How to Lasso a Cowboy

by Jodi Thomas

  “Get in, Emma,” her father ordered in a steely voice.

  Words of refusal climbed up her throat and she swallowed them back. She wouldn’t humiliate herself or her family in front of two strangers. With tense muscles, she returned her Good Samaritan’s jacket. “Thank you.”

  She kept her chin raised and her backbone straight as she climbed into the wagon’s back seat. Ridge’s hand on her arm aided and steadied her until she sat beside her sister.

  “Stay the hell away from my daughter, Madoc. She doesn’t need the likes of you,” her father ordered.

  Shocked, Emma only had a moment to give Ridge a nod of thanks before her father whipped the team of horses into motion.

  Her mother, too, was pale. There would be little mercy from her father for embarrassing the family with her abrupt departure from church, and for her improper actions with the man called Madoc.

  A man her father thought wasn’t good enough even for her.

  EMMA endured the awful silence all the way home by thinking about the man who’d been so kind to her. Madoc. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  The wagon rattled into the yard and her father halted the horses in front of the house. He hopped down and helped Emma’s mother, then her sister. Emma didn’t wait, but clambered down herself, earning a disapproving scowl from him.

  “Wait in the study, Emma,” he ordered. Then he exchanged a brusque look with her mother.

  Emmna settled into a wingback chair in front of the desk, sitting with her feet flat on the floor and her hands resting in her lap like a proper young lady. She would’ve preferred to sit with her legs folded beneath her, but she figured she’d provoked her father enough for one day.

  Her mother perched on the twin of Emma’s chair, her face pinched with worry. Her father, however, didn’t appear the least bit anxious. No, he was spitting mad.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” he demanded.

  She met his glowering eyes without flinching. “You and Mother have no right making decisions that affect my life without talking to me first.”

  Her father blinked, apparently startled by her forthrightness. “You’re our daughter and you live under our roof. That gives us the right.”

  “Would you ship Sarah off without talking to her about it?”

  “Sarah is not you.”

  Boiling anger and hurt engulfed Emma as she gripped the armrests. “What you mean is Sarah is still clean and pure, but poor Emma is used and soiled.” Her nostrils flared and her fingernails dug into the armrests. Long-held silence exploded in defiance. “I am not a thing you can cast aside and forget about. I have a life. I have hopes and dreams.”

  “Which will never be realized around here,” Emma’s mother interjected almost gently. “No respectable man will have you.”

  Emma’s stomach caved and she stared down at her fisted hands, which had somehow ended up in her lap again. She raised her head and turned to the older version of herself. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Mother.”

  Her mother flinched at the sarcasm, and even Emma was shocked by the depth of her own bitterness.

  “That’s enough, Emma Louise,” her father ordered. He stood and paced behind the desk, his body silhouetted against the windows.

  The regulator clock ticked loudly in the muffled silence. Emma concentrated on its steady rhythm—tick-tock, tick-tock—to block out the other sounds swirling through her head, but the memories were too powerful to be denied any longer.

  Pounding hooves.

  Gunshots.

  Screams.

  Blood.

  Her heart hammering, Emma stared at her hands, almost surprised to find they weren’t scarlet-stained. Instead, she noticed how they’d finally lost their dried parchment texture, but weren’t nearly as smooth as they’d been seven years ago.

  Her father stopped pacing, but remained standing behind his desk. “Maybe it was wrong of your mother and I to make plans behind your back, but we were only thinking of your best interests. As you know, your aunt Alice is a widow with no children. Your uncle left her very comfortable financially, and we doubt she’ll ever marry again. She’s willing to let you move in with her and begin a new life.”

  Emma took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m fond of Aunt Alice, but I want to stay here. This is my home, where I was raised. I don’t want to leave.”