The Maverick Cowboy

by Kate Pearce

  When she emerged from the shower, she found some of January’s shorts and a navy T-shirt with “Marines” on it that she suspected might belong to Blue. The rest of her clothes had gone.

  In the kitchen, Blue had made coffee and was sitting at the table with his phone out texting someone.

  “Hey, I put your stuff in to wash. I hope that was okay. Should be ready by the time you go home.”

  “Thanks.” She took the seat opposite him, conscious that she wasn’t wearing any underwear and that he knew it. “Is it okay if I write my notes?”

  “Sure, I brought your bag in.” He passed the heavy bag over the table to her one-handed without any apparent effort. “Dave texted me asking where you were, so I gave him the short version of what happened. He says he’ll see you at home and you can run it by his dad.”

  Jenna groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Great.”

  “You did the best you could, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the best of intentions and all your current knowledge?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat back. “Then that’s all anyone can ask of you.”

  She managed a wobbly smile. “Thanks, Gunnery Sergeant Morgan.”

  He gave her a casual salute. “You’re welcome.”

  * * *

  The back door opened, and several voices speaking over each other disturbing the peace of the kitchen made Blue smile. “The family’s back.”

  Ruth came in with Maria, Chase, and January. From the look of them, they’d been to town and bought up the whole of Maureen’s store.

  Ruth smiled at Jenna. “You here for dinner? I saw Nate in town. He says he’s coming out here, too.”

  “I’d love to stay.”

  “Good, because I’ve been practicing my nut loaf recipe.”

  Blue and Chase made identical gagging noises and Ruth scowled at them. “It’s very good, isn’t it, Maria?”

  “Yes.”

  Blue winked at Maria. “Then I’ll have to try it. Did you help Ruth?”

  “Yes.” Maria looked away at Ruth. “Can I take my things upstairs now?”

  “Sure, and please hang everything up, okay?”

  Maria gathered up most of the bags and went up the stairs.

  “What exactly did you buy her?” Blue asked, his fingers tapping on the table.

  Chase shrugged. “Just some riding gear and ranch clothes.”

  Blue stopped tapping. “That’s my job, Chase.”

  “For God’s sake, BB, it was just a fun thing to do with her.”

  “But I wanted to do it, and more importantly, I want to pay for her stuff. Let me know how much you spent, and I’ll reimburse you.”

  Chase sighed. “Okay, maybe you’ve got a point. I’ll total it up, all right?”

  “Good.” Blue nodded.

  “Except for her hat.” Ruth put on her apron and washed her hands. “I’m buying her that, so you can just suck it up.”

  Blue blinked. “Did you just say I should suck it up? Who’s teaching you that language?”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “I watch TV. I get the lingo.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Chase muttered, when Ruth turned her back. Blue grinned at his brother and the tense moment was over just like that. Things had gotten a lot better between him and Chase over the past few months—once he’d let go of the past and his brother had gotten rid of the stick up his ass.

  “What’s in the washer?” January asked as she came back in and dropped a kiss on Chase’s head before sitting down. “And have you been using my shower gel again, Chase?”

  “That was all me.” Blue held up his hand. “Jenna needed a shower, and I put her clothes on to wash. She was at Mark Lymond’s place attending to his mare in foal.”

  Ruth studied Jenna’s downcast face. “I take it that didn’t go well.”

  “I couldn’t save them. He wasn’t happy.”

  Blue reached over and squeezed Jenna’s shoulder. “She did her best. He left it too late to get help.”

  “Still hurts to see an animal die, though,” Ruth said gently.

  Jenna nodded. “Would it be okay if I go into the parlor and write my notes? I want to make sure I get everything down correctly.”

  “Why?” Chase sat forward. “Do you think there might be a problem?”

  She shrugged. “It’s standard procedure to get as much information as possible, and I have to share what happened with Dave and Uncle Ron. They might want to go and follow up. I’m not a partner at the practice, so everything I do reflects on them and their reputation in the county.”

  “You go ahead, Jenna. Dinner will be ready in an hour,” Ruth called out from her position by the stove. “I’ll send Blue to let you know when it’s time to sit down.”

  “Or send Nate,” Blue suggested. “I know Jenna will want to speak to him.”

  She gave him an exasperated look, picked up her bag, and left the kitchen.

  “Here you go.” Chase turned his laptop around so Blue could see the screen. “Here’s the total.”

  Blue blinked at the final column. “Jeez, Chase, next time remember we’re not all loaded like you are, won’t you?”

  “You can pay me back in installments if you like.”

  Blue glanced at his brother and realized he wasn’t joking. “Or you could start paying me a salary for my work here and take it out of that.”

  “I’m supposed to pay you now?”

  “That was the general idea. I’m out of the military soon, which means I’m technically unemployed.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right.” Chase frowned at his laptop. “I’ll have to think about what you should earn.”

  “About half a million a year should cover it.”

  Chase gave a crack of laughter. “Dream on, brother, dream on.”

  * * *

  Jenna typed up her final note and read through everything again, checking the information against the notes she’d scrawled at the time. The fragrant smell of something roasting had permeated under the door a while ago and her stomach was rumbling.

  A knock on the door made her look up to see Nate framed in the doorway. He was out of uniform and into the other local uniform of jeans, cowboy boots, and a shirt.

  “Hey.” He grinned at her. “How’s it going, fake girlfriend?”

  “As to that.” She patted the seat next to her. “I think it’s time for us to break up.”

  “Cool. What did I do?” He ambled over toward her.

  “Blue’s onto us.”

  He high-fived her. “Awesome! That’s just what you wanted, right?”

  “He said he knew we weren’t really going out because if I was The One, you would have married me already.”

  “Damn.” Nate sighed. “He knows the Turner mode of operation too well.” He took her hand. “You okay about this?”

  “I’m fine.” She gently disengaged her hand. “Did you come to see Maria?”

  “Well, I came to see BB and Ruth about Maria. BB said he’d spoken to Daniel Lester and that he didn’t think it would be in Maria’s best interests to be returned to a drunk.” Nate grimaced. “Social Services might have other ideas, but at the moment they are okay with Ruth looking after Maria while we wait for someone to interview Daniel Lester.”

  Jenna was intimately acquainted with both the CPS and Social Services and doubted they moved any faster than they had in her day. So Maria was safe at the ranch, at least for a little while longer.

  Nate held out his hand. “I forgot—Ruth asked me to tell you that dinner’s ready.”

  Jenna shut down her laptop, took his hand, and got to her feet. “Thanks for everything, Nate.”

  “You’re welcome. Any time you need a fake boyfriend, I’m your man.” He hesitated in the hallway. “Do you want to stage a big row over the dinner table? Maybe throw something at me?”

  “I’m not doing that to Ruth’s cooking. It’s way too good to waste. Let’s just be super polite to each other an
d let them work it out for themselves.”

  * * *

  Chase belched behind his hand. “That was the best nut loaf I’ve ever had.”

  “That was the only nut loaf I’ve ever had, and it was awesome,” Blue agreed.

  “I told you so.” Ruth gave them a complacent smile. “More peach cobbler, BB?”

  He patted his stomach. “I’m good.”

  Ruth sat down and poured herself some coffee. “Is Jenna going to be okay?”

  Jenna and Nate had left right after dinner, and January had taken Maria upstairs to paint her nails or something.

  “She’s worried about what Big Mac will say, but I was there. She did everything right. That poor horse wasn’t healthy enough to be carrying a foal in the first place. Mark is the one who should be shot.”

  “He’s certainly going to lose that ranch if he isn’t careful.” Ruth sighed. “Which is a terrible shame because it used to be such a thriving and happy place.”

  “If the worst comes to the worst and he decides to get out, we could always offer to buy it and add it onto our acreage.” Chase pushed the plate of cookies away with a groan.

  “You could afford that?”

  Chase shrugged. “I should think so. It’s not that big a place.”

  Blue wondered what it would be like to have that much money and found it impossible. He hadn’t come across many multimillionaires in the military, and Chase’s life in Silicon Valley was a complete unknown to him. But his brother was still remarkably down-to-earth in most ways, and he had eventually worked out where his roots were.

  After a while, Chase became engrossed in some work on his laptop, Ruth went to put Maria to bed and then to watch TV, while Blue talked to January about ranch matters. Billy was in town at an AA meeting, which he attended with great regularity. It was all remarkably peaceful. Blue’s only concern was how things were going for Jenna with her family, and he didn’t feel he had the right to call and ask.

  Eventually, everyone had gone to bed except Blue, who for some reason was still restless. Seeing all that blood and watching Jenna struggle to save the mare had awakened some of his less pleasant memories of his trips into the sandbox. He felt way too wired to sleep and decided to take a run around the property to use up some energy.

  He loved being out at night with just the sound of his feet hitting the ground, surrounded by the crisp breeze coming off the mountains and the nocturnal creatures out hunting. A coyote howled somewhere in the distance and was answered by its pack, the yapping of young cubs eerily like screaming babies, which didn’t help him get his mellow on at all.

  He turned back and eventually came up the slope behind the barn where January was planning on putting the new guest cabins. Slowing down to a walk, he took in some deep breaths and prepared to go into his warm-down routine. Ruth’s cooking was definitely affecting his weight, but hopefully all the riding was helping to even out the balance.

  He bent to touch his toes and eased into a couple of lunges, relishing the pull on his hamstrings and quads before straightening up with a groan. A faint sound to his right had him freezing in place. He was fairly used to the noises of the barn, and that one hadn’t registered with him before.

  The faint mewling sound came again, and Blue forced himself to relax. One of the barn cats had been looking pretty plump for a while, which probably meant new kittens.

  He jogged back toward the feed room and almost yelped when a small figure darted out in front of him. Instinctively he reached out and caught hold of the fleeing shape.

  “Maria?”

  She punched his chest. “Let me go!”

  He eased up his grip. “Honey, it’s me, Blue. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  She looked up and the fear faded from her eyes. “You scared me.”

  “Not half as much as you scared me,” he replied. “I nearly screamed like a baby.”

  “You’d never do that.”

  “Want to bet? Ask Chase what happened when he and the twins dressed up as ghosts one Halloween and scared the cra—I mean the bejeezus out of me.” He relaxed his grip until he was just holding her shoulders. “You couldn’t sleep either, eh?”

  She shook her head. “I have . . . bad dreams sometimes.”

  “So do I.”

  She stared up into his face, her expression troubled. “I dream about my mom.”

  “Me, too.”

  Her nose crinkled. “What happened to your mom?”

  “That’s a really good question.” He nodded in the direction of the feed store. “Do you want to come and see if we can find the new kittens first?”

  “Kittens?”

  “Yeah, come on.” He held out his hand and she came with him. Her pink fluffy slippers weren’t the best things to be walking around a barn in, but he wasn’t going to spoil the moment and point it out. He’d make Chase buy her a new pair.

  “Let’s stand here by the door and keep quiet for a minute,” he whispered to Maria. “Then we can work out exactly where the kittens are.”

  She moved closer toward him, her body leaning into his like it was the most natural thing in the world. Something tightened around his heart. Blue looked down at the top of her head and bent to brush a kiss on her black hair. God, despite everything, he hoped she was his kid. She deserved to be loved so badly.

  “Over there.”

  He pointed toward the back left corner of the room and began to move, Maria at his side. He went down on his haunches and studied the lower shelving rack as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  “Look.” He breathed the word into Maria’s ear and pointed out the squirming bunch of newborns on the old feed sack.

  “Oh wow . . .” she squeaked. “There are six of them.”

  “Yeah, and just born, I should think. You see their eyes aren’t open yet. We’ll have to get Ms. Jenna out here to take a look at them and see if they are all healthy.”

  “Shall we call her now?”

  “Tomorrow should be soon enough.” Blue retreated, sat on the floor farthest away from the kittens, and patted his knee. “Want to sit here while we wait to see if the mama cat is going to come back? We might have scared her off.”

  “Oh no.” Maria retreated and sat down on his lap with a thump that made him wince. “I hope we didn’t.”

  “If she doesn’t turn up soon, we can go and wait outside the barn. She’ll come back.”

  Maria settled in, one hand braced on his bare knee. “Did you have a nightmare as well?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Billy said you were a soldier.”

  “A Marine, which means I was actually a sailor.”

  “On a ship?”

  “Not really.” He hesitated. “It’s kind of complicated.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tonight I just couldn’t sleep. How about you?”

  “I dreamed my mom was dying and my dad—the man who I thought was my dad—was standing over her coffin screaming at her.” She shivered.

  “That must have been horrible.”

  “He didn’t get angry at the real funeral. He was too drunk. Uncle Jim had to hold him up.”

  He hated the matter-of-fact way she accepted that. “Grief takes people in funny ways, Maria.”

  “That’s what Billy says, too.”

  “Yeah, and he should know.”

  “Billy’s stopped drinking now, though, hasn’t he? He says my dad might come to his senses and do the same thing.”

  “I sure hope he does. He must’ve been a fool not to appreciate you.”

  She hunched her shoulders. “I’m not sure if he ever liked me much. I was always doing things wrong, you know? And the harder I tried, the worse it got. When Mom first got sick and he had to take care of me a lot, it was horrible. I didn’t tell Mom, though.”

  “I can’t think of a single reason why he wouldn’t like you. You’re awesome.”

  “You can’t make people like you, though, can you?” Maria’s breath hitched. “There was
a boy at school I really liked, but he crushed on my friend Dayna.”

  “A boy? Aren’t you a bit young for that?”

  She elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m almost in fifth grade. I’m not a kindergartener.”

  Blue decided not to comment on that and mentally revised his future budget to include a private all-girls school.

  “So what happened to your mom?”

  He almost smiled. She was as tenacious as he was.

  “Didn’t Billy tell you?”

  “No, he said it was something I should ask you.”

  Blue settled back against the wall. “A long time ago, she and my dad got into a fight and—”

  “Billy did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?” She frowned. “He’s way too nice to fight with anyone.”

  “I was there, sweetheart. I heard them fighting. All us kids did. I was around your age at the time. My mom hadn’t been doing too good since the birth of our baby sister, and she wasn’t happy living at the ranch.”

  “Why not? Once you get used to the smell it’s like super cool.”

  “She missed her family in the city, and she didn’t like being out here in the middle of nowhere. Some people don’t. So she and my dad had been fighting a lot.”

  She shivered and pressed closer to him. “I hate that.”

  “Chase and I would try and distract our little brothers when our parents went at it, but they knew things weren’t right. One night my mom got really mad, and she tried to, um, hurt Billy. He managed to stop her but ended up unconscious. When he woke up, she’d gone and taken the baby with her.”

  “Gone where?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?” She turned around to stare at him, her arms folded across her chest in a way that reminded him of Ruth. “Can’t you just look it up or ask someone?”

  Ah, the Internet generation.

  “We’re trying. We thought she might be dead at first, and so did the cops, but after talking to Billy we realized she might have run away instead.”