“Long trip?” Ryder settled Kat on his hip and walked into the kitchen. The two-year-old smiled because his cheek brushed hers and he imagined it was rough.
“The longest.” A year. That’s what Ryder figured. His brother had been on a journey that had taken the last year of his life, and brought him back to Dawson.
“You girls hungry?”
“We ate an hour ago, just outside of Tulsa,” Wyatt said. “I think they’re probably ready to get down and play for a while. Maybe take a nap.”
Ryder glanced at the little girl holding tight to his neck as he filled the coffeepot with water. “You want down, Chick?”
She shook her head and giggled.
“Want cookies?” he asked. When she nodded, he glanced at Molly. “You want cookies?”
She shook her head. She had big eyes that looked like the faucet was about to get turned on. She’d be okay, though. Kids had a way of bouncing back. Or at least that’s what he thought. He didn’t have a lot of experience.
“They don’t need cookies this early,” Wyatt interjected.
Older, wiser, Wyatt. Ryder shook his head, because he’d never wanted to grow up like Wyatt. He’d never wanted to be that mature.
“Well, I don’t have much else around here.” Ryder looked in the fridge. “Spoiled milk and pudding. I think the lunch meat went bad two days ago. It didn’t taste real good on that last sandwich.”
“Did it make you sick?” Molly whispered, arms still around Wyatt’s neck in what looked like a death grip. He hadn’t been around a lot of kids, but she was the timid kind. That was fine, he was a little afraid of her, too.
He’d had enough experience to know that kids could be loud and destroy much if left to their own devices.
“Nah, I don’t get sick.” He bounced Kat a little and she laughed.
“I guess I’ll have to go to the store.” Wyatt sat down at the dining room table.
“No, I’ll get ready and go.” Anything to get out of the house, away from this. He flipped on the dining room light. “Make a list and I’ll drive into Grove. When I get home, we can run down to the Mad Cow before the church crowd gets there.”
“I need to have the girls back in church. They like going.”
“Yeah, kids do.” They liked the crafts, the stories. He got that. He had liked it, too. “I need to feed the horses and then I’ll get cleaned up and run to the store.”
He brushed a hand through his hair and for the first time, Wyatt smiled. “Yeah, you might want to get a haircut.”
“Probably.” He slid his feet into boots and finished buttoning his shirt. “I guess just help yourself to anything you can find. The coffee’s ready.”
A brother and two kids, living in his house. Now that just about beat all. It was really going to put a kink in his life.
But then, hadn’t Andie already done that? No, not Andie, not really.
When he walked out the back door, his dog, Bear, was waiting for him.
“Bear, this is not our life.” But it was. He could look around, at the ranch his dad had built. He could smell rain in the air and hear geese on a nearby pond.
It was his life. But something had shaken it all up, leaving it nearly unrecognizable. Like a snow globe, shaken by some unseen hand. He looked up, because it was Sunday and a good day for thinking about God, about faith. He didn’t go to church, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten faith.
So now he had questions. How did he do this? His brother was home—with two kids, no less. His best friend was now his one-night stand. He had more guilt rolling around in his stomach than a bottle of antacid could ever cure.
Did this have something to do with his crazy prayers before he got on the back of a bull a month or so earlier. Did the words God help me count as a prayer? Or maybe it was payback for the bad things he’d done in his life?
Whatever had happened, he had to fix it—because he didn’t like having his life turned upside down. But first he had to go to town and get groceries, something to feed two little girls.
Church had ended ten minutes ago and Andie had seen Ryder’s truck driving past on his way to the farm. But they’d been stalled by people wanting to talk with she and her grandmother. Caroline had managed to smile and hang at the periphery of the crowds.
“We need to check on Ryder and Wyatt.” Etta started her old Caddy, smiling with a certain pride that Andie recognized. Her granny loved that car. She’d loved it for more than twenty years, refusing to part with it for something new.
What could be more dependable, Etta always said, than a car that she’d taken care of since the day she drove it off the lot?
Dependable wasn’t a word Andie really wanted to dwell on, not at that moment. Not when her grandmother was talking about Ryder.
“I think Ryder and Wyatt are able to take care of themselves.” After her mother climbed into the front seat beside Etta, Andie slid into the back and buckled her seat belt. Etta eased through the church parking lot.
It hadn’t been such a bad first Sunday back in church. The members of Dawson Community Church were friends, neighbors and sometimes a distant relative. They all knew her. Most of them knew that she’d gone on strike from church when Ryder stopped going. Because they’d been best friends, and a girl had to do something when her best friend cried angry tears over what his father had done, and over a moment in church that changed their lives. A girl had to take a stand when her best friend threw rocks into the creek with a fury she couldn’t understand because life had never been that cruel to her.
Her strike had been more imaginary than real. Most of the time Etta managed to drag her along. But Andie had let her feelings be known. At ten she’d been pretty outspoken.
“How long have you known Ryder and Wyatt?” Caroline asked, and Andie wanted to tell her that she should know that. A mother should know the answer to that question.
“Forever.” Andie leaned back in the seat and looked out the window, remembering being a kid in this very car, this very backseat. Her dad had driven and Etta had sat in the passenger side. The car had been new then. She’d been more innocent.
She’d heard them whispering about what Ryder’s dad had done. She’d been too young to really get it. When she got home from church that day she’d run down the road and Ryder had met her in the field.
“Forever?” Caroline asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
“We’ve known each other since Ryder was five, and I was three. That’s when they moved to Dawson. I guess about the time you left.”
Silence hung over the car, crackling with tension and recrimination. Okay, maybe she’d gone too far. Andie sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Etta cleared her throat and turned the old radio on low. “We’ll stop by the Mad Cow and get takeout chicken. Knowing Ryder, he doesn’t have a thing in that house for Wyatt and the girls to eat.”
“What happened to Wyatt’s wife?” Caroline asked.
Stop asking questions. Andie closed her eyes and leaned back into the leather seat. She wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t say something that would hurt. She was working on forgiving. God had to know that wasn’t easy. Shouldn’t God cut her a little slack?
Etta answered Caroline’s question. “She committed suicide last year. Postpartum depression.”
It still hurt. Andie hadn’t really known Wendy, but it hurt, because it was about Ryder, Wyatt and two little girls.
“I’m so sorry.” Caroline glanced out the window. “It isn’t easy to deal with depression.”
Clues to who her mother was. In a sense, Andie thought these might also be clues to who she was. She waited, wanting her mother to say more. She didn’t. Etta didn’t push. Instead she turned the Caddy into the parking lot of the Mad Cow. And Ryder was already there. He was getting out of his truck and a little girl with dark hair was clinging to his neck. He looked like a guy wearing new boots. Not too comfortable in the shoes he’d been forced to wear.
He saw them and he stopped. Etta parked
next to his truck.
As they got out, Wyatt came around the side of the truck. The older of the two girls was in his arms. She didn’t smile the way the other child smiled.
“We didn’t beat the church crowd.” Ryder tossed the observation to Wyatt but he smiled as he said it.
“No, you didn’t, but you can eat lunch with us.” Etta slipped an arm around Wyatt, even as she addressed the response at Ryder. “And you’ll behave yourself, Ryder Johnson.”
“I always do.” He winked at the little girl in his arms and she giggled. And she wasn’t even old enough to know what that wink could do to a girl, how it could make her feel like her toes were melting in her high heels.
Andie wished she didn’t know what that wink could do to a girl. Or a woman. She didn’t want to care that he looked cuter than ever with a two-year-old in his arms. He looked like someone who should have kids.
But he didn’t want kids. He had never wanted children of his own. He said the only thing his childhood had prepared him for was being single and no one to mess up but himself.
“You look nice.” He stepped closer, switching his niece to the opposite arm as he leaned close to Andie. “You smell good, too.”
Andie smiled, because every answer seemed wrong. Sarcasm, anger, the words “Is this the first time you’ve noticed how I look?” and so on.
She didn’t feel like fighting with him. She felt like going home to a cup of ginger tea and a good romance novel. She felt like hitching the trailer back to her truck and hitting the road with Dusty, because she could always count on her horse and the next rodeo to cheer her up. She could head down to Texas.
“You look a little pale.” Caroline stood next to her, another problem that Andie didn’t want to deal with. She felt like a tiny ant and people were shoveling stuff over the top of her, without caring that she was getting buried beneath it all.
“I’m fine.”
“You really don’t look so hot,” Ryder added.
“You just said I look nice. Which is it, Ryder?”
“Nice, in a pale, illusive, gonna-kick-somebody-to-the-curb sort of way.” He teased in the way that normally worked on her bad moods. Ryder knew how to drag her out of the pits.
But not today.
Today she wanted to be alone, to figure out the next phase of her life. And she didn’t want to think about how Ryder would have to be a part of that future.
Or how he was going to feel about it.
Chapter Three
“Why aren’t you eating?” Ryder had tried to ignore Andie, the same way she’d obviously been ignoring him. She had talked to Wyatt, to the girls, even to her mother.
She was ignoring him the same way she was ignoring the chicken-fried steak on her dinner plate. And her mother was right. She did look pale.
“I’m eating.” She smiled and cut a bite of the gravy-covered steak. “See.”
She ate the bite, swallowing in a way that looked painful.
“Are you sick?”
She looked up to the heavens and shook her head. “No, I’m not sick.”
“You act sick.” He grinned a little, because he just knew he had to say what was on his mind. He couldn’t stop himself. “You look like something the cat yacked up.”
His nieces laughed. Even Molly. At least they appreciated his humor. He sat back in his chair, his hands behind his head, smiling at Andie. Kat giggled like she knew exactly what her Uncle Ryder had said. He hadn’t expected to really like a two-year-old this much, but she already had him wrapped around her little finger.
He didn’t think Andie was as thrilled with him. As a matter of fact she glared at him as if he was about her least favorite person on the planet. And with her mother, Caroline, sitting at the same table, he was pretty shocked that he’d be Andie’s least favorite person.
“That’s pleasant, Ryder. I’m sick of you asking me what’s wrong. You haven’t seen me in two months. Do you have something else you’d like to say to me?”
“Right here, right now?” That made his hands a little sweaty, especially when everyone at the table stared, including his nieces. Kat, who sat closest to him, looked a little worried. “No, I guess not. Well, other than wanting to know if you’d like to go the arena with me tonight. I could use a flank man.”
“I’m not a man.”
“Good point,” Wyatt mumbled.
Ryder shot his brother a look. “Keep out of this.”
Kat, two and innocent, clapped her hands and laughed.
A chair scooted on the linoleum floor. Ryder flicked his attention back to Andie. She was standing up, looking a little green and wobbly. Maybe it was the dress, or the three-inch heels. He stood, thinking he might have to catch her.
“What’s wrong?” Etta started to stand up.
“I’m going outside. I need fresh air.”
“I’ll go with you.” Ryder grabbed his hat off the back of the chair and moved fast, because she was practically running for the door.
She didn’t go far, just to the edge of the building. He stood behind her as she leaned, gasping deep breaths of air.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Stop.” She kept her face turned, resting her forehead against the old concrete block building. “I must have caught something from Joy’s kids when I stopped in Kansas. One of them was sick.”
“I could take you home,” he offered quietly, because he had a feeling she didn’t need more questions at the moment.
“I’m fine now. I would just hate to make the girls sick. They don’t need that.” She turned, smiling, but perspiration beaded along her forehead and under her eyes. She was still pale.
“No,” he agreed, “the girls don’t need to get sick. I don’t think I could handle that.”
“They’re just little girls.”
“Yeah, and I’m not anyone’s dad. That’s Wyatt’s job. He’s always been more cut out for the husband and father gig.”
And saying the words made him feel hollow on the inside, because he remembered standing next to Wyatt at his wife’s funeral. He remembered what it felt like to stand next to a man whose heart was breaking.
Ryder hadn’t ever experienced heartbreak and he didn’t plan on it. He enjoyed his single life, without strings, attachments or complications.
“You’re good with the girls,” Andie insisted, his friend again, for the moment. “Just don’t slip into your old ways, not while they’re living with you.”
“Right.” He slid his hand down her back. “I’ll be good. So, are you okay?”
“I’m good. I’m going back inside.” She took a step past him, but he caught her hand and held her next to him.
“Andie, I don’t want to lose my best friend. I’m sorry for that night. I’m sorry that I didn’t walk away…before. And I’m sorry I walked away afterward.”
She didn’t look at him. He looked down, at the ground she was staring at—at dandelions peeking up through the gravel and a few pieces of broken glass. He touched her cheek and ran his finger down to her chin, lifting her face so she had to look at him.
“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered. “I just don’t know how to go back. We’ve always kept the line between us, Ryder. This is why.”
“We don’t have to stop being friends,” he insisted, hoping he didn’t sound like a kid.
“No, we don’t. But you have to accept that things have changed.”
“Okay, things have changed.” More than things. She had changed. He could see it in her eyes in the way she smiled as she turned and walked away, back into the Mad Cow.
A crazy thought, that he had changed, too. He brushed it off and followed her into the diner. He hadn’t changed at all. He still wanted the same things he’d always wanted. Some things weren’t meant to be domesticated, like raccoons, foxes…and him.
When they got home, Andie changed into jeans and a T-shirt and headed for the barn. She was brushing Babe, her old mare, when Etta walked through the double doors at the end of t
he building.
“What’s going on with you?” Etta, arm’s crossed, stood with the sun to her back, her face in shadows.
The barn cat wandered in and Etta stepped away from the feline.
“There’s nothing wrong.” Andie brushed the horse’s rump and the bay mare twitched her dark tail and stomped a fly away from her leg. “Okay, something is wrong. Caroline is here. I don’t know what she wants from me. I don’t know why she expects to walk into my life and have me happy to be graced with her presence.”
“She doesn’t expect that.”
Andie stopped brushing and turned. “So now you’re on her side.”
“Don’t sound like a five-year-old. I’m not on her side. I’m on your side. I want you to forgive her. I want you to have her in your life. I have to forgive her, too. She broke my son’s heart. She broke your heart.”
Andie shook off the anger. Her heart hadn’t been broken, not by Caroline or anyone else.
“I’m fine.” She brushed Babe’s neck and the mare leaned toward her, her eyes closing slightly.
“You’re not fine. And this isn’t about Caroline, it’s about you and Ryder. What happened?”
“Nothing. Or at least nothing a little time won’t take care of.”
Etta walked closer. “I guess it’s too late for the talk that we should have had fifteen years ago,” she said with a sigh.
Andie swallowed and nodded. And the words freed the tears that had been hovering. “Too late.”
“It’s okay.” Etta stepped closer, her arm going around Andie’s waist.
“No, it isn’t. I messed up. I really messed up. This is something I can’t take back.”
“So you went to church?”
“Not just because of this. I went because I had to go. As much as I’ve always claimed I was strong, every time I was at the end of my rope, it was God that I turned to. I’ve always prayed. And that Sunday morning, I wanted to be in church.”
“Andie, did you use…”
Andie’s face flamed and she shook her head.
“Do you think you might be…”
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