Choose Me, Cowboy

by Barbara Ankrum

  She lingered at the fringes of his kitchen, checking out his house as he worked on dinner. “Should I lie and say that glass of wine wasn’t necessary? Or should I just admit that I might not get through this without this?”

  “You could lie, but that first gulp was a dead giveaway,” he said. “Besides, the truth is always better.”

  “Said the spider to the fly.”

  God, he’d missed her. He took a sip of his own wine, letting the alcohol soothe the tension from his throat. “So, I’m the spider?”

  She smiled tightly. “That’s not how I remember things, exactly, but there was some venom involved. Speaking of venom, where is she anyway? Your ex?”

  “No clue,” he answered, tossing some asparagus onto a broiler pan and dousing the veggies with a dash of salt, pepper and olive oil. “I haven’t seen Melissa for years.”

  Surprise parted Kate’s lips and she lowered her drink. “What? But...what about the kids?”

  He shoved the pan under the broiler. “Turned out she liked the idea of being a mother better than actually being a mother.”

  Kate fluttered a look at the floor. “Oh. Finn...”

  “Go on. You can say you told me so.” God knew, he would if he were her.

  “That would be spiteful,” she said, running her finger along the rim of her glass. “And wrong. But you don’t mind if I think that, do you?”

  “No. I don’t mind.”

  She wandered along his counter, touching the handful of spice jars lined up on a little rack, the toaster, a basket full of organic apples. “So...this...is all you. You and the twins.”

  He ripped up a handful of lettuce leaves and added them to a salad bowl. “There’s Izzy. She’s been essential, notwithstanding what happened tonight. I was lucky to find her when I got here. What about about you?” he asked, redirecting. “Have you been here since graduating?”

  “Yes.” She pulled open his refrigerator and looked inside. “I came home after I did my teaching practicum in Missoula and got a job. Here I am. I worked at the school for two years, then this summer I got laid off because of budget cuts. With the least amount of time there, I was the first to go. Right now, I’m a long-term sub, until the regular teacher comes back.”

  “How come you never married?” he said.

  She took a gulp of wine. “I’m not in the market. Doesn’t mean I don’t date. Just,” she added with the lift of one brow, “no one my family approves of. They seem to have...opinions.”

  “Then they must definitely hate me.”

  She shut the fridge door deliberately. “They never really knew about what happened with us. No one did.”

  He frowned, truly taken aback for the first time. A stab of something like hurt washed through him. But he supposed he didn’t have the right to feel hurt about anything she did. “You never told your family about me? Even before...?”

  She blushed and leaned her back against the fridge. “My family would have been all over us if they’d known I was dating you. They’re like that. Not in a bad way, but call me superstitious. I didn’t want to jinx it. Then...Italy. After we got engaged, I’d planned on taking you home that next weekend, and then, well, I guess we both know what happened to that plan.”

  After they’d broken up, she’d kept her hurt all to herself? But she was close to her family. That didn’t make any sense to him. For the first time, he wondered if there had been more to their breakup than what he’d thought. Had she kept their relationship from her family because she wasn’t sure they’d accept him? Or because she wasn’t sure she did?

  Cowboy. Bull rider. He came from a different world and his family was nothing like hers—rich, successful. He still had half a family. Just his mom. She lived in Florida now, far from the brutal Montana winters and he only saw her a few times a year. His father had been out of the picture since he was a boy.

  Still, as he contemplated their ending—his and Kate’s—he found himself wanting to explain himself again, revise, rewrite their ending, but, of course, it was too damn late for that. Moving forward. That had always been his only choice.

  Dinner came together then and he turned to plate the food up. Kate found the silverware and set two place settings for them on the small dining room table. She refilled the wine glasses and they sat down to eat. She’d put the table between them and sat on the opposite side.

  “Mmmm,” she murmured after tasting the steak. “I must confess. This is really good.”

  “High praise.”

  “I’ll give the Devil his due.”

  Her smile made his gut twist with a hunger that had nothing to do with steak.

  “Though I must admit,” she went on, “whenever I imagined you over the years, you as Mr. Mom never occurred to me.”

  “You imagined me?” he asked hopefully, returning her grin.

  Color rose in her cheeks and her eye twitched. “Once or twice. But don’t flatter yourself. I moved on long ago.”

  With guys like Cree, he thought. Tattooed musicians didn’t fit his mental picture of the Kate he remembered. His Kate. But the universe had taken a substantial shift since they’d seen each other last. Anything could have happened, and probably had.

  “So,” she asked, without looking at him, “this used to be Frank Greevy’s place, didn’t it? Are you...renting until you move on?” She took another gulp of wine.

  “I own this place now. Frank Greevy left the ranch to me when he passed.”

  She choked on her wine. When she finally stopped coughing, she managed to say, “You’re staying in Marietta?”

  Watching her with concern, he picked up his wine and let the glass hover near his mouth for a moment before taking a sip. “I like it here. The kids like it. And apparently, they don’t let you pick up five hundred acres and leave the county with them. So...yeah. I’m staying.”

  For a long beat, she just stared at him as if he’d just told her Darth Vader was her father. “I see.”

  “Don’t take it too hard. Marietta’s a small town, Kate, but it’s not that small. If you don’t want to see me I can make that happen.” But not if I can help it.

  “No, it’s smaller than you think. Today’s the perfect example.”

  He lifted his glass to her. “Speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you for your help tonight.” He touched her glass with a clink. “Thank you. What you did was real kind, considering.”

  She tilted her head and took a sip. “Cutter’s a sweet boy. You’ve done well with him. With both of them.”

  He glanced behind him. “Whoa, I could’ve sworn that was a compliment that just shot past me.”

  “It was. Okay? Which does nothing to ameliorate my feelings about you being here.”

  “Am-eliorate?” He rubbed his jaw. “Huh. I might have to look that one up.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Alter. Change. Improve.”

  A grin crept to his mouth. He’d forgotten how much fun it was to tease her. “Uh-huh. I get you. Well, I know this place doesn’t look like much now, but I’m gonna ameliorate it. The house has good bones and a lot of potential, don’t you think?”

  She cast a furtive look around his personal time warp. “I wasn’t referring to the house.”

  He leaned back in his chair and toyed with his glass, enjoying the way the light from the 70’s chandelier cast her skin in porcelain light. “Right.”

  “Exactly what do you plan to do with this five-hundred-acre gift?” she asked, forking in a mouthful of salad.

  “Run some cattle. Start a bucking bull breeding business.”

  Those green eyes flicked up to his. “That sounds expensive.”

  Money was the last thing he intended to discuss with her, especially when there were so many other topics that came to mind. Like when he was going to see her again. Or if she ever intended to forgive him. His gaze drifted to her hair and his fingers itched to touch it. “I’m good. Hey, I signed up for the Copper Mountain Rodeo at the end of this month. Maybe you’ll
come.”

  “The rodeo? I thought you gave that up.”

  “For a long time, I did. But I still have a few left in me.”

  “But bull riding isn’t something you just pick up when you feel like it. After being gone from the sport for years.”

  “I’ve stayed in shape. I can still ride a bull.”

  Kate’s gaze flicked to his arms again. She cleared her throat and took a deep sip of wine. “It’s not the riding part that will kill you, it’s the falling off part. It’s the two thousand pounds of angry maniac pounding you into the ground or pulling you into the well and beating you to death. And you’re not twenty-three anymore.”

  He leaned back with a grin. “Is that concern for my well-being?”

  “What? No.” She fingered her wine glass. “All right. I may hate you, but that doesn’t mean I want to see you get in some bull-riding wreck. Your children only have you. If you got hurt...”

  “It’s a considered risk. Everything in life is a risk, Kate. Everything. No risk, no real life.”

  She sat back. “I see. This is your philosophy? Risk everything? Damn the consequences? But I guess I should know that by now about you.”

  “Now we’re talking about us?”

  “If the shoe fits...”

  “We were both wearing those shoes, Kate.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re blaming me for what happened?”

  “No.” This was the last direction he’d wanted to take this conversation in. “That was me. But there were two of us in that relationship, Kate. You were the one who insisted we take a break while you went to Florence for that semester abroad. I was the one who didn’t want a break. I was the one who wanted to marry you. And then there was Marcello.” He could tell he shocked her with that name. “Oh, yeah. I know about him. Surprised?”

  “Who told you about—?”

  “Sharon. Your roommate. I ran into her on the street a few months later and she felt obliged to inform me about your side-of-Italian.”

  She bit back whatever she’d been about to say and shoved to her feet, heading to the couch where she’d left her things. “Okay. I knew this was a bad idea.”

  He got up and followed her. “Where you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Just like that? You won’t even talk about it?”

  “Remind me to throttle Sharon Birch next time I see her.” She pushed her arms into the sleeves of her jacket.

  “But it’s okay that you never mentioned him to me?”

  She gulped and turned back to him. “Marcello...was nothing more than a—”

  “—boyfriend?”

  “No. We had a couple of innocent dates over there. He was...it turned out he was a jerk. If anything, meeting Marcello only solidified my feelings about you.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t date anyone while you were gone. Not one girl. Not until that night when I was drunk and Melissa was—”

  “—a buckle bunny, hoping to hitch herself to your star?”

  “One night. I never intended for...what happened to happen, but I didn’t cheat on you, Kate. We were broken up.”

  “Maybe. But at least I didn’t sleep with Marcello.”

  “We were broken up.”

  “Until we weren’t. Until I had a ring on my finger and we were planning our wedding. And she came up pregnant. And you chose her.”

  A long, awful pause stretched between them. All the hurt and pain between them filled that terrible space, and he realized that neither of them had put the past behind them. Not any of it.

  “I’d give anything not to have hurt you the way I did, Kate. But wishing changes nothing. I chose my child. My children, as things turned out. And yeah. No matter the consequences of marrying their mother, no child of mine would ever grow up the way I did. Without feeling loved and cared for by their father. And I’ll never regret being their father or doing what needed to be done to protect them.”

  She shifted the things in her arms. “Like riding bulls again.”

  “Yes,” he bit out a little defensively.

  “And now, apparently, she wants them back.”

  He blinked. His turn to feel heat blossom on his face. “How could you know about—?”

  “The court papers. The ones you left on your side table? I wasn’t really snooping. I just happened to see them lying out there when you were upstairs putting the kids to bed. I am the daughter of an attorney. They caught my eye. And I know what they are. Hong Kong?”

  The loose ends of him felt like they were unwinding like a fraying rope. But now that she knew, there was no undoing it. “I think she just wants to screw with me. That’s become her life’s ambition.”

  Silent, Kate waited for more. He shoved two hands through his hair. “After the kids were born, with me gone competing, she started to drink. She discovered early on that she didn’t want kids after all, she wanted my undivided attention. She never gave a damn about them. She’s the reason I gave up the rodeo, because she was incapable of caring for them.”

  Kate watched him now, her eyes turning a deep, dark green.

  He went on. “She would leave them with babysitters and go out to party when I was out of town. Sometimes for days on end, though I didn’t find that out until later. One day, I came home a day early to find her passed out on the couch and Cutter’s little mouth bleeding from a fall or something that could have been so much worse. And that was my fault, for not seeing what was happening until almost too late.

  “That day, I gave up the rodeo, the trips out of town. I tried to get her help, but she didn’t want it. Because between us, Melissa and me? There was nothing but the twins holding us together. And that was the end for us, for her as a mother, for me with my bull riding career. She gladly signed away full custody and it’s been me and them ever since. Until now. The kids, they don’t even know her. They wouldn’t know her if they passed her on the street.”

  Kate blinked back some emotion he couldn’t name as she watched him. “I’m sorry.”

  “So,” he said, “I need to settle. I need stability. I need to give my children the home they deserve. And yes, I’ll risk everything to give that to them. More even. Because I owe them that. And I’ll never let her take them.”

  Outside, the rain had stopped and a slow drip-drip-drip echoed outside the door. “So, you’re going to fight her?”

  “Yes. With everything I have. But keeping custody will be an uphill battle. Seems the court favors families and biological mothers, whether they abandon their children or not. So my attorney tells me. And I’m an unmarried, single dad who works too much.” He stopped short, knowing he’d probably told her more than she’d wanted to hear. But when he looked up, her eyes had gone dark with some lurch of realization and she was glaring at him.

  Backing up a step, she said, “Ohhh, no. Oh, no you don’t.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  She backed away from him. “Absolutely not! Is that what this whole evening has been about?” she demanded. “All leading up to this? That you need a ‘wife’ to parade in front of a judge?”

  Her accusation roiled through him. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. No. This has nothing to do with you.”

  She blushed furiously, then headed to the door. “Good, because you can forget it. That will never happen, Finn. Not in a million years. You know I hate you, right? I can’t even believe you would consider such a thing.”

  “I didn’t.” Until you mentioned it. “But just for the record, if I were going to ask you for that kind of help...that kind of favor, I wouldn’t have gone through the back door like that. I would have asked you straight out. That is, if I’d thought there was a chance in hell you’d do something like that for me.”

  She blinked back at him, something on the tip of her tongue to say before she changed her mind. “Well, I wouldn’t.”

  “And I didn’t ask. Kate, stop. Where are you going?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait a minute
.”

  Her hand on the door knob, she turned on him. “No, you wait, you...you...” She gave a frustrated growl for lack of a more descriptive word. “That is just low. Telling me your sad story. Playing on my sympathies like that, so I’d feel sorry for you. I could just...just—”

  “Just what? Punch me?” he asked, moving between her and the doorway. “Kiss me?”

  “Kiss you? As if!” But her eyes had dilated to black splotches and a tremor ran down her as she backed up against the opened door. Her nostrils flared with anger, and her scent washed over him afresh.

  “Punch me then. Or kiss me. Whatever makes you feel better.”

  Hands splayed against the door behind her, she narrowed a look at him. “As I am not a violent person, I choose C. None of the above.” But with the door wide open beside her, she wasn’t choosing to exit either.

  He braced a hand on the doorjamb beside her and loomed over her. “When was the last time someone kissed you ’til your knees stopped workin’? Huh? I used to be able to do that to you, remember?”

  Oh, she was remembering. He could see the memory in her eyes.

  “I—no, I don’t recall that...and—” she flicked that red hair out of her eyes with a jerk of her head—“I’m leaving now.” But her effort to go was merely a twitch in the direction of the car.

  “Wow. That long, huh?”

  She opened her mouth in silent outrage, but no words came to mind. No denial anyway.

  In fact, right now, she looked as if a windstorm had just blown through all of her carefully nurtured self-righteousness. Finally, she stammered, “I’ve had plenty of kisses from plenty of men and I—”

  “—men like Cree Malone, for instance? Is he a good kisser?”

  She probably thought he didn’t catch the wince, but he did.

  “Plenty of men,” she repeated. “Not that it’s any of your business. At all. And the last thing I need is a kiss from you.”

  “Really?” He took a step closer until their mouths were only inches apart. Until he could feel the pebbled nubs of her nipples brush against his shirt. “The last thing?”

  She swallowed hard and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “The very last thing,” she reiterated, as he bracketed his hands beside her head there on the doorway and lowered his nose to her hair to inhale her scent. “Stop doing that.”