Best of Cowboys Bundle

by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Barbara White Daille, Judy Christenberry, Christine Wenger, Shirley Rogers, Crystal Green, Nina Bruhns, Candance Schuler, Carole Mortimer

  Overcome, she lost strength, extracting her grip from his, hiding the threat of tears by averting her face.

  “And that’s it?” she said. Why did her voice have to quaver? Couldn’t she pull herself together? She’d done it so often in the past it shouldn’t be a problem.

  “There’s more. A lot more.”

  She heard the dried leaves stir as he moved closer.

  He turned her to meet him, his eyes like the burned remains of a destroyed world, his hands gripping her shoulders a little too tightly.

  “My boys…” He stopped. Started again. “They’re dead.”

  She flinched. A sucker punch.

  “God, Jack. God. I’m so sorry.”

  How could he have lived through it?

  Clearly, he’d hardened himself. All that was left of his emotion was a sheen of moisture dampening the ashes in his gaze.

  “It happened years ago.”

  “But it still hurts like yesterday.” She tilted her head, wanting to take all that pain away from him because she knew she could handle it herself, had spent years handling the loss of children. Sadness was a sharp welt in the back of her throat, making words difficult but necessary. “Does Rip know?”

  “No one does. Not around these parts.” He looked her in the eye. “No one but you.”

  His tone had gone a little dead, as if numbing himself were the only way he’d endure.

  Just one brief explosion of anguish, just one glimpse into the real Jack, and now she was cut off from him?

  He continued, hands slipping down to her upper arms. “These last few days, I’ve been going back and forth on whether to tell you or not, but…Hell, I can talk to you real easy, Felicia. You listen like you care.”

  “I do.”

  A tear slid down her cheek and Jack pressed a hand over it, cradling her face. She rubbed against his coarse skin, soothed.

  If only he knew how much she cared.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she whispered.

  He exhaled, seemingly allowing every day of grief to escape. “Jenna went to the theater with a friend that night, some kind of musical thing with people running around in rags and moaning about their lives. That wasn’t for me, so I stayed home with the boys. An all-guy sports-watching night. My mind wasn’t on the games, though. I kept thinking about how much I’d get for a yearling one of my prize stallions had sired.”

  “You bred horses.” She imagined another Jack in another time. A family man with a wife and two boys who ate dinner in a wallpapered room and went to bed after kissing the kids good-night.

  Picturing him living with another woman made Felicia cringe, but made her sort of happy, too, because he’d been normal. So much less tortured.

  He was still talking, voice flat. “The boys were still real young. Three and five, rascals, a real handful.”

  A heart-wrenching smile lit over his face and, in that moment, Felicia knew that this man did love children, that he’d loved his own to the point where it had made him the walking dead.

  She could fall for a man with that sort of power to love, couldn’t she? Could give him the will to live again, to want more children.

  Couldn’t she?

  His hands skimmed lower over her arms until he took her hands in his, grasp firm and desperate, touch revealing so much more than his monotone speech did.

  “After the game, the kids talked me into putting some frozen fries into the oven and staying up past their bedtime to watch their favorite DVD.”

  His hands were growing damp.

  “We ate,” he said, “and I got sleepy during the movie. I’d seen it a thousand times. Toy Story. So I wandered off to the bedroom, thinking I’d lay back and rest my eyes while going over our yearly ranch profits in my head. The boys ended up falling asleep in front of the TV.” He paused, a muscle flexing in his jaw, his grip tightening on her hands. “And I didn’t remember I’d left that oven on.”

  She couldn’t talk, didn’t want to. Dying by fire was a horror she couldn’t fathom, a blazing trap that turned her stomach in helpless nausea.

  He rushed on, the story having gone too far to stop now. “The alarms didn’t go off, and the boys were right near the kitchen…. God, I couldn’t even get to them, even though I tried and tried. Could only hear them yelling for me—”

  Eyes squeezed closed, Jack turned away from her, disconnecting their hands.

  He tried to shut out the images of Leroy and Lucas’s final moments, but guilt clobbered him, forcing him to invent the scenario anyway. It was all a part of the revolving nightmare, his never-ending penance.

  “It was an accident, Jack.”

  Felicia’s voice was like a lifeline, curling into the smoke of his misery to save him.

  But he didn’t want the reprieve. He didn’t deserve it. Remorse was so much a part of his life that turning his back on it didn’t seem possible…or even justifiable.

  “Accident,” he said, the self-hatred as fresh as the water that kept spilling down the creek bed, never stopping to rest or mist away. “I could have changed the damned alarm batteries. I could have woken up earlier. I could have remembered.”

  “Could have.”

  He felt her fingers on his back and he eased up, wanting so badly to melt under her touch. Wanting to forgive himself just as easily as she would no doubt forgive him.

  “I’d give anything to have a life full of could-haves,” she said, her voice so soft, so sad in his ear.

  Eyes burning with tears that just wouldn’t come, he turned to her, saw that she was crying…for him?

  Or was there more to it?

  At any rate, he didn’t deserve her pity. “I’d give my soul for that kind of life, too. But that’s not how it works, is it? Because instead of second chances, I’ve got an ex-wife who left me because she said I’d become a stranger. She told me it wasn’t my fault. But I’d catch her watching me with something behind her eyes—blame, I eventually found out. One day, when she couldn’t take our quiet spells anymore, she let me have it. Said she was wrong for feeling this way, but that it was my fault. Said that the boys would’ve woken up in time if they’d heard an alarm, or everything would have been fine if I’d stayed awake.” Jackson nodded. Bitter. So damned bitter. “I couldn’t help but agree with her. And that’s no way to play out a marriage.”

  He risked a glance at Felicia, wondering if she saw the same careless bastard that Jenna had finally admitted to recognizing.

  This woman’s never going to look at me again with that light in her eyes. But it’s a good thing she knows about me now rather than later.

  Yet he detected sympathy, not accusation.

  Didn’t she get it? Couldn’t she grasp the weight of his responsibility?

  “You’ve got to stop this,” she said, streaks of red marking her face where the tears had traveled.

  When he didn’t answer, she pointed a finger into his chest. “Why are you looking at me like that? Did you tell me all this to ‘unburden’ yourself…or was it to chase me away?”

  He couldn’t meet her gaze anymore. Maybe that had been his primary motive. Maybe he hadn’t ever wanted anything from Felicia but a validation of his worthlessness.

  Maybe he enjoyed wallowing in self-disgust too much and she was just a new way to do it.

  “Ah. Right.” She shook her head. “I guess it’s option B then. Chase Felicia away.”

  “No.” The word was out before he could rein it in. “You’re a sweet woman, and I don’t want to see you get hurt when it comes to trying to win me over. You’ve made your intentions about me clear, and I thought I’d do the same for you.”

  Liar.

  A tiny part of him had been wishing for absolution and he damned well knew it. Because from the moment he’d first seen her, he’d known that Felicia Markowski was his renewal, a light in a sanctuary’s window.

  A spring of hope that might renew him.

  Wrong. He couldn’t accept such a load of BS. As if she was going to sa
ve him, pump up his soul with sunlight and brightness, snatch him from the jaws of accountability.

  Doubtful.

  “Hey,” he said, as she shook her head and started to walk away. “I’ve made a habit of going from ranch to ranch for years, Felicia. Just in case you should come to the Hanging R one day for Bobby and I’m not there, I wanted you to know why.”

  “I get it,” she said. “Ranch to ranch, never settling down, always running. Never getting close enough for anyone to ask a lot of questions. Is that it?”

  He shrugged. It would have to suffice as a nod, because she was right and it was too hard to admit it.

  “Dammit, Jack, you make me want to scream. What can I do to get through to you?”

  A woman who took care to pepper her speech with words like doggonit had to feel pretty strongly to be using words like damn. Perversely, it bolstered him, showed him how much she really must have cared to be so angry.

  “Felicia—”

  She held up a hand, wiped away her tears with the other one. “Don’t Felicia me. Listen, I feel for you. You’ll never know how much, either, because you’re so closed off to the possibility of someone actually accepting you—faults and all—that it scares you to death.”

  Before he could catch himself, he’d raised his eyebrows in surprise at her astuteness. But why? He’d always known Felicia was as smart as a whip.

  Deep inside, he’d just been hoping she’d see past his shortcomings. That she’d like him enough to wipe away the debris of his self-derision, patiently making him see things clearly again.

  She was still worked up right properly. Word by word, hope grew inside of him. Word by word, he started to suspect how much she was coming to mean to him.

  “How long has your mourning lasted?” she said. “A few years? More?”

  Too many. The boys would’ve been eleven and nine now. Goddamn.

  She seemed so disappointed. “It’s become your life.”

  Shame suffused his skin but, damn, he felt relieved.

  Finally.

  “Listen,” she said, her gaze softening along with her tone, “I’m doing everything I can to understand you. But…I don’t think you want me to.”

  What he wanted was to pull her into his arms, to bury his face in her hair, to accept all she had been offering.

  But the time it took to imagine the riches of her touch cost him.

  With a final-straw shake of her head, she said, “Okay. Got it. Just…” She sighed. “Just know that I’ll be around, fool that I am.”

  When she started to leave again, she added one last thing over her shoulder.

  “But, mind you, I won’t be around forever.”

  The crunch of leaves under her shoes faded until he was left alone among the peace of the trees, chastised.

  Chapter Nine

  I t was the longest afternoon of Felicia’s life.

  Not only was Jack’s story tearing at her, but thoughts of her epic hear-me-roar speech in the park were stretching the minutes into eternities, too.

  She’d basically challenged him to make the next move, to be the one to pursue her now. But would he do it?

  Based on his track record, Felicia doubted it very highly.

  Even now, at a quarter to midnight, she couldn’t get to sleep, too mired in images of Jack’s sons to find any peace. Too concerned about Jack to let it go.

  Fidgety, she sought the remote on the nightstand by her bed and clicked on the small TV while a fan whisked around and around, stirring the sheets tangled around her legs. She wasn’t in the mood for comedy, bad movies or action-show reruns, but she surfed back and forth between them nonetheless. Anything to take her mind off everyone else’s troubles.

  When she heard a soft knocking at her door, she initially thought it was a sound effect from a cop show. But then it came again, louder, and she froze.

  Not even Emmy or Carlota came calling past midnight, so who…?

  Heart thudding, she muted the TV and crept to the door, scooping up her cell phone on the way. There weren’t many robbers who were polite enough to knock before breaking and entering, but still, the phone felt good in her hand.

  “Who is it?” she asked through the wood.

  “Jackson.”

  Felicia almost speared through the roof. What in the world was this about?

  Easing open the door, she glimpsed him through the crack. He had his hat in his hands, hair mussed up, making him look vulnerable. Making Felicia want to take him in and hug him right up.

  A reluctant teddy bear in need of cuddling. Boy, he’d hate that.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” Her greeting was longer, pulling one syllable into a few, questioning him with this one tentative word.

  Jack shifted position, restless. “I’ve been thinking about what you said today. Thinking a whole lot.”

  He’d come all the way over here to tell her that? A tweeng of sexual awareness vibrated through her.

  “Thinking? About which part exactly?” She was testing him, too reluctant to believe he’d dropped by for something more than casual chatter.

  But…gosh, was it ever about time he got the hint.

  “All of what you said rattled me to the bone, pretty much,” he said.

  Oh, boy. She wasn’t going to mess this up: Jack, just popping by the neighborhood at an odd hour.

  And it wasn’t to borrow a cup of sugar, either.

  She lowered her eyelashes, smiled, hoping it would work like a charm. “If you were thinking about the part where I said I’d ‘be here,’ I meant during regular hours, Jack. But now that you’re here and it appears I’ve been keeping you awake, too…”

  His eyes traveled from her face to her bare shoulder, where her nightgown strap was on display in the limited view the door crack was offering.

  When his gaze darkened, smoldered, coasted right back up to her eyes, she recognized a longing so fierce that her pulse flashed.

  Not that she was going to give him the milk before he bought the cow, but she wanted him inside her cottage. That way, it would be harder for him to escape. Then, she could make more of that hard-earned progress, romancing him little by little, just enough to make him leave wanting more. Soon, maybe he’d even fall in love with her and then…

  She opened the door.

  He took in the full length of her, his shoulders lifting with a caught breath. Crossing her mental fingers, she allowed him to gaze, imagining what he was seeing:

  A woman with a few too many pounds around the hips with her blond hair raining over her back. A knee-length nightgown, pure white, covering the silhouette of her curves. Her bare feet tipped with pink-painted toenails.

  A package in demure wrapping waiting to be opened.

  “You coming in?” she asked.

  He lifted an eyebrow, flapped his hat against his thigh. “I’d sure like to.”

  “But…?” She knew exactly why he was hesitating. Crossing the threshold with her standing here in a nightgown was an admission. A quiet way of saying he wanted more than just walks in the woods.

  “Maybe you’ve got a robe?” he asked, sounding like he hoped she didn’t.

  “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you came around during the dead of night,” she said playfully.

  “Maybe I did.”

  That rugged smile lit over his lips and Felicia’s skin flushed. Were they actually bantering?

  Progress!

  She walked away, luring him inside. Sure enough, he took the bait, closing the door behind himself, keeping his hat by his side as he took measure of her cottage: the framed dime-store pictures of Paris and Venice on her walls, the crocheted doily that had gone half-finished this evening, a closed journal on the top of her nightstand with a pen marking the entry she’d written last night, the bright floral print of her bedspread.

  Their gazes met after he finished perusing that particular item. There was something different about him tonight, something that told her he wasn’t backin
g away as easily as usual.

  But then he blinked and fixed his sights on the TV. Back to being the polite, standoffish Jack.

  “Here.” She took his hat, anxiously tossed it on an empty chair in front of a mirrored vanity table where she kept perfume and makeup. “Make yourself at home. Want a drink? Water, soda…?”

  “Water’s good.”

  He sat in a stuffed recliner that her parents used to own before they passed on. All the furniture she had—their furniture—had been midsixties chic, acquired during their first years of marriage. They’d given birth to Felicia during their last-chance autumn years and had left the world much too soon for her liking. She’d been their “miracle baby,” their sunshine, and she’d loved them back just as fiercely.

  After Felicia got two bottles of water from her minifridge, she stood in front of him, too excited to sit down.

  “So…” She smiled, took a sip.

  “So.” Jack hadn’t even cracked his beverage open yet. Instead, he thumped the plastic bottle against his leg, just like he’d done with his hat. “I suppose I should explain.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  He stopped with the leg-whacking, met her curious gaze straight on. “You’ve put up with a lot from me, and when you walked away this afternoon, it felt like there was a thread left hanging.”

  “And you decided to snip it off tonight.”

  “In a manner of speaking. I couldn’t sleep, and I wondered if you’d gone to bed thinking that I didn’t give a damn about what you said today.”

  Felicia had been in the middle of lifting the bottle to her lips again, but at his confession, she slowly lowered it.

  He continued. “What I’m trying to say is sorry. I’m sorry for being such a gruff jerk.”

  Dust off his words a little and Felicia got a glimpse of what they really could be:

  His way of saying he wanted to be with her?

  Or was she reading too much into this midnight visit?

  Because…duh.

  This was so Jack. Roundabout, enigmatic, taking the hard way around things when they could be done more directly. But that was what made him such an out-of-the-ordinary man.

  That was why she’d tripped head over heels for him.