Choose Me, Cowboy

by Barbara Ankrum

  He gave her a tight nod, then turned to his daughter. “Caylee, you’ll be okay with Izzy for a few hours?”

  “We’ll have dinner and make cookies, Caylee. Just you and me,” Izzy assured her, but Caylee clung to her father.

  She was taller than average, as Cutter was. Long, yet petite, with delicate, pretty features that had his DNA written all over them. Kate’s heart squeezed a little. How she could have missed that in the last two weeks on the playground, when these two children were just children and didn’t yet belong to Finn? To him and to the woman Kate had—over the years—come to think of as She Who Shall Not Be Named.

  “But what about Cutter?” Caylee asked, eyes watering. “He might need me.”

  “I’ll take good care of him.” Finn bent low and kissed the top of her head. “He’ll need you to sign his cast when he gets home. You’ll be first in line.”

  Kate blinked and stared down at her shoes. She would not be swayed by his tenderness with his children. Nor would she revise her feelings for the twins who—through no fault of their own—had once acted as both fulcrum and lever to pry away the life she’d hoped for. They were blameless. The same could never be said of their father.

  “It’ll be okay, Cutter. Bye, Miss Candy.” Caylee had her father’s big, hazel eyes and she turned them, to full effect, on Kate now.

  She tucked a strand of Caylee’s blonde hair behind her ear and felt something in her chest twist. She was a child who often seemed particularly in need of hugs from the female teachers in school. Could she have been drawn to her all along by the invisible thread that connected them all? “Bye, Caylee,” she whispered. “See you tomorrow on the playground?”

  Caylee nodded and started toward the parking lot with Izzy.

  Without further adieu, Kate back-peddled toward her classroom and called back to the man she’d left behind, “I’ll be right back.”

  He just stood there, watching her go, his eyes locked on hers. So, she did the only thing a good self-preservationist would do. She turned and ran.

  Chapter Two

  Seven-thirty came and went and Kate’s stomach growled as she paced the small, curtained-off ER room across the bed from Finn. Ben Tyler, the handsome orthopedic surgeon she’d met through Olivia’s boyfriend, Jake Lassen, had luckily been on shift tonight and had set Cutter’s arm. He was smoothing the last of the plaster tape, whose fragrance mingled damply with the sterile hospital smell. His cast was, by Cutter’s own choosing, a bright, neon green and would soon be decorated with copious stickers and well wishes at school.

  “Luckily,” Ben told Cutter, “you got the last of the cool, green color. Everyone else who breaks an arm tonight will have to settle for a boring white or...pink.”

  Cutter shuddered at that prospect. “I do not like pink.”

  “Understood.” He pulled off his gloves, took something out of his pocket and handed it to the boy. Cutter opened his fist to reveal a colorful rubber tree frog. “I only give these to kids who are especially brave. Think you can handle him?”

  A smile creased Cutter’s mouth. The first of the evening. He nodded and jumped the frog across his chest.

  “So,” Finn said quietly to Ben, “no problems later on with the bone?”

  Washing the plaster off his hands, Ben said, “Growth-wise? No. No growth plate involved, or I would have called a pediatric ortho down from Livingston for a consult. This is a clean, non-displaced fracture. It’ll heal up in no time, and he’ll be climbing play structures again and causing headaches for Dad. Right, Cutter?”

  Cutter nodded sleepily. His bedtime had passed an hour ago, and the pain meds they’d given him had kicked in. Outside, they could hear the rain still pounding on the roof. Torrents slanted against the windows in a deluge Kate had hoped would abate before they had to go. Not likely.

  “Thank you, Doc,” Finn told Ben, his voice thick.

  Ben nodded to them both. “Glad I was able to help. So, we’re done here. I’ll make sure they have your paperwork ready so you can go home.” Ben gave Kate a kiss on the cheek and shook Finn’s hand. “But I’d feed her, if I were you. She gets very cranky without meals.”

  Annoyed, she sat back down in an attempt to stop fidgeting, but gave Ben the stink eye. “Thank you for your oh-so professional opinion, Doctor Ben, but I am perfectly capable of feeding myself.”

  He turned a look back at her and winked.

  She grinned, absently wondering why a doctor as cute as Ben was still single. And why, for that matter, she’d never dated him? All blond and beachy-looking, with brains as a bonus?

  Not a place filler, she reminded herself. Dr. Ben Tyler would make someone a very nice husband someday, if he ever got his nose out of his medical journals. For being the cutest doctor in town, he was certainly the one with the fewest social skills. With the exception of that wink, of course.

  When she looked back, she found Finn watching her, all dark and broody. She felt herself blush and looked away quickly. Gads. Was there anything more awkward than old lovers meeting this way?

  “I’ll be back when you’re all set to go,” Ben told them. “If I can speed up the process, I will. That shouldn’t take long. It’s still pouring out there.”

  Finn sighed and brushed a hand through Cutter’s hair. “Close your eyes, Snip. It’s okay if you fall asleep.”

  Cutter didn’t have to be asked twice. Within moments, he and the frog were down for the count.

  Across the ER cot, Finn’s eyes met Kate’s. There were a thousand questions between them that, quite possibly, neither of them wanted answered. Speaking strictly for herself, she just wanted to get out of this evening with her dignity intact. But probably too late for that, as well. She felt exhausted from the tension of the last two hours. Now, with no doctors, nurses or five-year-olds to interfere, they stared at each other across the entrenched battlements they’d spent years erecting between them.

  “Thanks, Kate,” he murmured, his gaze scanning her face. “For bringing us and hanging around. This isn’t the first trip to the ER for him, but it’s his first broken bone.” The very word ‘broken’ had made him go pale and the worry lines around his eyes deepen.

  “Like father like son, I suppose.”

  “I guess so.”

  She nodded. From what she’d witnessed tonight, he was all in as a father now. “Twins? Really, Finn? Two?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He gave a magnanimous shrug. “When I screw up, I do so in multiples. Not that I’d—” His gaze flicked up to her and color rose in those tanned cheeks of his.

  “Not that you’d change a thing?” Kate finished. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  Tight-lipped, he took the frog from Cutter’s lax hand and stuffed the thing in his own pocket. “Yeah. I guess I was.”

  Her stomach cramped. “Well, I guess things all worked out for you then. You and—” she hesitated—“what’s-her-face.”

  “I wouldn’t change anything, except hurting you. But how could I regret them?” he asked, tucking Cutter’s meaty, but small hand in his big one. “They’re the good that came out of the bad.”

  Kate stood and turned her back to him so she could take a couple of deep breaths. “They are good. Both of them. Even if they are yours,” she added, just because. “Which, I had no idea about until tonight. What are you doing here? In Marietta, I mean. You must have remembered that this was where I’m from. Why would you—?”

  “You really want to know?”

  She wanted to know everything about him. Every last detail about his life since she’d seen him last. But her eagerness to answer all the questions that had nagged her for years would only make her look desperate. So she shrugged and stared past the curtain into the treatment room. “Never mind. I’m not really interested.”

  You didn’t come for me. That’s all I need to know.

  Kate blinked. Oh, dear God. Did I say that out loud?

  She turned back to him, relieved to find him staring at the bed. “Not that I c
are, but...what happened to the rodeo?”

  “I walked away from it. Mostly. But that’s a long story,” he said.

  He’d been a star, or at least a rising star on the rodeo circuit when he’d been hers. He should have been wildly successful by now, not drifting through Marietta on his way to somewhere else.

  “Does the story involve a certain buckle bunny we both know?”

  He sighed. “You wanna... come back to my place for some dinner?”

  “No?” The word came out sounding ridiculously like a question. She lifted her chin, and squinted back at him, just to eliminate any ambiguity. “I mean, no.”

  He shrugged. “You gotta eat.”

  “I don’t have to eat with you.”

  “I’ll cook.”

  She burned a look at him. “You? Cook?”

  He smiled that old smile at her that always made her brain buzz. There was no justice in a universe where the man who had broken her heart into a million pieces, the man she’d spent the last six years hating, had only gotten more handsome with age. Not less. And he could still wield that smile that made her all her female parts go awry.

  Curse him.

  Nor had he lost any hair. His was still a thick, luxuriant mink brown, a little too long, but without a trace of grey or thinning as so many other guys their age had. Whatever he’d been up to the last six years, he appeared to only have gotten stronger. Her gaze strayed to his forearms, beneath his rolled up shirt sleeves and she remembered how, sometimes, just the sight of them used to make her want to jump him.

  But those days were far behind them.

  “I cook,” he said, in answer to her question. “I do laundry. I do a lot of things that might surprise you.”

  “Oh, I think you’re good in the surprise department.” She’d meant that comment as a jab and she wasn’t about to pull her punches with him. But for a man whose world had once revolved around defeating the meanest bulls alive, almost everything about him surprised her tonight. Not that that softened or did anything to change her feelings about him. He still did, and always would, occupy that same black hole in her life he had for the past six years.

  But the devil in her wanted to ask him about his wife. And why he was a single dad? Was she, God forbid, somewhere here in Marietta, too? Did he still love her?

  Common sense prevailed. In a few minutes, they’d be out of here. She’d drive him back to his car; she’d go her way and he’d go his. They’d keep to their separate corners in Marietta until he moved on. And that would be that.

  But even as that decision finalized in her mind, he got slowly to his feet, rounded the bed and came over to stand beside her. Kate’s eyes widened and she felt herself backing up against the sink. There was something in the way he moved, some deep sensuality or sense of purpose about him that always disarmed her. Maybe in the way he watched her through that dark sweep of lashes as he moved her way, like a big cat stalking its prey. But he held his palms up, indicating he meant no harm, and he stopped only a few feet away from her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a hushed voice. “Go back to your side of the bed.”

  “Relax. I don’t want to wake him.” He leaned a hip against the counter, and folded his arms. “I’m not going to bite you.”

  “Maybe I should go and get the car—”

  “I’m divorced, Kate,” he said, almost as if he’d read her thoughts of a moment ago. “For the past four years.”

  Four years? Disappointment or anger or some other unrecognizable emotion sliced through her, sharp and quick. She did the mental math. That meant since the twins were under two? And never once had he come looking for her? Not, she corrected, that she’d wanted him to, aside from the overwhelming urge to punch him. But with her back up against the sink, she didn’t want to indulge her curiosity about why he hadn’t ever tried to find her. “I don’t care,” she told him, flatly.

  She could tell he didn’t believe her. When he twisted his mouth that way, that was a sure sign he was plotting something. “What about you?” he asked.

  “What about me?”

  “You never married?”

  She shot a glance at her bare left hand where his gaze had landed, then curled her fingers into a fist, furious that he’d goaded her into looking. “No. Not,” she added quickly, “because there haven’t been...I just haven’t—oh, it’s none of your business, Finn. Seriously.”

  “I saw you the other night at Grey’s.”

  Surprise thrummed through her for the hundredth time tonight. Had he been watching her while she’d been watching him? “Yeah? Well, I saw you, too. Although I wasn’t sure that was you. In fact, I was certain it wasn’t. Because I couldn’t imagine what you’d be doing in my home town.”

  “What happened to your dreams of going to the big city, Kate? New York? San Francisco?”

  She hated him for remembering that. “They were just dreams. And dreams change. I’m a teacher. And I teach here. Well, part time now, anyway. And I love my job. My family is here. My life is here.”

  “I can see why you love it. It’s a beautiful place, Marietta.” As if to dispute that, the rain slashed against the window with a ferocious swipe that rattled the glass. She gave him nothing but her most ironic smile.

  He changed tactics. “That singer, the other night, the one who called you out...?”

  An involuntary shudder of memory tore through her. Of course, he’d heard him call her out. Of course, she could keep no illusion of dignity here, with her butt backed up to the sink. “Cree? What about him?”

  “Are you...involved with him?”

  “What could that possibly matter to you?”

  He shrugged. “Are you?”

  “No! He was just being...drunk.” She peered through the curtain and down the corridor, hoping someone would be coming with their paperwork. No rescue was in sight. “I’m not dating anyone. I’m on a dating hiatus.” Drat! Why had she told him that?

  “Good. Then you can have dinner with me tonight.” That smile again.

  “I told you, I’m not dating anyone. Especially you.”

  “That’s good, then. Because it won’t be a date. It’s a thank-you for helping us tonight. That’s all. Will you let me cook you dinner?”

  “No.”

  He tilted his head patiently. “It’s been nearly six years—”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  Surprise caused a little tick between his brows. “I...I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with me.”

  “You would have been right.”

  Liar.

  Kate mentally slapped her inner critic and told her to shut up, despite, or maybe because of the flicker of hurt she saw in his eyes. All these years, she’d purposefully avoided any mention of him, refused to search him out on social media, or the regular media, afraid she’d see photos of his happy little family together where she should have been. Not that she cared anymore. She’d been over him for years. Forever.

  She reminded herself of this, despite the fact that his standing so close to her, smelling as good as he did, made her want to touch him. Reach out and run her fingers along the hollows of his shadowed cheek and thread her fingers into his hair until he pulled her into his arms one last time.

  Feeling dizzy at the thought, she knew a scenario like that one was not what she wanted. She was a reasonable person with a hair-trigger sense of self-preservation. And touching him—even in her imagination—would only set off a fire storm of trouble she did not want.

  No. Finn showing up tonight was merely an annoyance and the sooner she moved past this and put him behind her, the better off she’d be. They could act like adults. Tie up this loose thread between them and put their history to rest. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe she’d been waiting to do this since the day he’d left her.

  She exhaled sharply. “Fine. All right. I’ll come. But it’s just dinner. Nothing more. Understood?”

  A nurse chose that moment to open the curtain with paperwork
in her hand. She froze uncertainly, hearing the tense exchange. “Am I...interrupting?”

  He took the papers and smiled at Kate. “No. You’re just in time.”

  ***

  After getting the kids settled for the night, Finn put on some low music, poured Kate a glass of red wine and handed it to her in his avocado-colored kitchen. She took the glass reluctantly, arguing that she had school tomorrow, then gulped half of the wine down. He watched her with amusement over the rim of his own glass, understanding the impulse whole-heartedly.

  He could see that she’d been surprised to follow him to the doorstep of this ranch. Everyone in town had known Frank Greevy and knew this place had been his forever. And very few knew about him or the will. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was bursting with questions about what he was doing here, but she didn’t ask one.

  In the soft lighting, out of the daylight, her hair looked less red and more the deep burgundy color of that wine in her glass. He remembered how her hair used to change color that way, and how her eyes changed, chameleon-like, according to what she was wearing. The sea-green top she had on tonight turned them a grey-green color, but sometimes, they were the color of emeralds.

  She’d grown into her beauty, and she was still long and lean. Athletic. Memories stirred of those long limbs of hers wrapped around him. Of long, slow kisses on summer nights like this one and sex that had left them exhausted, but happy. As good as that part of their lives had been—better than good—that was only part of what he missed about her the most. The other was simply this. Standing in their kitchen, sharing the day. Letting his gaze slide over her and imagining a future together.

  Maybe spending his time around nothing but laconic cowboys and chatty five-year-olds had simply made him miss a grown woman’s company. This grown woman’s company.

  As Van Morrison sang in the background about Tupelo Honey, Kate took another gulp, clutching her wine glass as if the thing were a floating seat cushion and she’d just found herself in the water.

  “Better?” he asked, as he got the steaks into the pan.