Not Their First Rodeo

by Christy Jeffries

  When Jack looked up at her, he smiled his gap-toothed grin. “I thought you left yesterday without saying goodbye to us.”

  At that, she did hug him back, rather awkwardly with a pat on his head. She was equally touched by his words, yet slightly confused. The poor child had been growing up without a mother, and he’d recently lost his grandfather. Of course he would have some separation-anxiety issues, although Violet would never have anticipated he’d react so strongly to a random woman he’d just met yesterday. Still, he deserved to be comforted.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I was in a hurry to catch my ride and shouldn’t have been so thoughtless. Will you forgive me?”

  “Okay,” the boy said simply. “Can I sit next to you at dinner tonight?”

  Violet glanced at her watch. To her surprise, it was nearly four in the afternoon.

  “Here you go, Jack.” Marcus pulled a clean napkin out of his back pocket and casually handed it to the boy. Clearly, he kept a supply of them on hand for this exact purpose. “I don’t think we’re going to have dinner at the main house tonight.”

  “But we always have a fancy sit-down dinner when Gan Gan is in town.”

  Marcus’s sigh reverberated in his throat. “I know. But with Aunt Tessa and Aunt Freckles and now Miss Cortez-Hill staying there, it’s kind of a lot of people.”

  As though hearing her grandson invoke her name, Sherilee limped up the few stairs separating them, pretending she didn’t have a dusty sneaker print covering the expensive Italian leather toe of her high heel. “Don’t be ridiculous, Marcus. Of course you and the boys will still be having dinner with—” she paused just long enough to give Violet a pointed look that brooked no argument “—all of us at the main house.”

  “Yes!” Jack pumped a fist in the air before yelling back to his twin. “Hey, Jordan, Violet is gonna sit by us at dinner.”

  At least someone was happy about it, she thought, trying not to let the excited boys see an ounce of apprehension on her face. Now she would have to endure another round of dysfunctional family dynamics with the Kings.

  * * *

  “You apologized to my son earlier today,” Marcus said to Violet later that evening as they were having predinner cocktails in the great room of the main house. He took another drink from his bottle of craft ale, his second of the night.

  Violet’s hair was out of that ridiculous tight bun and hung softly down her back. She shoved a loose strand behind her ear, and despite the taste of beer still fresh on his tongue, his mouth went dry. All too swiftly, he recalled the silky feel of her hair in his hands as he... Ahem. She’s speaking, idiot. “Of course I did. It was rude of me to leave last night without saying goodbye.”

  “It’s weird, though. Usually he has a short attention span when it comes to new people.” In fact, neither of his sons had mentioned Violet yesterday after she’d left, and Marcus had assumed they’d easily forgotten about her until his sister Dahlia had dropped them off at the courthouse after school. But saying as much would be admitting that he didn’t have a good read on his own children. Because clearly, they did remember Violet, especially Jordan, who’d spent the last fifteen minutes quizzing her on the side effects of her migraine medication. Instead Marcus clarified what he meant. “Adults normally don’t go to great lengths to apologize for something kids are likely to forget anyway.”

  “No? Well, they should.”

  He’d noticed that she was somewhat stiff when Jack had hugged her earlier on the courthouse steps. Even now she looked as though she would rather be wearing anything other than the painted macaroni necklace that Jordan had made at school today. His son had ceremoniously given it to her just before joining his brother in the dining room to make sure the place cards their cousin had drawn were still in the right spots. “Do you spend much time around children?”

  “I’m an only child, remember?” Violet looked away quickly, refusing to meet his eyes. “No nieces or nephews or big family gatherings like this.”

  “Yeah, but surely you have friends with kids?”

  Her knuckles were white as she gripped the stem of her wineglass. “Um, I guess.”

  “You don’t know if your friends have kids?” he asked playfully, trying to ease this growing tension between them. “Or you don’t have friends?”

  Her eyelids lowered slightly, and her lips pursed together, as though she was about to deliver a scathing remark. Warmth flooded Marcus’s bloodstream, and he wished he could take a picture of her in that exact second because she was absolutely gorgeous when she was in lecture mode.

  “Of course I have friends.” She didn’t bother to hide the annoyance in her tone. But at least she was no longer trying to ignore him. “But the ones I spend the most time with don’t usually bring their children with them to work.”

  “You mean your coworkers?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to antagonize her or pity her right that second. “Don’t you ever hang out with people outside the job?”

  “I don’t do much hanging out at all, Marcus. Or is this your way of asking me about my dating life?”

  “Well, I wasn’t asking about it specifically, but if you want to talk about it, we can.” Although, he honestly didn’t want to hear about any other guys who might be after her. He was sure there were plenty.

  Before she could reply, though, his sons ran into the room with Aunt Freckles on their heels.

  His aunt cupped her hand around her mouth and hollered, “Dinner’s ready, gang!”

  “Really, Freckles?” His mother chastised her former sister-in-law. “I’ve seen farmers call their pigs to the slop troughs with a more civilized tone.”

  “If you’re more comfortable with me treating you like a pig, Sherilee, I’m happy to oblige.” Freckles winked a bright blue eye-shadowed lid at Finn, who hooted with laughter at their mother’s sputtering.

  Finn and Freckles seemed to share the same desire to shock Sherilee King whenever the chance arose. And Marcus adored his aunt and his sister for it. Sure, he loved his mother, but the King matriarch needed to come off her high horse every now and then. As long as the two women didn’t team up against him, he was fine.

  “Now, now, ladies.” Duke took their aunt’s arm and twirled her toward the dining room, leaving Finn to walk with their frowning mother. “I’ve been waiting nearly five years for your famous chicken-fried steak, Freckles. I’m sure the only pig at the table will be me as I load up my plate.”

  Marcus’s brother was the consummate peacekeeper of the family. He was the perfect son who could never fail at anything. Finn was always attempting to dethrone poor Duke from his good-natured pedestal with her smart-alecky comments and constant teasing, but he usually shrugged her off like a pesky fly.

  “Hurry to your chair, before Dad gets there.” Jack and Jordan each took one of Violet’s hands in their own and tugged her toward the dining room. “He’ll put all the mashed potatoes on his plate if you don’t get some before him.”

  Violet threw a look over her shoulder at Marcus, a smirk tugging one corner of her lip upward. “Oh, he still does that?”

  It wasn’t until they were all seated at the table that he was able to defend himself. “What do you mean ‘he still does that’?”

  Instead of speaking directly to him, though, she told his sons, “One summer when we used to be in the Junior Diplomats Club, we were at a fancy state dinner for this group of foreign dignitaries and their children. The servers brought out our plates while I was still on the dance floor. When I got back to my seat, half of my potatoes au gratin were missing. Your dad denied it was him, but he still had cheese on his fork as he tried to quickly swallow down the evidence.”

  “What kind of junior diplomat steals food off someone else’s plate at a state dinner?” Finn tsked, pretending to be scandalized.

  “I was a sophomore in high school and going through a growth spurt. Besides, as I
recall, Violet was so busy dancing with the French ambassador’s son and swooning with the rest of the girls over his accent that I didn’t think she’d notice.”

  Violet gasped. “You were jealous of Jean-Henri?”

  At this point, everyone at the table was watching them, and Marcus hated being the center of attention. His incredulous sniff caused his chest to jut out in defiance. “No, I wasn’t jealous of that guy. He might’ve had all the girls convinced he was a decent dancer, but he couldn’t dribble a soccer ball to save his life. The European delegates lost the final match that year, and everyone probably forgot all about him after he flew back to Paris.”

  “You mean Jean-Henri Laurent?” Duke refilled Violet’s wineglass. “He’s a professional soccer player now. His team won the international finals last spring. So you must be the only one who forgot about him, big brother.”

  Violet laughed at that.

  Dang. Now Marcus couldn’t decide if she was more beautiful when she was angry or when she was laughing. Probably when she was angry because he could still remember her laughter when they were younger. But this level of heat was a new side to her he hadn’t quite grown accustomed to.

  Not that he was accustomed to seeing her at all lately. Luckily, he was able to sit across the table from her and silently study her as everyone else around them talked and argued and put on quite the display of squabbling and teasing.

  He forgot how overwhelming his family could be to outsiders, although Violet wasn’t technically an outsider. They’d spent many of their adolescent summers together, so she certainly had no trouble interjecting into the multiple conversations going on around the noisy table.

  “So how long is everyone staying in town?” Violet asked.

  “Well, I was hoping to return to my ship yesterday afternoon, but the former second lady over there—” Duke used his fork to gesture toward their mother at the head of the table “—made a call to one of her buddies at the Pentagon, and now my commanding officer insisted I take another week of leave.”

  Tessa, whose panic attack yesterday had resulted in quite a media scandal involving the handsome and heroic Special Agent Wyatt, buttered a freshly baked roll. “I was also supposed to be back in Washington today, but our strong-willed mother insisted that I stay on the ranch and keep a low profile. Hopefully, the press finds something new to interest them soon, and I can leave in a couple of days.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Finn said around a mouthful of fresh green beans. “I live on the Twin Kings, and I oversee the cattle operation. Which surprisingly lowers our mother’s ability to control my life.”

  “How? I live on the ranch, too,” Marcus pointed out. “Yet that doesn’t stop Mom from her attempts to interfere in my job.”

  “I’m not interfering or controlling.” His self-proclaimed vegan mother scraped her fork along her gravy-smeared plate with a bit too much force. “I’m simply orchestrating better options for my children.”

  “What about you, Aunt Freckles?” Violet smoothly shifted the subject before all the King siblings could voice their objections to their mother’s careful rephrasing of history. “I heard you have a successful restaurant in Sugar Falls now. When do you have to go back to Idaho?”

  “Oh, I’m here for as long as my kiddos need me,” Freckles explained as she passed a second gravy boat containing the untouched vegan version to Uncle Rider. He sniffed it then grimaced before passing it off to Sherilee.

  Marcus’s uncle twisted an end of his bushy gray mustache and winked at his estranged wife. “And here I thought you were staying because you couldn’t get enough of me and my skills in the bed—”

  “Whoa, you two!” Finn interrupted. “There are young children present.”

  Marcus tossed his white linen napkin onto his plate in surrender. “That’s probably my cue to get the boys home.”

  A defiant crease appeared between Jack’s tired eyes. “But we want to hear more about the famous soccer player Violet got to dance with.”

  “He wasn’t famous when Violet danced with him,” Marcus said before realizing how petulant he sounded. “It was way back when we were still in high school.”

  “Did you and my dad go to school together?” Jordan asked Violet.

  “No, I went to a boarding school near Washington, DC, and your dad went to Teton Ridge High.”

  “So then, how did you used to hang out all the time if you lived in different places?” Marcus could see the wheels spinning in Jordan’s mind.

  “We actually only saw each other once or twice a year at these boring events for children of politicians. Your dad and I were mostly pen pals.”

  “What’s a pen pal?” Jack asked before using his sleeve to wipe the fruit punch off his upper lip.

  “It’s someone who lives far away, but you keep in touch by exchanging correspondence with them,” Violet said, likely not realizing that she was speaking to a six-year-old with a limited vocabulary.

  “What’s correspondence?” Jack clearly wasn’t letting up.

  Jordan stage-whispered to his twin, “That means Dad slided into her DMs.”

  Several gasps came from the adults at the table while Finn snorted rather loudly. MJ finally looked up from his phone with a huge grin across his face. Apparently, the boys’ vocabulary wasn’t as limited as it should be.

  Marcus jerked his head sideways at his little brother. “I’m assuming you’re the one who taught my impressionable children that expression?”

  MJ’s grin immediately turned into a snarl. “So now you’re blaming me for that, too?”

  Violet sat up straighter, as though she was going to defend her client from Marcus’s latest allegations. But before she could launch her opening defense, Finn made a chopping motion with her palm, like a referee trying to break up a fight.

  “It was me, Marcus,” Finn said with an unapologetic grin. “The boys overheard me and Freckles talking about... Well, suffice it to say that we didn’t know they were listening.”

  “What’s a dang DM?” Uncle Rider asked, causing another snort from Finn.

  “It means direct message, you old coot.” Freckles rolled her eyes. “When you’re interested in talking to someone on social media, but you don’t want everyone seeing what you write, you slide into that person’s direct messages. That way you can have a private conversation.”

  “Well, nobody better be sliding into your DMs,” Rider told Freckles, not picking up on the fact that the twins still only understood the literal definition instead of the more commonly known flirtatious implication. “You’re still a married woman. Technically.”

  “Are you married, Violet?” Jordan asked.

  She took a rather long gulp of her wine, and Marcus realized he was holding his own breath waiting for her to answer. Finally, she shook her head. “No, I’m not married.”

  “Do you have kids?” Jack asked next and Marcus’s heart twisted.

  “Boys, it’s not polite to ask so many personal questions,” he quietly cautioned his sons. Especially when Marcus already knew the painful answer.

  “It’s okay.” Violet’s half-hearted smile didn’t quite reach her sad eyes. “I appreciate their curiosity. No, I do not currently have any children.”

  They still hadn’t really talked about the babies they’d lost, and Marcus swallowed the guilt rising in his throat.

  “Do you ever slide into anyone’s DMs?” Jordan asked, causing Marcus to nearly choke.

  “I go out on dates occasionally. But I’m usually too busy with work and don’t have much time for social media.”

  Ah ha! It only took forty-five minutes of uncomfortable family bantering and an inquisition by a couple of six-year-olds to get the answer she’d dodged earlier.

  “Dad says he’s too busy to go out on dates, too,” Jack replied. “He used to be married to our mom, but now he’s called a widow.
Like the black poisonous spider.”

  “Widower,” Jordan corrected.

  “Yeah,” Jack nodded. “He’s like a black widower, but not poisonous. So that means that you can slide into his DMs again if you wanted to.”

  This time, Finn wasn’t the only one at the table who snorted. Even diplomatic Duke didn’t bother to hide his laughter. Marcus thought he was immune to being embarrassed by his family, but a flame of heat seared the skin of his neck and shot to his face.

  Violet toyed with her macaroni necklace, causing the paint to smear on her fingers and her white blouse. She didn’t seem to notice, though, because her eyes were too busy darting from the faces of his eager sons back to his.

  Great. She was probably thinking this was some sort of setup. That he was a lonely, single father using his kids to pick up women because he couldn’t get a date on his own. In fact, he’d had plenty of offers from plenty of women, but with two young sons at home, the timing just never felt right. He wanted to set the record straight; however, it had been a long day, and he was on the verge of saying something that Violet could later hold against him.

  “Okay, nobody is sliding into anyone’s DMs. Boys, thank your aunt Freckles for a lovely dinner. You have school tomorrow, and we still have to go over your math worksheet before bedtime.”

  Or before his family came up with more random comments that would make Marcus seem additionally ridiculous and pathetic. Violet already thought badly enough of him as it was.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite subdue that unexplainable need to prove himself to her. As his sons were making their way around the table distracting his family with goodbye hugs, Marcus stopped behind Violet’s chair on the way out and lowered his head until his mouth was level with her ear.

  He heard her sharp intake of breath, then whispered, “Just so you know, I’m not some sorry sack who can’t get a date. I’m just careful with who I bring home to meet my over-the-top family.”