Rodeo Father

The man who had bought her house watched her as if he was afraid she would faint again.

A terrible rage arose in her.

She didn’t want pity. She wanted a knock-down, drag-out fight, to pound something hard and not stop for a good month.

Bursting with the unfairness, she pushed against the cowboy squatting in front of her. Travis fell onto his butt in the dirt.

“Hey!”

Rachel had never touched another person with violence in her life.

She stood. Her belly might make a swift exit impossible, but she couldn’t stay here.

He jumped to his feet and grasped her upper arms to stop her. “Why’d you do that? I’ve done nothing to you.”

She kept her mouth shut because, if she didn’t, she would start to scream and never stop.

His big hands still gripped her arms. She hated him. She didn’t want him to stop touching her.

She put her hands against his chest to push him away, but her outrage deflated. If she could fall into the earth and disappear, she would. He was right. He had done nothing to her. Life had. As hard as she fought, she couldn’t get ahead.

Stuff happened.

She was tired of stuff happening.

She would just have to work harder. And harder. And harder. God, she was tired.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her palms soothed by the solid beat of his heart beneath his worn denim shirt.

Despite his confusion, despite how she had just treated him, he watched her with concern. Travis was kind and good, and she was behaving like a child.

“I truly am sorry.”

“It’s okay. I can see you’re upset.”

She started down the driveway to go home, or what passed for a home.

“You’re shaky,” he called. “You need some help getting across the road?”

Cripes. The day had started so well. For a short while, he’d found her super-duper attractive. Now, he was treating her like an invalid.

“I can manage by myself,” she answered with a touch of irritation.

She managed to make it inside the front door before the first tears fell.

After five minutes of the worst pity party she’d thrown for herself since Davey’s death, she rinsed her face and called her friend Nadine.

Rachel brought her up to speed on everything that had just happened.

“I’m angry, Nadine. Mad to the soles of my shoes. Life has to start turning around for me sometime soon.”

Nadine said, “I hear you, sweetie. You’ve had a rough go of it. How can I help?”

Nadine wrote for the local newspaper. She was handy with research and a computer.

A need for...something...burned inside Rachel. Vengeance, maybe? Or perhaps just to learn that Travis was not the perfect man he appeared to be? That he was flawed and unworthy of her attraction? That he didn’t deserve her house? It would be so much easier to think of him as her enemy if she didn’t like him so much.

“Find out about him,” she ordered Nadine. “You’re a great reporter. You do research for your articles. Find out who Travis Read really is and then let me know.”

“Will do, honey. I’ll get back to you soon.”

Rachel wished Tori were home right now. She would give her daughter the biggest hug, but every Friday morning, Cindy and Tori had a standing date for a few hours of shopping and then lunch at the mall.

Cindy worked at the hair salon in town and had disposable income. Cindy cared more for clothes and perfect nails than she did about improving her living situation.

Every week, she gave Tori the treats that Rachel could not afford and, every week, Rachel rose above her own regret and envy to be happy for Tori.

The new mall out on the highway twenty miles away was a monstrosity into which Rachel refused to set one foot. She liked the shops on Main Street, thank you very much.

Her mom loved the mall, but then, she had no sense of loyalty to her town at all.

Rachel missed Victoria. They’d only been gone a few hours, but Rachel needed her daughter something fierce.

Tori was goodness and light and the antidote to every disappointment life had visited upon Rachel.

She took her straw cowboy hat from the hook beside the door. She’d embroidered the bitterroot flowers on the band herself, as well as the ones on the secondhand shirt she wore. She set it on her head defiantly, then sat on the porch step to wait for her daughter to come home. She shouldn’t be wearing straw at this time of year, at the end of October for Pete’s sake, but Davey had given it to her after their first date. ’Nuff said.

Chapter Three

What the hell had that kiss been about? Travis took himself to task about as hard as he ever had in his life.

What had he been thinking? He knew only that Rachel had run across the road and had touched him with hands more caring than any he’d ever known. Her concern for him, a man about whom no one cared or gave a second thought, was a powerful attraction.

Women usually wanted stuff from him, as opposed to worrying about him.

After a childhood as bereft of affection as a snowball in hell, tenderness took him by surprise.

He’d been winded and shocked at losing control of his bike, flat on his back cursing himself for a fool, and then there she was like an angel, leaning over him with thoughtful concern and fear for his well-being.

His parents hadn’t cared. His sister would have, but he’d spent too many years taking care of her and their pattern was set in stone. He was the caretaker, not she.

Travis watched the woman waddle back to the sad-looking trailer across the road, stubborn defiance stiffening her spine.

She asked for nothing and offered so much. Too much.

Have a care, Travis. You don’t even know the woman and already you’re kissing her?

He’d never done anything like it in his life. He’d had plenty of one-night stands, but not with women with pregnant bellies and a whole barn load of responsibility.

Lying in the road with his protective shields down, this morning’s attraction had flared.

Her hair turned out to be every bit as soft as a calf’s ear. And she’d tasted as sweet as he’d imagined.

But what good was attraction when he could do nothing with it? She was pregnant. He had a glut of duties to fill in the coming months. He didn’t need more.

He had his own life to live.

Case closed, Travis. End of story, got it?

He needed to back away from Rachel and stay away.

He unhooked his saddlebags from his bike and carried them into his house. His house.

Travis Read. Homeowner. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Home. Lord, how did a man learn how to make a home when he’d never known a single good one in his whole life?

The challenge scared the hell out of him.

The empty rooms waited like hungry sponges to soak up the noise and chaos Jason and Colt would surely create.

Was he doing the right thing in uprooting them and bringing them here? He had only his gut to rely on, and it was shouting a resounding yes.

In the old-fashioned kitchen, he unpacked his groceries and put them into the ancient fridge.

Upstairs, he chose the largest bedroom for himself and the new king-size bed he’d ordered. He’d slept in bunkhouses all his adult life. Now he owned a bed.

Soon it would be Samantha’s, and he’d be back in another bunkhouse somewhere.

His bags hit the floor with a solid clunk.

Walking back downstairs, he stared around. By the time Sammy and her boys arrived, he needed to turn this house into a home.

He had plenty of work ahead of him, in cleaning up the place and renovating. Floors needed sanding and walls painting.

He had no template to guide him. He would start with whatever needed fixing and then take inspiration from the many ranch wives who’d made homes and fed him and his fellow cowboys on too many ranches to count.

There was nothing inside him to draw on.

He had plenty of longing, but zero know-how.

Moving on was all he knew, and bunking with a dozen other men was his way of life.

Travis Read. Homeowner. A home meant obligation and duty, a millstone around a man’s neck...and he was damned tired of those.

* * *

RACHEL SAT ON the porch and watched her mother pull into the driveway and park her decked-out pickup truck beside Rachel’s old junker.

Cindy Hardy had no understanding of the notion less is more.

She had bought every chrome feature the local dealership could get its hands on.

Thank God Rachel had been able to talk her out of a lift kit.

Cindy mistakenly assumed that men drooled over her, when all they really wanted was her truck.

Too many of the men in town had known Cindy, as in known known, to want to have anything to do with her romantically.

To the people of Rodeo, Montana, Cindy had always been and would always be the girl from the trailer park—even if there was no park, only a trailer.

The second Cindy got Tori unbuckled, Rachel’s daughter jumped out of the truck, came running toward her mom and threw herself into her arms, squealing, “Mommy, Mommy.”

Rachel broke into a huge smile and hugged her little three-year-old bundle of joy. Cindy unloaded the bags. Rachel oohed and aahed over her daughter’s new purchases. Cindy had bought her a lot of fun stuff. Thank goodness it wasn’t all toys, but also new clothes. Another week of Cindy’s wages down the tubes.

Rachel should tell her to stop, but without Cindy buying Tori’s clothes, the child would have little to wear. Besides, how could she tell Tori’s only grandmother to stop spoiling her?

Nope. She didn’t have it in her heart to ruin Cindy’s fun, even if Cindy never had understood that it would have been better to have saved at least some of her money to improve her life’s situation than to wait for some man to come along and save her.

Rachel would never, not in a million years, depend on a man again where her finances were concerned. She planned to scrimp and save and work until her knuckles hurt, and then get her children into a stable, secure home life.

Tori chattered away, reminding her of what was at stake.

Davey’s parents had both died when he was in high school. Ironic that it had been a car crash.

Cindy was Tori’s only other relative apart from Rachel.

Maybe one day a week of being spoiled wasn’t so bad.

A sound from the road caught their attention. A truck turned into Abigail’s—correction, Travis’s—driveway.

Rachel brushed her fingers through Tori’s soft blond curls. Mother Nature had fashioned her daughter’s hair out of strands of pure sunlight.

She and Tori watched the activity across the road, Rodeo’s version of reality TV.

“That’s a big chruck, Mommy.”

“Truck,” Rachel corrected automatically. “It sure is, Tori-ori-o.”

With a pang of deep-seated regret, Rachel thought, My house belongs to someone else now.

“What’s going on over there?” Cindy asked.

Cindy Hardy wore full makeup, and styled and sprayed hair. She’d tucked a sparkly, faux-Western shirt into her favorite jeans, which in turn were tucked into polished gray snakeskin cowboy boots, boots that had never seen the inside of a barn. A big rodeo belt buckle, a gift from a former lover, accentuated a still-trim waist.

Rachel suspected the guy had probably had a bunch of buckles made up expressly to give to women like Cindy. No rodeo rider worth his salt would give his own buckle away.

“It sold, but we didn’t hear about it,” Rachel said, not bothering to update her mother on details. The thought of introducing her to Travis made Rachel antsy in a way she didn’t want to look at too closely.

Cindy was still young and attractive, even if her style wasn’t something that appealed to Rachel.

Two men got out of the truck. “Wonder if the new owner will paint,” Rachel murmured. “It needs to be freshened up.”

Cindy’s husky laugh mocked her. “It needs a heck of a lot more than a coat of paint.”

Resentment shot through Rachel. “I would have been happy to have done the work to fix it up.” A fixer-upper was the only kind of house she could ever hope to buy.

A commotion across the road snagged her attention, as the two burly men opened the rear doors of the truck.

Travis didn’t own much. The truck was less than half full. The men unloaded a large dresser and carried it into the house.

Tori marched her fingers up Rachel’s leg, singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Rachel glanced down at her three-year-old daughter, gazing into eyes so blue they rivaled the cloudless sky, into Davey’s eyes, the first thing that had attracted Rachel to him. His brilliant, laughter-filled eyes.

She was struggling to replace his laughter in their lives.

The pair of movers came back for a big leather sofa. “Too masculine. That house needs comfortable, cozy sofas and armchairs. Shabby chic. Chintz.”

“Chins,” Tori whispered.

The furniture looked brand-new.

Travis came outside, all traces of leather gone. The cowboy she’d met this morning stood on the front porch.

He leaned against a veranda post, a rugged movie star in worn jeans, a snug white T-shirt, denim jacket, well-used cowboy boots and a black Stetson.

He should have looked out of place on Abigail’s old-fashioned veranda. He didn’t. He looked...perfect.

Cindy whistled. “Good-looking man. He bought that house? Wow. Who is he?”

Rachel didn’t fill her in. She had never, not once in her life, competed with her mom where men were concerned, but she felt a rivalry now with a raging fire.

“What does he need a whole house for?”

Good question. “I don’t know, Cindy.”

Rachel had had time to cool down. Contrary to what she’d thought earlier, Travis was not her enemy. He was only a man who’d somehow managed to do better in life than she had.

His glance swept the countryside, Cindy’s house, Rachel and Tori...and Cindy.

What good looks Rachel lacked, Cindy had in spades. Tori had inherited her blond curls from her grandmother, along with her charming dimples. Somehow those had bypassed Rachel.

All Rachel had were strong features and freckles, courtesy of a father she’d never met.

“I’m going over to meet him.” Cindy squeezed past Rachel and Victoria and stepped down from the porch.

“No!” Rachel didn’t want her mother embarrassing her. “Mom, please. Don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t flirt with him like you do with every man you meet.”

Cindy wouldn’t just be welcoming Travis to the neighborhood. She would ramp it up to see what she could get out of the man.

“He’s the best-looking man we’ve had around here in ages. If you think I’m going to pass him up, you’re nuts.” Cindy rubbed her hands on her thighs, the gesture telling. “I’m still young. I can flirt with any man I want. It’s none of your business.”

Cindy was pretty enough to turn any man’s head, but she’d been plagued with a neediness that routinely drove her into the arms of the wrong kind of man.

Relentless, she was forever on the lookout for her next conquest.

Her sights had just zeroed in on the one across the way.

“Please, Cindy, no. You want to get your hooks into him.” Rachel knew Cindy’s needs inside and out. The vulnerability in the depths of her eyes was exactly the thing that had gotten her into trouble when she was only fifteen, hitching her pony to a good-looking drifter’s wagon and then getting pregnant. Whoever the guy was, he’d been long gone by the time Rachel had been born.

Rachel was twenty-eight and her mother only forty-three. Rachel guessed Travis to be in his mid-to late thirties. Cindy could conceivably flirt with him, but what a load of trouble it could bring.

“Mom, he’s not a drifter. He’s our new neighbor. He bought the house, for Pete’s sake.”

“So?”

“So...” Rachel said with forced patience. “This could go wrong in so many ways.”

“Everything will be fine. I’m only going over to talk to him.” In Cindy’s voice, Rachel heard the hints of desperation that had been growing stronger since Cindy had turned forty.

“And when the relationship goes sour, as it always does?” Rachel’s displeasure bubbled over. She’d seen this movie too many times and hated the ending. “How good a neighbor will he be then? How good will you be?”

Cindy shrugged. “Maybe this time it will work out.” She started to mosey down the driveway, but turned back. “You could always move into a place of your own, and then you wouldn’t have to watch me talk to men.” She walked across the road.

Mom was right. This was her mother’s home, not hers. Cindy could flirt with whomever she wanted. “Come on, sugar pie, let’s go inside,” Rachel said, urging Tori ahead of her, unwilling to witness Cindy’s performance.

Inside the house, she strode to the kitchen and settled Tori into a chair.

In the bedroom, Rachel chose one of her few maternity shirts and put it on with her good maternity jeans.

She returned to the kitchen where she put the finishing touches to the dinner she’d made to take to work with her, every action staccato and peevish.

She had no claim on the new stranger. Cindy could do whatever she wanted with him.

She packed a quinoa salad and a pint of milk, dropping them into her bag too hard.

Forcing herself to calm down, she took Tori’s tiny face between her hands. Rachel kissed her forehead and her nose. “I love you, sweetie. Come sit on the porch and wave goodbye.”

She picked up her purse from the hall table and left the trailer, making sure Cindy was on her way back before heading to her car.

Tori retrieved her favorite stuffed animal, a furry gray platypus. Rachel shook off dirt before she let her daughter hug it to her chest. “Stay on the porch till the car is gone, okay?”

She approached Cindy who’d moseyed back across the highway with her ultra-sexy, phony walk that Rachel disliked.

Wary of her mom’s Cheshire cat grin, she asked, “What’s up?”

“I’ve got a date,” Cindy said with a whole boatload of smugness.

Disappointment thrummed through Rachel. So that’s the kind of man Travis was, a guy who kissed strangers, but liked flashy women like Cindy. Was the man a player? Had she pegged him all wrong? “When?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight? But I’m working. You’re taking care of Tori.”

“I know. I’ll ask Laurie to babysit for a few hours.” Cindy went to the porch and bent to talk to Tori. “You don’t mind, do you, honey? Laurie is fun.”

“She colors with me.” Tori smiled with Cindy’s dimples.

“But I can’t afford to pay her,” Rachel objected, knowing Cindy wouldn’t offer to pick up the tab.

“Sure you can. You make good tips at the bar.”

“But—” What could she say? I need money to move out, to get away from you? She couldn’t bear to sound so cold and ungrateful, especially not when Cindy had been kind enough to take her in. Rachel should have never moved back into the trailer with Cindy and her resentment, but what else could she have done? Davey had left her with nothing but broken promises and hot air.

Rachel gave in to the inevitable. “Okay. I’ll be home after one.”

Before leaving, Rachel kissed Tori again because, while Davey hadn’t been able to keep a buck in his pocket, he had made her laugh a lot and had given her the most precious of gifts, two children.

Just as Rachel opened her car door, Tori called, “See you later, aggilator.”

Ah, Victoria, my sweet divine daughter, you raise my spirits as much as your father used to.

Rachel blew her an air kiss. “Alligator, Tori-ori-ori-o. In a while, crocodile,” she sang and got into her old car and drove away laughing, but not before catching her new neighbor watching her with a strange expression on his face.

Travis Read, who are you? The man who loved his carousel ride this morning, or the kind who is attracted to a flashy, shallow flirt like my mother?

* * *

A HEADACHE POUNDED behind Rachel’s left eye. The tray full of beers she carried dragged down her arms. Was the music louder than usual tonight?

Honey’s Place was the only bar in Rodeo. True, there was the diner, but her friend Vy ran an alcohol-free eatery, and most people wanted beer with their fries on a Friday night.

A lot of these people were cowboys who worked the ranches in the area. They came in at the end of the week for liquor, great burgers and fun music.

Despite her aching legs and feet, Rachel hustled. She needed her tips, needed to come up with an alternative plan now that Abigail’s house had been sold.

If she felt a tad desperate, well...she was.

A table called for a round of beers. Rachel headed to the bar to fill the order.

“How’re you doing?” Rushed but efficient, Honey Armstrong filled orders as quickly as her servers brought them to the bar. Her mane of long, blond curls wild tonight, she peered at Rachel critically. “You look tired.”

Fearful of giving Honey a reason to send her home early, Rachel put on her game face.

“I’m good.”

“Rach, don’t try to fool me. You know you can’t.”

“I’ll take a dinner break soon,” Rachel promised.

Honey pointed a finger at her. “You’d better. You look worn out.”

It was Friday night, the bar was packed and Rachel needed to hustle. She would take care of her aching body tomorrow morning.

Off-duty, Sheriff Cole Payette, sidled up to the bar and sat on the only empty stool. His spot. No matter how busy Honey’s got, the locals left it empty for him. Friday and Saturday nights often found him sitting there for hours, nursing a beer.

Rachel liked him.

As it turned out, Rachel didn’t get that break she’d promised Honey she would take. Her energy flagged, but customers continued to pour in.

With every step, her feet screamed for attention.

Too bad. As long as there were customers, she would continue to work and bring in tips.

She set a heavy tray of mugs of beer onto the table next to the front door and handed them around. She was just making change when she felt a draft. New arrivals. Good. More tips.

She glanced up...and froze. Cindy walked in with Travis, the man freshly shaved and movie-star handsome, the tips of his hair still damp from a shower, she guessed.

Why couldn’t Cindy have taken him to the diner for dinner? Why come here? But Rachel knew. Her mom was showing off that she was with the handsome new cowboy in town, and Honey’s would be a lot more crowded than the diner. Cindy liked an audience.

She wore even more spangles tonight and had put on her sparkly eye shadow.

When he saw Rachel, Travis raised one eyebrow as if to ask, “You work here?”

Rachel suppressed the part of herself that found him attractive.

Fantasizing about a handsome stranger when she looked like a beer barrel on legs was just the type of daydreaming she had to quit.

Anyhow, Cindy must be his type. He’d asked her out on a date pretty darn quickly, hadn’t he? Which meant he wasn’t Rachel’s type. And why was she having those kinds of unlikely thoughts, anyway? He was dating Cindy, and he had bought Rachel’s house. Cindy was welcome to him.

Rachel’s dating days were long over.

Then why, in the middle of a crowded bar surrounded by people she’d grown up with and loved, did Rachel feel so lonely? So in need of someone to talk to? Of someone who would listen? Or who would just hold her hand so she didn’t feel desperately alone?

Travis and Cindy sat at one of her tables, and Rachel left them with menus while she finished delivering drinks to another couple of tables.

When she returned, she pointed to the hooks lining the walls on either side of the door. “You can hang your hat there.”

Travis raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t notice them. No one will take it?”

Rachel’s grin might have been tired, but she dredged up a ghost of this morning’s sass. He needed to understand what kind of town he’d moved to.