When she stood, Rory stood with her, holding one of the prettiest cats Gabe had ever seen—a beige-colored mass of fur that squirmed only to get comfortable in the boy’s arms. It stared around with eyes as big as its master’s.
“I’d like you all to meet Rory Michael Beltane and his buddy, Jack.” Amelia put her arm briefly around Rory’s shoulders. “Rory, this is my mom, my sister Grace, and my good friend, Gabriel.”
“The one who’s kind of your new boyfriend?” he asked, assessing Gabe with a gaze that spoke purely of fact-finding.
Amelia’s face flushed an attractive light pink, and Gabe smiled, his heart rate calming for the first time in hours. This is why kids were so great—they never minced words, and you couldn’t tell them any secrets. As Rory had just made clear. If he hadn’t been standing right there, Gabe would have loved ribbing Amelia about this one. “Kind of a boyfriend” was a designation he never would have hoped for. One day he’d thank young Rory.
“I, uh . . . yeah, that’s Gabe.”
“Hey, Rory.” Gabe didn’t make the mistake of trying to offer a grown-up handshake. The cat, Jack, took up both Rory’s hands. “Glad you made it safely to Wyoming. How did you and Jack do on that long flight?”
“It was okay.” He looked down at his pet. “I was afraid for him in the bottom of the plane. But I guess he’s all right.”
“He is one handsome dude of a cat. Calmest cat I think I’ve ever seen.” The words started to come more easily.
A little light of pride blossomed in Rory’s eyes. Amelia smiled gratefully. Gabe raised his brows suggestively and winked.
“Hi, Rory.” Bella approached, gave Amelia a kiss on the cheek, then bent to Rory’s level. “I’m Mia’s mom. Call me Bella. We’re so glad to have you with us, but I want you to know that we understand it’s a pretty sad time for you. Right?”
Rory gave a nearly imperceptible nod. This was where Amelia had gotten her ease around kids. Professional mothers were wonders to behold.
“When you’re all settled in and feel comfortable, you can tell us anytime you want to talk about your mom. Or you don’t have to at all. We’d like to learn all about her if you want to share her with us.”
He bit his little lip, but his eyes remained dry, and he nodded again.
Grace greeted him, too. She was the one to tease him into a first pale smile by warning him that he was about to be one of only two men in the house with a whole lot of girls. And he should just run for Cole or hope that Gabe hung around a lot so he could have safe places from all the talking.
Rory buried his face in Jack’s fur to hide the grin. Gabe thought he detected a hint of impishness beneath the sober mien. The hug bestowed on his cat was one squeeze too many, however, and Jack wriggled free, plopping to the floor with a plaintive meow and heading for the living room with a confident cat swagger.
“He’ll be okay,” Amelia said. “Let him explore.”
“Didn’t Rory fly here with one of the social workers?” asked Bella.
“She’s staying at a hotel in Jackson,” Amelia said. “I invited her to stay here, but she wanted to get some work done and come tomorrow morning to visit the ranch. It was nice of her to give us some bonding time. So, Rory, that means we’d better start getting you settled so we look good tomorrow, right?”
He nodded.
“Now that you’ve met part of the family, we can go back to the car and get your suitcase and the things we bought for Jack. I have a special spot for his litter box all picked out. And you can put his new bed in your new room.”
“Okay.”
There wasn’t much luggage for a child who’d been thoroughly uprooted and moved across country. Gabe grabbed the one large suitcase, and Grace easily hauled a box of cat litter. Amelia handed Rory a plastic bag with a pet store logo on it, and she took the new litter box. They paraded back into the house where Jack met them, getting Rory to smile for the second time.
They set up the litter box in an accessible corner of the back hall, and Jack obediently checked it out. Then it was Rory’s turn to scope out his room. The first hint of deer-in-the-headlights shock started to appear in his face as he followed Amelia up the grand wooden staircase to the upper floor. When she nudged him gently ahead of her into the newly created bedroom, he halted as if he’d hit a force field.
Amelia had finished off the room by filling the shelves with classic old books found in her mother’s stash of things saved from the girls’ youth. She’d also made a trip to Jackson the day before and picked up a few toys Bjorn had suggested might be appropriate—a couple of Lego building sets, a Transformer she’d been promised was classic, and a set of Matchbox cars just because. She’d found a bright red bean bag chair that looked inviting next to one wall. But the crowning splurge was a new laptop over which she’d debated long and hard. It wasn’t super powerful, Gabe knew, but it could run video games, allow him to do research for school, and she’d had all the parental controls set up and activated so she felt relatively confident he couldn’t get into trouble on it.
“He needs something to feel cool and special,” she’d said. “This is a tool and a toy. Right?”
He’d kissed her in the middle of the electronics store and whole-heartedly agreed. Rory would not hurt for attention or caring while he was with Amelia.
“What do you think?” she asked Rory as he continued to gape. “Will this be okay while we’re here?”
“This is for me?”
“It is. You need a place to make your own. When we get back to New York, we’ll figure out a room there, too.”
“So . . . ” He looked over his shoulder, desperate hope in his eyes. “I really do get to stay with you?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “I’d like that.”
Gabe didn’t know what caused the more forceful sock to his gut, the reminder that she was leaving soon or the fact that she seemed to have made a decision about Rory’s future already.
“I thought I could sleep with you.” He looked at the floor.
She knelt beside him and offered a hug. “Sweetie, you can sleep wherever you’d like. Wherever you feel safest. If you want to sleep with me, of course you can.”
Rory relaxed as he hugged her. When he let go he turned back to the room, the deer-in-the-headlights replaced by growing excitement. He walked to the desk and touched the laptop in awe.
“I get to use this?”
“It’s yours,” Amelia said. “You’ll need it for school. And for looking things up and getting even smarter than you are.”
He whirled around again. “Mine?” He questioned everyone in the doorway with his incredulous eyes.
“I was with her when she picked it out,” Gabe said. “She said it was for you.”
Rory threw his arms around Amelia again. “I never had nothing so nice as a computer.”
“Never had anything,” she said, and poked his side softly. “Get used to that. I correct grammar. And I know your mom had a computer she let you use sometimes.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t mine.”
“I’m really glad you like it. There’ll be some rules, but only a few,” she said. “We can talk about that kind of stuff later. Want to see the rest of the house so you know where everything is?”
He clearly wanted to check out the computer, but he nodded and followed them out of the room.
Rory’s excitement had faded back into overwhelmed silence by the time the house tour was finished and he stood in the kitchen, where the rest of the family finally waited to meet him. He shook Cole’s hand somberly and responded to Harper like he had to Grace, with a small smile at her compliments of his cat and the admission that she’d already sneaked him a little bit of tuna as a welcome treat.
“You must be ready to eat, too,” Harper said. “We’ll have dinner in about three hours, but how about something now?”
“I’m not so hungry,” he said, moving closer to Amelia and looking up at her as if for permission to say suc
h a thing.
“You don’t have to eat,” she said.
“Oh, that’s just pishposh.” The admonition came from Grandma Sadie, who joined the crowd, her black-and-red flowered cane tapping ahead of her lively steps. “Everyone in this kitchen is hungry for cookies. So, sit down, all of you, and I’ve got my famous old oatmeal chocolate chippers. Hello, Mr. Beltane. I’m Grandma Sadie.” She put her wrinkled hand out. “You can call me Grandma Sadie.”
To Gabe’s astonishment, Rory gave her the biggest smile he’d offered up yet. He held out his own hand. “Are you like a great-grandma?”
“I’m a very great grandma.” She winked. “Every house needs one, don’t you think?”
“And you still make cookies?”
That garnered a round of laughter.
“It’s about all I like to cook anymore, and only for special occasions. I thought this qualified.”
The exchange sealed the deal both of cookies and Rory’s acceptance of his new home away from home. Cookies, milk, and coffee flowed after that and the atmosphere relaxed. Gabe relaxed, too, less worried about the child now that he knew there were so many women willing to act as aunties and grandmothers.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to get in the way of the new, fragile family bonding. He was still an outsider. Maybe he was a “kind of boyfriend,” but that and, as the clichéd saying went, a buck-fifty would get him coffee at the nearest gas station. He might be unofficially attached to Amelia, but he wasn’t really part of the Crockett clan.
So he settled for quietly watching the ten-year-old try to absorb his new surroundings. Poor kid—this had to be overwhelming. People laughing and joking when he’d just lost his mother and home. He’d certainly be more comfortable once he was back in New York.
A wave of melancholy hit Gabe like a Wyoming thunderstorm. He needed to think hard about what he was doing with Amelia Crockett. This was her life now. Like a boulder thrown into a gentle, quiet pond, the arrival of Rory had tsunami-caliber repercussions. He honestly wasn’t resentful or jealous. But he didn’t want to hurt someone or be hurt either. His time to pursue Amelia before she left him had run out.
And yet he wanted more of her. Watching her laugh with her family, a woman who’d changed by a hundred and eighty degrees from the cool, stiff, unapproachable doctor he’d met three months before, only increased his desire. So what the hell did he do with this dilemma?
“Time for Rory to choose what we do next.” Amelia propped her chin in her hand and raised her brows. “You can rest here in the house, or you can come down to the barns and see some of the animals. I think a couple of the guys are here working with the mustangs.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Mustangs!” It was the most animation he’d shown since meeting Sadie.
At the mention of horses all the women jumped into motion as if they’d been told Johnny Depp was in the house. One put the milk away, another the cookies, another swept crumbs from the table into her hand and tossed them in the sink. Cole, Gabe, and Rory sat at the table staring at each other in amusement—and a little more astonishment on Rory’s part.
“That’s how girls act when horses and cowboys are involved,” Cole said, leaning toward Rory conspiratorially. “You might want to consider becoming a cowboy, just so you get any attention.”
“Are you a cowboy?” Rory asked.
“I guess I am. I raise cows and I got a cowgirl to say she’d marry me—so I speak from a little experience.”
“Are you a cowboy?” Rory turned to Gabe.
He’d lost count of the number of hits his heart had taken today. With one innocent question, a boy of ten had isolated Gabe’s problem. Of course he wasn’t a cowboy. He was a city boy who’d moved to a cowboy state.
“I’m pretty much not,” he said. “I do like horses, though. Do you?”
Rory shrugged. “I rode in a carriage once, and I petted a policeman’s horse. I never saw a mustang. Dr. Mia told me about them when we were driving here.”
“Then you should see the mustangs,” Gabe said. “Don’t you think so, Cole?”
“No question about it.”
Gabe smiled encouragement, but he knew he was going to let Cole take the lead on this outing. After Amelia sent Rory out the door with Cole and Harper, she reached for Gabe’s hand, and he halted her, spinning her into his arms.
“Thanks for being so patient,” she said. “This is completely crazy.”
“He’s a cute kid.”
“He’s amazing, too. He’s not saying much here yet, but he’s smart.”
“What would you think if I let you have the rest of the afternoon with him alone?”
“Whoa. Wait? You want to leave?”
“No, it’s not that. I thought it would be easier for Rory to have one less body around.”
“Easier for Rory? First of all, it wouldn’t be. Second, what about me?”
“I just want you to have all the time you need with him.” He meant it.
For an instant he thought she was going to let him have it—like the old Dr. Mia. Instead, she pressed her lips to his. When she pulled back from the kiss she grabbed a fistful of his sweatshirt.
“Listen, Lieutenant. No way are you leaving. I need you. I’ve used up nearly all my expertise on him already, and I’m scared to death.”
Her declaration, or her admission if that’s what it was, jarred him. She’d looked so calm, so expert with him. How could she be scared?
Finally a familiar rush of his normal confidence flooded back. Here she was embracing this enormous change in her life with fear she refused to show, and he’d threatened to abandon her. In one flash of insight he manned up. This wasn’t Iraq. The child wasn’t Jibril. He knew how to do this. He grabbed her into a hug.
“Aw, Mia. Of course I’ll stay. I just didn’t want to hurt or frighten him.”
She looked up at him. “You’ve never called me Mia.”
He hadn’t. But some little dam had broken inside and a sense of intimacy he’d never known filled him with joy.
“Mia, Mia,” he crooned. “I’m sorry. You are so much braver than I am.”
“I am not brave.”
“As brave as anyone I’ve ever known. I let myself fear getting to know Rory only to lose him when he leaves. But he’s a perfect example of the kind of child I do want to know. To help. There are too many Rorys in the world. You didn’t run from that.”
“Believe me, I want to.” For the first time she sounded miserable.
“Okay. For now let’s not run together. How about I grow a pair and have your back?” She sagged into his hold like a sack of sand, and the first sound of crying emerged—a tiny hiccup of a sob. “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“It is now,” she said. “It is now.”
They joined the others already on the way down the long sloping drive toward the ranch yard and the barns. Gabe breathed in the familiar earthy outdoor scents with new appreciation. With Mia’s—using her nickname had breached the wall between him and feeling like family—hand in his, he watched Rory bravely facing his own unknown between Cole and Harper, glancing back once or twice to make sure Mia was there. In those moments he knew that for however long he could make this new romance last, he’d do it right.
The universe, fate, God, who- or whatever, certainly did kick people in the shorts in mysterious ways.
The tranquility was interrupted by sudden wild yelling, and the slight figure of a teenaged girl charged toward them. Beside her raced a loose-limbed but graceful Border Collie pup.
“Harper! Cole! Come. Hurry! That grulla mare got loose. She bulldozed over Mr. Finney and broke through a half-open gate. Grandpa is with him, and Dad went after the horse.”
“Oh, God, no.” Mia stiffened beside him and dropped his hand. She pushed forward in a run and reached Harper. Gabe followed.
“Skylar, is Finney all right?” Mia asked.
Bjorn’s daughter, even at fourteen, knew more about horses than a lot of cowboys. She
’d been helping with the mustangs, and the guys responded to her with surprising respect. She stood before them now, breathing hard, her eyes as wide as Halloween moons.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t wait to see. But he wasn’t moving much.”
Chapter Twenty
MIA TOOK THE deepest breath she could manage and pushed back the gruesome thoughts of a broken, trampled Damien Finney, along with the knowledge that this was all her fault. What a foolish, impulsive, dangerous idea this whole mustang thing had been. She looked to Gabe who was ready to bolt along with Harper and Cole.
“Go,” she said. “Rory and I will be right there.”
What a terrible introduction to ranch life this would be for him. Fear and dread hung in her chest like stone weights. She turned to Rory and squatted. He stared at the sprinting trio of adults with a mix of fascination and alarm. That’s when she realized Skylar had also stayed behind. She offered the girl a weak smile.
“Rory,” she said. “Look at me, sweetie.” He did. “I’m sorry you’re having to see this your first thing at the ranch. We don’t have to go down there.”
“I . . . I want to,” he said.
“We’ll have to stay far back from the accident.”
“Did somebody die?” His voice wavered slightly but didn’t break, and he set his little mouth firmly—a true tough kid from New York, although he’d hardly been raised on the streets.
“I don’t think so,” Skylar said.
“Really?” Mia couldn’t stop the hopeful question.
“I don’t think there was any blood,” she said in continued teenage candor.
Mia knew that didn’t matter. And for the first time, she remembered that she should be the one at the scene. When had the medical instinct that was her heart and soul abandoned her?
“Rory, this is Skylar. Skylar, meet Rory. Would you both be okay if I did go down there? Maybe I’ll be able to tell if Mr. Finney is hurt badly or not.”
The Bride Wore Red Boots Page 24