The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  Mace nodded and gunned his truck, swinging out onto the highway, heading home. He hung on to Becky’s words with all the confidence he could muster. “It’ll be fine,” he told himself. Becky was sure of it.

  But when he came up his own lane and drove around the bend, the house was dark.

  He ran up the steps anyway, calling her name, hoping against hope. But the house was dead quiet. There was no clutter. No dishes on the drainboard. Not even a dirty glass in the sink.

  He checked the bedroom, yanked open the closet door, and saw exactly what he’d feared to see: her side of the closet was empty now, too.

  He hurried back out to the kitchen, fumbled his way through his cell phone to see the website that would tell him when the flights were departing. There were, conservatively, he discovered, half a dozen ways to get to Des Moines. He ground his teeth and studied the timetable, trying to estimate which one was most likely. There was one leaving at 9:10, expected to be on time. He glanced at his watch and grimaced. If he hurried . . . if he busted his butt . . . maybe . . . just maybe . . .

  He tucked the phone back in his pocket and shot out the door.

  *

  Maybe he shouldn’t do it.

  Maybe he should let her go. What he was going to ask was selfish, there was no getting around it. He couldn’t give her what Tom Morrison could. She could have it all with him—children of her own, a degree, a man who would love her.

  But not the way Mace loved her! No one could ever love her as much as he did.

  He shoved the accelerator all the way to the floor.

  *

  Montana didn’t used to have speed limits.

  Unfortunately for Mace, it did now.

  He was frantic. Desperate. And furious when he saw those flashing red and blue lights coming behind him. He was tempted not to stop. When he did, and the cop did a slow western amble from the patrol car, he was tempted to gun the engine and drive off. But with his luck he’d get caught and hauled off to jail, and Jenny would be nowhere around to come and bail him out.

  He sat and fumed while the cop wrote him the ticket. He gnawed his knuckles and tapped his fingers on the wheel.

  “Where you off to in such an all-fired hurry?” The cop tore the ticket off and handed it to him.

  “I need to get to the airport.”

  “Right.” The cop nodded. “Just don’t fly until you get there.”

  *

  He parked in a no parking zone. He practically vaulted over a couple coming out of the door. He took the steps two at a time all the way up to the security gate where the departures board said that the 9:10 flight to Minneapolis had already left the gate.

  He stared at it, stunned. The adrenaline that had got him down the mountain, through the canyon and all the way to the airport drained right out of him.

  He was numb as he walked back to the parking lot. His chest felt as if one of Taggart’s bulls was sitting on it, pressing down, squeezing the air, the breath, the life right out. He stopped on the curb and tried to steady himself, to draw a breath, to move on.

  On the other side of the terminal he could hear the engines of the plane hurtling down the runway, and as he turned it rose into the twilight, heading east . . . taking Jenny away.

  Out of his life and into Tom’s.

  His eyes blurred, his throat tightened. He sank down on the curb and put his head in his hands.

  He wasn’t aware of the footsteps until they stopped right in front of him. Even then, he didn’t look up.

  “Mace?” The voice was soft, hesitant, worried. Astonishing. Familiar. Dear.

  His head jerked up. He stared. “Jenny?” He lurched to his feet, stunned and self-conscious. He dragged a hand over his face. “What’re you . . . I thought . . . What are you doing here?”

  She smiled faintly. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Of course she was. She stood looking at him warily, a suitcase in her hand, another at her feet. She pressed her lips together nervously, looking at him, then looking away, then back at him again.

  Waiting. For him.

  And so he told her. The words weren’t pretty. He’d never be an orator. He stumbled over them, trying to explain the hurt, the pain.

  “You were right,” he said, his throat so tight he could barely get the words out. “You asked to talk. You wanted to talk. But I didn’t give you a chance. I didn’t give us a chance. I just . . . felt like I had failed you.”

  “No!” Jenny protested, shaking her head. “You never did.”

  “I walked away,” Mace said. “That was failing you.”

  “You were hurting.” Jenny gave him an excuse, but he shook his head.

  “Yeah, I was. I had just been told I couldn’t do the main thing that makes a guy a man. That was bad enough. Hell, that was awful. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to know! That was bad. But worse was feeling like I failed you. I knew how much you wanted a family. Like the ranch was mine, havin’ kids was always your dream!”

  “You were always my dream.”

  He stared at her.

  “Yes, I wanted a family. I want a family,” Jenny said firmly. “But I don’t want a family that doesn’t include you.”

  Mace’s mouth twisted. “I didn’t know,” he murmured.

  “I’m telling you,” Jenny said. “I’ve been trying to tell you! It’s not just your problem, Mace. It’s our problem. Our marriage. Our future. For better or worse, remember? We’re in this together.” Her gaze met his. Her voice shook. “I hope.”

  He swallowed convulsively, couldn’t speak. He blinked back tears, and swallowed again, but still couldn’t get words out.

  “Are we?” she asked quietly after a long moment.

  At last he managed a jerky nod. “Yes.” He shut his eyes and felt a shudder run through him, still desperate, still cold.

  And then he felt the warmth of a hand against his cheek. A soft touch. A gentle stroke. A lingering.

  He opened his eyes and found himself looking straight into hers. Jenny’s eyes, Jenny’s warmth, Jenny’s love.

  “I was so hurt,” she said softly, her hand still on his cheek. “When you left, I wanted to die. I didn’t know how to reach you, how to get you to trust me enough to keep our lives together. I thought I could wait you out. I thought you would come to terms . . . realize it was important, but not most important. But you never did. You just . . . left!”

  And for the first time, Mace listened. He heard it all from her point of view. He understood now the deepest pain she felt had nothing to do with his not being able to have children. It was that he’d walked away from her.

  “I was trying to do the right thing,” he said hoarsely. “Trying to give you what you wanted. You gave me what I wanted, Jenn!”

  “I want you. Always. No matter what.”

  “Even if I can’t—”

  “No matter what,” she repeated fiercely.

  Mace swallowed again. “But—” he gave a desperate wave of his hand “—you’re here.” At the airport he meant. With a suitcase. He looked down at the one at her feet.

  “I was going with him,” she admitted in a low voice. “You didn’t want me.”

  “I did! I do! I—” Mace shook his head.

  “You left again, even after . . . after that night . . . the night we made love. You didn’t stay.” She sounded anguished even now, and Mace’s guilt stabbed deep. Jenny shrugged and looked away. “I gave up. I packed. I got all the way to the airport. I couldn’t get on the plane.” Now her gaze bored hard into his. “Tom is a good man, but he’s not my man. He deserves someone who can love him fully and completely. I can’t do that. When I married you, Mace, I married you forever and always. In all ways,” she added fiercely. “I’ll never love anyone else the way I love you.”

  It was more than he deserved. It was more than he dared hope for. It was everything he would ever want—Jenny’s love for the rest of his life.

  “J
enn,” he began. But he couldn’t say any more. He reached for her, wrapped his arms around her, hauled her against him and, as she settled there and he felt her body relax and mold to his, he breathed again.

  His forehead rested on hers, her lips almost touching his own. “I know I hurt you,” he said raggedly. “I know I wrecked our marriage. I’m sorry. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry. I talked to Ian, Maggie’s dad, or rather, he talked to me—about Fiona, about their marriage. It made sense. It made me see I never gave you a chance. I want to listen. I want our dream—however we can make it happen. There’s nothing I can say that will change what I did, Jenn, except what you already know—I was selfish. I was foolish. I was wrong. And . . . I love you, too.”

  *

  It was December. The night was crystal clear and cold. The snow was thick on the ground. But it wasn’t snowing now. The runway was clear. The plane would be landing soon.

  They stood, Mace’s arm hugging Jenny’s shoulders, Jenny’s arm around his waist, as they watched and waited.

  The phone call had come three months ago on a crisp fall day. Mace had finished moving the cattle down that afternoon. They would be shipping on Friday. Jenny had taken the day off classes, and she was going to miss her lit class at the university that night so she could help.

  Mace had told her she didn’t have to. He understood what those classes meant to her. She had told him. He had listened.

  But that day she’d said, “I want to.”

  And that was why they had both been at home when the phone rang.

  Mace had answered it, heard the lag of a long-distance connection, and then the faint, “Mace? Is that you? Ian here.”

  Mace stood now, watching the sky, waiting to catch the first glimpse of tiny blinking lights—lights that meant a plane was coming—and he remembered how delighted he’d been that day, how glad he was to hear Ian’s voice, how eager to tell Ian he’d come to his senses, that he’d realized what Ian had also known—that his marriage was what mattered most in his life.

  But Ian already knew.

  “Talked to Maggie last week,” he’d said. “I have to say, I’m glad. I also have to say, I’m not surprised.”

  And then he had got to the point.

  “Now that you’re back together, I wonder if you’re thinking about a family?”

  “I can’t have kids, Ian,” he reminded the older man. It still wasn’t easy to say, but he managed it.

  “I remember,” Ian said. “That’s why I’m calling. I have three here I’d like to see become yours.”

  Mace stood dumbfounded, unable to say even one word.

  “Shocked you, have I?” Ian chuckled. “Never considered it?”

  “Yes.” They had just these past weeks. They’d gone so far as to start checking into adoption. It had looked like a long process, with lots of hoops to jump through. But Jenny had been willing to jump, and Mace had discovered he was willing, too.

  Now he shook his head. “What’re you—? Three?” He didn’t know what shocked him more—Ian’s words or the number he’d tossed out. Mace remembered that he’d almost lost his grip on the receiver then. His mouth had gone dry, his stomach flip-flopped. He’d looked wildly around the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Jenny asked. She was looking at him worriedly from where she was making spaghetti sauce at the stove.

  Mace couldn’t answer. Ian was talking anyway—explaining—and it was all he could do to listen.

  “A family I knew quite well,” Ian was saying. “Their parents were killed in that earthquake. They left a boy who’s seven, a girl, five, and another boy who’s not quite three. They have a grandmother here, but she’s not well. She wants them settled while she can still see to it. So we’ve been talking—she and I—discussing alternatives.”

  “Alternatives.” Mace managed a barely credible echo.

  “And . . . she wants them to go to a home where they’ll have parents who will love them, who want a family of their own.” He paused. “I can’t think of anyone who’d be a better father and mother than you and Jenny, Mace.”

  Mace hadn’t known what to say. He’d looked up, his gaze fastening on Jenny who was still looking at him with a quizzical, slightly worried expression on her face.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He’d nodded numbly. He’d cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “Let me talk to my wife, Ian. I’ll call you back.”

  Then he hung up and haltingly told Jenny what Ian had said.

  Jenny hadn’t believed what he told her. “Children? Three of them?” She shook her head. “That isn’t funny, Mace.”

  No, it wasn’t funny. It was terrifying—and at the same time exhilarating. “He means it, Jenn,” he said, aware that his voice was somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

  “Call him back,” Jenny demanded. “Tell me about these children. Tell me more.”

  Mace had called. He and Ian had talked. Then Jenny and Ian had talked. Then he and Jenny had talked all night. They sat with their arms around each other on the sofa and, for the first time in memory, Mace didn’t even think about making love to Jenny or shaping up the herd.

  “It would mean a huge change,” Jenny said cautiously. She looked like she didn’t want to hope.

  “Yep,” Mace agreed, but he was breathing easier than he had in a long time, and smiling all the same.

  “It wouldn’t be just the two of us. There would be five of us—all of a sudden. All at once.”

  “Yep.” But somehow he couldn’t stop smiling.

  “That’s pretty daunting.”

  “It is.” But he was grinning.

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “Buying the ranch was pretty daunting,” he reminded her. “Starting the herd was a risk. Building the house was a commitment.”

  “It’s not the same,” she said.

  But he knew what she wanted. It was the same thing he wanted. He didn’t look away.

  She swallowed and gripped his hands hard. “What do you think, Mace? What do you really think?”

  “I think I love you, Jenny. I know you love me. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. I think we are being given what we’ve said we wanted for years. We’ve got enough love to spare, enough to share.” He leaned forward and laid a kiss on her lips. “And any kids who get to call you Mom are going to be the luckiest kids on earth.”

  She had smiled then.

  And, drawing her close and holding her tight against his heart, so had he.

  Still, there were some scary moments. Nightmares of inadequacy. Perfectly realistic feelings of having bitten off more than they could chew. There was lots of red tape. There were bureaucratic stalls and governmental snafus.

  As the days became weeks and the weeks became months, sometimes they thought they would never see the children. At those times the photos Ian sent of three black-haired, brown-eyed urchins—Marcos, Pilar, and Antonio—seemed like no more than paper dreams.

  Finally, a week ago, Ian had called again.

  “I’m not going to preach this year,” he’d said without preamble. “I’m playing Santa Claus instead.”

  Mace, who’d been kicking snow off his boots and shaking it out of his hair, took a moment to connect. “Santa Claus? Ian? Is that you? What are you talking about? Santa Claus where?”

  “In Bozeman on Christmas eve. Santa’s bringing you a couple of sons and a daughter. And their grandma, too, for good measure.”

  “The more the merrier,” Mace said, blinking back sudden moisture in his eyes.

  And now he and Jenny were pressed against the glass, their arms around each other, their hearts in their throats, as they waited, watching out the windows, looking south toward where the plane would come from.

  Behind them, Mace knew, were their friends.

  “Do you mind if we come to the airport?” Felicity and Becky had stopped by to ask them yesterday.

  “I don’t mind,” Mace had said. He owed Becky big-time an
d he knew it.

  “Please come,” Jenny had agreed.

  “We have to come,” Becky said. “It’s what you do. Like the wise men,” she explained when they looked blank. “Some people go to stables, bringing gifts. Other people go to airports,” she explained. “It’s what Christmas is all about.”

  And so they were there—all of them: Taggart and Felicity and Becky, Taggart holding Willy, and Becky with Abby in her arms. Tess and Noah had come, too, with their three, Susannah, Clay and Scott. Jed, holding Neile in one arm with the other wrapped around his wife Brenna’s shoulders, and his nephew Tuck with Brenna’s father, Otis, leaning on him. Taggart’s parents were there. And, of course, Ian’s daughter, Maggie, and her husband Robert Tanner and their little boys, Jared and Seth and Nick. Maggie’s two brothers, Duncan and Andy, had driven in last night, too.

  Even the middle Tanner brother, Luke, whom Mace barely knew, had come to be with his brothers for Christmas. He and his wife, Jill, and children, Keith and Katie and brand-new baby Jack had come to the airport, too. So had Jenny’s sister, Teresa, up from Cody for the holidays, and—Mace’s biggest shock of all—his rolling-stone brother, Shane.

  “It’s Christmas,” he’d said when Mace had lifted his brows this morning upon opening the door to find him standing there. “Where else would I be on Christmas? Besides—” Shane had grinned and punched him lightly on the arm “—I don’t get to become an uncle every day.”

  “There it is.” Jenny’s voice was so quiet in the midst of the hubbub that Mace almost didn’t hear her.

  But then her fingers dug into his ribs, and he felt her tense against his side, and he pressed his nose against the glass and looked where she was looking, and, yes, there it was!

  Blinking lights in the distance. Coming closer and closer. Lower and lower, and then they lost sight of it as it banked to come down. They all turned and moved toward the glass doors through which arriving passengers would come.

  Jenny gripped his fingers tightly. “I’m scared,” Jenny said so low only he could hear her. “Are you scared?”

  “Terrified,” he admitted.

  “We could turn and run,” she said in a small voice.