lectures, time-outs and Fs on report cards. I couldn’t even settle down to learn to read until fourth grade! If someone had said to me, “Karen, you see all of those books you’re crying over? Someday, you’ll write a few,” I would have choked on a Tater Tot.
In His Kind of Cowgirl, Tanner Hayes also has ADHD, flunked a grade in school and was told by his frustrated teachers he’d never amount to much. Bull riding gives his energy an outlet. It’s a profession he excels at and it gives him pride. In my research, I found that many bull riders shared my hero’s story. Bull riding takes guts, skill and a smidge of insanity. Yet what it gives—a sense of accomplishment, pride and community—is invaluable. An organization that is dear to my heart, Warriors and Rodeo (WAR), funds veterans who want to bull ride. To learn more or donate, visit their home page at warriorsandrodeo.org.
Karen Rock
KAREN ROCK is an award-winning YA and adult contemporary author. She holds a master’s degree in English and worked as an ELA instructor before becoming a full-time author. Most recently, her Mills & Boon Heartwarming novels have won the 2015 National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award and the 2015 Booksellers’ Best Award. When she’s not writing, Karen loves scouring estate sales, cooking and hiking. She lives in the Adirondack Mountains region with her husband, daughter and Cavalier King Charles spaniels.
KarenRock.com
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To all those with ADHD or other learning disabilities who’ve ever struggled to accomplish their goals. Your achievements are all the sweeter for the challenges you’ve overcome.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
Dear Reader
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
Extract
Copyright
PROLOGUE
“JONATHAN RILEY SHELTON, you’re taking longer than a month of Sundays. Now get back in your seat.”
Claire Shelton flipped another pancake then pointed the spatula at her wayward seven-year-old. He twirled beneath the living room’s overhead fan, his freckled face pointed to the ceiling.
On the griddle, butter splattered and steam rose in vanilla-scented puffs. Her stomach growled, the traitor. She’d already eaten a peanut butter egg, a handful of jelly beans and the ears and tail off of Jonathan’s Easter bunny this morning. When would she learn to resist? She and her scale would not be friends tomorrow. Maybe they needed a break...
“Goblins are going to eat your breakfast!”
A giggle floated from the cottage’s front room. “You always say that!”
She peered at him through her galley kitchen’s archway. Sunshine lit the air around Jonathan’s small frame as he bashed through Lego bridges and elaborate battlefields of plastic soldiers. Even the speed of light couldn’t keep up with him, she thought, amused. Most days, neither could she...though she tried. And tried. And tried.
“Only when I see one.”
He whirled and the gap from his missing tooth flashed in a pirate’s grin. “Is it Guff?”
“Nope. Lottie. And she’s dyed her hair purple. Come see. You might catch her this time.”
“I want purple hair!” He grabbed his disheveled red mop and pulled, fingers tangling. Probably hadn’t brushed it since he woke up. She’d have to lasso him to a chair and bribe him with Oreos to comb it later. When he turned away, his shoulder blades poked through a superhero T-shirt. She squinted at it and recognized the one she’d sneaked into the hamper last night, the same shirt he’d insisted on wearing all week.
Stubborn boy.
What would she do with him? Then again, what would she do without him?
A long breath escaped her when he rose on tiptoe and pressed his face against the window. Must be eager to get out in the warm spring day. Bolt down the road a piece before she noticed he hadn’t picked up his room or done his homework.
She switched off the gas burner and let the inside of the pancake settle. Of course, she’d been just as mischievous at his age. She smiled, recalling her escapades growing up on her family’s bull ranch. Momma saying she wouldn’t sit still for any more of Claire’s shenanigans. Her grin faded. What she’d give to hear those lectures again. She hadn’t stopped missing Momma since she’d passed ten years ago. It was like waking with a stomachache every day.
She transferred the pancakes to the table and pulled open the fridge, hunting for juice. What advice would her mother give her now? Single parenting. Ten times harder than it looked, a hundred times more difficult than Claire had imagined. She was so busy she felt like twins.
If only she had backup. A husband at home instead of halfway around the world. Someone to remind Jonathan that peanut butter was for humans, not for dogs. That potatoes would grow out of his ears if he didn’t wash them. Corn, at least. And that parents didn’t negotiate bedtime with seven-year-olds, though she wound up doing it every night anyway.
She shook a near-empty carton of orange juice, filled Jonathan’s glass and dribbled the rest into her own, topping it off with water. Breakfast of champions.
Thank goodness Kevin’s year-long tour of duty ended this week. He never let new potato chip flavors distract him from buying the juice. And he handled Jonathan better than she. Kevin disciplined; she caved, but that’d end soon. Her chest loosened. He’d be home from Afghanistan in a few days. Safe. Back to work at his auto repair shop. Their family intact again. Life how it ought to be. Sweet as stolen honey.
“Come on now, son. Time to eat.”
Jonathan pivoted. Eyes wide. “Momma, soldiers! They’re wearing Daddy’s uniform. The fancy one with the shiny buttons.”
The small hairs on her arms rose and she forced herself to put the cold syrup in the microwave. To stay calm. Breathe. This could mean anything. Or nothing. Not the worst thing. Not what kept her up most nights since Kevin’s Texas National Guard unit deployed.
“On the road or in our driveway, honey?” She injected a casual note in her voice. No alarm bells ringing. None but the ones in her head.
She and Kevin just video chatted on Skype yesterday. Had talked about finishing his vintage truck restoration when he got home. That they’d cruise up and down Main Street for its first official drive then stop at Harrigan’s for cherry-dipped vanilla cones. Her mouth had watered and Kevin had said he’d been dreaming about it...and her, his voice deepening.
She’d blushed at that, imagining...
And he’d mentioned a quick trip into a US-controlled town today (or was that yesterday his time—she never could keep it straight). He wanted to buy a gift for Jonathan...the son he’d raised from birth as his own. Nothing could be wrong. Nothing at all.
“One just stepped on our flowers! Can I open the door? Can I?”
Jonathan bounced on the balls of his feet, his T-shirt rising over his belly.
“No!” she wanted to holler.
“I’ll get it,” she said instead, and pressed her fingers to her temples.
Get hold of yourself, girl.
But her feet stuck to the ground. Forgot how to move. If she didn’t answer the door, maybe the men would go away. Take their news with them. It wouldn’t be real then. Her stomach tensed.
Kevin worked as a mechanic. Didn’t see combat. Had a safe job, he’d reassured her when his group got called up. Any time Claire imagined losing him, a silent, primal scream would get trapped in her throat. She’d made a conscious choice, years ago, to avoid relationships that involved danger.
Maybe this had to do with the unit’s homecoming...a date change. A delay. That was all it was.
Please let that be all this was...
The doorbell rang. And rang. And rang.
“Momma!” Jonathan yanked on her tank top.
Her fingers trembled on the knob. When she swung it open, the hat-holding officers’ sober expressions said everything she didn’t want to know. An icy thread of fear curled in her gut.
“Jonathan, go to your room.” She tried to smooth out the jagged edge in her voice.
Her child peeked around her waist and looked up at the men. “Do you know my daddy? He fixes cars, only now he does humzees. I have a picture.”
“Humvees,” one of them corrected, a man with fair hair clipped short enough to show his reddish scalp. He swallowed hard and looked sideways at his partner.
The other, older man folded his arms and studied Jonathan with sympathetic eyes, muscles in the corners of his jaw knotting. “We didn’t have that honor, son. Heard he was a good man.”
Was.
Was.
Was.
Was a good man.
Not is. Not present tense. Past. As in no longer existed. As in... Claire’s entire body felt hollowed by the bright white light of a nuclear blast. Yet she didn’t shake. Her legs didn’t give way. She remained perfectly still. Funny how that could be.
“Jonathan, go on now,” she gasped.
“But, Momma...” he wheedled, his admiring eyes running over the uniformed men. Their stripes. Medals.
“Now,” she snapped, and remorse jabbed her when he flinched, unused to that tone from her. But he’d get familiar with all kinds of pain now, she thought, dazed. He just didn’t know it yet. Her mind raced. Poor baby. Poor her. Poor Kevin. Oh. No.
Jonathan scurried to his room, slammed the door, opened it again, then shut it properly, his attempt to behave making her eyes sting. Like that mattered.
Like anything mattered anymore.
“May we come in, Mrs. Shelton?”
She nodded automatically and stepped back, letting the large men inside. A bitter taste curdled at the back of her throat, as if she’d spent the morning drinking old coffee out of a rusted can. Her eyes felt gritty. Her body numb. Or was that her heart? She couldn’t tell.
They studied each other for a long moment before she gestured them toward a flowered sofa and collapsed into Kevin’s mammoth recliner.
“I’m Army Chaplain Edward Caston and this is Corporal James Finkly.”
She opened her mouth and started to say “nice to meet you,” only nothing came out. It wasn’t nice to meet them. In fact, she wished she’d never laid eyes on either of them. That she was dreaming this, and that the buzzing in her head would morph into her alarm clock, waking her up.
The officers exchanged glances and the younger one rubbed his hands on his thighs. “We regret to inform you...”
Claire watched his lips move, her peripheral vision growing dark, tunneling, until the soldier grew smaller and more distant. With a blink, she could make him vanish. Disappear. Dissolve this nightmare.
A hand gripped hers and she shook her head clear.
“Ma’am. Did you hear what I said?”
She dragged in slow, deep gulps of air from her diaphragm, as she did when she led her yoga classes. It didn’t help.
Calm down, she scolded herself, as her thoughts careened in hot, helpless circles. Be strong. Kevin had always been her rock. The man who carried her through the minefield of her old life. She needed to be that for him. For Jonathan. Claire took a deep, shaky breath and pulled herself together with all the strength that she had, as if she were heaving herself back up from a cliff edge.
“How did it happen?”
“His vehicle passed over an IED. He and another member of his unit were killed instantly. Take comfort that he didn’t suffer.”
Pain seared the center of her chest and she pressed her palm to it. The chaplain fell silent. Was that supposed to ease her agony? Did he think some kinds of loss were easier to bear than others?
“His remains?” she managed.
“Will be here tomorrow. Another officer, Captain Traynor, will help you make the funeral arrangements.”
“Funeral,” she repeated, trying the word. It tasted like dirt. She wanted to spit it out.
The younger officer shifted on the sofa and leaned forward. Earnest. “Ma’am, we deeply regret your loss. Kevin’s commanding officer wanted us to share his and your husband’s fellow guardsmen’s condolences with you.”
“But they’re alive,” Claire murmured, trying to imagine how they could be sorry when they still lived. When they would be coming home soon, like Kevin. Only...not like Kevin. He’d be in a box.
She shivered, her skin shaking over her bones at the image. She replaced it with his kind, honest face that broadcast “what you see is what you get.” And what you got was the sweetest, most honorable, bravest man she’d ever known. A childhood friend who’d stepped up when she’d been left pregnant and brokenhearted by a callous ex. A hero who’d made her feel wanted again. Safe. Loved. And in return, she’d given him her heart. Forever, they’d promised when they’d married just after Jonathan’s birth.
She gritted her teeth.
Death didn’t change anything. She’d never stop loving him. Only now he wouldn’t be here to love her back. The thought dropped straight into Claire’s head with a thud.
“May we call your pastor, ma’am?” The chaplain’s eyes scanned her face, his gaze assessing. “Someone to stay with you?”
How many times had he done this, she thought wildly. How many more? She pressed two fingertips to her forehead and closed her eyes, unable to look at him any longer.
“My father. I’ll call him.”
“If you’re sure. We’re more than happy to—”
She shook her head, suddenly needing them gone. The sight of their gleaming, intact uniforms made her ill. What did Kevin’s uniform look like? Claire opened her eyes and felt a hard ball of fury lodge at the back of her throat, almost choking her.
“Please go.”
She nodded stiffly at their murmured apologies and goodbyes as she stared at her lap, grateful when the door clicked shut behind them.
The refrigerator hummed in the sudden quiet. Outside the house she could hear the soft weekend sounds of her neighborhood: the twitter of sparrows, the far-off buzz of someone’s lawn mower, the slam of a car door. In the distance, children’s laughter bubbled. Life went on. Except Kevin’s. She’d never hear his voice again.
The thought shoved her to her feet and hurled her down the short hall to their bedroom. She jerked open Kevin’s sock drawer and yanked out the letter she’d discovered ten months ago. She stared at the front, mouthing his scrawled words. The ones she’d hoped to never read again.
To Claire: Open if I don’t come home.
A wet splotch fell from her cheek and blurred his handwriting. She carefully slit the envelope and unfolded the page, the paper shaking. Her eyes raced over the lines.
Sweetheart,
If you’re reading this note it means I’m gone and this is my last chance to say how much I love you. Maybe that makes me a little lucky. Not everyone gets to tell the person they love how they feel before they go.
I’m not much of a writer. But you know that. Always was better with my hands. If I could build something to show you how I feel it’d be the Eiffel Tower. Then I’d take you all the way to the top and give you everything as far as we could see.
Remember how we’d do that when we were kids? Put our fingers over the top and bottom of the sun, or a cloud, or a mountain and give it to each other? You gave me everything, Claire, and I gave you my heart, young as it was. Didn’t matter that I was a kid, I always knew you were the only one for me. Even when someone else came into your life for a spell, I never lost hope.
And I was right not to give up because you came to love me back. Even more, you gave me a son who’s mine in my heart, where it counts. Jonathan is our boy and I know you’ll raise him to be the man we’d want him to be. Please tell him his daddy is always proud of him, even when he sticks up for himself but gets knocked down, even when he drives his first miles and dings up one of my trucks, even when a girl crushes his heart but he goes on believing because I did and look what it got me. Two of the most loving people a man could ever be blessed to have.
Sure, I’d wish for more years, but some people live an entire life and never find the love I found. Guess that’s the luckiest part of my life. Having you and Jonathan at all. Know that I’ll always be with you. I give you the moon, the stars and most of all, my heart.
Your loving husband,
Kevin
P.S. I hope they make potato salad as good as yours in Heaven. I’ll miss you, baby girl.
She read it twice more before lowering the paper. A steel vise wrapped around Claire’s chest and squeezed so hard she felt as if she was suffocating. She turned from the bureau and fell back on the bed, burying her face in Kevin’s pillow. It would never hold his head again, and neither would she.
She was pure liquid loss then, sobbing into that pillow, the band around her chest tightening. Her husband. Gone forever. Though she could smell his cologne on the fabric she hadn’t washed since he’d deployed. Someday she’d die, too, and that clamp of grief would still be around her. She didn’t want it to go away. It’d be as if Kevin had never existed, and she couldn’t bear that. Not after everything he’d done for her. Given her. The moon. The stars. The world. A second chance when she hadn’t thought she deserved one.
Did you call for me, Kevin?
The thought was like the tip of a knife twisting and turning at her very core.
But the chaplain had said it’d been instant.
No suffering.
Not so for her. Nor for Jonathan. He’d now lost two dads, though she’d make sure he’d never learn about the first. Kevin would be the only father Jonathan knew and Claire’s one true love.
They would honor Kevin that way.
Always.
She rolled onto her back and pressed the heels of her palms to her wet eyelids. Losing Kevin felt like an actual breach between her ribs, a tear at the bottom of her lungs.
“Momma?” Her son’s voice quavered from the doorway.
She swiped her eyes, sat up and held out her arms. Time to think about Jonathan. She gestured when he stayed still, his short nose scrunched, green eyes wide, as if he sensed the bad coming his way.
“Come here, honey. Momma’s got some sad news.”
He glanced over his shoulder at a scratch against the back door. “Can Roxy hear it, too?”
Claire dug her fingernails into the soft fabric and nodded. “Of course. Go on and let her in.”
Jonathan flew down the hall, one sock half off his foot, trailing from his toes like a streamer. A chasm cracked open in her chest. How to make sense of this to her son? Cushion its blow?
Their silver-haired terrier rocketed into the room and leaped onto the bed, lavishing Claire with tongue kisses. Jonathan hitched up his slipping shorts and climbed next to her and the squirming dog.
“How come I had to go to my room?”
Claire smoothed back his cowlick. Kevin loved—had loved, she painfully corrected herself—ruffling it.
“Is Daddy okay?” Jonathan grabbed Roxy and pulled the writhing dog to his chest.
Kids. Never underestimate them, she marveled. He climbed into her lap and buried his face against her neck. His little body was warm and heavy. She pressed her lips against the silken skin of his cheek and protectiveness surged. After this, she’d never let Jonathan hurt again. Would keep him safe always.
She took a deep breath and began explaining the inexplicable... How their life would be now, even though, deep down, she hadn’t a clue.
CHAPTER ONE
Two years later.
“HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, DARLIN’,” Claire murmured as she drove past a Route 36 sign just outside of Coltrane, Texas. A car’s lights flared in her rearview mirror.
She adjusted the mirror, the only thing she ever changed in the vehicle. Everything in her husband’s vintage truck stayed as he’d left it. All but the paint job. She’d added the teal body coat when he didn’t return from Afghanistan to finish its restoration...or take her on that promised first ride.
Her eyes stung and she cranked the volume dial on her radio. An old country tune played and Claire hummed along, feeling as if she knew the heartbroken singer...or, at least, what she’d gone through. The years since her husband’s death had been tough, and she still felt the need to commemorate their wedding anniversary and talk to him, strange as some might think her.
“Can you believe this would have been nine years?” She twisted her wedding ring then picked up her coffee thermos.