The Forgotten Cowboy

by Kara Lennox

  That blew him away. He’d known she was scared—he was, too. Everybody was scared their first time. “You really didn’t want sex?”

  Finally, she looked at him. “I was a late bloomer. I mean a real late bloomer.”

  Chapter Six

  Willow continued to knead her dough—these were going to be the tastiest biscuits on Earth. She waited for Cal to grasp the significance of what she’d just said.

  Finally he did. “You mean you were…you hadn’t…”

  She nodded, embarrassed that she’d ever brought this up. But she supposed he needed to know. “I hit puberty a few months later.” And she’d slowly begun to understand a lot of things as her body had awakened. But she hadn’t fully appreciated what it meant to crave someone of the opposite sex until a week ago, when she and Cal had made love with such complete abandon. “As close as we were, I never felt like I could talk to you about that.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” he said. Then he added, “You’d sure started looking like a woman.”

  “Let’s not go there.” She rolled the remaining dough out and cut some more biscuits.

  “I’m sorry you think I ruined your life,” Cal said. “But, you know, your life doesn’t look so ruined to me. You’re off to med school in, what, three weeks?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Of course, that’s not your fault.”

  “Seriously? You might not go?” He sounded so crushed, she wanted to throw her arms around him. But Cal was probably one of the few people who had been privy to her youthful dreams of becoming a doctor. She’d had a lot of ideas when she was younger—working for the Peace Corps, finding a cure for some terrible disease. She’d been idealistic, perhaps, but very passionate.

  Cal remembered that, and it touched her.

  “You’ve been blessed with an astounding memory,” she said. “I’ve always had a good one, too, though not in your league. Now, imagine if your memory didn’t work right anymore.”

  “But it’s just faces you get confused with, right? I mean, how serious…”

  “It’s more than just faces.” She arranged the last few biscuits onto the baking sheet. “Take these biscuits. I’ve been baking them every day for more than a week. But I have to read Anne’s recipe every time. I can’t remember how long to bake them or at what temperature. And see this?” She yanked on a small, spiral-bound notebook that hung from her neck on a piece of yarn, a strange-looking necklace. “I have to write down every single thing I’m supposed to do in this notebook and look at it fifty times a day, or I’ll forget something.”

  “But you’ll get better.”

  “Perhaps. Eventually.”

  “Then you’ll put off med school for a year. It’s not the end of the world.”

  She shook her head. “Not that easy. I would have to take the MCAT again, since it’s been more than three years. Then, assuming by some miracle I do well on the test, I could reapply to med school. But realistically, they won’t give me another shot, not if I suddenly withdraw for this year. They’ll want to know why. And when I explain it…no medical school wants a brain-damaged student.”

  She slammed the oven door in frustration. “Sometimes there’s a narrow window of opportunity. For me, this is it. It’s now or never.”

  Cal’s face sagged with disappointment. Or something. She still wasn’t much good at deciphering expressions. “I don’t know what to say. You’ve wanted this so much, and for so long—”

  “You don’t have to remind me.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Get a job, I guess.”

  “Here in Cottonwood?”

  “Oh, no. In Dallas or Houston, probably. I don’t think I could stand living where everybody would know I was a failure.” Look, there goes that poor Willow. Brain-damaged, you know. Probably drools on herself. Had a promising future as a doctor until—

  “No one would think that. Give the people in this town some credit. I dropped out of vet school, but no one calls me a failure. Well, except maybe you.”

  “Only because you could do so much better.”

  “We’ve already covered this territory.”

  “Then I guess we have nothing left to talk about.” Willow consulted the recipe card and set the oven timer.

  “Will you go out with me again?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “We definitely already went over that territory.”

  “So the only reason you won’t go out with me is because you can’t forgive me for loving you too much?”

  “That’s an interesting spin on what happened.” Oddly enough, the same one Nana used. Had they talked about it? Or had they each come up with that phrase independently? “And it’s not the only reason.”

  “What else is there?” Instantly, he was off his stool and standing before her, gripping her upper arms firmly enough to force her to look into his eyes. “We are incredible together. The evening I spent with you—and not just the sex, but the whole thing—was the most fun I’ve had in years. It was just like it used to be, only better. And you thought so, too.”

  She couldn’t deny it. They’d always been compatible, at least when it came to their personalities and their interests. But now they had true physical chemistry, as well, which added a whole new dimension to their relationship.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” she said.

  “Darlin’, they could not get any more hurt. What’s the problem?”

  Well, he’d asked for it. “I could not possibly have a relationship with a man who has so much potential and does nothing with it. We wouldn’t be compatible in the long run. I once thought you shared my drive and ambition, that you understood me. But apparently you don’t.”

  “My dropping out of vet school bugs you that much, huh?” He let go of her and turned away. “I didn’t peg you for a snob.”

  “I’m not a snob! I would have been happy to date Hank the ranch cowboy.”

  “Hank?”

  “Since I didn’t know your name, I made up one for you. I have no problem with jobs that put calluses on a man’s hands. What I can’t stand is that first you threw my future in a Dumpster. Then you threw yours there, too.”

  Well, there it was, out in the open. Willow hadn’t realized she felt so strongly about Cal’s choice of career, or rather his choice not to bother with a career at all. Had she been holding on to her anger over their ill-fated first sexual encounter so that she wouldn’t have to face the real problem?

  He just stood there for a few moments, his jaw about dragging the floor.

  “I guess I’ve always been slightly jealous of you,” she continued, because she really wanted him to understand, and nothing she said now could be worse anyway. “Your natural brilliance, the way everything came so easy for you, the parents who encouraged but never pushed, never punished. Everything just dropped into your lap while I was in an eternal struggle. I managed to contain it for a long time, because I was able to tell myself that you deserved it, you were going to serve humankind with your talents, that sort of thing. But when you turned your back on your brilliant future—”

  She stopped when she saw the look in his eye. It was sort of dangerous. He was no longer cajoling.

  “I might still have a brilliant future,” he said, his voice soft and a little bit scary. She’d never seen him like this before. “Don’t count me out yet. Maybe I’m a late bloomer, too.” With that he turned and stalked out of the kitchen. Clementine the dog stood and trotted after him.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Willow murmured. Cal had sought her out, apparently wanting to mend fences and make a fresh start. Even after the disastrous conclusion to their date the other night, he was still interested in pursuing her.

  And what had she done? Jumped all over him for dropping out of vet school, something he’d done three years ago and that really had nothing to do with her. If he hadn’t thought she was psycho before, he surely did now.

  But she hadn’t been able to
help herself, because she’d seen something important while he was working with Danny the horse. She’d seen passion. Not sexual passion, but passion for life, passion for animals.

  It simply made no sense that Cal had elected not to be a vet, when vet medicine was the tailor-made occupation for him. She knew she’d done the right thing, even if it had hurt him to hear it. She’d had to bring it up. And his answer to her question had only confused her further.

  CAL WENT HOME that night, unable to get Willow’s words out of his head. She thought he was a failure, that he had no ambition, that he had no intention of using his brain to do something worthwhile.

  As he lay in bed with one cat wrapped around his head and another curled up on his chest, sleep wouldn’t come. Could Willow’s indictment be right? Why hadn’t he done something with his life? When he’d dropped out of vet school, his parents had told him to take his time and think about what he wanted to do. Well, he’d taken his time, all right. More than three years had passed. And he hadn’t been in a hurry. He’d thought he had plenty of time to figure things out.

  But maybe not as much as he thought. Twenty-six was still young, but as Willow had pointed out, life could change—or end—in the blink of an eye. And so far, he’d accomplished absolutely nothing, and the days and months were ticking by.

  He had a pretty good idea what he wanted to do. He wanted to train horses. That was where his strength lay, and the idea of working with horses, or even other animals, every day turned him on like nothing else. But he’d never let himself think too long or too hard about this ambition. To pursue such a career, he would have to give up a steady job for the risky proposition of a solo venture. And after his mis-step at vet school, he wasn’t eager to risk another failure.

  Even if he committed himself to such a future, he had no idea where to start. He knew nothing about starting a business. Should he go back to school and get an MBA? Work as an apprentice to some established trainer? Run an ad in the paper, Trainer for Hire?

  He really didn’t know. But there was one person who could help him. Willow Marsden was the world’s best goal setter. She’d been setting goals, formulating plans, making lists and working around setbacks for as long as he could remember, while he just went with the flow and things came to him.

  Maybe that’s what he’d been waiting for—some opportunity to fall into his lap—and it hadn’t happened…yet.

  Well, Willow was just the one to help him devise a plan of action and take the steps to achieve it. It’s what she did best.

  But would she help him? Cal punched his pillow and thought about it. He suspected she wouldn’t be able to resist if he presented it to her as a problem that needed solving. Willow had never in her life turned her back on a problem or a person in need.

  “SO,” ANNE BEGAN as she helped Willow make hamburger patties, another of a camp cook’s endless tasks. “What did you and Cal talk about all that time he was in here yesterday?”

  Willow had been hoping no one had paid attention to her extended visit with Cal the previous day. But she should have known better. Nothing around here escaped Anne’s notice. Besides, Anne had an overdeveloped interest in the love lives of everyone around her. After finding Wade and marrying him despite some pretty tall odds, she’d managed to marry off both of Wade’s older brothers and their grandfather the following year. Now that she had immediate family taken care of, no one in Cottonwood was safe from her machinations.

  “I don’t really remember what we talked about,” Willow hedged, though she precisely recalled every word. “You know how bad my memory is.” She had confessed her cognitive shortcomings to Wade and Anne before she’d started working here. As her employers, they had a right to know. They’d been sympathetic and supportive, not pitying, as she’d feared.

  “You are the biggest liar,” Anne said sweetly.

  Willow sighed. “If you must know, we rehashed old arguments and started some new ones.”

  “What could you possibly argue about? Cal seems really easygoing to me. He’s gentle with the horses, relates well to kids. And he’s soooo cute.”

  “And he’s soooo not right for me. So please stop matchmaking.”

  Anne held out her greasy hands in a gesture of innocence. “Who, me? I was just pointing out the man’s strengths. So what really happened with you two way back when? I’ve been squeezing every town gossip I can think of, and no one remembers.”

  “Really?” That surprised Willow. Was it possible she’d exaggerated the events of that summer in her mind? She’d been sure everyone was staring and pointing at her, laughing behind her back about the fool she’d made of herself over Cal and the mess she’d made of her life.

  “So give,” Anne said. “I’m a firm believer that there is no history, no matter how tragic, that can’t be dealt with and overcome. Wade and I have something really sad in our history. We had a miscarriage.”

  “Oh, Anne, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that. You certainly seem happy now. And you have Olivia.”

  “We are happy. But it took some effort to get there. Being pregnant the first time really threw my whole life off track. And then I didn’t tell Wade, and then he was mad when he found out—it was terrible. But we worked it through.”

  Now that Anne had confided in her, Willow felt compelled to make a similar confession. So she told the whole, icky story. Only something odd happened. Right in the middle of it, she started laughing. “My father’s face…turned so red I thought…he was going to have a stroke,” she said between gasps. “And you’ve never seen two people get dressed so fast.”

  “And I bet Cal never made faster tracks for the door, either.”

  “No, actually, he didn’t,” Willow said, only now recalling this part. “He stayed and took it. He even tried to take all the blame. But, of course, his strategy didn’t work.”

  Anne handed Willow a paper towel to wipe away her tears of laughter, then got one for herself. “Sounds like he was very noble.”

  “But first he was very horny.”

  That started the two women into peals of renewed laughter.

  “So, that’s it?” Anne asked when she could talk. “That’s the big, awful secret of your past that’s kept you apart all these years?”

  “Well, there was a little more to it than that. Cal and I…we conduct our lives differently. There’s just no real hope for a future there.”

  Anne looked at her skeptically. “Having different outlooks doesn’t make for a bad relationship. Look at Wade’s brother Jon and his wife, Sherry. They’re not just two peas from different pods, they’re completely different vegetables.”

  Willow couldn’t argue there. Jonathan was quiet, serious, conservative, maybe a little shy. Sherry was outgoing, flamboyant, brash and outspoken. Yet they were both devoted to their kids and each other, and they seemed happy.

  “It’s not a good time for me to get entangled with someone. I have a lot on my plate.”

  “A good man can be a help, rather than a hindrance, when life gets tough.”

  “Anne, please…”

  “Okay, okay, ’nuff said. But I do want to warn you. He’s going to be here the rest of the week. Things are slow at the ranch, so Jon’s lending Cal to us to saddle-break some of our yearlings. He’ll be letting some of the campers help him. And he’ll be taking his meals here, too.”

  Oh, great. Just what she needed, a six-foot distraction. Willow struggled to hide her reaction. “What’s one more mouth to feed?”

  “You don’t mind? Really?”

  “I imagine he’ll stay out of my way.”

  WILLOW IMAGINED wrong. Cal managed to be underfoot every time she turned around. He showed up before meals to help in the kitchen. He helped her clean up the dishes. He hung out around the campfire at night and told amusing stories to the kids, who seemed fascinated by small-town life.

  On the third night, as he helped her pack up the leftovers, she couldn’t help commenting. “Aren’t there some horses somewhere that need yo
ur attention? You spend more time up at the house with me than you do down at the barn.”

  “I can’t work with the horses all the time,” he said. “I have to give them some down time, so they won’t get sick of me. So they’ll look forward to when I return.”

  She couldn’t help smiling as he held the back door open for her. “You have the damnedest ideas about horse training. I always thought breaking horses was about wrestling them into a saddle, then letting them buck you off a few times until they get used to it.”

  “That’s one way to do it. You show ’em who’s boss, make ’em behave ’cause they’re afraid of you. You might succeed in riding the horse, but you’ll never be able to trust him.”

  Willow took out the plastic wrap for the leftover lettuce, tomato and onion. “So that’s not how you do it.”

  “No. I make friends with them, so they trust me and want to please me. It takes a few days, but the first time I get on their backs, they don’t buck. They just look surprised.”

  Willow laughed, picturing the scene. “Here, make yourself useful. Seal up those chip bags and put them in the pantry.”

  “It’s good to hear you laugh.”

  She used to laugh a lot, when she and Cal were dating. When had she become so serious?

  “Come out for a ride with me,” he said impulsively. “The moon’s almost full.”

  “I have work to do here.”

  “I’ll help you.” He put away the hamburger and hot dog buns while she wiped off the counters.

  “Waffles and fresh fruit are on tomorrow’s menu. I have a lot of prep work to do.”

  “I’ll help you,” he repeated.

  “Cal, if I go for a moonlight ride with you, I will do things I regret.”

  “Really?” he asked hopefully.

  She shook her head. How had the man gotten past her defenses? She’d put up brick walls against Cal Chandler years ago, periodically fortifying them by stockpiling evidence against him, keeping her memories of his transgressions alive. But somehow he’d wriggled through a chink in that wall.

  Maybe it hadn’t even happened tonight. Maybe it had happened three days ago when she’d finally been able to laugh about her unpleasant deflowering. Or earlier, when she’d watched Cal with Danny.