Choose Me, Cowboy

by Barbara Ankrum

  “Boom!” Mark said, grinning. “The boarding school was all very private and hush-hush. She hadn’t disclosed any of this to either her attorneys or to the judge. Or, apparently, her husband. When her attorneys found out what our side had discovered, they surely advised her that if there’s one thing Judge Corillo likes less than mothers not raising their own children, its mothers who want nothing to do with their children once they have them.”

  Anger, swift and sharp, rose in him at what she’d tried to do. At how easily she could have shattered both him and their children without giving a damn thought to the consequences. “Why?” he asked. “Why would she do it?”

  “I was not privy to the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Jamison, but I think it’s fair to assume this whole thing wasn’t about the children at all. More likely, from what I saw in the file, she had some plan to overcome her pre-marital agreement. She drew her check for the boarding school tuition from a private account, separate from their mutual account. Let’s just say that the opposing attorney ‘indicated’ to me that her husband had been ‘unhappy and unknowledgeable’ about certain contents of the file. Since their case was dropped so quickly, I can only assume he was the one to shut the hearing down. His attorneys, his checkbook.”

  Finn leaned his head back on the back of the chair. “So...it’s really over?”

  “Yes. They have already filed a motion to dismiss. I have a copy. If she ever tries to file again, her intentions in this case will likely shut her down. But I don’t think she will.”

  “I...I don’t know how to thank you, Mark. I don’t know how you managed to dig all this up, but—”

  Mark held out a hand and Finn shook it, wanting to hug the man. Wanting to go and wake up the twins and wrap his arms around them. He couldn’t believe this was real.

  “I wish I could take credit,” Mark was saying, “but this wasn’t me. A man named Trey Reyes delivered these files to me in person yesterday. Now, the legal world in Montana is a rather small one. I’ve heard of this guy. He an out-of towner with quite a reputation for demolishing seemingly good cases. I’ve also heard he does a lot of work for your wife’s father.”

  Dumbfounded, he blinked at Mark. “You mean...Kate’s father? But...I just met him the other night. He doesn’t even know about—” He stuttered to a stop. “Wait, you mean Kate hired him...?”

  Mark shrugged. “Reyes didn’t reveal that. But there are only two of you in this little pretend, secret marriage and I think we can safely assume that it wasn’t you.”

  “But she never...” he started, but then he laughed, shoving two hands through his hair. Of course she never told him. Why would this secret be any different?

  Because she just saved your ass. That’s why. He could only guess why she’d kept this from him. The potential for failure, she didn’t want to get his hopes up. Suddenly, all of her convoluted reasoning of the other night began to make some crazy kind of sense to him. Not that he was all right with her keeping secrets from him, but...

  Before he had time to wrap his head around this new revelation, from down the road came a large truck that pulled into his driveway beside Mark’s Mercedes. He stood slowly. Surely this day could not get any stranger.

  The truck carried ladders and piles of long strips of corrugated metal that looked suspiciously like barn roofing material and various and sundry other building materials.

  “Can I help you?” he asked the small, Hispanic man climbing out of his truck.

  “No, señor,” the man replied with a big smile. “It is I who will help you.” He reached a hand out to Finn to shake. “I am José Delgado, señor. I am here to fix your barn roof.”

  What? “But I didn’t...I can’t—there must be some misunderstanding.”

  “No, no, señor. Miss Canaday say today is your cumpleaños. Your birthday, no? Is my pleasure to fix. I already come out to look. You don’t need a new roof. Just repair. My son and me, we do it today. No charge.” He handed him a business card that said he was a licensed and bonded roofer.

  No charge? He blinked up at the man. “What?”

  “Sí, señor. Miss Canaday, she taught my younger boy last year to read. He was not even her student. He was in the fifth grade. She stayed after school every day to help him when they were all ready to give up. I owe her.”

  Relationships, Finn thought.

  Delgado patted a fist against his chest. “I think and I think, what I can do to pay her back? And when she come to me for this, then....”

  “When did she come to you?”

  He shrugged. “A few weeks ago. She offered me money, but I say no. And that is that. We will start now, okay? Feliz Cumpleaños, señor. Happy birthday.”

  Speechless, he could only grab the man’s hand again in thanks and watch as the two got back into the truck to drive closer to the barn.

  Mark moved beside him. “Things are looking up, eh?” He gestured at Finn’s half-casted hand as he slid off his coat jacket. “You know, it’s been awhile since I got my hands dirty. And I’ve got two of ’em and I drove all the way here, it’d be a shame to waste the trip.”

  “You’re kidding me, now, right?”

  He made a face. “What? You think we lawyers don’t know how to wield a hammer? I’m from Montana, man. Once a country boy, always a country boy. Just so happens I brought a change of clothes.”

  Still reeling, he showed Mark where to change after retrieving his things from the car. When he was alone again, he took out his cell and dialed Kate. Her voicemail picked up. “Kate?” he said after a long pause. “Please call me. Okay?”

  A hundred questions rolled through his mind and he had the answers to none. Kate was nothing if not complicated. Life with a woman like her would never be boring. That was for sure. But she was like the eight second ride that eluded him. The prize he could hold, but could never keep. She’d fake-married him, single-handedly saved his kids from disaster, called in favors for him and then walked away. Who did that? And still, he’d blamed her for keeping her secrets and not believing in him.

  And she’d let that pass.

  Damn the woman!

  The sound of more cars pulling into his driveway brought him back to the screen door where he saw what looked like Kate’s family stopping at the end of his drive. A cold sweat broke out as he imagined what they’d come to say to the man who’d just broken Kate’s heart. How could he explain what had happened between them? And should he? He wasn’t even sure he could explain the situation to himself.

  He pushed open the screen door as Olivia and Eve came up the porch steps, carrying...brownies?

  He opened the door for them and they smiled. “Hi, Finn! We heard it’s your birthday and that there are a few things that need doing around here. So we came to help.”

  “You... Wait. What?” he stammered.

  Olivia set the pan of brownies down on the kitchen table. “Jake couldn’t make it. He’s flying today, but the rest of us brought tools.”

  Indeed, there was a box of tools coming up the porch steps in Reed Canaday’s arms.

  “Happy Birthday,” Eve said, brightly.

  “Thanks. But did...Kate—?”

  “Put us up to this?” Olivia asked. “Who else? And—” she made a sympathetic face—“even though she’s not here, we figured we all took the day off anyway. We might as well show up.” Reed, Jaycee and his foreman, Ken, hovered at the front door.

  “Wow, that really wasn’t—Listen, I don’t know how to say this, but...Kate and I...we aren’t...”

  Cutter and Caylee tumbled into the room, still blurry from sleep, but eyes wide at the sight of a roomful of people. “Brownies!” Cutter exclaimed, making a beeline for the chocolate treats.

  “See?” Caylee said softly to Finn, a smile creeping to her mouth.

  He didn’t want to break her heart and tell her Kate hadn’t come with the rest of them. The brownies were just a coincidence. That this was all some giant misunderstanding that a simple explanation would clear up
and then they would go. But his daughter wandered to the window, pressing her nose against the glass.

  “What’s that, Daddy?”

  In the distance an unfamiliar sound joined the rhythmic clatter of hammering from the barn. A whap-whap-whap sound. What was that?

  “Incoming,” Olivia announced.

  In fact, a helicopter was heading their way, sweeping down the slope of foothills that rose just beyond his ranch. What the hell? And then he remembered. Jake flew helicopters. But... there was...music coming from the helicopter through some kind of a speaker. And as the chopper drew closer he recognized the song.

  Richie Havens was singing “Follow.”

  “Hmm. Maybe you should go see,” Eve suggested, but he was already halfway out the door by the time she finished her sentence.

  Jaycee and Reed stepped back from the door with knowing looks. “We’ll watch the kids.”

  The chopper landed in his pasture, purring and powering down as the song poured out from the speaker. He couldn’t see inside the chopper, except for the pilot who was turned his way, watching him come. He lifted his dark glasses with a thumbs up gesture. Jake.

  “Let your hands tie a knot across the table, come, touch the things you cannot feel,” Richie sang.

  Still two hundred feet from the helicopter the door slid open to reveal Kate, standing inside, watching him. She jumped down from the doorway and started toward him and the wind from the still-spinning blades whipped her red hair in a froth around her face. She grabbed her mane and gathered the mess in one hand as she walked his way.

  “Then don’t mind me ’cos I ain’t nothin’ but a dream. And you can follow.”

  Finn began to run.

  ***

  Kate collided with him halfway there and wrapped her arms around him. The comfort of his solidness was a balm, slowing her racing heart and easing her fear. Burying her face against his shoulder, she said, “Oh, thank God you didn’t run the other way.”

  Blinking, he pulled her back by the shoulders, his rough gaze meeting hers. “I never wanted to run, Kate.”

  “No, that was me. But this wouldn’t have been much of a grand gesture if you had.”

  He glanced at the helicopter, then back at the house where her family waited. “Is that what this is? All of this?”

  “Oh, well, no, that? They’re here because you need help and that’s what family does. You are still technically related. The grand gesture part, aside from Jake’s helicopter, is this.”

  She touched his face with both hands, then slid them down to his chest. “I realized that I’ve been running for a long, long time. I ran, even before you could...to Florence. Away from what we had. You were right about that. I didn’t even fight for you when you married Melissa. Because I was scared. And hurt and angry. And none of those things kept me warm the next six years. Or kept me from making a fool of myself with men who didn’t give a damn about me and who couldn’t have been more wrong for me.

  “And none of those things that made me run mattered at all when I saw you on that playground that day when Cutter fell. Because I’d never stopped loving you. Never. I’ve loved you for so long, I was just scared—and I’m still scared—to think that things might actually be good for us only to have them ripped away again. But that’s the coward in me—”

  “Shhh,” he whispered against her forehead. “I don’t know anyone braver than you.”

  She blew out a laugh. “No. Coward’s the right word. I was scared. And wrong. And scared. I messed up. But I hope it’s not too late. Because this is me, fighting for you. No more lies or secrets. This is my grand gesture, Finn, so there’ll be no mistake this time. So, if you can’t forgive me, I’ll be able to say I gave us my best shot. I fought for you. I didn’t walk away without telling you what was in my heart. That I love you.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded tearily. “So much.”

  Finn glanced off into the fields surrounding his house as if he might find some answers there.

  “You said, forgive you?” he whispered, looking back at her with a stroke of his knuckles against her cheek. “I’m grateful. What you did? The kids? They’re going to stay with me now. And that was all you.”

  Grateful? Is that all he was? She braced herself for failure. “Technically, that was Trey Reyes. He’s kind of a...dark and twisty miracle work—”

  He stopped her words with his mouth. Kissed her so lightly at first, she wasn’t sure if he was simply tasting her, or—

  “We’ll talk about him later.”

  Or, that would work, too...

  Then he dropped his mouth fully on hers and tucked his hand against the back of her head, pulling her even closer. This time, his kiss felt like coming home, like relief, and the sweetest gift she’d ever been given. Their tongues danced together in a hungry slide that sent a rush of hope through her. Hope and a spark of heat that always settled in her belly when he was near.

  Jake had turned off the music and shut down the chopper and she could hear, back at the house, her crazy family erupting into cheers at the sight of them kissing. She imagined they’d all been holding their collective breaths. Right along with her.

  He broke the kiss after a long moment and rested his forehead against hers. “Just so we’re clear, and before we go run that gauntlet back at our house, I love you, too. And I choose you, Kate. I choose you. God knows, I’ve made my share of mistakes, but all of them led us right here, which makes me lucky as hell for the second chance.

  “This thing that just happened between us, that wasn’t easy or...in any way close to the way I’d hoped to win you back. But I’ll take you any way I can get you. And this time, I’m not letting you go. I want to marry you again, for real, without the lies and the courthouse. With your family all around us and our children beside us. I love you with everything I have...which... may not be a lot right now, but I promise you, I’ll make our lives good.”

  She smiled as tears leaked out of her eyes, and stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss against his mouth. “We’ll do that together. You and me and the kids. All of us. I love them more than I can say. And yes. Yes, I’ll marry you again. And again. As many times as you want. Because this is where I belong. This is where I want to stay. Right here with you.”

  His grin widened and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Thank God.” Together they headed back toward the house that would be theirs and the family that would surround them with love.

  “By the way,” she murmured, with her head resting against his shoulder as they walked. “Happy Birthday. Jake’s gonna give you a ride in his helicopter.”

  “He is?” He cast a backward look as Jake climbed out of the helicopter to follow them back to the house.

  “Uh-huh. And, while I can’t top that, I did make you brownies.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” he said, that wicked grin of his returning. “And, about the brownies? Caylee never doubted you.”

  She sighed. “Ahhh. Girl power. And what about you?”

  He smiled down at her. “Hey, I’m just a man, navigating the waters of a complicated and amazing woman. Eventually, I came to my senses.”

  Hugging his arm, she whispered, “Thank God. But just so you know, I’ll always be complicated. Apparently, it comes with the territory.”

  “And I’ll always love that about you. That,” he added, “and your brownies.”

  “I can work with that.” Threading her fingers through his, they walked side by side toward the children who were already scampering across the field toward them.

  It was the first of many such days together, she hoped; all of them, a family. And for a girl who wasn’t born yesterday, Kate Canaday-Scott knew she’d finally been had, in the best of all possible ways.

  THE END

  The Canadays of Montana Series

  If you loved Choose Me, Cowboy, you’ll love Barbara’s Canadays of Montana series!

  Book 1 – A Cowboy to Remember

  Book 2 - Choo
se Me, Cowboy

  Book 3 – Coming Soon!

  For the latest news on Barbara’s series, sign up for Tule Publishing’s newsletter here!

  An Excerpt from A Cowboy to Remember

  Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Barbara’s other Canadays of Montana story,

  A Cowboy to Remember!

  On the night of her thirtieth birthday, at the Big Marietta Fair, Olivia Canaday took a pull on her long neck beer, leaned on the porcelain sink in the restroom—where she was hiding from what had, officially, turned into the worst blind date in history—and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  What, in the name of all that is holy, are you doing here? Haven’t the last seven years taught you anything?

  She sighed and took another swig.

  A rhetorical question, of course. She’d learned plenty in the last seven years, she thought, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear, not the least of which being that her cowardice was legend and the dating pool teemed with slimy bottom feeders and narcissists.

  Not that she was bitter.

  She mentally added a new entry under the heading, Note to Self, which read: Never allow wicked stepsisters to trick you into another blind, pity date again. Ever.

  Kate and Eve—the traitors—and their respective dates had conveniently lost Olivia in the fair crowds after Peter Moreno, the former high school classmate they’d set her up with, lost track of his ‘shut-the hell-up’ button. He’d been talking non-stop about himself, and his booming law practice, for the last two hours. He’d even brought along the photograph taken of him outside the Marietta Courthouse that had appeared in the latest edition of The Copper Mountain Courier, which, he’d pointed out, was taken from his ‘more photogenic’ left side. He had generously reenacted the pose for her with a cheesy wink.

  She shuddered, remembering it.

  Outside the restroom door, the sounds of the midway, couples laughing and genuine happiness, rushed on by her like a river. The scent of corn dogs, barbeque, and cotton candy reminded her of all the other, long ago nights she’d spent at this fair, being part of something. Tonight, she’d caught glimpses of friends she hadn’t seen since high school, now married up, with children, and moving on with their lives, while hers seemed stuck on hold.