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

His Kind of Cowgirl
Karen Rock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.

A sports car flashed its brights then sped past. Her gaze dropped to the speedometer. Thirty miles per hour in a forty-five zone. Slow, but not slow enough to make this annual trip last as long as she wished.

The countryside loomed gray wherever her headlights touched, bluebonnets waving in thick clusters from the roadside, their sweet fragrance carrying on the warm March wind through the open windows. The road unrolled in front of her and she felt its thrum in her bones.

“Jonathan’s doing well. Got all A’s in homeschool. He’s smart, like his daddy.”

Her voice cracked at the end, evaporating in the back of her tight throat. She recalled Jonathan’s hushed voice when he’d admitted to being bullied and had begged not to return to public school. To spend his days on her father’s ranch, the home they’d moved to after she’d been widowed. He’d always been small for his age and she’d hated thinking of him being pushed around by the bigger boys.

Would Kevin have handled it as she had? Let their son stay away, even after the bullies were punished? Jonathan had grown so withdrawn after losing his father, and she was concerned that the lack of social interaction with kids his age kept him from maturing the way he should. He was different from the rambunctious child Kevin had left behind.

A night bird ghosted over the Chevy Apache’s hood and vanished. Outside the windshield, the full moon ran wild with streaks of cloud, its light pouring down thick enough to drench her on this humid night.

“Dad’s got his speech back but his left side’s still troubling him. Can’t get around like he wants and won’t use the electric scooter. But he’s dragging his foot less, so that’s progress. Right?”

Silence unfurled in the space and she imagined Kevin nodding, his hand dropping from the wheel to cradle hers. He would have known how to help her father accept his post-stroke limitations with that quiet self-assurance that had once steadied her spinning world.

“We finally got an offer on the ranch. Mr. Ruddell, the neighbor who’s been helping us, said he’ll take it off our hands. He can’t afford much, but it’ll be a quick sale so we’ll beat the bank foreclosure. Just.”

Her father’s grim face and terse silences around her lately practically screamed “traitor.” As if she’d engineered the proposed sale. Had twisted his arm to accept it...

Well...she had, but how else to avoid bankruptcy? A total loss on their generations-old ranch? With her dad’s health failing, he didn’t need extra pressure trying to save a lost cause. The doctor said more stress could kill him.

Ever since she’d intercepted a bank call and uncovered the horrible financial news, Claire would wake up each morning in a panic, sure that she’d run out of air. Then the breath would hit her like a horse’s kick to the heart. She couldn’t imagine selling her childhood home, but what choice did she have? Even her older sister, Dani, a horse wrangler who managed a Colorado dude ranch, supported the decision. Although, she’d never been as attached to the ranch as Claire. She’d preferred wandering on horseback to rocking on a porch swing as Claire did every night with her father.

If her dad passed away, leaving her as Kevin had... The thought scared her so much she wanted to take it back, swallow it down in a great gulp and drive faster, flee the possibility before it caught her.

“Do you remember the time you stopped by to help Dad fix one of the tractors and caught me sleeping in it?” She took a sip of her cooled coffee. “I was such a mess then. You knew I was.”

She could imagine her husband’s firm head shake. He’d built her back up when she’d been breaking down. Restored her as he repaired everything else, like this 1959 truck. Not content there, he always improved on the original. Even her.

Especially her.

“I miss you, babe.” And she did, the stabbing loss as deep as the day the Army broke the news. “But I’m doing okay.”

She envisioned the skeptical, downward slant of his eyes.

“Want to hear our wedding song?”

A yellow light in the near distance caught her attention. She attempted to replace her thermos in its holder, missed and grabbed for it before it spilled on the reupholstered front seat. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the top edge of the traffic fixture as she entered the intersection.

Everything happened at once and in slow motion.

A crushing jolt shuddered through the truck. Her wheels skidded sideways. She smacked against the window when her pickup rolled down an embankment, as if punched by something large and lethal. Glass rained deadly sharp. The earth tumbled around her, her truck in spin cycle. When a massive tree loomed, the Chevy slammed into it then stilled.

Winded and stunned, she hung upside-down in her lap belt, blood, metallic and warm, on her tongue, a rushing sound whistling in her ears. Her heartbeat changed and grew slow and rolling in darkness. Something hurt, a long way away. Then nothing.

“Ma’am. Ma’am. Are you all right?” A man’s voice shouted, rousing her. She tried turning her head but pain held it in place. When she opened her mouth, silent panic flew out.

“Hold on. I’m getting you out of there.”

Acrid smoke pierced her consciousness. She closed her eyes against the billowing grit.

This wasn’t happening. It was a dream. No. A nightmare.

A tugging motion jerked her right and left, followed by a ripping sound. Large hands halted her sudden fall.

“Got you.”

Her rescuer cradled her against his chest, his breaths heaving beneath her ear. After carrying her some distance, he lowered her slowly to the ground. Grass scraped against her stinging cheeks and she opened her eyes.

“What?” she croaked, then swiped at the trickle leaking from her mouth. A man wearing a cowboy hat hunched over her, his features blurred.

“You’ve been in an accident. We have. Our trucks collided in the intersection.”

“My truck!” She bolted upright and clutched the swirling ground.

An arm snaked around her back and eased her down. “I called the dispatcher. The fire department’s on the way.”

She heard a wail in the distance and wanted to shriek with it.

Her special day. Her anniversary. 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.

* * *

THEY WERE THREE miles outside of town. Tanner Hayes knew it was unlikely another car would be passing for a while. He peered anxiously down at Claire. The lines of her face, turned up to the sky, nearly broke his heart.

“What are you doing here?” she rasped, winded. Was she having trouble breathing? Punctured a lung? His pulse sped.

“I’ll tell you later. Where are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Long lashes swept her cheek and the paleness of her skin blurred its edges like watercolor. But her green eyes flashed the way he remembered, her delicate features still arousing his protective instincts. Was she going into shock?

He shrugged off his jean jacket and draped it around her shoulders. She looked frozen to the bone, too cold to even shiver.

“Wear it,” he insisted when she shook it off.

Her hand rose when he made to resettle it on her. “No. Thanks.” She pushed to her elbows and held her wrist.

“Can you move that?” He hunkered beside her.

She winced slightly when she flexed it and edged away. “Just a strain. Bruising I’m guessing.”

“Anything else?” Headlights illuminated the night and his eyes ran over her lithe form, taking in the fiery hair that seemed to grab the color from her porcelain skin. She looked smoothed, luminous, as if her flesh had been stripped away and she were made out of something so clear it was almost glass, something that could shatter. She looked beautiful.

“You’re bleeding.”

She jerked from his touch and his pulse raced at the swelling lump on her temple, the red slash through her full bottom lip. He stuffed unsteady hands into his jeans pockets, assuring himself she was okay. In one piece. Not seriously harmed.

Not again.

In the tense silence, the siren grew deafening and a fire truck thundered by and jerked to a halt. An ambulance and police car sped behind it then pulled to the opposite side of the road. Blue, red and white lights illuminated the velvet night.

EMTs raced their way. Tanner refused their help and moved aside, watching closely as they checked Claire’s vitals and examined her. One wound an Ace bandage around her ankle and handed her an ice pack. Less than twenty yards away, firemen hosed down her smoking truck, their walkie-talkies squawking in the still air.

“Talk me through what happened.” A young, heavyset police officer flipped open a pad and clicked the end of his pen.

When Tanner finished, the trooper continued scribbling and asked, “So, you’re sure the light was green when you passed through the intersection?”

Tanner opened his mouth but another voice answered.

“It was yellow on my end.” Claire limped their way, pain tucked in the corners of those determined eyes.

“When it’s your turn, I’ll take your statement.” The officer lowered his gaze to Tanner’s license.

“Are you the Tanner Hayes? The bull rider?”

Tanner nodded curtly. This wasn’t some meet and greet. Plus, the man had been rude to a lady. To Claire. That didn’t go down so good in his books.

The official pocketed his pad and thrust out a hand. “What a heck of a surprise. Can’t wait to tell the boys I met the PBR world champion. We watch you on TV every week. Say. Can I get an autograph?”

A throat cleared behind them. “I’d like to give my statement now.”

Tanner narrowed his eyes at the fawning officer. “Happy to oblige once you’ve gotten Claire’s statement.”

The cop glanced between them. “You two know each other?”

Claire’s head bent and her red curls obscured her face. “Once,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”

Her words stung. She had it about right, but Tanner wished otherwise. That things could have gone differently. That there’d been another path. One that hadn’t left her behind and him full of regret.

After she gave her statement, she refused further medical treatment and wandered closer to her damaged truck. Tanner trailed her, stretching his steps to catch up. Pebbles ground together.

The passenger side of her pickup was crumpled and her windshield was smashed. His lungs burned as he imagined the worst. He’d heard from her father that she had a son. A nine-year-old who depended on her. Why the hell had she been running a red light in the dark? And why hadn’t he spotted her in time?

He eyed his own truck with the experienced eye he’d gained helping mechanics on his rodeo crew. A crushed bumper. Smashed headlights. Pushed-up hood. Otherwise, drivable. At least, he supposed so. Someone had moved it to the other side of the road.

“I’m sorry, Claire.”

Her shoulder bones moved restlessly under his touch. “This was my husband’s truck.”

Her admission went through Tanner like the punch of an electric fence. He knew she’d moved on. Married. Yet hearing it from her trickled cold oil down his skin. His pained gaze flew to her truck—her spouse’s truck—again. He could see it now. What he’d done... Sorry wasn’t enough.

“I need to get it fixed back to the way Kevin wanted.” Her last words ended on a watery gulp that made him step closer.

The officer handed them both tickets. Tanner scanned his. Driving without insurance. He winced. Rodeo travel. Road work meant irregular mail. His renewal must have come last month when he’d been laid up in a hospital, unable to remember his name and sure his career with the top thirty-five elite was over. His future a black hole ready to crush him.

“Running a red light?” Claire’s voice rose and Tanner glanced up at her. She was all patches of black and white, like an illusion. As though one blink would turn her into moonlight and grass.

The cop looked at Claire and pointed to a motorcyclist donning his helmet. “Got a witness statement. He rode up behind you and saw the red.”

Confusion sharpened Claire’s features.

Tanner moved, restless. He didn’t want Claire ticketed. “Might have been a mechanical failure, officer.”

The uniformed man slit his eyes at Tanner. “Are you taking back your original statement? The light wasn’t green?”

Tanner shifted in his boots. He wasn’t a saint, but he was no liar, either. “No,” he admitted, then glanced at Claire’s pained expression. How many wrongs would he do her before he’d make it right?

The cop’s face relaxed into friendly lines and he held out a pad and pen. “Now, how about that autograph?”

“Sure.” Tanner scrawled his name without looking and turned at a metallic squeal. A tow truck’s chains hoisted Claire’s pickup. It was beat up. Had some mechanical damage given the small fire...but it wasn’t totaled. Could be fixed.

Her small exclamation had his gaze swinging her way, his concern growing. She looked scraped right out. When she swayed, he slipped an arm around her and held her tight. She could squirm all she wanted, he wouldn’t let go.

“Where are they taking it?”

Tanner read the side of the tow truck. “Bob’s Auto Body. Not far.”

As their small town’s biggest repair shop, everyone knew Bob’s. Tanner had even applied for a job there, but had been turned down when, like most of the townsfolk, Bob had been leery of hiring the fatherless child of a drug addict who’d caused his own share of trouble growing up.

Good thing he’d been hired at a local ranch. The job had helped him support his single mother until he’d caught the rodeo bug. Found an outlet for the jittering energy that roamed through him like fire ants. Proved everyone wrong who’d sworn he wouldn’t amount to anything; that he’d turn out like his deadbeat dad and junkie mother.

Now that he faced the real possibility of a career-ending injury, his old neighbors might be proved right after all. Unless his last-ditch plan worked out... The one that’d brought him to Coltrane in the first place.

Claire waved away the hovering rescue personnel and turned on him once the cop drove off, the ambulance following.

“If you weren’t here, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Claire.”

A wounded laugh escaped her. “It never is, is it? And you’re right, it’s not your fault. But somehow, whenever you’re around, bad stuff happens to me.”

Her slender back arched as she swung away.

“Let me see you home.”

At his offer, she turned in a quick circle, noticing, as he did, the taillights of the towing company disappearing around the road’s bend.

“I’ll walk.” Her uneven gait churned up road dust, her face wincing with each step on her wrapped right foot.

He reached her side then jogged ahead, stopping her. “Your ranch is miles away. Be reasonable.”

Her jaw jutted. “I’ll call home. My dad’s helper, Marie, might still be there. She could pick me up.” Her face froze. “My cell phone is in the truck.”

He handed over his phone and waited as she dialed and asked for Marie, then listened as she made reassuring noises before hanging up.

“She’s gone?”

“Yes.” Claire twisted her hair, her expression faraway.

“You didn’t tell your dad what happened.”

“I didn’t want to worry him.” She stared over his shoulders, a line forming between her brows. “I don’t have any other numbers memorized.”

“Claire, I’m not letting you stand out in the dark figuring out a ride when I can drive you myself.”

Her right eyebrow rose. “You stopped being able to ‘let me’ do anything ten years ago.”

He blew out a breath. Patience. He’d left when she’d given him the ultimatum: rodeo or her. Her ruffled feathers were justified. Still, he’d figured she’d have gotten over it by now. If he hadn’t given her father his word, he’d leave. Then again, where else could he go? With his invested winnings mismanaged and lost, and a forced retirement possible, he needed a place to figure out a new future. Fast.

“Claire. Please get in my truck.”

Her hands fisted on the slight flare of her hips. “And if I say no?”

“It won’t affect the outcome either way,” he said evenly, containing his rising temper.

Obstinate woman.

Her eyes roamed skyward and she spoke to the stars. “It’s taking you out of your way. Why bother?”

He cupped her jaw and looked her square in the eye. Truth time.

“I’m heading to your father’s ranch anyway.”

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT? WHY?”

Claire stared at Tanner, her mind careening through the night’s twists and turns.

“I’ll tell you on the drive.” A broad hand gestured. “After you.”

She shook her head. Tanner’s take-charge attitude hadn’t changed a bit. Or the recklessness that’d propelled him through an intersection before noticing she was in it, illegally or not.

Same guy. Same story.

Some things never changed.

And now he might see Jonathan. What if he figured out her long-held secret? One he didn’t deserve to know. If he learned he was her son’s real father and asserted his rights, he’d destroy the stable life she’d reconstructed for her and Jonathan after Kevin’s death.

Tanner cared too much about rodeo—he wouldn’t stick around long enough to be a real father to her boy. And when he left, Jonathan’s shaky confidence would be damaged even further. She couldn’t let that happen.

She studied Tanner from the corner of her eye as she limped slowly beside him. He was as lithe and powerful as she remembered, his back muscles shifting under the white T-shirt tucked into his Wranglers. He still moved with a predator’s grace: coiled strength beneath a relaxed exterior. The chiseled planes of his face hadn’t changed, either, or the level brows over watchful blue eyes. How much would that thoughtful gaze puzzle out when Jonathan came into the picture?

Suddenly the wind rose and the air around them pricked with electricity. Elm trees lashed to and fro as water dusted the air.

“Looks like a bad one,” Tanner hollered when the clouds opened up and threw their first wet volley. A flash lit up the sky, the crash of thunder following close on its heels.

“We’d better run for it,” he said.

She looked down at her throbbing ankle and before she could react, he hoisted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and raced across the road.

“I can walk,” she protested, but he’d already reached his truck. When she pounded on his broad back, he turned, and his breath, barely scented with the tang of cinnamon, was warm on her face, his lips disturbingly close.

“Hold still. You’ll hurt yourself more,” he said in the deep, soft voice he used to gentle two-thousand-pound bulls.

“Let me down.”

“Once you’re inside. Don’t want you injuring that ankle more.” His strong, one-handed grip held her captive as if she weighed nothing. He opened the door and lowered her onto the passenger seat.

She watched him jog around to the driver’s side, wishing she was anywhere but here. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts and memories of a man who’d actually cared about her, not with the one who’d proved he couldn’t care less. A person who’d left her, and an unborn child he’d thankfully never learned of, for what truly mattered to him: fame and fortune.

Tanner slid inside and tossed his hat and jacket in the back. Raindrops fell from his nose and chin. “Here.” He reached behind him and draped a blanket around her. Her teeth chattered and she gathered the covering close. She wanted nothing from him. Not the blanket. Not even this ride. But, given the weather, she couldn’t argue.

“So—so why are you back?” she managed through clenched teeth, her muscles straining not to shake.

“Your father asked me.” He cranked the heat and headed back onto the road.

Confusion mixed with the dull pounding in her head. “Why would he do that? He just had a stroke.”

Blue eyes flicked her way, compassion deepening their color. “He told me about that and the ranch. I offered to help him save it.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Nope.” His mouth and jaw looked as firm as ever. Definitely not joking.

“So you just dropped your career and came? Can’t remember that being an option before.” She pressed her lips closed, mad that she’d let him get her tail up. His leaving her was water under the bridge. It didn’t matter anymore. Unless he found out about Jonathan...

“And you’re too late. The ranch is sold.” At least she’d be seeing Tanner’s taillights soon.

His swift, sidelong glance made her jump and peer out her window at the writhing darkness, rain twirling through the black.

“Your dad said the sale wasn’t final.”

“It practically is,” she insisted, infuriated at his unruffled expression. “He just needs to sign the papers.”

Tanner made a noncommittal sound that she barely heard over the thrumming engine.

“It’s going through,” she vowed, falling into the same rhythm their old arguments used to take. The calmer he got, the more irrational she sounded...and it drove her as crazy now as it had then. Men. Were they born with a straightjacket on their emotions? Or maybe it was just Tanner.

Tanner shrugged. “There’s still time.”

Her heart beat a strange rhythm, stopping then racing. “Why are you butting into my family’s business? Don’t you have bulls to ride, autographs to sign?” She shrugged off the blanket, steaming now.

A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Tore my rotator cuff and got another concussion recently. I need a place to rehab until I’m cleared to ride again.”

She pushed down the sudden, unwelcome concern. He’d stopped being hers to worry about long ago. The wind kicked up and tossed a small branch at the windshield.

“We’re not a spa. You’re wasting your time. Worse, you’re wasting ours.”

In the split second his eyes flashed to hers, something shimmered and stretched inside, a dormant part of herself rattling its chains. There couldn’t be an atom of her that actually wanted him around, could there?

“Coming here makes sense,” he said obliquely, returning his gaze to the slick road. The windshield wipers swished ragged sheets of water back and forth, the purr of heat lulled her.

“None of this makes sense.” Despite everything, she dropped her head back and closed her eyes. She had to keep Jonathan and Tanner apart, but how? It seemed impossible. With Tanner around, would her lies be challenged? Suspected? Her reasons for keeping quiet ten years ago still made sense. Tanner might have done the responsible thing and returned home, but he would have felt resentful. Tied down. Obligated. She wouldn’t let him blame her and Jonathan for losing out on his dreams. That wasn’t the kind of dad Jonathan deserved. The partner she’d wanted.

“Don’t go to sleep, Claire,” he commanded, his voice suddenly sharp.

Her lids flew open and she noticed the line of cypress trees that marked the start of the Bakers’ land. “I wasn’t.”

An uneven breath escaped him. “I should drive you to the hospital.” He started to slow the truck as they approached an intersection and she waved a frantic hand.

“I need to get home. My family will worry if I’m gone too long.” She had to get to the bottom of Tanner’s stay. Convince her father to change his mind. She couldn’t let him get stressed again trying to save the doomed ranch with some crazy, reckless scheme of Tanner’s. The doctor had ordered rest. Calm. Two things Tanner knew nothing about.

“You have a son. Jonathan?”

She pressed her shaking lips together, fighting to keep her face neutral. Already, the questions...

They rolled up to a stop sign and idled. Out of the gloom bounded a pair of braying Labradors, breaking the potent silence that stretched between them. At last, her vocal cords unstuck. “How do you know that?”

His forearms flexed as his fingers tightened on the wheel. “Heard about him from your father.”

Her stomach clenched. “Then he told you I married nine years ago.”

It hadn’t been hard to convince her dad Kevin had fathered Jonathan, since she’d truly fallen for the wonderful man who’d married her three months after Jonathan’s birth. Her father couldn’t have shared anything incriminating with Tanner...

“I’m sorry about Kevin.”

His sympathy fired through her, making her uncomfortable in her own skin. He had no business talking about her husband. Or Jonathan. She leaned her head against the window and stared out at the dim roadside pastures as they flashed by.

“Dad should have mentioned your visit.” She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed the bumps on her arms.

Intensity deepened the light creases that bracketed his mouth. “I asked him to. Must have forgotten.”

Claire thought over her father’s recent absentmindedness. It could have slipped his mind... Still, why hadn’t he consulted her right away? If he had, she might have stopped this catastrophe. Tanner staying with her family? On her ranch? Impossible. He would be a bad influence on her boy and her fragile father.

“How are you two still in touch?”

“When my tour group passes by he comes to watch and we go out to eat. Talk on the phone around the holidays.”

“Birthdays, too, I suppose?” Bitterness colored her tone. How had her father kept this from her? Then again, he’d hidden the ranch’s desperate finances. They passed Mr. Ruddell’s ranch, his pear trees flanking the wagon wheels at the start of the drive.

“Sometimes.”

Her temperature rose at his offhand admission. She knew her dad wished he’d had a son to help with the bulls, and Kevin had been more interested in machines than livestock. When she and Tanner had dated, her father had treated Tanner like family. Even trusted him to work with their prize animals, sorting their breeding stock, keeping the best for their program and selling the rest privately or at auction.

“How long is Dad’s invitation?”

Tanner rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s open-ended. I’ll be gone once I get the all-clear, though.”

A short laugh escaped her. “Sounds right.”

“Claire—”

She waved off his appeal. “Look. Whatever my dad and you planned...please forget it. Tell him you stopped by to say hello, wish you could help, but another commitment came up.”

“I didn’t expect you still felt that strongly.”

“I don’t.” The rise in her voice made her pause and swallow her agitation. She wouldn’t give Tanner the wrong impression...let him think he still affected her.

“We just don’t need your kind of help.” Don’t need you, she added silently. Her increasingly withdrawn son could use a father figure, but not someone like Tanner. Never him.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “And what kind of help is that?”

“The type that ends with people in hospitals,” she snapped, her control breaking. Lightning forked down the road. An exclamation point on her mood.

He blew out a long breath then said, “You know I wouldn’t have dared you to try out that new barrel horse if I’d known her history.”

Claire’s head throbbed harder as she recalled the weeks she’d spent in the hospital and then at home with a shattered pelvis, fractured skull and broken ribs after a competition practice gone bad more than a decade ago. “That’s the thing. You rush into everything. Don’t consider safety. Worse, you push others, too. It’s all about the thrill.”

“Better than the way you’ve been hiding ever since the accident.”

His words echoed in the pit of her stomach. Her mouth opened and closed. After her accident, quickly followed by her mother’s death, Claire’s world had spun out of control, her emotions as bruised as her body. Her priorities shifted, transforming her from a young woman who never considered safety to one who understood human frailty and the importance of family.

Dani’s dude ranch only allowed her a couple of weeks off, and Claire hadn’t wanted to leave her grieving father alone to follow Tanner. And even if she had, how would she have coped watching the man she’d loved risk his life every day? Impossible. No. She’d made the right choice in giving him that ultimatum, as painful as his answer to it had been.

At last, she whispered, “These have been the happiest years of my life.”

He ran a hand through the flattened hair at his crown. “We’re almost there.”

He flicked the blinker and turned onto a road only a mile from her drive. The truck’s leathery scent grew strong as rain drummed around them, closing them in when all she wanted was to escape.

“You’re not staying here.” The words came out of her mouth strangely, making a flat splat like the water against her window.

The truck signaled then turned again before Tanner answered her.

“Let’s hear your father out.”

Another turn had them swinging, at last, onto Denton Creek Ranch’s long drive. When they stopped, his warm hand fell on her arm before she could bolt.

“I’m not playing some game, Tanner,” she exclaimed, “This is my life. Not a competition.”

His eyes tightened in the corners, small flares appearing. “You used to like competing.”

She thought back to her old rodeo dreams, how she’d once imagined crowds cheering her name.

“That girl’s gone. Some things matter more than winning. I wish you’d learned that lesson.”

“Maybe I should have,” he said beneath his breath, his voice so low she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

He settled his hat on his head and ducked out of the truck, leaving her to stare after him.

Whatever his plans, she’d stop them. It’d taken a good man’s love to reassemble her broken world. She wouldn’t let Tanner Hayes smash through it again.

* * *

TANNER REMOVED HIS hat and thrust open the porch’s screen door for Claire. He studied her, drawn, as he’d always been, by some intangible quality. Something in the way she moved, in the straight back and the swing of her shoulders, her quick-fire expressions.

“Dad!” she called. A small terrier charged them and sprang as high as Tanner’s belt buckle, barking.

“Settle down, Roxy.” Claire scooped up the yapping dog and kissed it on the nose.

He followed her into a large, adobe-style kitchen and spotted her father and a young boy seated at a long oak table, hunched over chocolate cake.

“Hello, Martin.”

The man looked up, surprised, before one side of his mouth twisted in a smile, the other frozen in place. Dismay filled Tanner to see his old hero brought low, followed by a fierce conviction to restore him and his ranch to their former glory.

“Hey, Tanner. Glad you made it, but...” The furrows in the old man’s brow dug in deeper. “Didn’t expect you for another week or so.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Claire’s sundress dripped as she crossed the room and placed her hands on her father’s rising shoulders. She’d always been a loving daughter. Had been devoted to Tanner that way once. What if they’d never split? Would she be caring for him now, too? Helping him figure out his bleak future?

Martin peered up at her. “Thought I had more time.” His deep-set green eyes narrowed, disappearing inside heavy lids. Under the harsh light, the extent of Claire’s scrapes made Tanner suck in a fast breath. It unsettled him. Seeing her hurt. Knowing he’d caused it. Again. A reminder that he was no good for her.

“And why are you banged up? Are you hurt?”

The freckled young boy watched Claire under pulled-down eyebrows, rabbit-gnawing absently on his cake. Tangible proof that Claire hadn’t really loved Tanner. She had a child whose age meant Claire had moved on to another man fast. Had found love, marriage and a family—everything she’d wanted that Tanner couldn’t give. But what if he had...he wondered, eyeing the youth. If he’d chosen Claire over rodeo, this could be his son.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

Claire scooted around the table to kiss his cheek, their sunset-colored hair mingling. “I’m just fine, honey. I had a little accident and Mr. Hayes drove me home. Why don’t you and Roxy go upstairs? I’ll be up in a bit for a story. Guff and Lottie.”

“Can I take my cake?”

His shoulders drooped when Claire shook her head. “You know the rules. Take a last bite and scoot.”

The child shoved a fourth of the slice into his mouth and bolted from the chair, cheeks bulging as he chewed. When he neared Tanner, he skidded to a halt. “Cool belt buckle.”

“Upstairs, please.” Claire pointed. “I’ll sing you a song, too.”

The jittering boy froze, his eyes widening. “Do you have to?”

Claire’s dimples appeared, deep parentheses around her lovely mouth. Tanner forced his eyes away. Shoved back the memories of kissing her tenderly, passionately... He hadn’t come here to rekindle an old flame.

“Only if you don’t hustle. I’ve been dying to sing more lullabies.”

The boy made a gagging sound and clutched his stomach. “I’m going!”

She gathered him close and squeezed. “I’ll be up soon, buster.” The motherly gesture did something funny to Tanner’s gut. Made him regret something he couldn’t name.

Released, Jonathan returned Tanner’s smile. Roxy barked madly as they dashed up the stairs.

“’Night.” Tanner grinned after the kid. When he glanced at Claire, her features looked pinched, her eyes pained.

Martin cleared his throat. “I want to hear more about this accident.”

Claire dropped to a seat and propped her elbows on the table. “I’ll fill you in later, okay? First, Tanner can’t stay. He’s reconsidered.”

Her father pinned Tanner with a sharp look. “That true, son?”

He pulled out a chair and sat. “Claire would rather I leave.” The smell of strong coffee permeated the tiled room and suddenly he wished for a cup. His knee jittered until he clamped a firm hand on it. He and caffeine didn’t mix so well this late at night. It’d been a heck of a day and seeing Claire again had unnerved him more than he’d expected.

Martin patted his daughter’s arm, his clumsy movement tough to watch. He’d always been Tanner’s idol. A father-figure to a boy without one. He owed Martin more than he could repay, though he’d sure try. Sweat equity for starters, and changes that’d get the ranch back in the black. With luck, he’d find a way to save his own future, too.

“That’s for me to decide, Claire Belle. Not saying I shouldn’t have told you first. Maybe I got confused at the date.” The man peered at a Barns across America wall calendar beside an encased, folded flag—for a brother lost in Vietnam, Tanner recalled. “Looks like I did. Sorry about that, Tanner. I promised you I’d warn her.”

Tanner nodded. “Not a problem, sir.”

Claire pointed a spoon at her father. “It is a problem. You agreed to sell Mr. Ruddell the ranch and his offer expires in sixty days. We don’t have time to mess around with Tanner and his risky ideas, whatever they are.”

Her father’s palm thudded on the table, making the milk in the glass slosh. Tanner echoed the frustrated sentiment. Martin needed help and Claire shouldn’t interfere.

“I was born here, Claire. Planned on living out my days here, too, then passing it down to you and Jonathan. Thought I’d lost the chance until Tanner offered to help. Plan on him being our guest for a few weeks.”

“Weeks?” she gasped. Her fingers flew as she wound her damp hair into some kind of bun. The back of her neck looked burned and for a moment the crazy urge to rest his cheek against it seized him. To see if her skin felt as soft as he remembered.

“What have you two planned? If we miss the sale deadline, the foreclosure happens only a month after that. Then you’ll lose everything, including the money you need to pay for a spot alongside Uncle Bob at the assisted living facility. Dani’s going to chip in, but she can’t come close to covering it all.”

Tanner looked out the dark window. Yes, the stakes were high, but didn’t she see how much her father needed this shot?

Martin wiped his mouth after another bite of cake. “Tanner’s got contacts to improve our sales and ideas to strengthen our stock. Plus, he’s got plans to make some money here for himself, too. Seems like a win for us both.”

Tanner met Martin’s eye, silently acknowledging Tanner’s proposed business venture. Martin had said he could count on Tanner and that confidence felt good. Honest. Earned. Or it would be...because no matter what Claire said, he wasn’t leaving when he was needed so badly. When he needed to be here, too.

“Dr. Ogden said not to let you get worked up. And the assisted living facility has the rehab you need to make a full recovery. Don’t you care about getting better?” Claire picked up her son’s plate and strode to the kitchen sink.

“I’d rather go all in than fold, darlin’.” When Martin reached for the pitcher of coffee, Tanner grabbed it and filled a cup.

Claire jerked around. Her eyes locked with Tanner’s and he read the emotions washing through them. Hurt. Resentment. Concern. Most of all...love for her father.

“What about how I feel?” she asked, returning to her father’s side. “What Jonathan wants? He’s already lost a father and you’re all he’s got. You mean more than saving the ranch. A million times more.”

The stricken look on Claire’s face made Tanner knot his hands under the table to keep from going to her. She wanted nothing to do with him. She’d made that clear enough.

Her father patted her cheek, his weathered face gray under the yellow overhead light. “I want to provide better for you and Jonathan. Restore the ranch to what it used to be while I still have the strength to try. Give me that peace of mind before I meet my Maker.”

Tanner nodded at Martin. That was exactly what he aimed to do. They both had to succeed.

“Stop talking that way, Dad.” Claire twisted a napkin and the shredded paper snowed on the oak table.

Her father lowered his chin and two more appeared. “Most times I think you’d be happier off the ranch.”

“That’s not true.” Yet her denial rang false. Tanner knew how uncomfortable she’d become around large, untrained, unpredictable animals after her accident. How she’d pleaded with him to stop riding bulls. It’d been the sticking point in their relationship, the issue they couldn’t get past, until it’d broken them apart.

“If you want more advice, we could hire a consultant.” Her insistent voice rose and her skin flushed a dull red. “Tanner doesn’t need to stay here.”

He didn’t flinch when her eyes swerved in his direction. There was a snip of silence. She wasn’t running him off.

“With what money?” Her father sipped his coffee through a straw, then continued. “We can’t afford what it’d cost to hire someone with Tanner’s knowledge to turn things around, and Dani can’t get time off from work now that she just got promoted.”

“I’ll do my best,” Tanner affirmed. He’d promised her father and would see this through.

“Your best?” Claire pushed back her chair and paced before the brick wall-oven. “How many concussions have you had, Tanner?”

“Four. No. Five,” he admitted, recalling the doctor’s warning that one more serious spill could cause permanent brain damage. Maybe kill him.

But to envision another career? Impossible. He didn’t focus or follow rules well in regular jobs. Only rodeo’s wild rides gave his nonstop energy an outlet. Ironic that controlling a bucking bull felt more manageable than anything else. Still, soon he’d be thirty and getting old for bull riding. He had to figure out next steps or end up an aging rodeo clown, hanging out at the local honkytonks, swapping stories of glory years no one cared about or remembered clearly...not even him.

“Five? You should have stopped after your second, or third. You don’t care about danger, Tanner. I don’t know what you’ll come up with for the ranch, but I’m guessing it won’t be safe. Could scare my...” A grim layer stamped on her voice as it trailed off, a hint of desperation a sliver below it. She glanced toward the stairwell then looked down at her hands, hiding behind her eyelids.

Jonathan.

She thought his actions might endanger her child. The thought startled him more than it should have, a shock like a splinter jamming under a nail. He didn’t worry about danger. Couldn’t perform at his job if he did. But he’d never put a kid at risk. When he stood, his head brushed the dangling light fixture, making it swing.

“I’m going to make the ranch solvent again with no harm done. I swear it. ’Night, Martin.” He put on his hat and tipped its brim. “Claire.”

He strode outside to grab his bags, letting the porch door bang behind him. The rain had stopped and water dripped from every surface. His boots sloshed through puddles on the way to his pickup. He’d take it in tomorrow and see about getting it fixed. As for Claire’s truck... He’d find a way to repair that, too.

At the door, he turned and glanced up to see Claire standing in a window watching him. She whirled when he spied her, but not quickly enough to hide her tortured expression.

Like so many from his past, she didn’t believe in him. Funny how once she’d been his biggest supporter. He leaned against his truck and squinted at the glow behind Claire’s curtains. He pulled out a cinnamon stick and clamped it between his teeth. Times like this made him wish for the cigarettes he’d quit six months ago. But he was twenty-nine now. Old enough to know better. About lots of things.

So why, when it came to Claire and him, couldn’t he understand a single one?

CHAPTER THREE

CLAIRE STOOD ON the wraparound porch of their large, two-story farmhouse and zipped a thin sweatshirt over her tank top. A clammy, shivery sensation crept up her legs. Her father had changed his mind without consulting her or Dani, whom she’d called before bed last night. Worse, he considered Tanner their savior.

A bitter noise escaped her. Of all people, the man who’d once wrecked her life was now supposed to save it? Her hands curled. Like heck he would.

She lowered her thermos then strode beneath laden magnolia trees along a fenced-off grazing area on their 15,000-acre ranch. Beyond it stood a couple of red-sided barns that housed equipment and their show livestock. Farther away still milled a breeding herd in another of their twenty pastures, the tin loafing shed empty. A bull bellowed in the distance.

At least Tanner had a kitchen in his separate housing unit. Bulls to tend. No reason for him to visit the main house or stop by the horse stable she managed. He wouldn’t see much of Jonathan or her. Still, she needed him gone, not just absent. Needed to remove the possibility that he’d learn the truth about Jonathan. Yet doubt lingered. Was she wrong to keep him in the dark about having a son?

She shook off the traitorous thought. Kevin was Jonathan’s father. Tanner hadn’t even stuck around long enough to know about her pregnancy. He’d wanted fame, not her.

On the other hand, didn’t Jonathan deserve to have a father? And didn’t Tanner deserve to know the truth?

She rounded a bend and emerged into dappled sunlight.

No.

She’d made the right decision not to include Tanner. It was senseless to question it now. Her spirits rose when she considered Tanner’s short-lived interests and how seldom he focused on anything for long. Whatever had drawn him here would lose its charm and he’d leave. She had to make sure that happened before they lost their buyer and the bank foreclosed.

At least he hadn’t come for her. Restlessness zip-lined through her. Not that it should matter...

She reached the horse stable and turned to stare at her family’s two-story white country house, its lines old-fashioned but stately. Morning glory and moon vines twined around the porch’s newel posts, peppering the building with bursts of color. It was beautiful. Most of all, it was home. Except for her seven-year marriage, she’d lived nowhere else.

How would Jonathan handle leaving it and returning to public school when she found a job and couldn’t homeschool him anymore? Would his bellyaches return? Those nights when he cried himself to sleep?

Claire’s head throbbed. Nobody ever told you that being a mother was all about making what seemed like thousands of tiny decisions, some as painful as broken glass.

She had to let the ranch go and so did her dad. No sense delaying the inevitable. Putting it off only made their situation worse. She’d block every change Tanner tried to make until she drove him away. The sooner the better.

A horse nickered and she stepped inside the dim rectangular building. Dusty, a dapple-gray quarter horse, arched her neck and eyed Claire, her black nostrils blowing. More horses appeared at their doors, nosy to see what Claire brought them today.

“Hey, Dusty.” She stopped to pet the horse’s velvet nose and slipped her a carrot.

Another horse snorted and bobbed its sleek mahogany head. “Would I forget you, Athena?” She stroked the paint horse’s corded neck and blond mane as it munched on its treat. Athena’s similarity to her old barrel racer struck her again. How many years since she’d ridden? Ten. Not since her eighteenth birthday. The day of her accident. Still, she’d never stopped loving these gentle giants even if she wouldn’t ride them. Fear trickled down her spine. Ever. It took all her willpower to simply lead these tried and true horses in the ring with her beginner students and give instructions to her more proficient riders without giving in to her anxiety.

To calm her nerves, she sang like always.

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play...”

She moved down the line, doling out her treats, getting a quick visual on each animal before beginning her chores. A wiry four-legged body dashed between her legs.

“Home, home on the range,” she continued, glad only the animals could hear her. What had her son called her singing? A punch in the ear? Yikes.

Roxy lifted her muzzle and howled along, her tail beating the gnats out of the air.

Claire crouched to scratch her pet’s scraggly chin. “You’re so cute, even if you are the bearded lady of dogs. Thanks for the accompaniment.”

After grabbing a rake, she set to work on her morning chores, the mindless tasks temporarily chasing her worries away. She had riding lessons lined up starting at nine and needed to hurry to get breakfast and a shower before then.

A couple of hours later, she trudged up her porch steps and nearly collided with a tall man wearing a T-shirt and jeans covering well-worn boots.

Tanner.

Vivid blue eyes flashed from beneath a brown cowboy hat. Her heart picked up tempo at the hard, handsome curve of his lips, the flecks of stubble along his square jaw. His nose was straight, his chin dimpled. Skin tan, hair brown and waving. Body wired with energy. Tanner seemed spring-loaded, as if he was searching for something. He was perception and grit. Ambition and strong coffee. She could have looked at him forever. Their eyes locked.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted, flustered and more aware than she should have been of his sculpted arms and long legs.

His eyebrows rose. “Stopped by to ask your father a question and he invited me for breakfast.”

“So you’re done? Leaving?”

“Haven’t finished my bacon yet,” he drawled and chucked her gently under the chin. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”

She sputtered, the spot where he’d touched burning like a brand. “Wasn’t concerned about that.”

He swerved on the bottom step and peered up at her, his eyes gleaming. “If you’re anxious about my food getting cold, just put it in the oven for me. I’d appreciate it.” His mouth curled in amusement.

“I think certain places might freeze over first.”

He tipped his hat then strode to his quarters, chuckling.

Obnoxious, infuriating, arrogant, pestilence of a man.

With a groan, she dashed upstairs and jumped into the shower. If only she could linger and keep from running into Tanner again. But with a student scheduled, she had to rush. Plus Jonathan would be downstairs. She needed to stay vigilant around them.

After a quick towel off, she pulled on jean shorts and a T-shirt. She trapped her unruly curls in a fishtail braid and slid on her boots before clomping back downstairs.

To her dismay, Tanner sprawled in a chair at the table, seeming to take up more space than anyone else in the room. His eyes dropped to her feet then rose slowly to meet hers, and the warm appreciation in them darkened the shade to a deep blue. She flushed. He had no right looking at her that way. But hadn’t she done the same when they’d been outside, a voice whispered accusingly.

“Morning, Dad.” She kissed the top of her father’s head then returned Jonathan’s hug, studiously ignoring the man making her nerves jump. “How’d you sleep, honey?”

“Good. Here, Roxy.” He leaned down and fed his scampering terrier a bacon slice.

“Honey. No feeding the dog at the table.”

The antennae-like hair over Roxy’s eyebrows twitched as she hunkered on the floor and began chomping, her jaw snapping open again when Jonathan snuck her another piece.

“Jonathan. What did I say?”

He shrugged, eyes glimmering and full of false innocence. “You said no feeding Roxy at the table so I did it under the table.” His mischievous grin made Claire’s lips twitch. “I didn’t break a rule.”

“You sure bent it. What am I going to do with you?”

“Feed me to the dogs?” He flopped upside down on his chair and dangled his wrist to Roxy. “Want a bite?”

She headed for the stove and filled her plate with eggs and toast. “What are you going to do today...besides disobey your mother?” Marie, the housekeeper Claire’s father hired after her mother’s death, handed her a glass of juice. “Thanks.” The dark-haired woman returned her smile. It hurt, imagining they’d be letting her go when they sold the ranch, but luckily she already had plans to move in with her pregnant daughter in Arizona.

“Finishing my Benjamin Franklin report then maybe work on my model plane.” Her son kept his head lowered, but she noticed his eyes flicking toward Tanner.

Her father nudged Jonathan. “Let’s get out today, son. Marie will drive us into town. How about an ice cream at Harrigan’s?”

Claire held her breath, hoping Jonathan would agree. He loved ice cream as much as any kid, but he rarely wanted to go into town knowing he might run into some of his old classmates. His counselor had warned them not to push him into activities that heightened his insecurities, so Claire stayed quiet.

“No, thanks, Grandpa.” Jonathan chopped the rest of his bacon with his fork, scattering it around his plate.

“How about riding with your mother?” put in Tanner.

Martin’s spoon clattered to the table and Jonathan’s eyes grew round. Claire’s breath stalled. “Momma. You don’t ride.”

“She used to be the best barrel racer in the area. Could have been a champion.” Tanner raised his juice glass as if toasting her.

“Enough, Tanner.” Claire tamped down the old rush of excitement at his admiring expression. She wasn’t that woman anymore and she didn’t want her son’s head filled with crazy ideas. Worse, Tanner made her remember a side of herself she’d let go. Wouldn’t want back.

Jonathan scooted to the edge of his chair. “I want to learn to ride, but Momma won’t let me.”

“Jonathan,” Claire warned, shooting the cowboy a glare over her son’s head.

Tanner smiled wide, seeming to enjoy her ire, which, of course, only fired her up more. “I’ll take you, sometime, if your mother gives the okay.”

“She doesn’t.” Claire tossed her cold toast back onto her plate, her appetite gone. How dare Tanner overstep and interfere with her parenting? First the ranch, now Jonathan? He was getting under her skin in the worst way.

“How’s your day lined up, Tanner?” her father asked in the tense silence. He wiped his mouth but missed the stiff side. Claire leaned over and dabbed at the egg in a move too fast for a man’s pride to register. She hoped...

“Mostly I’ll be looking things over. Did a bit of that last night with the breed stock. I’ve got a rep from Carne Incorporado coming up from Mexico City tomorrow. He’s a fan and friend who’s looking to improve the company’s beef with better breeders. I’ve also got my eye on a couple of bulls that could go for six figures at auction. Revelation’s one.”

Her father whistled and leaned forward, the red veins on the end of his nose filling. “That’s my top stud. And Carne would be the biggest company we’ve worked with, yet. What’s the chance of us getting a contract?”

Tanner shrugged and poured himself another cup of coffee. “Hard to say.”

“May I have a word with you, Tanner?” Claire shoved her chair back and stood. “Outside, please?”

He studied her for a moment before he nodded. Roxy bounded after them then leaped off the porch to chase squawking chickens.

“You’re raising my father’s hopes for nothing.” Her voice was indoors quiet, falling through the wide sunshine. “We’re not large enough to interest big players like that.”

Tanner gripped the porch rail and his forearms clenched as if he braced himself against her arguments. “Your father’s got great seed stock. Large corporations like Carne will want to buy it.”

She swayed a little, and her mouth clicked open. A bigger ranch meant more pressure on her fragile father. No. This business connection could not happen.

“A corporation like Carne has no loyalty to Denton. Even if they made an offer, they could easily pull out and leave us in even more in debt down the road.”

He pulled off his hat and a small breeze ruffled his hair. “Well, this is how I see it. If we auction some of our top studs and syndicate others, selling stakeholders exclusive rights to their semen, we can get buyers talking about Denton again. Attract even more investors than Carne. We’ll use the cash to expand and fill bigger and bigger quotas.”

“Too risky,” Claire fired back, struggling to keep her voice down. “Selling the ranch to Mr. Ruddell is safer.”

Tanner leaned a boot on the porch’s lower rail and tilted his head, studying her. “And safer is always better.”

“Of course.”

“Sounds more personal than professional, Claire.” Tanner’s voice was soft and flat.

She flinched, knowing he referred to her change of heart about rodeo...and dating a bull rider. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” He pushed off the rail, all tanned arms and square shoulders, his demeanor infuriatingly cool. “Guess that’s for you to decide. As for the ranch, not taking risks is what has put it behind the times.”

“Just stop,” she pleaded, her voice rising despite herself.

“Stop what exactly, Claire?” When he sauntered close, she breathed in his familiar scent. Leather and livestock. It scrambled her thoughts for a moment.

“All of it. Why do you care?”

He resettled his hat and squinted at the rising sun for a long moment. “I care, Claire.” He started down the steps, his words falling over his shoulder. “More than I should.”

* * *

TANNER PEERED AT a worn, creased paper, light bouncing off the page. The late afternoon felt like summer, pails of sunshine spilling through scuttling clouds, brightening the whole pasture. Dandelion seeds drifted on a low breeze and spiky ragwort flowered yellow.

“Plank position. Drop the knees. Hands underneath the pecs not the shoulders.”

He ripped off his damp T-shirt and tossed it onto the ground beside his hat. In a swift move, he dropped into the springy grass, stretched out for the fancy push-up and executed thirty. His healing rotator cuff ached but he forced another set. Yoga was no joke. It kicked his butt. Sweat ran down the sides of his face and slicked his back and chest. He’d been at his physical therapy for an hour. Almost time to quit.

He held up the paper again, scanned it and stuffed it back in his jeans for the last time. Knot pose. On his belly, he crossed his bad arm under his chest then reached forward with the opposite hand, a deep drawing of the muscle. Still felt tight, but looser than it had a week ago. His therapist was right about yoga.

Tanner had scoffed at first. Thought it wouldn’t be a challenge. A smile crept across his face. What an idiot. These easy-looking moves worked him harder than any bull. And his hand, wrist, arm and shoulder muscles felt stronger...critical in his job.

After his last bad landing, he’d worried his career was over. At this rate, he might get into shape, after all. With no savings after a mismanaged investment, he had no other option but to ride...unless his idea to start a rodeo school, renting space and buying Denton Ranch’s more aggressive, mixed breed bulls, worked out. It’d be the first time he put his mind, not his grip, to use, and he didn’t have as much faith in the former... Not when his occupation had been so good to him.

He rolled over. Meditation time. He slowed his breathing and let his body sink into the earth the way he’d been shown. Cleared his mind and pictured a peaceful spot. Denton Creek. Where he and Claire had picnicked and swum while dating.

“Tanner!”

He blinked up into the blue sky. Had he imagined Claire’s voice? It’d sounded real.

“What are you doing?”

Nope. Not a dream.

He leaped to his feet and sauntered over to the metal fence. As he watched her unlatch the gate and walk inside, his heart rate picked up a notch. There was no denying she was beautifully made, with long graceful bones and flat muscles that flowed smoothly from the curves of her torso to the dip of her waist. The sun skidded across her face when she looked up at him. Dark green eyes and a full mouth that didn’t give an inch.

He breathed in the fresh scent of her as she passed by, a one-of-a-kind mix of wildflowers, horses and the outdoors, that brought on memories he’d better forget again in a hurry.

“Are you hurt?” Her eyes ran over his bare chest then lowered, a pink tint darkening her cheeks as her eyes lingered on the kidney-bean-shaped birthmark beside his navel.

“I was meditating. Yoga.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

Tart-tongued gal. Her sarcasm had always challenged him. Made him want to kiss the sting right out of her until she melted, sweet and willing, in his arms. No other woman excited him this way. Lit him up the way rodeo did.

“Not if I want to rehab this shoulder.” He grabbed a handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped his brow. “What can I help you with? Didn’t think you wanted to see me much.”

Wariness curled in her eyes like smoke. “I don’t. But I called my insurance company and they’re not covering the truck repairs because of my ticket. I wondered if you had any ideas.”

His thumbs hooked in his belt loops. “A few.”

Claire leaned against the fence and slanted him a skeptical look. “I called the auto body. They said it’d take time to locate the specific parts, and lots of labor. It’s going to cost a fortune.”

He rested a hand on the fence rail beside her shoulder. “Let me figure that out. I’m having it towed here in the morning. Already called a mechanic to see if he’d work off-hours to help.”

She angled her head and the red curls that escaped her braid blew across her face. “And then what? You’re going to fix it?”

The scoff in her voice sounded all too familiar. Voices from his past telling him to not even try. It only fired him up. “That’s the plan. I want Jonathan to work with me.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Jonathan? He would never. I would never...”

Unable to resist, he tucked a wavy strand behind her ear, his fingertips lingering on the soft flesh. She shivered, despite the sun melting all around them.

He forced his mind back onto the conversation. Claire was magnetic, pulling him in when he’d had no intention of getting close again. “You’re coddling him. He should have gone out with Martin today. Be doing things. Working with his hands.”

“He makes model airplanes,” she exclaimed.

“Will he ever fly a real one?”

Her eyes shimmered. “Too dangerous. He wouldn’t want that.”

“He should. Let him work with me.” Having grown up without a father, he felt for the kid, wanted to help Martin’s bid to get the boy out into the world.

For a moment, Tanner caught a weakening in her resistance, in the rounding of her eyes, the softening of her mouth. He leaned in, drawn to this glimpse of the old Claire. After a moment, she shook her head and ducked under his arm.

Back at the gate, she whirled. “When are you leaving?”

His lips twisted. “Planning a going-away party for me?”

Her eyes rose to the sky. “Why did you come back? Really?”

“I want to help your father.” The truth. Mostly. She didn’t need to know he had to save himself, too. Or he didn’t want her to know, he admitted. Then there was his growing preoccupation with Claire. Being around her messed with his head. Filled him with thoughts he’d had under control for years.

Claire’s eyebrows lifted. “And...?” she prompted.

“That’s it,” he said firmly.

“So this isn’t about us?” Her shoulders hunched and her words came out in a muffled clump he strained to hear.

“Do you want it to be?” The question leaped out of him too fast to lasso back.

Her eyes met his, the questioning expression making his pulse thud. Hard.

At last she shook her head. “We both made our choices.”

He recalled how sure he’d been that she’d come around once he succeeded at rodeo. Letting her down when she’d given him the ultimatum—her or rodeo—had seemed the lesser of two evils. She hadn’t known him when he’d spent his after-school hours in detention and struggled to graduate after an extra senior year. Rodeo was the only thing he’d ever been good at, and he hadn’t wanted her to see him fail at a regular job.

“The right ones,” he muttered, hanging his head and raising his eyes.

Her shoulders squared as she examined him, green eyes dull, just a little too wide. “So, nothing’s changed.”

His nod felt heavy. Dishonest somehow. “Nothing’s changed.”

Without another word, she unlatched the gate and strode away, leaving him with an empty feeling that didn’t sit right.

He’d been on his own for ten years. Had worked hard to finally put her out of his mind. And now here she was again, muddling a straightforward plan to help Martin and a gamble to save his own future.

He headed back for his shirt and hat.

Claire affected him more than he’d bargained for. She was a complication, but he was doing this in spite of her, not because of her.

He pulled his brim low and watched her bright head disappear down a small hill.

Best he remember that.

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