Six Weeks to Catch a Cowboy

by Brenda Harlen

  Spencer chuckled softly, then touched his lips to hers in a kiss that was unexpectedly tender. “Are you okay?”

  “Mmm,” she agreed, because more words were too much of an effort in her current state of complete and total relaxation.

  “The floor’s kind of hard, and I wasn’t very gentle.”

  “I’m okay,” she assured him. Truthfully, she felt better than okay, but she didn’t figure his ego needed the boost of knowing how thoroughly and completely he’d rocked her world—especially since he’d been there every step of the way.

  “Wanna do it again?” he asked.

  The hopeful tone made her smile.

  Again and again.

  But she reminded herself to tread carefully. To remember that this wasn’t a relationship and she shouldn’t start envisioning happy-ever-after just because she’d experienced mind-blowing sex.

  “It sounds like the rain’s stopped,” she noted. “Don’t you think we should head back?”

  Without disturbing her prone position, he reached his hand up to check the jeans hanging over the back of the chair by the fire. “Our clothes are still wet.”

  “Oh, well, in that case...”

  He gave her that naughty smile that made the muscles in her thighs quiver.

  A panty-melting smile, Jillian had called it.

  Kenzie decided her coworker didn’t know the half of it. But her panties had been discarded a long time ago, and she decided to take advantage of that fact.

  * * *

  Kenzie woke up early, snug and warm in Spencer’s arms, in his bed.

  She never would have guessed that he was a cuddler. Oh sure, most guys talked the talk and would willingly hold a girl for a few minutes after sex, but then they were all about wanting their space. And that was okay, because she’d never thought she was a cuddler, either.

  And yet, she’d spent the entire night in Spencer’s embrace.

  Fun and games, she reminded herself. And only for the three weeks that remained of his stay in Haven.

  No cuddling required or even desired.

  With that thought in mind, she carefully disengaged herself from his hold and tiptoed to the bathroom.

  Her body ached in places she hadn’t even known existed. She might have been able to explain away some of the twinges as a consequence of the horseback ride, but she knew that many others were the sweet aches that resulted from a much more intimate form of exercise.

  She had absolutely no regrets about anything that had happened between them, but now it was time to go back to her own place. Her own life. Reality.

  It was only when she was dressed and ready to slip out the door that she remembered Spencer had picked her up on the way to Crooked Creek yesterday. Without her own transportation, she had two choices: doing a three-mile walk of shame or waking Spencer and asking him for a ride.

  She decided to wake him. If she snuck out, he might think that she couldn’t face him. But if she greeted him with an easy smile on her face, maybe she could assure him that last night hadn’t meant anything more than the fun and games she’d promised both of them.

  * * *

  Of course, Spencer didn’t seem to be in any hurry to take her home. He insisted on making breakfast first, to replenish all the calories they’d burned off the night before. While they fueled up with coffee, eggs and toast, Kenzie was surprised at how easy he made the morning after seem—no doubt because he had a lot of experience with mornings after. But she was still glad she hadn’t snuck out.

  Then somehow, while they were tidying up the kitchen, he presented his case in favor of morning sex, arguing that it was different than any other kind of sex. Kenzie didn’t try to hide her skepticism, especially when he offered to give her a demonstration. It was an obvious ploy to get her back into his bed and she was smarter than that.

  Then he kissed her, and she discovered that the knowledge in her brain was no match for the desires of her body. Ten minutes later, she was naked again, enjoying his patient and thorough demonstration. After that, there was a discussion about shower sex, followed by another demonstration.

  “Tell me about your engagement,” he suggested, when they were finally on their way to her apartment.

  “Really?” she said skeptically. “You want to know about my relationship with Dale?”

  He shrugged. “I’m curious about why you agreed to marry him—and why you changed your mind.”

  “How do you know he didn’t end the engagement?”

  “Did he?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “So what happened?”

  “My mom and I went to look at bridal gowns and I realized that I was more excited about planning a wedding than the marriage that would come after.”

  “You don’t want to get married?”

  “I do want to get married,” she confided. “But only if it’s for the right reasons—and saying yes just to avoid hurting the feelings of the guy who asked didn’t seem like the right reason.”

  “You weren’t in love with Dale,” he realized.

  “I wanted to be, but—” She shook her head. “No, I wasn’t in love with Dale.”

  “Then you’re not still nursing a broken heart?”

  “Definitely not.” She turned her head to look at him. “How about you?”

  “I can assure you that Dale didn’t break my heart, either.”

  She smiled at that, but she wasn’t willing to let him off the hook so easily. “Have you ever been in love?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t stayed in one place long enough to get attached to any one person.”

  “It doesn’t take long to fall in love with the right person,” she told him, as he pulled into the parking lot behind her building.

  “How would you know?” he challenged.

  “Touché,” she murmured, unbuckling her seatbelt.

  Of course, Spencer insisted on seeing her up to her apartment. Then kissing her goodbye. And she’d barely closed the door behind him when a FaceTime request came through.

  “Where were you yesterday?” Brielle asked, after they’d exchanged the usual pleasantries.

  “Spencer invited me to go riding at Crooked Creek Ranch,” she admitted.

  Her friend sighed wistfully. “One of the things I miss most living in New York.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think Domino misses you, too,” Kenzie told her.

  “I’m glad you got to spend some time with him.”

  “And he’s got a couple of new friends to keep him company. Copper Penny, a former barrel racer, and Daisy, a pony your grandfather brought in for Dani’s riding lessons.”

  “So how was the ride?” Brie asked.

  “Great,” she said. “Until we got caught in a storm and had to take shelter in the hunting cabin.”

  “That must have been a scary experience for Dani.”

  “Oh. Well, actually, she wasn’t with us,” Kenzie admitted.

  Her friend was silent for a beat before asking, “It was just you and Spencer?”

  “Uh-huh.” She kept her tone casual and easy.

  Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

  Unfortunately, Brie knew her better than that. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

  And because Kenzie didn’t want to hold anything back from her best friend, she confided, “I couldn’t FaceTime when you called because I was mostly naked.”

  “You were at the hunting cabin—mostly naked—with my brother?”

  “It was a torrential downpour and our clothes were soaked, so we were drying them by the fire,” she explained meekly.

  “This would be a good time to tell me that nothing happened, because my thoughts are moving in a very different direction.”

  “If that direction is naked bodies tangled together in front of t
he fire...it wouldn’t be wrong,” she confided.

  “You had sex with my brother?”

  Kenzie nodded. “And it was the most amaz—”

  “No!” Brielle said. “There are some things that even a best friend doesn’t need to know, especially when those things involve the best friend’s brother.”

  “Sorry,” Kenzie said, “but that’s why I needed to tell you. I need some advice.”

  “Well, if you’d asked me before yesterday, my advice would have been to not sleep with my brother,” Brie told her.

  “And today?”

  Her friend sighed. “Today, I guess all I can say is don’t give him your heart—unless that warning’s already too late, too.”

  “It’s not,” she promised.

  Thankfully, Brielle seemed willing to believe her, and they chatted for a while longer about other things.

  But when the call finally ended, Kenzie wondered if she’d been honest with her friend—or if she was lying even to herself.

  When Spencer came back to Haven, she’d been certain that her teenage crush was a thing of the past. Maybe, when she first saw him, there had been a flutter of something, but she’d disregarded that something as purely physical attraction. She hadn’t worried about her heart, because how could she have real feelings for a man she didn’t even know anymore?

  But spending time with Spencer and Dani had given her the opportunity to know him, and to realize that the man who’d returned bore little resemblance to the cocky cowboy who’d left Haven to find fame and fortune seven years earlier.

  As a result, what she felt now was so much deeper and more real than anything she’d ever felt before. And she realized that any promises she’d made to herself to hold back her heart had already been broken. She’d fallen for his little girl—and was well on her way toward tumbling head over heels for Spencer again, too.

  * * *

  Brielle wasn’t the only person to express concern when she learned that Kenzie had spent the previous day at Crooked Creek Ranch with Spencer.

  “I warned you not to get involved with him again,” her mother said grimly, as she tore the lettuce for a salad later Sunday afternoon.

  “You warned me about every boy or man I ever showed any interest in,” Kenzie pointed out.

  “With good reason,” Cheryl told her. “And Spencer already has one child born out of wedlock.”

  She bit her tongue, because she knew that coming to Spencer’s defense would only convince her mother that she was halfway in love with him again. And maybe she was, and maybe it was a mistake, but she didn’t need a lecture right now.

  “He probably didn’t even think about possible repercussions from his actions,” Cheryl continued. “And didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”

  Kenzie shook her head, unable to bite her tongue a minute longer. “You don’t know anything about Spencer’s relationship with Dani’s mom.”

  “It’s an all-too common story,” Cheryl insisted bitterly. “A handsome cowboy sweet-talks a lonely girl into his bed and then disappears when he can’t handle the consequences.”

  The bitterness fairly dripped from her words, leading Kenzie to suspect that her mother’s deep resentment toward Spencer might be about more than his relationship with Kenzie. In fact, it might not be about Spencer at all.

  Growing up without a father, Kenzie had been full of questions that, for the most part, remained unanswered. But she was twenty-three years old now, and she figured she was entitled to the truth.

  “Is that what happened to you?” she asked. “Was my father a rodeo cowboy?”

  Her mother seemed startled by the question—or maybe she was just surprised that her daughter had dared to ask it. Over the years, Kenzie had mostly given up asking the questions her mother refused to answer. But this time, she didn’t back down.

  “Was my father a rodeo cowboy?” she asked again.

  Cheryl pressed her lips together in a tight line. “You never had a father.”

  She nodded, acknowledging that it was true. But at the same time, she needed to know what had happened between her parents, why her father had left before she was even born. Why he’d never wanted her.

  “You’re right,” she said. “But I need to know why.”

  Her mother shook her head. “I can’t talk to you about this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it hurts too much,” Cheryl admitted, her voice quivering.

  With anger? With sadness? How could Kenzie know when her mother always shut down her emotions? Especially when it came to anything about her father.

  And she was tired of the secrecy and emptiness inside her. “Can’t you see how much the not knowing hurts me?” she implored.

  Cheryl lifted her chin. “You know everything you need to know.”

  Kenzie disagreed—but she was tired of fighting for answers she obviously wasn’t going to get.

  “You know what hurts the most?” she asked her mother. “Remembering all the times over the years when you insisted that I could come to you, talk to you, about anything. Because every time I try to talk to you about this, you shut me down.”

  So instead of saying anything else, she walked out the door.

  * * *

  “Ke’zie! Ke’zie!”

  Dani abandoned the Pocket Ponies she was playing with and ran over as soon as Spencer opened the door, wrapping her arms around Kenzie’s legs and squeezing tight. He might have been envious of the enthusiastic greeting, but she’d been just as excited to see him when Linda dropped her off a few hours earlier.

  “We’re gonna have ice cweam,” Dani told her. “You wanna have ice cweam with us?”

  “I’d love some ice cream,” Kenzie told her.

  “With choc’ate sauce an’ spwinkles?”

  “Of course,” she agreed.

  “I didn’t think I was going to see you today,” Spencer remarked. And then, as if to remind her that she’d woken up in his bed that morning, he smiled and said, “Or should I say ‘again today’?”

  “I didn’t think so, either,” she said. “And I wasn’t planning on it, but I had an argument with Cheryl and...somehow I found myself here.”

  He appreciated that she referred to her mother by her given name within earshot of Dani, having learned that any mention of “mom” or even “mother” could send his daughter into tears.

  Spencer’s brows lifted in silent question.

  Kenzie just shook her head. “Long story.”

  “You look like you could maybe use a glass of wine instead of ice cream,” he noted.

  “Can I have a glass of wine with my ice cream?”

  He rubbed her shoulders. “You can have whatever you want.”

  So she had wine and ice cream, but she suspected it was the comfort of being with Spencer and Dani that took most of the weight of the anger and frustration from her shoulders.

  While Spencer was giving Dani her bath, Kenzie offered to unpack the boxes that Linda had brought over when she dropped off her granddaughter.

  “Find anything interesting?” Spencer asked, after he deposited his pajama-clad daughter into her bed and tucked the covers around her.

  “Actually, yes,” Kenzie said. “Along with a lot of clothes that Dani probably outgrew a year ago, there was a box of keepsakes. Her ID bracelet from the hospital, a copy of her birth certificate, a lock of hair from her first haircut. And these.”

  “These” were envelopes—at least a dozen of them. They were bound together by a fat rubber band and addressed, in a distinctly feminine script, to:

  Spencer Channing

  c/o Crooked Creek Ranch

  Haven, NV

  “Maybe one of us will get some answers today,” she said.

  It was the only hint Kenzie had given him about the nature of her fight with
her mother, and though he hoped she would open up and talk to him about it, he was admittedly distracted by the letters she’d given to him.

  He thumbed through the stack of envelopes—eighteen of them, all addressed the same way but none ever sent. None even stamped.

  The answers he’d been seeking might be in the pages. And if he didn’t like the answers—well, at least he would know.

  “Sto-wee, Daddy,” Dani said impatiently.

  Since the day they’d gone shopping, she’d started calling him “Daddy” much more easily and frequently—proof that she’d finally accepted his role in her life—and he never got tired of hearing it.

  But Kenzie came to his rescue now, plucking Dani’s favorite book from the shelf and asking, “Would it be okay if I read your story tonight?”

  Dani’s head bobbed up and down. “Ke’zie wead.”

  “Thanks.” He brushed a light kiss on Kenzie’s lips, then another on Dani’s forehead, and carried the letters out to the living room.

  He started with the one of top, confident it was the first one as the date corresponded with Dani’s birthday.

  Dear Spencer,

  You’re probably wondering why I’m reaching out to you now. It’s been eight months since I last saw you and so much has changed in my life since we decided to go our separate ways. Even though I’m writing this letter to tell you some things you need to know, I can’t promise that I’ll actually find the courage to mail it. I hope I will. I hope I can be strong enough to tell you about our beautiful, perfect daughter who was born only a few hours ago.

  I named her Daniel, after my dad, but I’m going to call her Dani...

  He could almost hear Emily’s voice as he read the words she’d written detailing the birth of their child. The second letter was dated a month later, the third another month after that and so on, with a new letter written each month throughout the first year of Dani’s life. She recounted the highlights and milestones of their child’s growth and development, her love for Dani evident in every word. But while they were interesting to read, he didn’t get a sense of why she’d kept their daughter’s existence a secret from him for so long.

  By the time he opened the last envelope, he was torn between gratitude for the memories she’d shared with him and frustration that so many questions remained unanswered. When he unfolded the final pages, he was startled to note the date on the last letter, only a couple of days before Emily was killed.