Her Lucky Cowboy
Page 32
Dangerous, dangerous ground. Her heart might not be able to take letting him go again. She loved the little boy. He almost made her think dreams do actually come true and don’t always turn into nightmares. Almost.
Kate put Alex up to her shoulder to pat his back. He let out a huge belch and settled his cheek back on her shoulder. “That’s my big boy. You sound like every guy I’ve ever met in a bar.”
Actually, it had been a long time since she’d been a part of that scene. She’d given up playing the party girl, the tough girl who liked even tougher guys, the girl who didn’t care about anyone or anything, who only wanted to have a good time. Nothing about that scene or that girl seemed fun anymore.
At twenty-two, she turned a corner and got serious about herself and her life. For all her negativity about what happened to her in the past and the rotten way she’d been raised and treated, she’d never done a damn thing to change things for the better. A hard realization to wake up to on her birthday, to look back at her life and realize all she’d been doing is surviving. She wanted more. So she went back to school and got her degree in social work, using the supervised hours she worked in the field to gain experience and hone her skills to help with teenagers. She worked during the day and attended school at night to finish her masters this past year. Twenty-eight now, she finally had a job and a purpose in life that filled her up most days, even as the daunting task of helping others who sometimes didn’t necessarily want it dragged her down but never knocked her out. She loved her clients. Most of them anyway. Teenagers had a way of making you earn every small achievement. They made her think and come up with creative ways to connect with them so she could get them to trust her and eventually try to change their lives.
Like she’d done.
“Come on, let’s go find your mom and dad. It’s time to blow this joint and get you settled at my place. Don’t get me wrong, kiddo, I’m happy to have you for a few days, but that’s it. You’re not staying.”
She tickled Alex’s belly, making him laugh, before rising and carrying him out the bedroom door and across the landing to the stairs.
“It’s going to be all right,” Donald assured her sister. He reached up and cupped Margo’s face in his hands, sweeping his thumbs over her cheeks and looking her right in the eye with so much love and devotion that Kate looked away. The tenderness in his affection for Margo stunned her every time. She’d rarely seen that kind of kindness and love between two people. She envied her sister that connection to Donald. It’s why she’d agreed to help them, why she believed in them even if she didn’t admit as much to her sister.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, stepping down the last few stair treads. “Did something else happen?”
“Evan called. He’s upset about the divorce and what that means for him as well as his mother,” Donald said in his usual diplomatic way.
“Donald is cutting off his unlimited supply of funds and putting him on a reasonable budget,” Margo added, rolling her eyes. Although Margo lived in a big, fancy house, she still clipped coupons and bought items on sale. She didn’t take what she had for granted.
Something about the worry clouding Donald’s eyes about the call triggered Kate’s inner voice to warn her of danger. Her gut went tight. As easygoing as Donald was, his son Evan’s personality swung the other way. All the way to volatile. Rage mixed with antipathy and entitlement. Not a good combination when you just told a rich kid he’d been essentially cut off.
“How did you leave things with him?”
“I told him to speak to his mother to get the real truth of why I’m doing all of this. He deserves to know, then he’ll understand that what I’m offering is generous under the circumstances.”
“He’s been in trouble in the past. Do you think he’ll come here and cause trouble for the two of you? Is that why you want Alex out of the house?”
“No,” Donald said definitively. “No.” This time the word held a lot less certainty. “My concern is that these types of calls will go on for the next few days, especially when my lawyer contacts Christina to serve her the papers. It’s going to be a stressful time, and I don’t want my emotions and Margo’s worry to upset Alex. It’s better this way.”
Kate read between the lines. Donald didn’t want to upset Margo, but he expected trouble in some form from his wife and son. At the very least, he knew they wouldn’t go away quietly.
“I promise, Kate, I’ll take care of everything. I won’t let anything happen to Margo.”
“I hold you to that promise.”
He smiled, released her sister, and came to stand in front of Kate. He put his hand on Alex’s back and the other on her shoulder. “I know you will. Margo, Alex, and you are my family. This will all blow over and we’ll move on together and watch Alex grow into a wonderful and loved man. He is the gift we share. Nothing will make me happier than to have this business behind us. I want to spend the rest of my life making Margo happy and raise our son. All of us together and happy.”
Kate’s inner pessimist shouted, “Yeah, right.” But holding Alex in her arms, seeing his happy face and the innocence in his eyes sparked the belief that maybe the life Donald described wasn’t out of reach. They needed to work for it, and that included taking care of old business.
“Call me if anything more happens. Keep me in the loop.”
“We will. I promise,” Donald agreed.
Her sister and Donald walked her out to the car. Margo took Alex, hugged him close, and put him in the car seat in the back. Margo settled Alex, then kissed him on the head. “Be good for Auntie. I’ll miss you, sweetheart. I love you.”
“I promise, I’ll take good care of him.”
“I know you will. It’s just I’ve never been away from him since he came home.”
“Go with her,” Donald suggested at the last minute.
“No. I’m staying with you and seeing you through this ordeal.”
“That’s just it, it is an ordeal. I’ll handle it. It’s not for you to work out, but for me to do.”
“We’re a couple. Partners. We do things together. The fun things and the tedious.”
Donald hugged Margo close. “I much prefer the fun we have together.”
“Then Kate will take Alex, and you and I will have some fun.” The sparkle in her sister’s eyes when she said those words made Kate blush. These two were good together. Margo’s fun nature balanced Donald’s seriousness.
Donald set her sister aside, leaned in and kissed Alex goodbye, closed the door, and opened Kate’s door for her. Before Kate took her seat, he reached for her hand and held it tight. “Thank you for doing this.” He pressed hard on the key he’d placed in her hand and whispered, “Just in case.”
About the Author
JENNIFER RYAN is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Hunted series and the McBride series. She writes romantic suspense and contemporary small-town romances featuring strong men and equally resilient women. Her stories are filled with love, friendship, and the happily-ever-after we all hope to find. Jennifer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three children. When she isn’t writing a book, she’s reading one. Her obsession with both is often revealed in the state of her home and in how late dinner is to the table. When she finally leaves those fictional worlds, you’ll find her in the garden, playing in the dirt and daydreaming about people who live only in her head, until she puts them on paper.
www.jennifer-ryan.com
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By Jennifer Ryan
HER LUCKY COWBOY
WHEN IT’S RIGHT
AT WOLF RANCH
DYLAN’S REDEMPTION
FALLING FOR OWEN
THE RETURN OF BRODY MCBRIDE
CHASING MORGAN
THE RIGHT BRIDE
LUCKY LIKE US
SAVED BY THE RANCHER
Short Stories
CAN’T WAIT
(appear
s in ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A COWBOY)
WAITING FOR YOU
(appears in CONFESSIONS OF A SECRET ADMIRER)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Everything She Wanted copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Ryan.
HER LUCKY COWBOY. Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Ryan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780062334961
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062334954
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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