Her Twins' Cowboy Dad

by Patricia Johns

  “It is.” Jane’s gaze stopped at a tarnished metal tea canister sitting on a shelf. She picked it up—it was empty. There was writing on the side she couldn’t make out.

  A family had lived here—a couple who had pulled together and started a ranch. It made her wonder about how their life had gone. One day, her daughters might ask about them, but they’d be more interested in the father they’d never met.

  Guilt wormed up inside of her.

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did earlier,” Jane observed quietly, putting the tea canister back on the shelf where she’d found it. “About my marriage. About Josh.”

  “Was it a lie?” Colt asked, fixing her with a direct stare.

  “I don’t lie,” she said irritably. “It was just hard being married to him. That’s all. And I don’t think it was his fault. I think marriage is hard. I think it takes a reserve of character that no one realizes before they get into it.”

  “Very likely,” he replied.

  “Like this family that lived here all those years ago,” she said. “They would have had a tough time. Especially in winter, and with baby after baby coming... It wouldn’t have been easy for that mother, but life can be hard. And marriage can be hard, too.”

  “But back then, they had different expectations,” Colt countered. “They didn’t get married for the romantic reasons we tack on to the institution today.”

  “Says who?” she retorted.

  “Come on! It wasn’t about warm fuzzy feelings back then in a ranching community. There were a lot of practical things to take into account—including a woman needing a man to provide for her. A woman would have chosen her best option and gone with it.”

  “So you think this couple didn’t love each other,” she said.

  “I’m not saying that. They probably learned to love each other,” he replied. “But they wouldn’t have expected all the warm fuzzies that we do these days.”

  “You can’t know that,” she countered. “There have been people who loved each other deeply all throughout history.”

  “Have they all been married?” he asked. “To each other?”

  He was teasing now, but this wasn’t just an argument for the sake of a debate for her. This mattered, because her faith was based on an understanding of things that included love in marriage. From Adam and Eve to Jacob and Rachel to Abraham and Sarah... Even Mary and Joseph! She’d struggled with Josh precisely because she wouldn’t settle for less. She refused to sink into the background of his life and his heart.

  But for all of her trying, it didn’t seem to help much. And all of her trying had left her deeply exhausted.

  “So what are you saying?” Jane asked with a faint shrug.

  “I’m saying that marriage has been a lot of things, but romance hasn’t always been part of it. Women were married off for family alliances. Men got married to produce an heir. Sometimes you’d get a widow and widower who would marry just to share the workload to feed their kids and survive winter!”

  “I think God intended something more. Just because humans have ruined something that God created doesn’t mean it’s worthless,” she said.

  “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

  “I can feel it,” Jane said, putting a hand over her chest. “Here. I can feel it. Women weren’t created to be sold off in blind marriages for political reasons. We aren’t just vessels for bearing children!”

  “Hey, I’m not saying that,” Colt said quickly. “I’m just saying that marriage hasn’t always been romantic. I’m not saying that women should have been treated that way. I’m against that, for the record. I think women deserve their freedom.”

  “Fine.” She sighed and pulled her hair away from her face. “It hasn’t always been romantic.” She didn’t know why this annoyed her so much, but it did. “But I married Josh for love.”

  “I believe you.” Colt heaved a sigh, then looked toward the window and the pounding rain again.

  “And I’m willing to believe that the couple who lived in this little house got married for love, too,” she added.

  “Yeah?” A smile curved up his lips again.

  “Why...do you know otherwise?” she asked.

  “Nah, no one told me how they met.” He grinned at her, and she felt her ire rise again.

  “I’m not joking around, Colt.”

  “Jane, what does it matter?” he asked, the humor evaporating. “You don’t want marriage any more than I do!”

  He stood there, staring down at her with fire in his eyes. He was standing closer to her than she’d intended, but the dimensions of this room didn’t allow for much space. His arms were hanging at his sides, and he met her gaze, waiting for an answer with his eyebrows raised. She found her breath a little short, and she swallowed.

  “No, I don’t,” she admitted.

  “And that’s okay,” he said, taking a step back again. “Because if you look back on it, marriage was often just a piece of paper between a father and another man he was passing his daughter off to. And if you look at what marriage has become in our society, it doesn’t last! But that doesn’t mean that anyone was happier back when this cabin was a home. It just meant people didn’t have an escape.”

  “Like your dad,” she said.

  Colt froze, and she realized she might have gone too far. His father’s abandonment of his family shouldn’t be part of her argument to make a point. She felt a well of regret at the words. She couldn’t take them back, though, and they hung in the space between them.

  “Would it have been better for my father to stick around and treat my mother the way Beau treated her sister?” he asked at last. “Because no woman deserves that!”

  “There are other options,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have brought your father up, and I’m sorry about that. But there is the option to love someone. Stand by them. Be good to them, even when you don’t feel romantic. That’s an option, too.”

  “Yeah...” Colt sucked in a breath.

  “Your dad shouldn’t have left you and your mother,” she said. “And Beau shouldn’t have been so awful to Sandra. They all should have been better to each other, kinder.”

  “You chose that route,” Colt said. “You stayed with Josh and you loved him. But now that he’s gone, you don’t want to get married again because that was hard. And it hurt. And you’d rather be alone after all of that. So I’m not sure that your way was ideal, either. There was still collateral damage, wasn’t there? That collateral damage was you.”

  Jane’s heart clenched as his glittering gaze met hers. She looked toward the window again where Suzie stood with her palm against the glass.

  Wait. Where was Micha?

  She looked around the room, and there was no sign of her. There wasn’t anywhere she could hide, was there?

  Jane went to the staircase and looked up. “Micha?” She waited, listening. There was nothing but the sound of hammering rain on the roof, a distant drip from somewhere overhead. Nothing else. Jane looked back at Colt, dread rising inside her. “Did you see where she went?”

  * * *

  Colt strode to the staircase and went up, taking two stairs at a time. The wooden structure creaked under his weight, and he stopped at the top, ducking his head against the buckling roof. He could see the sky through a rather large hole, and the rain was letting up. The patter of raindrops on the wooden floor was gentler now. He looked around the second floor, scanning for signs of the toddler, but there wasn’t really anywhere to hide. The second floor was nearly as empty as downstairs—an old iron bed frame leaning against one wall, a few paper bags from McDonald’s crumpled up in a corner... Those were from him and Josh visiting this place fifteen years ago!

  His gaze snapped around the upstairs. There used to be a wall up here that separated some sleeping areas, but he and Josh had knocked it down one year for no reason at
all. Just boys destroying stuff.

  He wished he hadn’t.

  Colt came down to find Jane at the back door.

  “Do you see her?” Colt asked.

  “Nope.” She scooped up Suzie and headed out into the rain. Colt jogged down the stairs and followed her outside.

  “Micha!” he called. “Where are you, kiddo?”

  “Micha!” Jane called.

  The rain stopped nearly as quickly as it had started, and as he tramped through the long grass, he could hear Jane calling in the other direction.

  Where was she? His heart hammered in his throat, and he sent up a silent prayer for help. The toddler was out here somewhere, because she sure wasn’t in the house.

  Colt circled around the front of the cabin, and he heard some rustling by the front step. Micha was crouching in the shelter of the overhanging porch, a caterpillar in her hands.

  “Look!” Her face lit up when she saw him.

  “There you are,” he sighed, and beyond them, he could hear Jane’s frantic call. “Mommy’s calling you, Micha. Don’t you hear her?”

  “Mommy!” Micha called back cheerfully. “Mommy!”

  Jane came around the corner just then, Suzie on her hip and her face white with relief.

  “Micha! Where did you go?” Jane said, sinking down to her haunches and holding her free arm out.

  “Look!” Micha said, marching toward her mother and holding out the caterpillar.

  “Yeah, wonderful,” Jane said, and her tone was so dry that Colt couldn’t help but smile.

  “That girl is a runner,” Colt said.

  “She is.” Jane pulled Micha in a for a hug. “You stop running off, Micha. You worried Mommy.”

  “Oh, Mama...” Micha put a dirty hand on the side of Jane’s face with a look of sympathy which immediately melted into an impish grin. “Look!”

  She held up the caterpillar again, and Suzie reached for it, which brought on a squeal of upset from Micha, who didn’t want to give up her prize to her sister, but the caterpillar was dropped. Jane sighed and stood up, leaving the girls to tussle at her feet.

  “I feel a bit responsible for that,” Colt said.

  “Don’t,” she said with a sigh. “Apparently, I argue with you a little too easily.”

  The sun started to come out, and just behind her a rainbow came into view. Standing there with her hands on her hips, her jeans wet at the bottom from the rain-soaked grass and that dark gaze of hers locked on him, he found himself suddenly at a loss for words.

  She was gorgeous.

  She turned then and stopped.

  “Look, girls, a rainbow,” she said, then she glanced back at him. “You know how in the Bible it says that after the flood God sent a rainbow to reassure the people that he wouldn’t put them through that again?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sometimes I wish God would make that deal with me,” she said. “That I’ve experienced my worst. I won’t have to go through anything that hard again.”

  Jane turned away again, not waiting for him to reply, and he watched her crouch down and point to the rainbow for the toddlers’ benefit.

  It was strange that they’d just argued about the value of marriage in that little cabin, and for what? She didn’t want another husband, and he didn’t want a wife. But there was something between them that didn’t sit easily—maybe it was Josh’s memory. Because he felt drawn to her for no reason he could see—just wanted to be with her, listen to her, help her out, and all they ended up doing was bickering because she wanted marriage to mean something, and for some reason that irritated him.

  Maybe she was right and it had to do with his dad.

  “Jane, I don’t mean to keep arguing with you over dumb stuff,” Colt said. “You should know that I don’t go around picking fights with women on a regular basis. I’m normally a little more mannerly than this.”

  She rose to her feet and came back toward him. “I must be easy to argue with.”

  “You? No way. You keep winning,” he said, giving her a grin. “Maybe I just care more with you.”

  “Why would you?” she asked with a shrug.

  “Because I like you.”

  “Do you?” A smile came to her lips. “I used to be more fun than this, you know. I used to be more pulled together, too.”

  “I don’t care. I like you this way,” he replied.

  “Even tired out, and my hair in a ponytail?” she asked with a teasing smile.

  “Perfection.” He took a step closer and caught her hand in his. Her fingers were warm, and instead of pulling away, she squeezed his hand back.

  “We aren’t supposed to do this,” she whispered.

  “I know...” He wanted to move in closer still, but he didn’t dare. “Maybe we can be friends who hold hands sometimes...”

  “I don’t think friends do that.” She smiled slightly.

  He dropped her hand, and his palm felt cold where her fingers had been. “Then I’ll behave. But I stand by it, Jane. I like you. And I’m not hitting on you or asking anything from you when I say that. It’s just a fact.”

  “That’s the nicest thing someone has said to me in a really long time,” she said softly. “But I’m so tired out. I’m drained. I feel like I’ve got nothing left to offer even a friendship anymore.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that with me,” he said. “Let me take care of stuff for a bit.”

  “For a few more days,” she said, and she met his gaze. “Then we’ll be signing papers and I’ll be heading out. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

  He paused. She was right. It was the deal, and he’d been trying not to think about it.

  “Ever think about being a cook?” he asked. “You could stick around. Work the ranch.”

  “Your mom did that, and it wasn’t good for the family,” she countered.

  “It would be nice to have you around,” he said quietly. “Really nice.”

  “You hired a guy,” she reminded him.

  “I’m not attached to him yet,” he said, and he sent her a teasing grin.

  She sucked in a breath. “I don’t know, Colt. I have a feeling that our bickering could get out of hand.”

  Colt nodded—he knew what she was trying to say. He’d like her to stay, and she didn’t want to be in that close. It was okay. He didn’t really blame her.

  “So what do you want to do today?” Colt asked. “You want to keep riding, or go back?”

  “I want to see that tree house, Colt.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “This one’s for Josh. I want to see what you guys were so proud of back then.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s get back on the horses.”

  Micha and Suzie came tripping toward them, and Micha held up a long, wriggling worm between two fingers.

  “Look!” she said.

  Jane made a face, and then laughed. “Yes, Micha. It’s amazing.”

  And maybe it was best that Jane not stay here on his ranch, settle in, raise her daughters here...because while he knew all the logical reasons to steer clear of matrimony, she was the one woman so far to seriously tempt him.

  She’d be heartbreak in the end, he had no doubt, but sometimes a guy walked into pain willingly because a woman made it all seem worth it.

  “Let’s get going,” he said, and he started around the house toward the horses. They were half an hour away, and he was hoping some time with memories of his cousin would get his feet back on the ground.

  Chapter Eleven

  The countryside sparkled with drips of rain that clung to nodding stems and left the air smelling of damp earth. The clouds rolled away and some patches of blue sky and sunlight broke through, warming the air and their skin as they basked in those first luxurious rays. Even the horses seemed to perk up,
stepping a little higher and tossing their heads.

  The rest of the ride was a quiet one. Colt kept looking over at her, because now that he’d had the idea of Jane just sticking around, he kept imagining what it might be like to have rides like this one more often.

  Suzie settled in front of him, the ride seeming to lull her into a quiet mood. These girls could end up being skilled riders, given enough practice and access to a ranch. Not that he had all sorts of free time to give toddlers riding lessons. Why was he even thinking about this?

  Maybe when they visited once every year or two, he could take them all out riding then. That was more reasonable, but the thought was mildly depressing. They wouldn’t remember him. He’d just be a guy in a few stories their mother told them—their dad’s cousin. And what was that? Not even a terribly close relation.

  Colt could see the trees coming up in the distance, and as they drew nearer, his memories of the place came closer and closer to the surface. Back when they were kids, this patch of trees felt like it was so far away from all the adult supervision they were used to. They felt dangerous and grown-up. There was no one to tell them to how to do anything, no one to overhear their conversation. And there was that testosterone-fueled part of both Colt and Josh that had responded to the freedom.

  “It’s just ahead,” Colt said.

  The tree line was bathed in late morning sunlight, and Jane looked in the direction he was pointing.

  “It’s quite far from the house and the barns and all that, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “It felt even farther when we were young, though.”

  Riding out with smuggled hammers and nails, some purloined boards strapped into saddle bags—the difficulty had made it more like an adventure. If they’d had access to some suitable trees close by everyone else, they would have lost interest and certainly wouldn’t have kept adding on to the tree house in their early teens.

  “Just past this patch of trees begins Bruce’s land,” he said. “And there are some streams that flow through here that he wants to own. It’s just good on paper—maybe he’s thinking of selling eventually and if his land has those streams on it, it’ll be worth more.”