Rodeo Rancher

Lily, in Michael’s arms, wriggled to be put down and went over to her. Apparently, the ice had really and truly been broken with that hair trick, because Lily leaned against Samantha’s thigh to look inside. “Want to see what I’m carrying, do you?”

Samantha dumped the contents onto a sofa cushion. “There you go. I have everything in here but the kitchen sink.”

At that moment, the phone rang.

Michael answered. “Hello?”

“Michael. You’re there.” It was Karen Enright and she sounded anxious.

Michael bit back a sigh. Karen had been Lillian’s best friend. After Lillian’s death, Karen had become proprietorial where Michael was concerned. Her boundless earnest concern for him and his children smothered him. He’d never given her one iota of encouragement.

“I’ve been worried.” Her breathless voice irritated him.

The only woman he’d ever loved was dead. He wasn’t about to start loving someone else. Karen should understand that.

He’d loved Lillian from the first moment he’d met her in high school. It had deepened when they’d begun dating at sixteen.

Lightning had struck him once. It wasn’t likely to strike him a second time.

“How are you and the children?” she asked. “Would you like me to come over and help take care of them?”

Her deep earnestness chafed him.

“In this weather? For God’s sake, Karen, stay put.” Honestly, he just wanted her to stop. “Like I said earlier, the kids and I will be fine.”

“But what if the power goes out?”

“We’ll do what we’ve always done. We’ll get by. Do not come over. It would be a fool’s errand.”

Suddenly, the phone went dead and the lights went out.

They’d lost their power, just as he’d thought they would.

The living room had been plunged into darkness, save for the fire he’d been feeding before the phone rang.

Damned cordless phone. He should have stuck with his old landline.

Lily patted his leg. “Daddy? Okay?”

“Yep. We’re good.”

“We’ve got systems,” Mick said. “See, Lily? Right, Dad?” In the light of the fire, he pointed to the logs and the camping equipment.

“We’ll be fine,” Michael said. “In the morning, I’ll start up the generator. We won’t need it for the night. Might as well head to bed.” Reluctant to give in to the intimacy of sleeping in the same room with strangers, he thought the bedrooms might stay warm enough until morning. He led the way down the hall with one of the lamps and tucked in his daughter and kissed his son.

Samantha did the same with her two boys and then they were alone in the hallway.

Her fingers twisted nervously.

He stuck his hands into his pockets and raised his shoulders, not sure what to do with her. It was only nine o’clock and too early for bed.

“You want a coffee or something?” he asked. “We can boil the water over the fire.”

“Too much caffeine. Do you have herbal tea?”

“Think so.”

They wandered to the kitchen. The urge to keep his distance from her was stronger now that the house was hushed and felt even more intimate.

She started to chatter again. He did his best to block it out. He couldn’t.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

She stilled. “Do what?”

“Fill the silence.”

For a moment she went deeply silent. He wondered whether he’d been too blunt. Again.

She didn’t laugh this time. “It’s a habit of mine.”

“I noticed.” He smiled to soften things in case he really had hurt her feelings.

He found the herbal tea in the cupboard, Lillian’s chamomile. Toward the end it was the only thing that would settle her stomach.

Lost in memories, he didn’t realize he was staring at the box, immobile until a light touch warmed his arm.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was my wife’s tea.”

“Is she—? Did she—?”

“She’s gone.” He hated uttering the word dead. Every time he did, it made it real all over again.

Samantha didn’t ask questions, but said, “You don’t have to give me her tea.”

But he did. Lillian had been generous to everyone. She would have liked nothing better than to sit down with Samantha and talk about their kids or anything under the sun that caught her fancy.

She would have wanted Samantha to enjoy what was left of the tea now.

“Let me make you a cup. I want to.”

She nodded and stepped away.

They settled in the living room, her on the sofa and Michael keeping his distance in the armchair.

He didn’t know what to say.

Apparently, neither did she.

She wasn’t rushing to fill the void even though her fingers moved constantly. Why was she so nervous? Sure, he was a stranger, but he thought he’d shown he was trustworthy. He wasn’t going to jump her. Maybe if he told her the truth about Lillian, she wouldn’t be afraid to be alone with him.

“My wife didn’t leave us,” he blurted. “She died.”

She gasped. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She looked it. “It must be hard for you and the children.”

The unspoken question hung in the air until he answered it. “Cancer.”

“So...not sudden.”

“No. Might have been better if it had been.” Okay, enough. He couldn’t talk about it. It hurt. He didn’t often haul out his intestines without anesthesia and put them on display.

A log popped on the fire and she startled.

“The boys’ father?” he asked to change the subject. “Is he around?”

“We’re divorced. Last I heard, he was in the Himalayas somewhere.”

He raised his brows, but she didn’t expand.

Her expressive face had gone blank. Was she angry? Sad? Glad?

“How could he leave his children behind?” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but anger had surged through him. Lillian hadn’t had a choice, but if she had, she would have stayed. It sounded like Sammy’s husband had run out on her. He would be angry. He would seethe.

“That’s a good question,” she answered. “I’ve wondered that many times.” Yes. There was the anger.

“Must be hard on the boys.” He echoed her earlier sentiment, because it was true. All of this was difficult enough for the two of them as adults, but what were children equipped to handle?

“Yes, it has been hard. Jason felt abandoned when his dad left. He’s my little protector. He thinks he needs to be the man of the family. I wish he could relax and just have fun like Colt does.”

Michael nodded. He’d already noticed Jason’s love for his mother. The boy had stood up to him, a big strapping adult, to defend her from implied criticism.

Gutsy kid.

“He wants to come out with me in the morning to see the animals. I said yes. That okay with you?”

She seemed to ponder the implications...a man alone with her child. She must have sensed his honesty.

She nodded. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Trying to keep our children safe?”

“Yeah. It is.” And he didn’t always get it right. Some people in town thought he kept his children too isolated, but how could he not?

What if something happened to one of them? It was his job to make sure they reached adulthood unscathed. He hadn’t been able to save Lillian, but he could save his children.

* * *

SAMANTHA AWOKE IN the middle of the night to tapping on her forehead.

For a minute, she thought there was a drip from the ceiling, but the tapping was dry.

A hand!

She startled awake and took in a lungful of air, ready to scream. No! Not here. Not in rural Montana where she and her sons were supposed to be safe.

Prepared to protect her children, she opened her eyes.

The person hovering over her in the darkness was tiny. A child.

Sammy’s disorientation cleared and she remembered where she was.

Her breath whooshed out of her. She glanced to her right. Both of her boys slept soundly. Who was patting her hair?

She mumbled, “What is it?”

“I’m cold,” Lily whispered not an inch from Sammy’s face.

Oh! Michael’s little girl.

Sammy realized she was cold, too. The house had lost its heat pretty quickly. No wonder. The storm still raged outside.

Good thing Michael had lent her his sweat suit. She’d be chilled without the fleece.

Without further thought, she said, “Climb in. We’ll cuddle together. Okay?”

Samantha snuggled Lily and spooned around her, while Colt poked his elbow into Sammy’s back. Jason slept soundly on his brother’s far side. Thank goodness for Michael’s huge bed.

Lily backed right up against her. Sammy pulled the blankets up snugly around all of them. She wrapped her arms around the child.

“Better? Warm enough?”

“Warm.” Lily sighed and dozed off right away.

Her sweet little weight against Samantha melted a path to Sammy’s heart.

“I always wanted a little girl,” she murmured, and yawned.

Despite her exhaustion, sleep didn’t come easily. She touched each of her boys, relieved to feel their healthy, slightly sweaty heat. It took a while for her heart to stop racing.

She didn’t want to, but she thought about Manny d’Onofrio and his associates.

In his letter from jail, her former employer had promised he’d called off his men. He’d written that he no longer sought revenge against her for sending him to prison. In his words, I found God and I want peace. I won’t bother you no more for ratting me out.

God, didn’t that sound like a bad movie script? But it had been all too real for Sammy, starting with getting a job in Manny’s Las Vegas casino as part of his accounting team and ending with her testifying against him for embezzling funds from his partners.

He’d vowed revenge, but she believed he’d changed. In his letter, he’d sounded sincere. Who would have thought?

But sometimes, late at night, she worried. Nightfall brought terror.

It was over. It was all finally over. Why couldn’t she stop jumping at every late-night sound?

Travis had bought the house here for her and the boys as a sanctuary, away from crooks and city crimes. Hence, her trip in a snowstorm to Rodeo.

She’d gone back to her own name, dropping her married name, and had given it to her boys, too, and no one was supposed to know where she was. Manny’s letter had reached her through their lawyers. He couldn’t find her, but Travis’s former girlfriend, Vivian, had tracked him here.

Vivian used to work for Manny.

Manny might guess she would follow Travis here, but he’d sworn he wouldn’t bother her again. Even so, she’d decided to leave the sanctuary they’d found after Las Vegas, in California, and follow Travis to the house he’d bought for her.

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