Her Twins' Cowboy Dad

by Patricia Johns

  “See you later, Peg,” Jane said.

  Peg gave a curt nod, and they headed out to the truck.

  “What’s with Peg?” Colt asked, pulling the door shut behind them.

  “She’s going to see your new cook today,” Jane said with a small smile.

  “Oh...” Colt glanced back toward the house as he pulled open the truck door for her. “I don’t get the problem.”

  “She likes him, and I asked about it,” Jane said. “I think she’s just a bit nervous.”

  “Huh. I think she’s wearing makeup,” Colt said, waiting as Jane buckled the girls into their car seats that were still in the back of the truck from their trip to church.

  “And if you’re wise, you’ll never mention it,” Jane said with a laugh.

  Colt slammed her door shut and Jane adjusted her position while she waited for him to get settled in the driver’s side.

  “I’m looking forward to this,” Jane said. “I haven’t been on a horse since before the girls were born, and I miss riding.”

  “How often did you ride before that?” Colt asked. He started the truck and backed out. Jane could see Peg watching them leave out the side window.

  “Whenever I could,” Jane replied. “I had a friend from church who worked at a rescue ranch, and I used to come and ride with her, just to give the horses some attention and to keep them used to being ridden. I loved it.”

  Colt shot her a smile. “Good. This is an easy ride, but I think you’ll like it, then.”

  They arrived at the barn, and Colt parked the truck then nodded toward the corral. “I just need to saddle them up. You ready?”

  Colt led the way into the barn, and while he saddled the horses, Jane got the girls into their riding helmets. In years past, riding had been her escape, and part of her was hoping for that feeling of momentary freedom again. That rescue ranch she used to ride at had rescued more than horses—it had been the place where she found some calm and happiness with her husband stationed overseas. It had rescued her, too.

  When it was time to get into the saddle, Colt brought a chestnut mare to the mounting block. Jane picked up the twins, just to be safe, and went around to the horse’s head to say hello.

  “She’s beautiful,” Jane said.

  “She’s gentle,” Colt said. “I think you’ll like her.”

  “I can mount on my own,” she said. “But could you hold the girls until I’m up there?”

  Colt stood back while she swung into the saddle, then handed the toddlers up to her one at a time. She held them both while he mounted his horse, and then he leaned over and took Suzie out of her arms.

  “Let’s see how this works,” he said.

  Jane settled Micha in front of her on the saddle, and Colt did the same with Suzie. The girls squirmed a little at first, but they soon got the feel of riding and Jane smiled over at Colt and Suzie, who looked like they were enjoying themselves, too.

  If she was looking for freedom, she might not find it. Motherhood changed what freedom was possible, although those tethers were welcome. She looked over at Suzie held so gently in front of Colt, and she felt a wave of maternal satisfaction.

  “I think we’re ready,” Jane said, patting Micha’s little belly. Micha grabbed onto Jane’s hand, small fingers clutching hers in excitement.

  “I think we are, too,” Colt replied, shooting her a grin. “Let’s ride.”

  * * *

  Colt set a gentle pace. They weren’t in a rush today, and with the girls along for this ride, he didn’t want to take any chances.

  The day was cool, which made for a pleasant ride, and as he settled into the rhythm of the horse beneath him, he held Suzie comfortably in place. She looked around herself, babbling in half baby talk. He could only understand a few words of her chatter: horsey, bump-bump-bump, Mama... Whatever she was saying, she was having fun, and he felt his mood lighten in response to her babyish happiness.

  The first few minutes of riding were noisy with toddler chatter, but as the ride wore on, both girls got quieter. The path he was taking was away from the pasture and through a rockier terrain. The grass was tougher and the trees were more plentiful—copses of trees spreading across the landscape. They were headed toward a patch of dark green—“the forest,” as he and Josh had called it back then. It wasn’t much of a forest, but there was a lot of denser growth out there and the trees grew tall and sturdy, unlike the bent, twisted trees they were passing here.

  He turned, looking back at Jane, who was riding a couple of yards behind him, and he reined in slightly so that she could catch up.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Jane said.

  “Yeah, I always did like this ride,” he agreed. “Josh and I used to come out here when we were kids—back when you could let your ten-year-old ride and tell him to be back by supper.”

  Jane smiled sadly. “I can’t imagine doing that with my girls.”

  He looked down at the toddler in front of him. “Well, they’re pretty small right now. A different time, I guess. Besides, my mom knew I’d be fine with Josh. We were pretty resourceful together.”

  “You don’t talk about your mom too often,” she said.

  “Not much to tell,” he said.

  Jane eyed him for a moment.

  “She wanted this,” he said at last. “Me to inherit. She thought after all the hard work I’d put in, I deserved it.”

  Colt felt a knot settle in his stomach. He hated the way it sounded—like they’d planned this somehow. It hadn’t been that way, but his mom had mentioned it often enough that he had to wonder if she had suggested it to his uncle at some point.

  “Your mom never did marry again after your dad left?” Jane asked.

  “No, she stayed single,” he replied.

  “And she managed by herself...” Jane’s voice was quiet and he glanced over at her. Was she looking for some sort of reassurance that it was possible to raise her children alone?

  “It helped that Mom could work at the ranch,” Colt said. “Although, it probably didn’t help her relationship with her sister. They would have gotten along better with a little more space between them. They tended to judge each other a lot. Mom thought Sandra was too hard on Josh. Sandra thought Mom was too much of a free spirit. Sandra always did feel responsible for her...”

  “The sisterly dynamic,” Jane said with a small smile.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “What about your dad?” she asked. “He never contacted you?”

  “A few times,” Colt said, and his mind went back to those stunted phone calls when his mother would stomp out of the room to listen from the other side of his bedroom door. “Dad wasn’t sending any money, so Mom was furious with him. She’d call him up every few years and demand some child support, and he’d have some excuse not to give it. But he’d talk to me on the phone then...ask how I was doing. Call me a good kid, even though he had no idea if I was a good kid or not.”

  “Would she have been happier if she’d married again?” Jane asked.

  Colt shrugged. “I doubt it. Mom didn’t think too much of marriage. She said it was just a contract, a piece of paper. When Dad left her with me, she was a wreck for a while. At least that’s what Sandra told me. So Beau and Sandra gave her a job so she could get on her feet, and it turned out to be longer term than anyone intended.”

  “So that came from her,” Jane said quietly.

  “What came from her?”

  “That idea that marriage is only a piece of paper.”

  He paused for a moment, the realization settling into him. Yeah, he’d first heard that idea from his mom. He could remember being a kid—ten maybe?—and his mother sitting on the steps to Beau and Sandra’s house. She’d had a can of pop in one hand and deep sadness in her eyes. He couldn’t remember what had just happened—his dad refused to send money? O
r maybe Beau and Sandra fighting again? It’s just a piece of paper, Colt. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted. “But just because she recognized it first doesn’t make it wrong, though. As much as we might want it to, marriage doesn’t make people love each other. My dad was legally wed, and he took off.” The wind picked up, and this time it had an earthy scent to it. “And look at Beau and Sandra. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they actually stuck it out together, but they didn’t like each other. At least not far as I could remember them.”

  To the east, Colt could see the outline of Josh’s grandparents’ old cabin peeking out from behind a spread of trees. It was deteriorating quickly these last few years, but there was a time when he used to like to ride out and look at it. They weren’t his blood relatives, but he still felt a connection to them. His mom’s father had been an alcoholic, and she’d never told a happy story about the man. Sometimes it was easier to connect to Josh’s family. They seemed worthier, somehow. Even if that was unfair.

  “I don’t agree with her,” Jane said, and he could hear the disapproval in her tone and he understood that. People didn’t like to look ugliness in the face. And maybe most people didn’t have to. He didn’t seem to have a choice anymore.

  “Look around you, Jane,” he said. “I mean, not here.” He laughed quietly. “But I mean at the relationships around you. I’ve got several friends who got divorced. They just grew apart, they said. And I was a guest at those weddings. I saw how in love they were at the start. I even felt a little jealous watching them dance and stare adoringly into each other’s eyes. It didn’t last. Five years, seven years pass, and they change their minds. A piece of paper doesn’t stop that from happening.”

  “Just because some marriages go wrong doesn’t mean that God isn’t offering something incredibly beautiful in the institution,” she countered.

  He couldn’t argue with that. She was right, but how could anyone know if their marriage was going to soar to the great heights of what was possible in God’s plan or nosedive with the others? He rode along in silence for a few more minutes. That cool wind was getting ever stronger, and he glanced up at the overcast sky. Were they in for rain today, after all? It was still hard to tell. Sometimes these threats of rain could sail right on overhead and hit another area.

  Jane rode along next to him, her gaze turned away so he couldn’t see what she was feeling. Micha was nodding off against her arm, and he glanced down to see that Suzie was getting pretty dozy, too. There was something about that rhythm on horseback that worked like a lullaby.

  “I’m not saying happily married people don’t exist,” he went on. “I’m just saying that a piece of paper doesn’t guarantee anything. It just locks people down, makes them financially obligated toward each other.”

  “I wasn’t locked down,” she said, turning toward him again.

  “But were you happy?”

  A fat drop of rain hit his hand, and he tipped his hat up, looking at the darkening clouds.

  “It’s starting to rain,” Jane said.

  “Sure is,” he agreed, and he reined his horse in. “I want to hear you fess up—tell me the truth. Were you happy with my cousin?”

  Jane reined in her horse, too, so that it pranced around in a circle to come close to him again.

  “The girls will get cold,” she said, and she turned to pull a small blanket out of her saddlebag. “I’ve got some little blankets for them, but—”

  “There’s an old house over there,” he said, pointing toward the old cabin. “We can wait out the thunderstorm there.”

  Jane met his gaze for a moment and he could read the pain in her eyes. The wind whipped her hair around her face, and she handed the blanket to him and then reached back again for her saddlebag.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, easing his horse forward and reaching into the bag for her. He pulled out another small blanket, and they both tucked the fuzzy blankets around the girls.

  Then he nudged his horse around, and they headed into the wind and toward shelter.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Jane said after a moment, raising her voice above the wind.

  “What’s that?” He looked over at her as another couple drops of rain hit the brim of his hat.

  “I wasn’t happy,” Jane said. “Not...as one would describe it. But I was hopeful. I think that matters more.”

  And maybe it did. He wasn’t trying to tear apart her memories or tarnish anything for her. What kind of guy would that make him? All he was wanting was for her to understand where he was coming from, because his position was a lonely one.

  People wanted romance, marriages that lasted, and they kept on trying for it. And yet he couldn’t quite forget that feeling he’d had in church on Sunday, sitting next to this beautiful woman as they kept the toddlers occupied. It was that feeling of togetherness, tenderness, that people chased. What guy didn’t want the pleasure of a life with a woman as beautiful as the one next to him? What man wouldn’t want to call her his?

  But marriages always started out with that optimism, and he just didn’t think it made sense to throw his own hat into that ring. After all, the unions he’d seen hadn’t given him any hope that he’d fare any better.

  Chapter Ten

  The spatter of errant raindrops spurred Jane on faster toward the moldering house. Its roof was sagging in on one side and one of the windows was broken, but it would shelter them for the time being. Micha didn’t seem to mind the rain at all and kept squirming a hand out from under the blanket, trying to catch a raindrop.

  Jane had said too much. She’d never thought of herself as unhappy in her marriage to Josh before he died, because she’d loved him. It wasn’t possible to love a man and be unhappy with him, was it? But after he’d died, she had been forced to admit to herself that she hadn’t been happy. She’d been stressed, frustrated, wrung out...and that felt like a terrible thing to admit. She felt like she was letting Josh down, somehow. The things Josh had seen at war that changed him—those weren’t his fault. But life together hadn’t been easy, either.

  Jane shouldn’t have said anything. She should have kept that to herself. She looked up at the broiling clouds overhead—a downpour was imminent.

  “There are some trees behind where we can tie the horses,” Colt called, and she ducked her head and guided her horse around the side of the house. Colt was right—three very leafy trees grew close together just behind the house, and the horse didn’t need any encouragement to move into the shelter of those low-hanging branches. Jane ducked her head to avoid being hit.

  “Okay, Micha, you’re going to have to hold on,” Jane said. “I’m getting down first, and then I’ll lift you down, okay?”

  Jane swung her leg over and dismounted, but the minute she took her foot out of the stirrup, Micha held her arms out and launched herself toward Jane. Jane shot her arms out to catch her daughter with a laugh of surprise.

  Colt rode up beside her, and Jane switched Micha to her hip and reached for her other daughter. Suzie was just blinking her eyes open again, looking groggy.

  “Hey, you,” Jane said with a smile, and as Suzie reached for her, Colt lifted her down into Jane’s grasp. “You look tired, sweetie.”

  Colt dismounted and took the reins, then led both horses deeper into the shelter of the trees. Jane looked toward the house as a gust of rain-scented wind whisked her hair away from her face.

  “It isn’t locked,” Colt said as he strode up beside her. “Let’s get inside.”

  They burst through the door just as the rain started to hammer down. Jane looked around at a dusty, nearly empty cabin. There was a chair missing one leg leaning in a corner, and a small table sat in the center of what had once been a kitchen. Some dried leaves filled another corner beside the front door and the broken window, and at the far side of the room was an iron stove attached to a tin chimn
ey.

  She put the toddlers down, and they blinked uncertainly in the dim light and clung to her jeans.

  “Who used to live here?” Jane asked.

  “Beau’s parents,” Colt replied.

  Jane took another spin around and spotted an old narrow staircase that led upstairs, but the cabin was tiny at best.

  “How many kids did they have?” she asked.

  “Six. But only the first four were born here,” he replied. “Beau told me the stories about them. So did Josh, for that matter. This is Marshall pride right here.”

  Four children and two parents all in this one tiny cabin. It was hard to imagine being that cramped. But this was the site of her daughter’s great-grandparents’ home—so it was a part of their heritage.

  “There’s not a lot of space for that many people, is there?” she said.

  “It was a different time, I suppose,” he replied. “They had different standards.”

  Micha sidled away from Jane and headed for the closest window. She pointed outside.

  “Horsey.”

  Suzie followed Micha and they both stood there in gray light by the dusty, rain spattered window, fingers pressed against the glass. Jane followed them and looked out at the horses. They were sheltered well enough under the trees and were eating oats out of feed bags. She turned back to the room and looked around.

  “Can you imagine feeding an entire family on that stove?” she said, nodding toward the small iron stove on the other side of the room. “That would have been a lot of work.”

  She wandered over to the stove and tried to open the oven, but the handle was rusted into place. With two girls of her own, she could only imagine how much work it would be to build the fire, cook the meals, keep the kids from burning themselves...

  “It’s not a lot of space,” Colt said. “But considering they would have built it themselves, it’s pretty impressive.”