Caught by the Cowboy Dad

by Melinda Curtis

  “No.” She didn’t look at him.

  Devin gulped again. But no amount of gulping was going to stop the avalanche of thoughts running through his head. “It’s so weird that I was just asking my dad about...” Don’t tell her that! “I mean, Dr. Carlisle was telling me...” Don’t tell her that, either!

  “They always make it seem so easy in the movies, don’t they?”

  “It was easier in Pride and Prejudice,” Devin groused. “The most they could do was touch hands.” Before he realized what he was doing, he took Frankie’s slender hand in his and lifted it, as if he was Mr. Darcy in one of the versions of Pride and Prejudice his mother liked to watch. And then he kissed the back of Frankie’s hand while holding her caramel gaze.

  What have I done? That was so...so...nerdy!

  Devin dropped Frankie’s hand and stood, but he couldn’t look at her. “And this is why the incidence of teenage-nerd pregnancies is so low.” For some reason, he couldn’t stop an awkward chuckle from spilling forth.

  Oh, no.

  “I’ve got to go. I...” Devin backed up. “I hear my dad calling me.”

  He heard nothing of the sort. But he bolted out of there.

  And thankfully, Frankie never said a thing.

  * * *

  DEVIN CHARGED INTO the motor home and slammed the door behind him.

  “You don’t suppose our dating advice led him astray?” Holden stopped stirring the coals and glanced at Bernadette. They hadn’t talked much since Devin had left.

  “I think Devin is too smart to take our advice.” Bernadette wrapped her arms tighter around her midsection. “I mean, look at us. We mucked up our relationship from the get-go.”

  “Not the get-go.” Holden scoffed, sitting in the camp chair. The coals were perfect for marshmallow roasting, but he stared at the red, glowing embers instead of moving to collect s’mores supplies. “We’re good together, and you know it.”

  “On one level, maybe.” Bernadette shook her head. “When I was in high school, I used to celebrate Fridays with a trip through a fast-food drive-through. And I’d always order fries and a shake. No burger for me. Then I’d park in our driveway and dip my french fries in my chocolate shake. I loved the contrast of sweet and salty, hot and cold.” She was using her formal voice, the one he assumed she’d learned in medical school. “But I grew out of the habit because it’s not healthy.”

  Holden scrubbed his hands over his face. “For someone who claims to have fallen in love with me, you’re quick with the intellectual alibis about why we can’t pick up where we left off or make a commitment to each other.”

  “Holden—”

  “Emotional buffers are only necessary when you think you’ll get hurt.” He shook his finger at her, onto her now. “Why else would you sit in the driveway rather than go inside? You needed an emotional buffer when your dad was sick.”

  And suddenly, without him meaning to, he moved past the point of filtering his life from her. “I’ve spent a lifetime pretending I’m perfect, a lifetime trying to prove to my family that I can take over the reins of what my grandfather built. And since that was a public role, to do that, I didn’t leave loose ends, like ex-girlfriends who knew my or my family’s secrets. I didn’t...” He angled his head toward her but couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “I couldn’t be an open book to anyone.”

  “You’re not running for political office.”

  “But that’s exactly what it feels like, exactly the way my father raised me.” His gaze struck hers, found home in the softening of her gaze. “Shane’s father did that, too, I think. The rest of my siblings and cousins were raised a bit differently. Shane and I had high expectations put on us.”

  “And Devin?”

  Holden shook his head. “You’ve heard him. He has no interest in running the family business. And the reality is that I don’t want him—or our child—to be brought up like that.” To be raised to keep everything inside, because he was beginning to realize how much he’d missed out on by doing so.

  “Interesting.” Bernadette reached in the grocery bag on the nearby picnic table and withdrew a candy bar. “Tell me about Texas.”

  He gently took possession of the candy bar and the grocery bag, calling to Devin to bring out the roasting forks.

  “Dad,” Devin protested, but he marched out with them. “Here.”

  “Stay. Sit,” Holden invited. “I don’t mean to sound militant, but I have something to say, and you should hear it.”

  Devin rolled his eyes. “Tell me this isn’t another marriage proposal.”

  “It’s not.” Holden risked a glance at Bernadette, who was eyeing him warily. It wasn’t enough anymore to feel close to someone without allowing them a view inside himself. “I was about to tell Bea about some of my experiences at the family ranch in Texas.”

  “You were?” Bernadette’s arms loosened across her chest.

  Holden nodded.

  “Oh.” Devin sat down.

  Up until that moment, Holden hadn’t realized he might not have been forthcoming with his own son about who he was and what in his past had shaped him. “I...” He floundered.

  “What do you remember most about Texas?” Bernadette prompted softly.

  Holden closed his eyes, smelling woodsmoke and pines, hearing the river’s steady rush as it hurried past. “I remember the heat and the wind. And the humidity. In the summer, it could press down upon you the moment you stepped outside.” He opened his eyes, looking at his small audience. “But I couldn’t wait to get outside because I didn’t have to act like the heir to the throne there. I could be a boy. A messy boy. An awkward boy.”

  “A cowboy,” Devin said, smiling. “I used to pretend there, too.”

  “Exactly, although Esteban wouldn’t allow anyone to strut around as if they owned the place.” Holden warmed to his topic. “Our ranch foreman made sure we knew the right way to care for the stock, how to ride so a horse knew we weren’t baggage, and what ranch hands were supposed to do.”

  “How old is Esteban?” Devin tapped the roasting forks on the fire grate, still smiling. “He’d say he’s older than dirt.”

  “He was one of my grandpa Harlan’s first employees in Texas, so the age of dirt is a pretty good guess,” Holden said jokingly. “One summer, he sent me and Bo out riding in the southern pastures to look for strays. He gave us food and water and told us to ride south for two hours. We rode out there, thinking we were hot stuff. I probably wasn’t more than fourteen.”

  “Would you have known what to do if you found any?” Bernadette asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Devin said, handing him the roasting forks. “Even I know how to round up strays.”

  “Well, we know how.” Holden put a marshmallow on one fork. “Doesn’t mean we’d be good at it.”

  “Did you find any strays?” Bernadette swiped a piece of chocolate.

  “No.” Holden stopped smiling. “About two hours after we left, we came across a cabin at the farthest edge of the property by a trickle of a stream. It was just a shack really.” No running water. No electricity. “And there was a family living there. They were...scared of us.” No one had ever been scared of Holden before.

  “What did you do?” Devin asked.

  “We watered the horses and then gave the family the water and food Esteban had packed for us.” Holden held the marshmallow over the flame. “I think that’s why Esteban sent us.”

  “Dad, I would have expected you to accuse them of squatting.”

  “I’m not completely heartless.” Holden’s marshmallow caught fire. He blew it out quickly and with the air that might have been a heavy sigh at hearing his son’s opinion of him.

  “There was a girl, wasn’t there?” Bernadette teased.

  Or maybe that wasn’t teasing.

  Holden frowned. “They had two kids. And yes, one of th
em was a girl about my age.” A shy, pretty girl. “But it wasn’t like I brought them food so I could flirt with her. They didn’t speak English.”

  “You brought them food more than once?” Devin chuckled. “Dad, you were so trying to flirt with her.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” He’d brought them food, as well as clothing he’d swiped from his family. And money. He’d given them his allowance. “And after a few days, they disappeared.” He’d been worried sick. And when he’d asked Esteban about them, the old man had shrugged and said, “Folk like that always move on. It’s enough that you’ve helped them on their way.”

  “Were you heartbroken?” Bernadette asked softly, reaching for his free hand and giving it a squeeze. “I would have been.”

  “I was worried. And yeah, maybe a bit hurt.” He’d dogged Esteban for days, unwilling to believe the ranch foreman didn’t know where they’d gone next.

  “This big black cat showed up at our back door one summer,” Bernadette said, still holding his hand. “I fed it for a week before it disappeared. I still look for it when I go back home.”

  Holden still rode out to that shack every time he returned to Texas.

  “Mom would say that’s why you’re afraid to commit,” Devin said slowly, staring into the fire. “Mom would say you have to trust what people say in a relationship. She’s a therapist, you know,” he told Bernadette.

  “I didn’t know.” Bernadette chuckled. “And you asked us for relationship advice because...”

  Devin shrugged. “Because nothing I was doing was working.”

  “That’s okay. There’s no future for you two, Dev,” Holden said absently, receiving a nudge in the shoulder from Bernadette for his comment.

  His son stiffened. “Dad, this isn’t a shack near the Mexican border. Frankie and I have a lot in common. I have friends going to colleges all over the country, and we plan to keep in touch.”

  “But Frankie lives in rural Idaho in a place with no cell-phone service,” Holden said gently. “Sometimes you have to be realistic, son. Let her go.”

  “You’re so old-school.” Devin got up and returned to the motor home. “You’d have me send her a note and a bouquet of roses.”

  “Sometimes the hardest thing to accept is the truth,” Holden said in a tone he wished was kinder.

  The RV door slammed.

  The marshmallow Holden had been roasting dropped into the fire. He set the roasting forks on the picnic table with the s’mores ingredients. “This is it.”

  “What?” Bernadette adjusted her glasses.

  “Dev and I have never had a heated argument before.” The elephants were back. Stomp-stomp. Holden struggled to draw a full breath. “Am I wrong?”

  “By pointing out a relationship with Frankie isn’t likely to thrive?” Bernadette took the candy bar from the picnic table and broke off another piece. “I’m sure he didn’t want to hear it. But sometimes a parent has to point out the obvious, otherwise we’d be a world of dreamers who believed the world had no boundaries, that long-distance relationships were easier than ever given the advances in technology. Or that it was possible to discover a cure for cancer.”

  “Right? I’m only trying to keep him from getting his heart broken.”

  “But isn’t that part of those life experiences you keep talking about him needing?” Bernadette took another piece of chocolate. “That’s how we learn, after all. By doing. By succeeding. And even by failing.”

  “I don’t want him to be hurt.” Or Frankie, for that matter.

  “It’s not up to you, Holden. It’s Devin’s heart. He’s free to give it to whoever he wants. Just like I was free to give mine to you.”

  He reached for her. “Bea—”

  She stood, out of reach. “Maybe you needed some life experiences, too,” she said gently in the voice of his Bea, not his doctor. “At some point, you’ll agree. We have to move on.”

  He watched her walk away, a plea for her return left unspoken, held back by one thought: She was right.

  But the elephants marched to a different beat, one that seemed to say Hang on to her.

  The trouble was...

  He didn’t know how. Unless...

  He charmed her back into his arms.

  But if he did that...it was only right that he meant to keep his arms around her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “WHO’S SNORING?” BERNADETTE sat up, popped a mint into her mouth and staggered out of the motor home’s bedroom.

  Either she’d woken up the snorer or the culprit wasn’t in the vehicle, because—

  Bang. Rattle. Bang.

  She bent to look out the window as the sun began to come over the horizon.

  A small bear tumbled off the picnic table and growled, which sounded an awful lot like the snore that had woken her up.

  “Are the raccoons back?” Holden asked, yawning.

  “Nope. It’s a bear.” Something else caught her eye.

  The bear had tipped over the buckets of rice. Holden’s boots looked chewed on.

  “Um...” Bernadette wasn’t sure she knew how to break the news to Holden about his beloved snakeskin boots.

  “I didn’t do it,” Devin said sleepily, rolling over until his back was to Bernadette, sending multiple items to fall out of his bunk. The clatter of which did nothing to wake him.

  Bernadette hurried over to pick things up. A cell phone. A notebook. A highlighter. “Maybe you two should switch places tomorrow night.”

  “I stopped sleeping on the top bunk when I was fourteen.” Holden’s amused grumble lightened the shadows.

  “Most kids fight for the top bunk.” Bernadette put Devin’s things on the kitchen island and returned to the bunk to rescue any textbooks before they tumbled.

  “You can’t sneak in and out of a top bunk.” Holden’s tone was suggestive.

  Her pulse quickened.

  He caught her hand and tugged her down to sit next to him. The fuzzy light of dawn did nothing to soften the intensity of his gaze. “Why is it that I can’t get you out of my head?”

  Because you love me.

  Bernadette held herself very still, waiting for him to come to the same conclusion. “There’s a logical reason, given—”

  “Do not say my medical condition.” He growled, much like the bear, and wrapped his arms around Bernadette and brought her deliciously close, kissing her the way he had when they’d first been dating.

  He can’t get me out of his head.

  She was thrilled at the thought. And thrilled with his kiss.

  If only, if only, if only...

  The RV shuddered as something collided with it. The bear growled, sounding as if he was right outside the door.

  She drew back, breathing hard. “Holden, I...” Love you. She vaulted to her feet before she told him that again. “I’ve got to get back to bed.”

  “You can sleep with a bear carousing outside?” He waggled his brows suggestively.

  “I mean, back to the bedroom.” She put a hand over her belly, as if to say she was having a bout of morning sickness when the opposite was true. Her nausea had been ten times better the past few days. “I’ll...I’ll see you later.”

  Only because she couldn’t hide in the back of the motor home all day long.

  * * *

  BERNADETTE TURNED HIS world upside down.

  Holden rolled over and hit his head against the side of the motor home. He sat up, but everything was cockeyed. Without opening his eyes, he blamed it all on Bernadette, which was easier than blaming it on his own health issues.

  That kiss...

  He wanted another.

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair and swung his legs around. His calves clung to the edge of the bunk as he pulled himself forward. Being emotionally off-kilter was one thing. This was another. He t
ook a good look around.

  The motor home listed to one side.

  “Impossible.” He got to his feet and stumbled down the steps, opening the door.

  The bear was gone and...

  “My boots!” His heart sank. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Sorry.” That was Bernadette. She’d seen.

  But she hadn’t seen everything. There was a reason the motor home was listing to one side. The front tire beneath the passenger seat was flat.

  Holden revised his assessment. “Unbelievable. Either this motor home is cursed or this campground is.”

  “What is it?” Devin dropped to the floor behind him.

  “A flat tire.” Holden shut the door and climbed the steps.

  “Oh?” Devin brightened. “Good thing we didn’t plan on leaving today.”

  “Right.” Holden reached over and turned on a light switch. It worked. He glanced back at his son. “At least that works.”

  Devin held up his hands. “Hey, I didn’t touch the ignition last night.”

  But just in case, Holden started up the vehicle. The engine purred to life without so much as a cough.

  Bernadette banged out of the bedroom, hair tousled and scowling. “Where are we going when it’s clear we have a flat tire?”

  “Leave it to the doctor to immediately diagnose our problem,” Holden quipped.

  “Dad’s paranoid that I ran the battery down again,” Devin said.

  “I’m not,” Holden insisted, shutting the engine off.

  No one said anything.

  He turned in his seat, taking stock of his companions.

  They were both staring at him as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “I’m not going to get upset,” he reassured them. “I should probably rummage around and find the spare.”

  “No time for that.” Bernadette crossed her arms. “Myrna’s going to the doctor today. We need to be up at the tour office by nine.”

  “We’re covering for her?” Devin asked. “Are we getting paid?”