How to Handle a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  There was a lot of history around here, including some that Sierra needed to know.

  “Did you know Phoenix House was a children’s home once before?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “The Wynott Home for Children. I heard it got shut down.” She glanced at the boys then gave Ridge a significant look. “I heard why. It’s not like that anymore.”

  He knew that. He could tell Sierra cared about the kids. But the woman who’d run the home before had made a good impression on the public too. It had taken some brave kids and a concerned citizen to uncover what had really been going on.

  He shut down those thoughts and turned his attention back to the boys.

  “Why don’t you guys line up in front of the house for a group photo?” he suggested.

  “Great idea!” Sierra was sure enthusiastic about picture taking. It was kind of nice that she cared enough to take them. He didn’t have any pictures of himself at that age.

  “Give me the camera,” he said. “I’ll take it, so you can get in the picture.”

  She whipped the camera away like it was made of gold and he was a street thief. “No, no. Let’s get you in it with them! You stand there, on the porch. Josh, you stand in front. Isaiah, you’re taller, so get back there with Mr. Cooper. Perfect. Now smile!”

  He stood behind the kids as ordered. He couldn’t see their faces, but he’d bet his best boots not one of them cracked a smile.

  ***

  Sierra needed to get out of here. She’d had plenty of pictures to prove that Mike had gotten her—and more importantly, the kids—into a dicey situation. The photos were made even more effective by the image of Ridge glowering from under his battered cowboy hat. He looked even more disreputable than he had the other day in the closet.

  Unfortunately, disreputable worked for her. Though she’d been shocked by his appearance, she was having trouble behaving herself. He was wearing what was left of a worn denim shirt. The sleeves had been ripped off along with one of the breast pockets, and most of the buttons were missing—which meant she got a tantalizing glimpse of tight abs every once in a while.

  The deep tan, the way his muscles swelled from the torn sleeves of his shirt… This was the American workingman at his best.

  Focus on his face. Focus on his face.

  His hat was the same one he’d worn the other day, only it looked like a couple of horses and maybe a buffalo had had a go at trampling it into the dirt. His jeans were completely blown out at the knees. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t wearing one intact piece of clothing.

  Unless his underwear…

  Focus on his face.

  No, focus on the kids. They were roaming around now, so she should probably get them back in the van and on the road. The place was a festival of potential puncture wounds. She looked down at the cut on her hand and noticed three nails protruding from the porch rail beside it. Plus there were those feral-looking dogs, who had scared up a couple of rodents that shot out of the shrubbery surrounding the house. She was pretty sure they’d been rabbits, but they could have been rats.

  She glanced at Ridge, trying to figure out how to leave gracefully, but he was stroking one of the dogs and smiling, which made crow’s-feet appear at the corners of his eyes. She felt her face warm in a slow, hot blush.

  What was wrong with her? She was drooling over crow’s-feet. Crow’s-feet were wrinkles, for God’s sake.

  And the man seemed to like dogs better than people. He was kind to the boys, but he’d basically ignored her since that to-do in the closet.

  He stood and walked the boys over to the truck. At a wave of his hand, the dogs leaped into the bed of the truck and sat, swishing their tails and grinning. Now that they’d stopped their endless running and circling, Sierra could see they were actually handsome animals, black-and-white mirror images of each other.

  “Pile in,” Ridge said.

  “You want us to ride in the truck?” Isaiah asked. “Like the dogs?”

  “Unless you want to walk,” Ridge said. “No way that van’s going to make it up the drive.” He gestured toward a weed-choked two-track, which curved around a rock outcropping and disappeared into the hills.

  “Wait a minute,” Sierra said. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To the ranch.” He grinned. “You didn’t think this was it, did you?”

  “No, I—no,” she lied. “Of course not.”

  “This was the original claim shack. The house is back there.” He gestured toward the rutted road he’d come from. Great. He could take them back there and kill them and nobody would ever know.

  “The road hasn’t been graded in a while, and we had a hailstorm the other night, that washed it out in a few places,” he said.

  “Is there another way to go?”

  “North entrance is easier, but it’s about a half hour out of your way,” he said.

  Sierra considered a half hour stuck in the van with the kids and headed for the truck. He could kill her if he wanted.

  “You can ride in the cab,” Ridge said. “You boys, get in the back.”

  Carter didn’t need to be invited twice. He vaulted up into the truck bed and stationed himself at the front, his elbows resting on the top of the cab.

  “Come on, guys. This is cool.”

  Jeffrey had climbed halfway onto the tailgate when Sierra held up a hand to stop him.

  “Come on, Sierra!” Frankie clambered into the bed of the truck. “It’ll be fun!”

  “We can’t.”

  Ridge shot her a disbelieving look. “Don’t tell me. No seat belts?”

  “Exactly. It’s not safe.”

  He scowled. “We’re not going far.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Ninety percent of accidents happen within a mile of home.”

  He muttered something unintelligible and turned away, leaving her to face the five hopeful boys in the back of the truck. They offered up their best pleading smiles, no doubt honed on adults far tougher than she’d ever been.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll go.”

  Chapter 15

  Sierra couldn’t even begin to list all the reasons she should not be attracted to Ridge Cooper. His rusty pickup, for one. The fact that he lived in a place that couldn’t be reached with a perfectly normal Econoline van, for another. And last but not least, his insistence that the boys—for whom she was responsible—pile into the back of his truck like a litter of puppies.

  Because while she’d been scowling at him, the boys had done exactly that. Carter and Jeffrey sat on a couple of hay bales toward the front, while Josh and Isaiah perched precariously on the sides of the bed. They were grinning from ear to ear, happier than she’d ever seen them. But she couldn’t help picturing them tumbling off and falling under the vehicle’s wide wheels.

  “Get in the truck, please,” Sierra said. “No sitting on the side.”

  For once, they obeyed her without a single groan.

  “Honestly,” Ridge said with an exasperated grimace, “it’s not far. Nobody’s going to get hurt.”

  She went to the passenger-side door and stared down at a complicated construction of barbed wire that looped around the handle and connected to the side of a toolbox in the bed. She didn’t want to go, but she wanted even less to see the boys’ smiles fade to disappointment.

  “Oh, sorry. It’s probably easier to climb in from the driver’s side.”

  Ridge opened the door as she came around and watched, expressionless, as she did her best to climb over the gearshift with grace and dignity. It was hard to be graceful and dignified with your butt in the air, though. Especially in tight jeans.

  When he eased behind the wheel, Ridge turned and slid the cab’s back window open. “Ready?” he called to the boys.

  “Ready,” they shouted in unison.

  Maybe this would be a team-building exercise. The boys rarely agreed on anything, and here they were shouting in unison.

  The pickup lurched into mo
tion, rumbling steadily until it reached the hill, where it groaned like an old man heaving his way up a flight of steps. The gears clattered like old bones as Ridge shifted down, down, down, and finally motored up the incline at a thrilling five miles per hour.

  It actually was kind of thrilling, because Ridge hadn’t been kidding about the ruts. The truck lumbered over deep potholes and nearly high centered on the weedy strip that ran down the middle of the road. Sierra clutched the edge of the window as the cab rocked and rolled, eliciting happy shrieks from the boys in the back.

  “Hang on.” Ridge gunned the motor as they hit a curve, and Sierra slid across the seat until her shoulder hit his. The boys were laughing now, but she wasn’t; she was floundering for the door handle so she could pull herself back to the passenger’s side. The cab was canted at a forty-five degree angle, and her thigh was pressed against Ridge’s, her hip against his. Her shoulder—wait.

  His arm was around her shoulder.

  No wonder she was having so much trouble climbing back to her side of the seat. And no wonder she felt all happy and warm inside.

  This would never do.

  ***

  Ridge felt Sierra stiffen in his grip then relax by increments. Did she think he was being affectionate?

  Was she starting to think that was okay?

  “Just wait,” he said. “The next switchback goes the other way. Don’t want you to hit your head.”

  The next turn was a hard left, and only his tight grip on her shoulder kept her from sliding across the vinyl seat and slamming into the door frame. She hardly seemed grateful, though. Now that they weren’t scrabbling for the door handle, her hands were clenched primly in her lap.

  He looked down and saw the cut and the blood.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She tried to cover it up.

  “There are wipes in the glove compartment and a first aid kit with Band-Aids.”

  “You keep that kind of thing handy?”

  He nodded. Maybe now she’d realize he was a responsible adult.

  But instead, her eyes narrowed. “You get hurt a lot around here?”

  He sighed. “It’s a ranch. Barbed wire, horses, wood fence—what did you expect?”

  “I expect to keep the kids safe.”

  “They’ll be safe enough.” This woman sure didn’t like to take risks. She wanted guarantees on everything, which meant she sure as heck wouldn’t like ranch life. Ranchers took risks every day. That was part of the fun of it.

  As they rounded the turn, the ranch came into view—a big red barn, a white house, and a network of pastures and corrals that covered the shallow scoop of a valley. Barbed-wire fences bordered plots of hay-like stitches on a patchwork quilt.

  He remembered the first time he’d come here, bouncing in the back of a pickup with his brothers, just like these boys today. He hadn’t shrieked or laughed. He’d sat as stiffly as Sierra, staring at the brickred barn with yellow straw gleaming from the hay window up top. The house had glowed white against the hard blue sky, and the surrounding fields had been so green he and Shane and Brady had shielded their eyes with their hands in perfect unison, as if they were saluting the place. He’d felt like he was entering the pages of a storybook, though he’d known, as well as anyone, that life was nothing like a storybook.

  The house’s glory had faded a bit since those days; it needed a new coat of paint, for starters. But it still had that storybook look. The steps up to the wide front porch were flanked with lilac bushes and bordered with riotous gardens from which colorful mums and a few fading coneflowers peeked out. The windows—four on top and three on the bottom—were tall and narrow, decorated with graceful tie-back curtains.

  Now that Bill was gone, the house belonged to Ridge and his two brothers. Since Brady had no interest in staying put and Shane had found a lucrative job running a nearby spread for one of the so-called “gentleman ranchers” that had invaded Wyoming lately, the place was his to run.

  But he’d been given that gift for all the wrong reasons. He knew his brothers figured this was about all he could do, crippled as he was.

  Worst of all, he knew they were right.

  “This is nice.”

  Sierra sounded surprised. He should probably feel insulted, but he didn’t have time. The moment he pulled the truck to a stop, the tailgate clanged open and boys and dogs spilled out.

  Ridge climbed out of the cab then held out a hand to help Sierra slide across the seat. Shaking her head, she made her own way, lifting each foot past the gear shift and under the steering wheel. She sat a moment on the side of the driver’s seat, legs dangling, and watched the boys. They were gaping like tourists, checking out the house and gazing openmouthed toward the barn, where a few graceful horses stood idling in a paddock behind a white-painted fence.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, guys?” She joined them, putting her arm around Frankie. “Like a hidden farm, a secret one, where nobody can see us or hear us.”

  The boys nodded gravely.

  “Are we riding those?” Carter pointed at the horses.

  “Once you learn everything you need to know,” Ridge said.

  “I already know how to ride,” Isaiah said. “I did it before. The horse was black, and his name was Thunder. I rode him anywhere I wanted.”

  Ridge pictured a birthday party pony, plodding around in circles. “We’ll still go over safety stuff.”

  “That’s for babies,” Isaiah scoffed. “Thought you were a rodeo cowboy.”

  “I am.”

  “Well, that’s not safe.”

  “It is when you know how.”

  Turning away, Ridge put his fingers to his lips and gave a long, high whistle. That seemed to interest the kids more than anything they’d seen so far, and they were so busy trying to imitate him, they didn’t notice an ancient paint horse rounding the corner of the house at about two miles per hour.

  Except for Josh. Josh noticed everything. “He comes like a dog!”

  “Yup.” Ridge scratched the old horse up under his mane, just the way he liked it. “This is old Sluefoot, the first horse I ever had,” he told the boys. “Ain’t he purty?”

  The old horse cocked his head and gave them the eye. Like many white-faced horses, he’d developed eye problems in old age. He could see okay with the left, but his blind right eye made him hold his head at a peculiar angle, so he seemed to be leering knowingly. He’d had a stroke a couple years back too, and though he’d recovered pretty well, it had weakened the muscles on one side of his face. When he cocked his head to see out of his good eye, his tongue tended to flop out of his mouth. Ridge was so used to the old horse’s peculiarities, it didn’t faze him, but newcomers were sometimes a little taken aback.

  “Look at that old horse,” Isaiah said. “I bet you’d all be scared to ride that one.”

  Ridge had to admit Sluefoot wasn’t looking his best. His mane and tail had grown long, and looked as dry and tangled as the before photo in a hair care ad. He was munching contemplatively on a mouthful of yellow weeds that stuck out of his mouth on both sides, giving him an oversized walrus moustache that matched his mane.

  “That is one ugly horse,” Frankie said. “Hey, Isaiah, it looks like your mother!”

  “Holy crap. What’s wrong with him?” one of the kids burst out. It was the big, blond kid. He’d make a good running back for Grigsby High’s junior varsity someday if he did some ranch work and toughened up.

  “He’s just old.” Ridge couldn’t help feeling a little defensive. Sluefoot had been handsome once. His breeding was questionable, but he’d been a well-trained cow horse with a lot of flash. He’d won the brothers a slew of high school rodeo prizes, but most important, he’d been Ridge’s teacher in all things equine. They’d grown up together, and he loved the old gelding dang near as much as he loved his brothers.

  “There’s nothing really wrong with him,” he told the kids. “He’s blind in that right eye, but he’s
gotten used to it and gets around okay. His hocks are spavined, and you can see his back’s swayed, but that’s just old age. He’s got some arthritis, and he had a stroke. But he’s fine.”

  The kid smothered a giggle, but Sierra wasn’t so subtle. She burst into her lilting laughter.

  “Yeah, he’s fine.” She struggled to catch her breath. “Ready for the races, right?”

  So she was going to make fun of his horse. Well, Sluefoot wouldn’t know the difference. Ridge had noticed over the past few months that the old horse was becoming increasingly deaf. Anything less than that high whistle seemed to pass right through him. But he ate all right, and he still nuzzled Ridge’s pockets for treats at every opportunity.

  In fact, right now he was trying to sniff the kids’ pants in a hunt for treats. When he reached Sierra, she tried to set an example for the kids by gingerly petting his nose, which only encouraged him. As she stepped away, he reached over and nipped one of her back pockets.

  With a little screech, she jumped back and waved the horse away while the kids laughed.

  “See?” Ridge stroked the horse’s neck. “He’s fine. Nothing wrong with his instincts.”

  “So are we gonna ride that?” Isaiah didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t afraid of Sluefoot.

  “No, nobody’s riding Sluefoot,” Ridge said. “He retired a long time ago.”

  Jeffrey was already halfway to the barn, his gaze fixed on the small corral where Ridge had released Moonpie that morning.

  “Jeffrey,” Sierra called. “Stay with the group.”

  The boy turned to Ridge, wide-eyed. “Can I ride that one?”

  Sierra grabbed Ridge’s arm. With both hands.

  “Please say yes.” She clung to him, her eyes pleading and wet with tears. “He hasn’t said a word for almost two weeks. He just stopped talking. I don’t know why. And he never asks for anything.” She shook his arm then seemed to realize what she was doing and dropped it. “Please say it’s okay.”

  Ridge shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He raised his voice to reach Jeffrey. “I can’t even ride that one. Not yet. He’s wild as a cougar and twice as mean.”