A Cowboy in Her Arms

by Mary Leo

  He crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his crusty hands out of sight. “I noticed you’re having issues with your left arm. Fall off any more horses lately?”

  She stood up straighter. “I haven’t been riding.”

  “Probably a smart move.”

  He shuffled his feet, grimaced and lumbered back to his original stance.

  She could tell he was having a rough go of it with the ranch. Plus, she’d heard that Polly had told Marty Bean, owner of Moo’s Creamery, just yesterday that Joel was working from sunup to sundown trying to repair as much as he could on the ranch before the weather turned cold. Why he didn’t want any help, when from the looks of him he obviously needed it, was way beyond her memory of Joel Darwood. The guy she remembered would never have refused help. Accepting help had been his MO, and once it had been offered, he’d back away from the situation until the helping person had finished the task. Then Joel would step in and take all the credit. There were times when she’d thought his actions were perfectly shameful, when she had insisted he give credit to the other person, and if she pushed it enough, he would do just that...but not very often.

  Standing in front of him now, she questioned what she ever saw in that Joel Darwood. But then she was young and naive back in college. The fact that he paid attention to her, and they laughed at the same jokes, and seemingly shared the same view of the world had been enough for her to daydream of one day marrying him.

  She was all grown up now. He and Sarah had seen to that, and it took more for her to think about marriage with someone who simply provided a laugh or two. Now she wanted a real man by her side...a real cowboy in her arms.

  Could this new Joel Darwood possibly be that kind of man?

  The Joel Darwood she’d known had proved that he only cared about himself or he would have never taken up with Sarah after their argument. She’d thought they’d work it out, but before they could talk it over, Sarah had confessed that she and Joel had slept together. And if that wasn’t enough of a blow, a few weeks later, Sarah turned up pregnant.

  She’d never wanted to hear his side of the story, never thought he’d tell the truth. But now, after what her family had said, she was ready to listen, ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  What Callie could never figure out was why he married Sarah. Sarah had said it was because they were in love, but Callie could never completely buy it, and Sarah’s pregnancy hadn’t seemed like a strong enough reason, either. That had been one of the reasons they’d argued the day he’d walked out. He’d been adamant about never wanting children, yet there he was, escorting his little girl to her first day at school. So much had happened. Did she even know this man anymore?

  “Here we go,” she said, more to herself than to Joel.

  He must have sensed her apprehension. He gently touched her hand and said, “You’ve got this.”

  A rush of emotion surged through her, as if his touch meant something, as if she still longed for his embrace.

  She wondered if her sisters had been right.

  Had there been something more in that fall at the rodeo than merely losing focus?

  She moved her hand away.

  “Thanks,” she told him, tossing out a momentary smile, then she turned to her class, wanting to get her first day officially started. The rest of her students seemed to know to gather on the rug and form a semicircle, leaving a section open so she could join them.

  Emma sat between Frankie Carlton and Mary Salerno, who welcomed Emma with a hug. Mary’s parents and grandparents owned and operated one of the oldest restaurants in town, Hot Tomato, and they knew just about everyone. The Salernos were a warm and affectionate family, always hugging and kissing their more frequent patrons. Apparently, that kind of warmth had been passed on through the generations.

  Emma looked adorable, with her sky blue baseball hat, backward, over a mess of curls.

  “I’m so excited to be here today. I hope you are, too! Anybody want to tell me why you’re happy?”

  The children seemed eager to participate in the conversation, each telling her why they liked her class, mostly because of all the critters.

  As Callie settled in for the day, she couldn’t help but notice when Joel exited the room, closing the door behind him. After she’d left him at Belly Up the other night, she felt confident she’d rarely see him, but having Emma in her class tossed that idea right out on its fat ear.

  She now knew she could potentially see him every day.

  But now was not the time to think about what that might mean. She had thirteen, no, fourteen children to teach and inspire. She could only hope she would do as good of a job as Miss Sargent had.

  * * *

  AS JOEL WALKED back to his SUV in the parking lot, he had second thoughts about leaving Emma in that classroom, and not because he thought she’d bonk someone over the head with a baguette. Polly had prepared a scrambled egg sandwich on soft white bread for Emma’s lunch. No crusty bread weapons allowed.

  Problem was, he knew how this would end: the inevitable moment when Emma would do or say something that would cause Callie to set up a serious meeting where she would tell him that his daughter didn’t fit in. How Emma was disturbing the class or she’d done any number of unconventional things that could get her expelled.

  He hated to think that Callie, of all people, might have to give him the bad news.

  What the heck would he do then?

  He and Emma had come to the end of their road. This town, this ranch, had to work. His mistake was listening to Polly and registering Emma for kindergarten when there was absolutely no reason why she had to attend, since kindergarten wasn’t mandatory in Idaho. She could wait out this year and he could enroll her in first grade next fall. That way he could avoid any and all confrontations with Callie, and perhaps by then, Emma would be much more acquainted with small-town living and would have made some friends.

  Joel spun around and headed back to the school. He’d simply unregister Emma and wait until next year. He scolded himself for thinking his daughter was ready for a classroom again when only recently she’d been expelled from what was supposed to be a school designed for more spirited kids.

  Nope, he assured himself. This was not the time to stick his vulnerable daughter into a classroom, especially with a woman who still resented him...no matter how sweet she acted toward his daughter.

  He walked back through the open front door and made his way down the now-empty hallway to the office and readied himself to pull his daughter out of kindergarten.

  Chapter Six

  “Oh, Daddy, Miss Callie is the best teacher ever! We get to play with Wheezy and Squeezy all the time. He’s here, Daddy. Wheezy’s one of our bunnies. And Frankie said I can sit next to him again tomorrow. Frankie’s in my class. He taught me how to feed the bunnies. Did you know bunnies like strawberries and bananas, Daddy? I like strawberries just like Wheezy does.”

  Emma was so happy Joel thought she might burst. “No, I didn’t know that, kitten.”

  “Yeah, and kale, too. But I don’t think I like kale, so don’t buy me any, okay?”

  “Okay. No kale for you.”

  “I got to feed Wheezy, Daddy, and I got to hold him for a really long time. But we can’t hold him too tight or we might hurt him. We have to be very gentle, Daddy. He likes being held and he likes to jump, too. So does Squeezy, but Wheezy jumps higher. Miss Callie said so. She walked them both around a little track we made, and they jumped over each hurdle. Sometimes Wheezy didn’t want to jump and looked silly just sitting there. He made me laugh. He would make you laugh, too, Daddy.”

  Joel stood in front of the school as parents and children swarmed around him. Sunshine danced off every surface while the deep green grass surrounded him with its sweet scent as if it had been recently cut.

  He kn
elt down on one knee to better talk to his daughter. “Are you trying to tell me you like this school?”

  She bobbed her head several times.

  “It’s superfantabulous, Daddy. I love it. And Miss Callie says I can stay as long as I want. Can I, Daddy? They aren’t going to make me leave, are they, Daddy?”

  Ironically, the older woman who worked in the office, Mrs. Pearl, had advised him to stop and think for at least twenty-four hours about pulling his daughter out of kindergarten. Thanks to the astute Mrs. Pearl, he’d reconsidered his attempt at sabotaging his daughter’s happiness.

  “Not a chance, kitten. We live here now. This is your school and will be for a very long time.”

  Emma reached out, flung those sweet little arms of hers around Joel’s neck, and giggled into his shoulder. His heart swelled. He hadn’t seen his daughter this happy in months. It took all his fortitude not to well up and blubber like a baby.

  “Daddy, can we go home now so I can tell Auntie Polly all about it?”

  “We sure can, baby,” he told her while he stroked the back of her head and held her tight. He loved his little girl more than he could put into words, and relished moments like this. He’d missed out on so much of her life that he wanted to wallow in her happiness and try to make up for his past mistakes.

  “We had fun with Emma today,” Callie said from somewhere above him.

  He cleared his tight throat, blinked away the tears and stood, taking Emma’s hand in his.

  She asked, “Can I say goodbye to Mary, Daddy? She’s nice.”

  Emma stared off in the near distance at a girl Emma’s age standing alongside a woman who appeared to be her mom, a stylish woman with short-cropped brown hair somewhat hidden under a white cowgirl hat.

  “Sure, kitten,” Joel told her as she slipped from his grasp and ran to her little friend. “Just stay where I can see you,” he shouted.

  “I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time,” Joel told Callie as he watched Emma and Mary run around in circles, giggling.

  “She’s a smart little girl, Joel. She can read far beyond what we read in class, and from the little bit of math I gave the students today, I have a feeling she’s good with numbers, as well.”

  Joel couldn’t take credit for any of that. Sarah had many faults, but she’d made a few feeble attempts at taking the time to teach Emma her numbers, her letters and how to read. Deep down, he knew, in her own way she’d tried to be a good mom, even though she and Joel had always been busy outdoing each other with jobs and friends—and, he later learned, she’d had an assortment of extramarital affairs. Polly had taken up the slack for the most part when it came to Emma’s education. Regrettably, because of all their bad behavior, and except for Sarah’s intermittent attempts to be a good mom, neither one of them had spent enough quality time with Emma.

  “Sarah gets some of the credit for that, but it was Polly who did most of the teaching. Sarah and I were too busy with our own lives to do much.”

  “You must have had some kind of impact on her. You’re all she talks about.”

  “About how much I wasn’t around, no doubt.”

  Joel knew he deserved Emma’s wrath for more or less abandoning her for the better part of her life, but it was still hard to take.

  “According to Emma, you read to her every night.”

  Joel had only recently started reading to Emma, but it wasn’t something he had initiated. Polly had been too busy with chores when they first arrived and had asked him to take over for a couple nights. That was more than a month ago. He found that he loved reading to Emma, teaching her the words on the pages and making up their own stories about the pictures.

  “I guess I do. She seems to like it.”

  “I’ve got news for you. She loves it.”

  Callie smiled, and all that sunshine that danced around them now seemed to be radiating from her. She had blossomed into a feisty, self-confident and determined woman who seemed to love children, and they loved her.

  Plus, drop-dead gorgeous with those almond-shaped eyes, that fine, thin nose, the sultry color of her skin, and full lips that had always sent a shiver through him whenever they kissed. He was happy he had Emma in his life and wouldn’t change that for the world, but he deeply regretted walking away from Callie back in college. Even now, he still believed she deserved a better man than he could ever be.

  Callie was the very first teacher who had ever spoken so highly of his daughter. He didn’t know if that was due to an built-in fondness she seemed to have for Emma or if it was a genuine acknowledgment of Emma’s acumen. Either way, Callie had succeeded in dissolving all the apprehensions he’d had about his daughter being in her class.

  “Then I should continue?”

  She chuckled. “Absolutely!”

  Never in Joel’s entire life had he been more pleased about his decision to wait twenty-four hours. Waiting had never been on his radar screen.

  He was beginning to finally understand the true meaning of the word.

  * * *

  THE NEXT COUPLE weeks proved to be both exhilarating and frantic for Callie. Wrangling fourteen students and keeping them occupied had proven to be more difficult than she’d anticipated, but she was slowly getting a handle on it. Plus, her fear of something horrible happening whenever she was in Joel’s presence had eventually crumbled. She was getting used to seeing him standing out in front of the school, waiting for Emma, leaning on the metal railing, cowboy hat tipped back on his head, jeans and boots dusty from whatever he’d been into before he left the ranch, blue eyes sparkling in the late afternoon sun, looking as if his chest and arm muscles were growing by the day.

  “How’d you do in school today, Emma?” he’d ask as soon as he saw his daughter.

  “It was fun,” Emma would say as she brushed past him and ran to the sidewalk with her friend to wait for her dad.

  Inevitably, Joel would turn to Callie and ask how Emma was doing, or if she was behaving herself.

  “She’s fine, just fine,” Callie would tell him, sometimes stretching the truth a bit.

  Most of the time, it was true. Emma shared the toys and played nicely with the other children, but every once in a while, Emma would hoard the toys and not let the other children near whatever she wanted to play with. Or she’d take one of the bunnies and outright lie to the other children. “Miss Callie said that I’m the only one who gets to play with Wheezy today.”

  Some of the children would cry, while others would report to Callie and she’d have to get tough with Emma. “Emma, you know that’s not true. Let’s put Wheezy back in his hutch so the other children can pet him.”

  “No, I don’t want to.” Then she’d run out into the school yard. Callie would have to go after her and find a way to make her give up poor Wheezy.

  Emma could be so challenging that on some days Callie would be at her wit’s end.

  Still, she persisted in thinking she could break through Emma’s bad behavior, and until she did, she decided not to burden Joel with any of it. He had enough going on with the ranch, he didn’t need to know about Emma’s occasional bad behavior...at least not yet.

  Joel and Callie were becoming friends, each being cordial to the other despite the big dark cloud that hung over them. She knew that one day they’d have to discuss their past, but the school yard wasn’t exactly the best place.

  Now as Callie stood out on the front lawn with Emma, waiting for Joel to pull up at any moment, she wondered if that day would ever come. The man was probably too busy with his ranch to think about mending fences with an old girlfriend he’d long since moved on from.

  Callie knew he was focused on the repairs, even finally hiring a mechanic to come out and get the tractor and other equipment up and running again. But he seemed to be stubborn about hiring someone to help with everything else
. Which probably accounted for his tardiness today.

  “Where’s my daddy?” Emma asked, her voice sounding shaky. “I want my daddy to be here now. Where is he?”

  “I’m sure he’s on his way, Emma, but I can call him if that would make you feel better.”

  “I want my daddy,” Emma said, just before big tears began to fall.

  “As soon as I get him on the phone, you can talk to him. Okay?” Callie was careful with how she phrased her sentence and how she comforted Emma. She didn’t want Emma to pick up on how she felt, and for that matter, she didn’t want Joel to know, either. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling. The more she was around Emma, the more she realized that Emma simply was not the kind of child Callie could relate to.

  Emma wiped her tears with her hands and nodded as Callie tapped on Joel’s number. She had the contact information for all her students on her phone, just in case there was an accident or for a situation like this.

  Joel didn’t answer so Callie left a message, which made Emma cry even harder. No way could Callie handle this situation for very long. Try as she may, Emma was inconsolable.

  “Nothing worse than a crying child and a parent who ignores his responsibilities,” Mr. Crawly, the second-grade teacher, remarked as he walked past Callie. “I’ll make note of his tardiness to Mrs. Pearl. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the latest procedure for this, but if he’s late two more times, the child can be suspended. I’ve seen her dad drop her off, but I don’t know his name.”

  Zeke Crawly was a busybody, a fiftysomething recently divorced man with a perpetual chip on his shoulder. Maybe the chip was from the loss of his wife, or maybe he’d always been that way and his wife had finally had enough. Callie didn’t know the answer to that one. Unfortunately, he seemed to have a lot of pull on the school board, and despite her wanting nothing to do with him, in this case, he might have a point.

  “Joel Darwood,” Callie told him, but as soon as she said his name she wanted to take it back. “But he probably got tied up in something and lost track of time.”