Colorado Cowboy - Includes a bonus novella

by Sara Richardson

  Darla gave a quick glance around before leaning close. “For what it’s worth, I think Charity’s pretty attached to you too.”

  “I’m not sure that helps.” He’d been trying to protect her. She’d basically told him she didn’t even want to think about Melody, but he should’ve told her about the robbery anyway. Her trust in him had already been tenuous, and he’d completely destroyed it.

  “Listen…” Darla glanced around, waiting until the last stragglers of the crowd disappeared into the community room. “If you want to fix it, why don’t you just find a way to help Melody? Show Charity that you’re not against her.”

  “Or you could just let it go,” Ty said. “Move on to the next woman. I find that’s a much easier solution than—”

  Darla cut him off with a raise of her eyebrows.

  Yeah, Ty was just as much of a lost cause as Dev. Only he didn’t know it yet. “I have no idea how to help Melody.” Especially now that she was on the radar. Now that the detective knew about her, she might be beyond his help.

  “Find her.” Darla made it sound so easy. “Maybe if you get to her first, you can find a way to help her. Even if she is guilty.”

  If she was guilty, the only way he could help her would be to convince her to turn herself in. At least they might go easier on her then. “I’ve looked. The police are looking, and they haven’t found her. She’s definitely off the grid.”

  “Have you talked to their mom?” Ty asked. “Charity always used to say how her sister was much closer to their mom than her. Maybe their mom knows where she is.”

  Huh. It wasn’t every day that Ty came up with helpful advice, but…“That’s actually a good idea.” From what she’d told him, it sounded like Charity didn’t get along with her mom, but maybe Melody did.

  “Why aren’t we going to Dev’s place?” Bodie peered out the window as they flew past the Jenkinses’ ranch.

  Charity kept her eyes on the highway, not allowing herself to even look toward Dev’s cabin, which sat up on the hill. “I thought we’d do something different this morning.” She hadn’t told him about Melody and the robbery. She couldn’t. She’d looked up everything she could find about it online, and she still couldn’t believe Melody had been involved. She refused to believe.

  “What about the PlayStation?” Bodie asked. “And Mr. Jenkins said something about needing help fixing a tractor.” The kid sounded bummed, but he’d be a lot more bummed if he knew Dev had been working with him so he could pump him for information about his mom. He’d be crushed. That was the only way to describe it when you learned someone you’d actually started to care about had betrayed you.

  But this was not about her. This wasn’t about the twinge of pain that had settled just beneath her heart like a bruise. Today was about Bodie. “You can do chores around my house to earn a PlayStation.” She had plenty of yard work she’d been putting off. “But today I thought we’d spend some time racing.”

  “Racing?” Her nephew finally quit staring out the window and gaped at her instead. “Like horse racing?”

  “Barrel racing.” She flicked on her blinker and slowed to turn into the Cortezes’ driveway.

  “Oh.” Bodie’s shoulders fell. “You mean like you’re gonna train and I’ll time you or something?”

  “Nope. I mean you’re going to train and I’ll time you.” She wasn’t thinking about Dev right now, but if she were thinking about him, she would admit he was right. Bodie needed something to strive for—a pursuit that could help him develop discipline and goals. Something to drive him.

  “You’re gonna let me ride Ace?” Bodie almost looked like he was afraid to believe it.

  “I’m not going to let you ride him.” Charity pulled the truck to a stop in front of the stables where she boarded her horse. “I’m going to teach you how to ride him.”

  “No. Way.” Her nephew scrambled to get out of the truck. She hadn’t seen this much interest on his face since Dev had offered him a PlayStation.

  Dev. For not thinking about him, he sure seemed to cross her mind a lot.

  “I can’t believe you’re gonna teach me to race.” Bodie rushed over to the driver’s side door and pulled it open like he couldn’t wait for her to get out. “It’s what they do at all the rodeos, right? They steer the horse around the barrels going superfast?”

  “Exactly.” She climbed out of the truck and led him into the stables. Walking in to the dim, cool space always made her feel grounded. The sound of the horses breathing, the manure-tinged scent of the air. It was all so familiar and comfortable. She might not be an expert on relationships with people, but she knew horses. “You probably won’t go superfast today,” she warned Bodie. “Not until you get comfortable riding.” This first lesson would cover only the basics—saddling up, walking, turning, halting. All things he’d need to know before she could let him loose.

  “That’s okay. I’d never ridden before I got on the horse with Gracie.” Her nephew eyed the stalls as they passed. Most of the horses here belonged to the Cortez family and were used for work around the ranch. She stopped at the last stall, where her horse ambled over to meet her at the gate.

  “Bodie, this is Ace.” She reached up to give her boy a good pat. As always, Ace leaned his head into her touch.

  “He’s huge.” A look of fear had replaced the excitement in her nephew’s expression. “Way huger than he looks from far away.”

  “I like to think of him as a gentle giant.” She unlatched the gate and coaxed her nephew into the stall. “Quarter horses are more even-tempered than thoroughbreds, and Ace here has the patience of a saint.” She had no reservations about putting Bodie on this horse’s back. But before they could do that, she had to teach him how to saddle up.

  Going to the shelves at the rear of the stall, Charity collected the brush and the saddle pad, but left the saddle sitting on its stand. “First we have to give Ace a good brushing.” She did a quick demonstration on the horse’s back before handing the brush to Bodie.

  “Okay.” He stood as far away as he could get and still be able to touch the brush to Ace’s back.

  “It’s okay to stand closer.” Charity guided him next to the horse. “He knows the routine, so nothing you do will surprise him. Just run the brush over his sides and back.” She covered Bodie’s hand with hers and showed him again.

  When she was satisfied that they’d removed all of the loose hair from Ace’s coat, she quickly brushed the underside of the saddle pad and had Bodie help her position it on the horse’s back. “Now for the saddle.” She lugged it over, inhaling the scent of oiled leather, and arranged it over the pad. “You have to make sure the horn is right above the withers.” She pointed. “That’s most comfortable for Ace. And when he’s comfortable, he’s more motivated to keep you comfortable.”

  “Right.” Bodie seemed to carefully examine the position and make a mental note.

  “The next step is to string the tie strap through the ring on the girth strap.” She bent to demonstrate while Bodie watched over her shoulder. “Then pull the strap up and loop it through the D ring from the front down.” She peered behind her to make sure he was getting it, and laughed at his confused frown. “The last step is to loop the tie strap back through the girth ring front to back to front again,” she said, finishing the motion. “I know it’s kind of a lot, so I’ll walk you through it the first few times.”

  He looked at her wide-eyed. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

  While Bodie continued to examine the straps at the base of the saddle, Charity slipped on Ace’s bridle and then went back to the shelves and found him a helmet. “You ready to climb up?” she asked, plunking the helmet on his head.

  “I guess.” He still didn’t seem too sure, but she had a feeling that would all change the moment he sat on the horse’s back.

  “Okay. First take the reins in your hands.” Charity helped him find the right grip. “Then put your left foot into the stirrup.”

  Her nephew did a
s he was told, his balance teetering.

  “Now you’re just going to step up and swing your other leg over.”

  He went for it, and she gave him a little boost until he slowly sank into the saddle.

  “Wow.” A smile beamed from underneath the shadows of his helmet.

  She smiled too. “How does it feel?”

  “Like I’m really tall.” He looked around the stables. “This is crazy.” Only when he peered down at her again did his smile even out. “After all the mistakes I’ve made, why are you letting me do this?” he asked.

  A sudden rise of emotion flooded her throat, but she did her best to swallow it back. “You deserve the best life, Bodie.” It was true that mistakes would help him find his way, but so would victories. “I want you to believe that.” All of the love she had for him made her chest ache, but she had to keep going. “No matter what. No matter what choices your mom makes or where you end up, you get to choose who you want to be. You get to choose what you go after.” Melody had fallen into the same cycle of their mom’s destructive patterns, but he didn’t have to.

  Bodie’s gaze hardened into a glare. “Mom told me you never wanted to see us again,” her nephew blurted. “That you thought you were too good for us, so you left us behind.”

  “No.” Charity squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears came anyway. “That’s not how it was at all. I worried about you. I questioned her ability to be a parent. So she hid from me. All those years…I didn’t know where you were. I should’ve tried harder to find you.” She shouldn’t have let ten years pass without making sure Bodie had what he needed. “I hope you can forgive me for that.” In a way she’d given up on her sister because it had been easier than dealing with the constant worry, the fear that something terrible would happen. That’s what she did when things got hard. She ran. But she wouldn’t do that to Bodie.

  Bodie seemed to consider her words. “How did you do it?” he finally asked. “How did you escape and make something of yourself?”

  “I had help.” She’d had people who never gave up on her. “Gunner Raines brought me into his program and gave me a place to train.” And then Levi, Mateo, and Ty had welcomed her onto their team. “I can help you too. Even when your mom comes back.”

  “What if she doesn’t come back?” he whispered, and she could hear him holding back tears.

  Charity reached for his hand, which still tightly clutched the reins. “If she doesn’t come back, it’s not because of you.” She would tell him that every day of his life. As many days and as many times as it took for him to believe it. “You’re not the reason she has problems. We had a tough time of it growing up.” Before she’d talked about it with Dev, she’d refused to let herself think about it. But he was right. She’d been abused. She and Melody both had. “But I want you to know, Bodie, if your mom doesn’t come back, or if she can’t come back, you will always have a place with me.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The pot roast came out of the oven with a charred crust, only proving that Charity was no domestic diva.

  She poked the rubbery carrots and potatoes surrounding it with a fork. Well, it may not be the perfect meal, but it was the first roast she’d ever made, and she and Bodie were sitting down to a Friday night dinner together after a not-so-terrible week. Take that, domestic goddess.

  She carted the roast over to the table, which she’d set with napkins and placemats. How was that for fancy? “Did you have a good day?” she asked, settling in across the table from Bodie.

  “Yeah, it was good.”

  She did her best to temper a smile and play it cool, but that was the first time he’d ever responded to that question with anything other than a grunt or a roll of his eyes. Something positive must’ve happened. Not that she wanted to push it. “Your classes are going okay?” Nonchalance breezed through the words.

  “Yeah.” Bodie carved off a bite of the overdone roast. “We got to dissect a frog in science. It was pretty cool.”

  Cool was really positive, right? She did her best to keep the conversation going without sounding overly eager. “Doesn’t sound cool to me. That sounds disgusting.”

  He grinned—a full-on grin, teeth and everything. She would’ve pressed the pause button if that were possible, to keep his face that bright with genuine happiness. He looked like a normal kid…not a kid whose mom abandoned him with someone he didn’t know. Not a kid who’d likely been raising himself. Charity sucked back tears with a silent sniffle. Didn’t need to go ruining this moment with a bunch of emotions. “So why did you have to dissect a frog? What’re you supposed to learn from a bunch of blood and guts?”

  Bodie shoveled the questionable potatoes and carrots into his mouth like a champ. “It’s like a biology unit. So we can see what the organs look like. The intestines looked like worms,” he informed her, somehow still eating with that visual hanging between them.

  Pushing her plate away, Charity groaned. “There goes my appetite.”

  Bodie laughed. A real laugh! “You sound like Gracie. I thought she was gonna hurl.”

  Gracie? Charity’s ears perked up again. “How is Gracie anyway?” she asked casually. “Is her ankle better?” When Lucas and Naomi had brought her over to apologize after taking her to the doctor, Charity and Bodie learned her ankle had been only sprained, but she’d still had to hobble around on crutches all week.

  “Yeah. She said it’s a lot better. I told her we’ve been riding a few days this week, and she said she wanted to practice with us as soon as the doctor says it’s okay.”

  “Sure.” Before she could ask how long that would be, someone knocked on the front door. “Hang on.” She jumped up from the table intent on hurrying to shoo whoever it was away so she and Bodie could finish their very normal, pretty wonderful dinner. Unless it was Girl Scouts selling cookies. She never shooed Girl Scouts away.

  Charity moved swiftly down the hall just as the person knocked again. She threw open the door ready to either send a salesperson packing or give a Girl Scout a huge hug, but instead she stopped and stared—no, gaped—at the one person she never in a million years would’ve expected to see. “Mom?”

  “Char-Bear!” Tammi Stone flew at her and smothered her in a hug.

  Charity stood frozen, her arms suspended out wide, and gagged on the smell of cheap perfume. This was not happening. She stepped away from her mom, but no matter how much she tried to deny it, Tammi Stone stood in front of her, dressed in a red chiffon pantsuit and glittering gold heels. Her face was lathered with enough makeup to fill in the creases and her bleached blond hair reached for the sky.

  “I came as soon as I could get a flight out,” she twanged, channeling a character from Dallas. “I had to drive all the way down to the big city to get a flight, and then they sent my connection through Los Angeles, which is so crazy, because it’s all that way west and then I had to come back east to Denver, and goodness me, the flight was so turbulent the man sitting next to me kept getting sick.” Her glossed red lips bent into a smile. “But not to worry. I’m here now and everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “Why?” Charity squeaked. She did not need this right now. One more character in the after-school drama her life had suddenly become. “What are you doing here?” For the first time, Charity looked past her mother at the pile of suitcases stacked behind her. As in three suitcases. Big ones.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I came as soon as I heard that Melody was missing.” Her mom clutched both hands against her chest. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe your sister would leave Bodie here and take off to god only knows where—”

  “Whoa, back up.” Charity stopped her right there. “How did you find out about Melody?” After her sister had left Bodie, Charity had called her mother and casually asked if she’d heard from Melody. When her mother told her they hadn’t spoken in a couple of weeks, she found an excuse to get off the phone without telling her what was going on. Mainly because she hadn’t wanted her to
do something like this—show up unannounced to make everything even more complicated.

  “One of your friends called me. A nice boy. Dev, I think. He has a real deep, sexy voi—”

  “You’re telling me Dev called you?” That was impossible. He wouldn’t go behind her back and do something like that…

  “Yes, I’m sure his name was Dev. He said he was a friend of yours. He wanted to know if I’d seen or heard from Melody. Imagine my surprise when I learned what she’d done.”

  Anger lodged itself tightly beneath her ribs. What was he thinking? She’d told him they were done, which meant he should stay out of her life and her business. She and Bodie were settling, they were finding a rhythm and making progress, and now her mother had come to add to the drama.

  “Grandma?” Bodie walked outside and pushed past Charity.

  “Hi, baby.” Tammi closed him in an airtight embrace. “I’m here! I came as soon as I heard. Oh, my dear sweet boy. Everything’ll be all right. Don’t you worry.”

  For a brief second Charity wondered where that affectionate loving motherly side of Tammi had been when she was growing up, but it didn’t really matter. It was too late to matter.

  Her mother bumped Charity out of the way and led Bodie inside. “Be a peach and get my suitcases,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Oh, I’ll get your suitcases.” And then she would tell them she had to run some errands so she could pay Dev a little visit.

  Dev was not in the mood to lose money. He’d already lost enough this week—namely Charity. Now he was stuck hosting poker night for Lance, Lucas, Levi, Mateo, and Ty tonight. Had he not messed up things with Charity, he might be sitting here with her instead. Well, not at his dining room table. Maybe on the couch where they could talk…and he could kiss her again…

  “Should we play another round?” Ty asked, shuffling the deck. One by one, Dev’s friends all said they were in, so he did too. Not like he had anything more important to do right now.