How to Handle a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  ***

  Sierra could have laid in that grove forever, staring up at the sky with Ridge, watching the trees sway above them. But she wanted to know him better—not just his body, but his mind too.

  “What was it like, growing up as a foster child?”

  “You don’t want to know about that,” he said.

  “No, I do. I’m not trying to pry. I want to understand the boys better.”

  He turned to face her, and she saw the tough cowboy give way to the tender man she’d seen the other night. He had a shield he kept in place ninety percent of the time, a tight lid on the part of him that still held the hurt he’d suffered as a boy. She knew he needed that shield, but he’d dropped it that night at the Red Dawg when he’d given her his injured hand. And he was doing it again now.

  “It’s hard,” he said. “When you don’t have parents, you look at the other kids, and it’s like they’re all golden, every one of them. Even the meanest, nastiest bully is everything to someone. Someone cares if his clothes are clean and his hair’s combed. If he skins his knee, somebody helps him up and fixes it for him. But we just had to get up and keep going on our own.”

  “I try to do those things for my guys,” she said softly. “I know it’s not the same, but I try.”

  “And that’s good,” he said. “That’s more than a lot of foster kids get. But even when you do your best, you’re not their mom.”

  “I love them,” she said.

  “But they’re not yours. And you’re not theirs.”

  She flinched, but she knew she shouldn’t. Where was that professional distance she was supposed to keep?

  “I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said. “But you said you wanted to understand.”

  She nodded, and he seemed to lapse back into a haze of memory. “When you’re a kid, you don’t understand that it’s not your fault. You wonder why you don’t shine the same as other kids, why you’re not first in anybody’s heart. Why your parents chose drugs over you, or worse yet, just walked away and left you like trash for other people to pick up. You don’t know it’s the luck of the draw, and you think you must be flawed somehow.”

  She nodded.

  “There were two kinds of us,” he continued. “There were the ones who tried like hell to matter to somebody—like Josh—and there were the ones who pretended they didn’t care, like Isaiah.”

  “Which kind is Jeffrey?”

  “The person Jeffrey was supposed to matter to didn’t just stop caring. That person hurt him and would hurt him again if he could.”

  “You’re right.” She’d flinched every time she’d read Jeffrey’s file, unable to imagine the kind of people who would hurt a child that way. But Ridge hadn’t had to read a file to know the answer.

  Had he suffered the same kind of childhood as Jeffrey? Was that the bond that seemed to draw them together?

  “Jeffrey doesn’t talk because he doesn’t trust himself,” he said. “He’s afraid that if he starts, he won’t be able to stop.”

  She stared resolutely down at her lap, afraid that if she met his eyes, he’d stop talking. And she needed to know these things. To love her boys better, the way they needed to be loved. And maybe to love Ridge too. This man needed to be first in somebody’s heart. With her mother so distant, she had nobody but Riley to care for, and she knew it was time to let Riley go.

  But a man like this, so damaged and difficult? All of her heart wouldn’t be nearly enough. Her whole life was about helping people, but could she help Ridge?

  She could. She could love him enough to stay with him. She could help him create a life so complete, so right, that his dark past would recede behind their shining future.

  And for herself? She could have the family she’d always longed for: a patchwork family, with kids from every culture and background plus a few of her own. She wouldn’t just be a replacement for their mothers, a temporary fix; she’d be the real thing. And they’d be golden.

  Maybe someday…

  She remembered Jeffrey’s words in the car on the way back from the clinic.

  I’m sick of someday.

  Well, she was sick of someday too. She was sick of trying to change the world when she couldn’t even deal with the changes happening around her. Sick of giving all she could to others and never taking anything for herself.

  She was sick of working so hard to help others attain the good things in life—love, a home, a family—and denying those things to herself every single day, even though she wanted them with all the depth of her being.

  Chapter 45

  Ridge reached over and touched Sierra’s chin, lifting her face so she could look in his eyes. And when she did, she saw the pain he’d suffered while he waited for his own someday—the hurt, the healing, and the courage it had taken to survive. His eyes held a solid determination under the tenderness, and she sensed a tensing of his whole being as he looked into her eyes.

  “Sierra.” He said her name as if he were tasting it, as if he were saying it for the first time. “What do you want out of life?”

  Funny he should ask. “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “What’s changed?”

  She thought a moment. What had changed? Just one thing that mattered.

  “I met you,” she said.

  “That changed me too.” He pulled her close, so her head fit just under his shoulder and her cheek rested against his chest. Together, they watched the little gold and silver ornaments glitter as they swayed in a gentle breeze. “Before I met you, I never expected much more out of life than survival.”

  She nodded. She’d known that somehow—that he was just moving from one day to the next, with no real goal in sight.

  “I knew I was lucky to have my brothers, to have had Bill and Irene. But I never thought I’d have a family of my own.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t think I knew how.” He thought a moment, his thumb gently stroking her shoulder. “No, that’s not it. I thought I was my father’s son. My mother told me once that men in my family were born without a heart, and I believed her.”

  “And now?”

  He chuckled, pulling her closer. “You and your little band of outlaws showed me different. I never knew there were so many ways to love somebody.”

  “I know,” she said. “I can tell you love them.”

  “And you,” he said. “I love you.”

  She tilted her head up, and those gray eyes looked into hers. They were soft now, all their crystalline hardness gone.

  He was right. He had changed since they met. And so had she.

  She rested against his chest again, tucking her head under his chin, so he couldn’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m only here for a few more weeks. I’m so sorry, Ridge.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “The last thing you need is for someone else to leave you.”

  “Then don’t.”

  She sighed. “I have to. But I thought maybe we could see each other now and then. I could come up on the weekends once in a while. And maybe you could come down to Denver.”

  He somehow managed to put his arms around her and pull her away at the same time. Now he was looking into her eyes, and she knew he could read the storm of emotions there as clearly as he could read the Wyoming sky before a rain.

  “That’s not what I want,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s what you want, either.”

  “What do you want?” She regretted the question as soon as it left her lips. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Ridge wanted. She wasn’t sure she was ready.

  “I want you to marry me.”

  She opened her mouth then closed it, then opened it again. She must have looked like a horse mouthing an uncomfortable bit.

  “I know it’s sudden. I know it’s soon. But I love you, Sierra. I love you so hard it hurts, and I need you beside me every day.” He squeezed her hands, a
nd those honest gray eyes were fixed on hers. “We can make it work. Say yes.”

  She couldn’t speak. She wanted to, if only to tell him to wait, but she couldn’t get a word out.

  “I know you want to make a difference in the world,” he said. “But can you really do that from some high-rise in Denver?”

  “That’s where all the decisions are made.”

  “Really? That’s where they decide that Isaiah should be put in charge of something to channel his bossiness into something constructive? That Frankie needs to hang on to that old hat, even if it is a menace to public health, because it was his grandfather’s? That horses hold the key to Jeff’s heart? You don’t change the world with laws and rules and policies; you change it with love. I know that, because you changed me.”

  “But I’ve tried to make a difference here,” she said. “I wanted to make this a hometown for the boys, remember? And the neighbors just look at me sideways and turn the other way. I don’t know how to do it.”

  “I do,” he said. “I know these people. Brady said Isaiah was really interested in that old tractor engine over there. So how about we let him work with Ben Sanders a couple afternoons a week?”

  “Ben Sanders?”

  “He’s the mechanic in those garages in town. Fixes cars sometimes but mostly heavy equipment for the oil fields. And Josh seems to be interested in medicine.”

  “I thought maybe he could be a vet someday.”

  “Vet, heck. He could be a doctor. But we could start with the animals. I could have him shadow Doc Harrison once in a while on his rounds. Carter seems like sports might be his thing, but he also likes military stuff. He could talk to Phoebe Niles’s son when he comes home from his deployment. And then when Mike goes back to the military, maybe Phoebe would enjoy having him around once in a while. He reminds me a lot of Mike when he was that age.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”

  “I’ve only just gotten to know the kids and figure out what would work. Besides, I was too busy talking you into spending time with me.”

  She bent her head and began plucking fuzz from the old blanket as if it was the most important thing in the world.

  “You might not be able to save the world from here, Sierra. But I think you could save this little town. And who knows what could come after that? You could write about it. Make it a book. That way, you could have that influence you want.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do that someday.”

  “Do it now. You don’t have to compromise, hon. You can save the world and be happy. You just have to say yes.”

  She stared into the distance, her mind spinning as she watched popcorn clouds drift across an indigo sky. An airplane sliced through the blue, leaving a white contrail like a tear in the blue of the sky. She watched it fly, a silver speck in the great blue bowl of the sky.

  Ridge was right. She was just one person. There was no guarantee that she could change the world. But she knew she could change this man, this town, these kids.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes?” He looked so startled she wondered if she’d done the right thing. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to say yes. Maybe he’d been playing with her, or maybe he thought he had to propose to get her—well, not to get her into bed, because he already had that, so…

  He leaned into her, and she suddenly found herself on her back on the blanket, and then he was kissing her with a new tenderness but somehow, at the same time, with a new power—a possessiveness that should have irritated her but only made her feel like she’d finally found where she belonged—and who she belonged with.

  Chapter 46

  Sierra hung up the phone in the office, jumped out of her chair, and let out a whoop. Her job at Phoenix House hadn’t been filled. She could stay. She could stay with her boys and marry her cowboy and live a life she never even could have imagined a month ago.

  The tiny office seemed too small to contain her joy, so she headed out to the front porch. Leaning on the rail, she looked up and down the street and saw Wynott with new eyes. This was her town. These were her people.

  This was her hometown.

  She paced from one end of the porch to the other. She needed to tell somebody. Ridge would be out in the corrals, messing with his horses. But Riley—she glanced across the street. Sure enough, the battered ranch truck was parked behind the hardware store.

  Did Riley park in the back to avoid her, or what? Was she hoping Sierra wouldn’t see the truck? Sierra was pretty sure Riley had forgiven her, and she’d seemed fine at the ranch the other day, but she should go over there and check.

  She waited for a truck to pass then ran over to Boone’s.

  “Hi, Ed. Is Riley here?” Sierra was bouncing on her toes, barely able to contain her news. She’d resisted the urge to tell anyone about Ridge’s proposal and her answer; there had been too many logistics to work out. But now that she knew she still had her job, she felt like hollering from the rooftops.

  “Sure is. She’s back there with Alma,” Ed said. “She’s a ministering angel, that girl is. Been a gift from heaven for us, that’s for sure.”

  Sierra had heard Riley described many ways, but ministering angel?

  That was a new one.

  “The way she helps out in the store is one thing, but it’s what she does for Alma that really makes me grateful,” Ed continued. “There’s some times a woman needs another woman when she’s ailing and can’t help herself, you know? Riley’s given Alma her dignity back.”

  “Wait a minute.” It sounded like Riley had news of her own to share. “So Riley’s been helping you here at the store and nursing Alma too?”

  “Just in her spare time,” Ed said. “I know she’s working for the Decker boys out at the ranch, but she always seems to have a little time for us, and I appreciate that. It’s good Ridge’s so flexible and all about the truck, so she can be here when we need her.”

  “Well, that’s—that’s great.” Why hadn’t Riley told anyone about this?

  “She’s like the daughter we never had.” He leaned across the counter, resting his elbows on the scarred linoleum surface. “Alma just can’t wait till Riley’s done with the Decker job and can move here for good. We don’t use the upstairs anymore since Alma got so bad, so she’ll have plenty of privacy, and she’ll be here if Alma needs her. Yup, that girl’s a blessed angel. No doubt about it.”

  He gave Sierra a serene smile. Much as she wanted to mirror that expression, she just couldn’t. She felt like one of those surprised cartoon characters, like her eyes were bugging out of her head and bouncing on little springs.

  “Aw, did I spill the beans?” Ed looked down at the counter and shook his head. “Alma always said I couldn’t keep a secret in a ten-gallon bucket. Riley was probably going to tell you all about this at some special dinner or something. I know she’s awfully proud of finding her place here in Wynott. She said you didn’t think there was anywhere for her to work here.” He grinned, as proudly as if Riley was his own daughter. “Guess she proved you wrong, now, didn’t she?”

  Sierra nodded, smiling, but she felt a little stunned. This was so sudden, so unexpected. Who would have guessed that Riley would end up selling hardware in a small town in Wyoming?

  “Well, she’ll be out soon as she gets Alma settled,” Ed said. “Then she can tell you herself.”

  Sierra wandered through the aisles, pretending she was shopping when really she just needed some time to digest the news. Why was she feeling a pang of loss when her friend was finally setting out on her own, just like Sierra had always hoped she would?

  She turned to see Riley standing behind her like an apparition.

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Just appear here, out of nowhere?”

  Riley laughed. “There’s a door back there, in lumber. It goes to Ed and Alma’s place.”

  “Ed was just telling me about your—plans.”

 
Sierra did her best to sound happy. Why was that so hard? She should be jumping up and down, hugging her friend.

  “Sorry,” Riley said. “I was going to tell you, but somebody just can’t keep a secret.” She gave Ed a pointed look.

  “I’m sorry, honey. It just spilled out.”

  “I’m just glad to hear the good news.” Sierra pretended to examine various nuts and bolts, wondering all the while what was wrong with her. It was hard to cover up an emotion when you didn’t even know what it was.

  Riley looked as puzzled as she felt. “What’s wrong, Sierra?”

  “I don’t know. I’m happy for you, but I feel like everything’s changed.”

  “I know,” Riley said. “I don’t need you anymore.”

  The words hit Sierra like a dagger. But then again, this was what they’d worked for. The whole point of mentoring someone was to teach them to make it on their own. Maybe she’d forgotten that goal along the way. She looked at Riley, standing there with her tool belt draped around her waist, and felt her own grin widening to mirror her friend’s.

  “You don’t need me, do you?”

  “Not as a mentor, I don’t,” Riley said. “But I could use a friend. You’re not going to lose interest now that I’m not all helpless and needy, are you?”

  “No. It was never about that.”

  Riley arched a disbelieving eyebrow. “It’s always about that with you.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You think? The work you do? The way you love those boys?” She lowered her voice. “Heck, even Ridge is a project for you.” She thumbed carelessly in the direction of Decker Ranch. “He came from a broken home, just like the boys. Just like me. I mean, he’s hot and everything, but you feel safe because he needs you. That’s what attracted you to him. You want to fix him.”

  Was that true?

  On the surface, it seemed like a no-brainer. Sierra was, in a way, addicted to fixing people. And Ridge definitely was, in some ways, damaged goods. But deep down, she knew their relationship wasn’t that simple. There was something more between them—something inexplicable. When she was with him, she felt like she was home.