How to Handle a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “But who is he? Is he a friend of your father’s?”

  The child refused to even look at her.

  Ridge knelt down on the gravelly shoulder of the road and put both hands on the boy’s shoulders. Looking him straight in the eye, he lowered his voice and said, “I will never let him get you. Never. I promise you, it’s safe to go home.”

  Sierra would have stepped in if she’d only known what to say. Ridge couldn’t keep that promise. Giving the kid a sense of security was good, but hadn’t the cowboy said he believed in telling the truth? What was he going to do—set up a 24/7 vigil outside Phoenix House? There was no way he could protect Jeffrey all the time.

  Jeffrey’s normally expressionless eyes searched Ridge’s, as if making sure he could trust him. Ridge never looked away, and finally the boy nodded. Turning away from Ridge, he climbed into the truck’s narrow backseat and tugged the seat belt across his small body.

  “Never,” Sierra heard him whisper to himself. It was barely a breath, but she wondered how often the boy would repeat the promise to himself in the days to come. Some kids had a bit of blanket from home that made them feel safe; now Jeffrey had a word—and he’d carry it with him like a security blanket for months, maybe years to come, until it wore out.

  When would that be? It seemed inevitable that it would wear out. These kids’ lives changed so fast, so frequently. But Ridge was a man who kept his promises. She suspected he’d find a way.

  She wouldn’t want to be Mitch right now.

  ***

  The other boys were hanging out with Gil in the kitchen by the time Ridge got Sierra and Jeffrey back into the house.

  “Hey, look, it’s the man from Mars,” said Isaiah. “He came back to his home planet.”

  Jeffrey walked past him without a word. Sierra let him go, waving an admonishing finger at Isaiah.

  “Watch it with the name-calling, mister,” she said. “You know better.”

  She turned back to Ridge. “Looks like everything’s back to normal here. Thanks.”

  “That’s all you have to say? Thanks?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing. I don’t like chatty women.” He grinned and looked so charming, with his five-o’clock shadow and battered hat, that she couldn’t help smiling back. “But now that I chased down your renegade kid for you, I could really use that lunch.”

  “Oh. Lunch.” She’d obviously forgotten all about the invitation. He could almost see smoke coming out of her ears as her mind cranked up excuses. “It’s kind of late for lunch.”

  “Dinner, then.”

  She stewed a little while longer and finally came up with another excuse. “What will Riley do while I’m gone?”

  Riley appeared in the doorway so fast she had to have been eavesdropping.

  “I left some stuff in Denver. I need to go pick it up,” she said. “If I could borrow your car…”

  Score one for Riley. Surprisingly, she was on his side for some reason.

  “Sure,” Sierra said. “I should go with you, though.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you,” Sierra said. “But come right back. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Sierra turned to Ridge. “I have to go wash up a little.”

  Riley looked so uneasy at being left alone with Ridge that he felt sorry for her. Perching on the edge of one of the chairs, she kept glancing at him and looking away. He wondered what had happened in her life to make her so frightened of men.

  “You don’t have to babysit me,” he said. “If you have things to do…”

  “No. Well, yes, actually. I do have things to do.” She took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “I’m not just going to get my stuff. I’m going to find Mitch and figure out what he’s up to. He lied about knowing Sierra. He used me to get to her. And I want to know why.”

  “That could be dangerous.”

  “Maybe.” Riley looked him straight in the eye for the first time since he’d met her. “But I don’t care. I’m not a total loser, you know. I’d do anything to help Sierra.” She glanced down at her feet, the brief tough-girl facade fading. “I’ll do it smart, don’t worry. I’ll pretend I’m on his side, like I’m mad at Sierra for not letting me stay.”

  “That sounds smart,” Ridge said. “But it still sounds dangerous.”

  Chapter 28

  As Sierra followed Ridge into the dimly lit interior of the Red Dawg Saloon, she managed to tear her eyes from his backside long enough to nod hello to a few of her new neighbors. His jeans weren’t tight, exactly, but they sure did fit. And he’d gone out to his truck and returned wearing a clean straw cowboy hat.

  A clean hat should have been a good thing, but for some reason Sierra missed his bashed-in, stained, scarred, battered old felt hat. It fit better with his face somehow—and his personality. Ridge wasn’t about the showy cowboy charm sold by Nashville singing stars; he was the real thing. A working cowboy.

  Those Nashville stars might have money and fame and legions of groupies, but they weren’t this rugged, or this masculine, or this hot. They didn’t have that walk, the slight swagger a man could only get from long days in the saddle. Or the quiet self-assurance of a rodeo rider who’s been tossed in the dirt by a hundred horses and bucking bulls and walked away every time—well, almost every time—with a tip of his hat. Certainly if you could subdue a bucking bull, you’d be pretty confident about everything else.

  She struggled to still the crazy sparrow that seemed to be fluttering in her chest as she slid into a booth upholstered in red vinyl with a few duct tape patches. Why was she so nervous? She was only here because he bailed her out last night. Period. End of story.

  “It’s not exactly The Four Seasons,” he said, sliding into the other side of the booth.

  “I’ve heard it’s the best restaurant in Wynott,” she said.

  “I don’t know. The microwave burritos at the Mini Mart are pretty darn good.”

  She glanced around and caught several other diners looking their way. Ed Boone, who had been armed and dangerous outside his hardware store the night before, had his deep-set eyes fixed on the two of them and a sly smile on his face. Mrs. Carson, who was having a silent but companionable dinner with her husband, averted her gaze every time Sierra looked her way. A few men at the bar were watching speculatively. Ridge had nodded at them as he walked in, so they must be friends or acquaintances.

  “They’ll quit staring after a while.” Ridge grinned. “Might be a long while, though. You’re the most interesting thing to happen to Wynott in a long time.”

  What did he mean? Interesting to everyone or interesting to him? Or both? Was it a reference to what had happened between them at the ranch? Or just a passing reference to the fact that she was the new girl, somebody a little different.

  Why did that matter, anyway? As Isaiah would say, she was being such a girl.

  As she pretended to admire the Red Dawg’s rustic decor, Ridge accidentally brushed her calf with the toe of his cowboy boot. There couldn’t possibly be a more innocent touch, but it was like he’d pushed a button that started an old-fashioned Super 8 movie flickering in her mind. She saw snippets of their night together, disconnected pictures of the moments that mattered: their bodies intertwined, his rough hand cupping her cheek, his pale eyes looking into hers and seeing far more than she wanted to reveal. Then things got really heated and she saw the sculpted muscles of his thigh against hers, the bulge of his biceps as he lifted himself above her, the earnest concentration on his face as he closed his eyes and savored the sensation of driving into her, over and over and…

  Stop.

  She folded her hands on the table—partly to look poised but mostly to stop them from shaking. The waitress had stopped by, and Ridge had said something. What had it been?

  She smiled and nodded vaguely, wondering what she was agreeing to. He could have asked her to cut off her left thumb and feed it to Sluefoot for all she kne
w.

  When the waitress gave her an expectant smile, Sierra realized she hadn’t so much as glanced at the menu.

  “I’ll have a cheeseburger,” she said. She could see the remnants of one on Mrs. Carson’s plate and the fries looked good. “With fries and a Coke.”

  “Rib eye,” Ridge said. “Rare. And a baked potato. Water to drink.”

  Sierra fished around for a subject that didn’t involve herself or Ridge or how they felt about each other.

  “So how do you know Mike?” she asked.

  “Mike who?”

  “Mike Malloy. Your drinking buddy.”

  He gave her a blank stare.

  “The guy that runs Phoenix House, who thought you should teach the kids rodeo.”

  “Oh. Him.” Ridge shook his head. “I actually don’t know him. Shane met him in the beer tent at a rodeo once. The guy wouldn’t leave Shane alone until he promised to get involved.”

  “So you’re not my boss’s best friend after all.”

  “I never even met the guy.”

  “That’s great.” She could hardly hide her glee. If Ridge and Mike weren’t friends, she was free to…

  Free to do things she shouldn’t.

  Ridge was watching her as if he could read her mind, so she fished around for a safe topic. Local history should be safe.

  “Phoenix House was a group home before, wasn’t it?” Sierra said.

  Ridge nodded, grimacing. “They called it an orphanage then, but yeah, it was pretty much the same thing.” He stumbled over the words, as if this was a hard topic for him to talk about. “The woman running it was nothing like you, though. She was a lot older, for one thing.”

  Sierra grimaced. She got comments about how young she was all the time. It was her size. It kept people from taking her seriously, and she was tired of it. She’d hit her limit in heel-height, and her posture was straight as a number-two pencil. The only way she could look taller was stilts, and they hadn’t come into vogue yet.

  She sat back as the waitress arrived, bearing heaping plates of food. Sierra’s burger was big and juicy and deliciously messy, which would have been fine if she’d been eating alone.

  “Anything else?” the waitress asked.

  “Drinks?” Ridge smiled as the girl whirled and headed back to the kitchen.

  “What was she like?” Sierra asked. “The woman who ran Phoenix House, I mean.”

  Ridge huffed out a mirthless laugh. “She sure as hell didn’t care about the kids like you do. She was just there to collect a paycheck. She scrimped on supplies, and she never lifted a finger to clean the place.”

  “You know a lot about it,” she said. “Have you always been concerned about homeless kids?”

  “Sort of.” Ridge toyed with his food, which made it all the more embarrassing that Sierra couldn’t help attacking her cheeseburger like a hungry wolf.

  “She never should have been given control over kids. Not anywhere.” Ridge was staring across the room, his eyes fixed on the wall as if he was seeing the skimpy meals and unwashed laundry himself. “She’d lock the kids in the basement, make them go without meals, you name it. That’s what finally got the place shut down.”

  “That’s awful,” Sierra said.

  “It was. It’s so isolated here, you know? There was nobody for the kids to turn to. I think there were supposed to be state inspections, but nobody ever came.”

  He was still staring blankly into the distance. The term “thousand-yard stare” was usually applied to combat veterans or post-traumatic stress sufferers. But if she didn’t know better, she’d say that’s what Ridge was doing now.

  He seemed to take a lot of things about the home personally. Maybe it was a sad commentary on society that the level of his caring set off warning bells in her head.

  Or maybe…

  All the questions that had been lurking in the back of her mind since her first trip to the ranch surged to the forefront. Why didn’t Ridge have the same last name as his father or his brothers? Why did the three boys look so different? And that picture…

  She reached over the table, stopping just short of touching his hand. He jerked in his seat, as if he’d been dreaming and she’d woken him up.

  “You seem to know an awful lot about this,” she said cautiously.

  He shook his head, as if snapping out of a dream. “Yeah, well, I was there.”

  She didn’t know what to say. He had been there.

  There.

  He’d been one of the kids.

  Pieces began falling into place—the way he understood the kids. The way he talked about the place.

  She didn’t know where to look or what to say. She’d heard how bad the place was back then. Mike had cautioned her that Phoenix House had a terrible reputation to overcome.

  No wonder Ridge had trouble with relationships. No wonder he understood the boys so well.

  He’d been a foster child himself.

  Chapter 29

  Ridge’s dinner with Sierra was not going according to plan. He’d figured on bringing up his past, but the picture he wanted to paint was of a man who’d experienced the foster system and had a positive outcome—not of a man who’d been through the worst the system had to offer. Now Sierra was looking at him with a mixture of horror and pity that didn’t bode well for any rational discussion.

  Maybe he should just give up on this. Why did he want to complicate his life with a kid anyway? He was no good with people.

  But he was good with Jeffrey. The memory of the boy riding circled in his mind—the glow of his smile, the new confidence in his movements. Dammit, he remembered that feeling, that elation when you swung into the saddle and took control of a chaotic world. He wanted to give that feeling to Jeffrey, and maybe some other boys too. Not just once a week, but every day, the way Bill Decker had done for him.

  “Ridge, I had no idea you were a foster kid,” Sierra said. “I’m so sorry. I hope I haven’t said anything stupid. I mean, I had no clue.”

  He waved away her pity. “I’m fine.”

  She leaned forward, a french fry dangling from her fingers. “Well, you’ve done pretty well for yourself. I mean, I had no idea. How did you ever end up a cowboy, of all things?”

  “When they shut the place down, they found homes for all the kids but three—the three nobody wanted. Me, Shane, and Brady. They gave us an emergency placement with Bill Decker, at the ranch where I live now.”

  “And you stayed.”

  “Best thing that ever happened to me. Bill Decker didn’t plan on keeping us for long, but something just clicked for all of us.”

  “Wow.” She sat back, staring at him with a mixture of wonder and pity in her eyes.

  He wondered how to make her stop feeling sorry for him. He’d been through hard times, sure, but now he was done with that time in his life. Period. He was who he was, and that’s what he should be judged on—not his past.

  “Bill must have been quite a guy.”

  “He was.” Ridge pictured his foster father, a wiry rancher tough as a strip of rawhide, with the energy of a Tasmanian devil, the tenacity of a wolverine, and a heart as big as all of Wyoming. “He and Irene treated us like we were their own.”

  “It must have been an adjustment for you if you’d been in care that long.”

  “I hate that phrase, ‘in care,’” he said. “Nobody ‘cared’ for me until I got out of the system.”

  “I’m sorry. I never thought of it that way.” She toyed with what was left of her food awhile before she looked up and met his eyes. “So that’s why you’re so good with the boys.”

  “I hope so. It’s also why I want to adopt one. Or two. Actually, I’d eventually like to take three. That’s what worked for me and my brothers.” He thought of the conversation they’d had earlier about how well this whole group fit together. “But I could take more.”

  She stopped as suddenly as if someone had hit a pause button, a french fry halfway to her mouth. Setting the fry down, s
he blurted out, “You want to be a foster father?”

  Maybe the pity in her tone hadn’t been so bad. It sure beat disbelief, which was what he was hearing now.

  “Yes, me. Why? Is that so unbelievable?”

  She gave him a critical look. “It just surprised me. You don’t seem like the type.”

  What did she care what “type” he was? He’d spent time in three foster homes in between his bouts in various state-run group homes, and nobody had seemed to care what “type” those foster parents were. His first placement was with a pair of lazy layabouts who wanted to take advantage of easy money from the state. He’d been six then, and they’d mostly used him to clean floors and bring them beers. His second foster parents were zealots on a mission to save the world by beating morality into the hides of innocent kids. The third family meant well, but they’d expected Ridge to love them unconditionally from day one. They’d given him back to the state three weeks after his arrival.

  Obviously, nobody had checked to see what “type” they were.

  “You don’t think I can do it,” he said.

  “It’s not that. It’s just a lot to take on, that’s all.”

  “You care about the kids, right?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then aren’t you anxious to find real homes for them?”

  She took a small bite, chewed, and swallowed.

  “Anxious isn’t a good word.” Patting her lips with her napkin, she looked thoughtful. “Just because they enter into a family living situation doesn’t mean they’re home free. Foster parents have to have an understanding of the issues these kids face and the difficulties they have adjusting to what we think of as a normal life. These kids can’t just blend in with an existing family or create the kind of family most people hope for. It’s different.”

  He just stared at her. Did she think he didn’t know this stuff?

  “I know you have a good understanding of the problems they face, but you have to make sure this is a commitment you can stick with, because there’s no going back.”