Welcome Home, Cowboy Read online

  “Spoilsport,” Annie grumbled, grinning, and Cash laughed. Yeah, he was one happy dude, all right.

  “Good to know. See y’all later, then.”

  “Break a leg!” Emma called after him, because she’d heard that was what people said to performers before they went on stage. But Cash was already gone, yakking to Sal as they carted his equipment inside. Sighing, she fell in step with the hordes making their way toward the front door, Annie pushing the stroller, the old gal’s recently permed curls a frothy white cloud around her face.

  They found seats in the back of the hot, packed room where Emma could keep Skye in the stroller. Beside her, Annie chuckled as she fanned herself with some old church program she’d dug out of her white vinyl purse. “Fire marshal gets wind of this, we’re all screwed.”

  “Annie!” Emma said, chuckling herself as Cash ambled out onto the small “stage,” looking pretty darn good for a man who’d been up at night with the baby nearly as much as Emma these past couple of weeks. But in worn jeans, scuffed-up boots and a plaid shirt Emma’d seen a dozen times before, he looked no more like a “star” then she did.

  Until he grinned and she saw the immediate, practically electric connection between him and the audience. Then she understood.

  “Whoa!” he said, doing an exaggerated flinch for the benefit of the couple of hundred kids all sitting on the floor in front of the stage, earning him a chorus of giggles. “Where’d y’all come from?” More giggles. Then, pretending to frown, he propped his hands on his hips and scanned the crowd. “Hunter? Where are you, buddy?”

  When Hunter yelled out, “Right here!” Cash pointed to him, then grabbed the mike off its base and grinned for the crowd again. “My good buddy Hunter here asked me to come for his class,” he said into the mike, his low voice sending a chill through Emma. And probably every other female in the place. “Guess I forgot to tell him it was supposed to be a secret!” This said with a huge wink, and everybody laughed, and Emma could tell Cash was feeding off the attention and applause like it was his lifeblood.

  Sal brought out a stool, which Cash grabbed and plopped in front of the mike, set close to the front of the stage. “You know,” he said, scanning the electric guitars and amps set up behind him before, with a shrug, he chose the battered old acoustic he played on their porch. “All that stuff?” He arranged himself on the stool, one boot heel hooked over a front rung, the guitar in his lap. “Feels like overkill to me. Here, anyway.”

  One hand on his knee, the other one casually draped over the side of the guitar, he said, “Many of you might not know I grew up right around here. Well, partially, since I left home when I was sixteen. Which I do not recommend, by the way,” he added, looking at the kids down front. “Went to this school, in fact. Hey, Miss Hutchinson—you still here?”

  “I sure am!” came a clear, thin voice from the right, and everyone laughed again. “Except it’s Mrs. Alvarez now.”

  His gaze directed to the middle-aged blonde leaning against the wall, Cash pressed a hand to his heart. “You didn’t wait for me? I’m crushed, I truly am.”

  “You were six, Cash,” the teacher said, laughing.

  “Still old enough to know I’d scored the hottest first-grade teacher in New Mexico,” he said, winking again for the audience. “Anyway—” he slapped the guitar “—let’s do some music, how ’bout it? Any requests?”

  For the next half hour, he played and sang like Emma imagined he must’ve done when he started out, relying on nothing but his clear, naturally deep voice accompanied by the mellow sound of an old acoustic guitar. More than once tears sprang to Emma’s eyes as she listened, sometimes because of the music, more often because of the man singing it. At one point Annie reached over and wrapped her strong, wiry hand around Emma’s, murmuring, “I know, child. I know.”

  Even so, the scales didn’t tip entirely until, after the concert, Cash invited the kids to come up on the stage with him, first to join in singing some simple song he apparently made up on the spot, then to hold and touch and even play any of the guitars they liked. At one point Hunter whispered something into Cash’s ear. Grabbing the acoustic, he nodded, then followed him down into the audience, to a severely disabled little girl in her wheelchair. Squatting beside the chair, Cash carefully set the guitar in her lap, then took her hand and slowly strummed her fingers across the strings.

  Her verbal response was virtually unintelligible. But there was no misreading her dazzling smile. And when Cash looked up and caught Emma’s eyes, an equally brilliant smile on his, an unseen force quietly opened the damper to her heart, letting the love pour out like there was no end to it.

  Which, as it happened, there wasn’t.

  Chapter Ten

  “To-day was the best day ever,” Hunter said to Cash across the kitchen table that night. “I have a lot more friends now.” He laughed his low nasal laugh, which earned him an indulgent, “Hunter, honestly!” from his mother.

  “Me, too!” Zoey said, flashing a smile of her own. “You sound a heck of a lot better in person than you do on your CDs.”

  “Is that right?” To be honest, the buzz still hadn’t worn off. To make that connection with an audience, any audience…no better high in the world. “So all that money I spent on fancy sound mixing and what-all—”

  “Wasted,” Zoey said, and Annie pressed her napkin to her mouth, smothering her laugh, and Cash glanced around the table, almost wishing—

  “What’d you say this was again?” Annie said, jabbing a fork at the casserole Donna Garrett had donated to the cause that had languished in the freezer since Skye’s birth.

  “Not sure it has a name,” Emma said, frowning as she prodded what was probably a piece of ham with her fork. “Best not to think about it too hard.” Then her gaze lifted to Cash. “’Fess up—you had a blast today, didn’t you?”

  She’d been unusually quiet during the ride back to the house, like she’d worn herself out. Although she’d seemed fine when Cash returned from making deliveries to the two restaurants and three small inns Emma supplied with fresh produce. Now, though, he suspected a connection between her question and her earlier pensive mood. One that made him feel itchy inside.

  “Not gonna lie,” he said, forking in another bite of the mystery casserole. “It felt good, performing again. A lot better, in fact, than I’d expected.”

  “You were awesome,” Zoey pronounced, nodding.

  “Yeah,” Hunter said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Awesome. May I be excused?”

  “Me, too,” Zoey said, dumping her napkin and sliding out of her seat before Emma gave her leave. “Granny—can we take Skye for a walk? It’s still light out!” she said when her mother opened her mouth. “And warm! Just up to Veronica’s. Please?”

  “Yeah,” Hunter said, the table shaking when he bumped the edge as he stood, too. “We can go see Ver-on-ica’s kitties!”

  “Veronica has kittens?” Annie said, out of her seat like a shot. “Why didn’t somebody tell me? Zoey, get Skye changed, and Hunter, you get his stroller—”

  “Don’t you dare bring back another cat!” Emma said to Annie as she marched out of the kitchen through the writhing mass of cats they already had. After five minutes of the chaos involved with getting four people including a baby out the door, the house was empty and Emma hadn’t moved.

  “Em—?”

  “Hear that?” she said, her eyes shut.

  “I don’t hear anything—”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Then she opened her eyes and Cash’s gaze snagged in hers, and he thought, Look away! only he didn’t know if he was talking to her or himself. Then Emma popped up from her chair to start clearing the table.

  Whew, close. “Let me—”

  “No, it’s okay, I can do this much,” she said, stacking the plates, pushing out an aggravated sigh when Cash took them from her and carried them to the counter.

  “I don’t get it,” she said behind him
.

  He grabbed a tray and returned to the table for everything else. “Don’t get what?”

  “Why you think you’re not good with kids. What you did today—that wasn’t an act, Cash. That was real. That was you.”

  Flushing, his gaze bounced off hers before he carted the tray to the counter. “Not like I was gonna be a jerk with all those people watching.”

  “You forget, I see you every day with my two. You’ve never treated them with anything but patience and kindness—”

  “Yeah, well, it’s no big deal being nice to somebody you know you won’t be around long enough to screw up.” He slammed open the now-fixed dishwasher and yanked out the bottom rack to start loading the plates. “Not my kids, not my responsibility.”

  He heard her walk over to stand beside him. “Maybe not,” she said quietly, leaning one hand on the counter, the other on her hip. “But you’re still not a jerk. And you’re not gonna win that argument so you may as well give up now.”

  “Damn it, Emma!” Cash swiveled to meet her gaze, only to get so hung up in it he had no idea how to find his way out again. “You’re driving me crazy, you know that?”

  The words shimmered in the space between them for a moment before fading into the cushiony silence. Finally, Emma smiled, a whatchagonnado? curve to her lips that shoved Cash right over the line between then and now.

  “Yeah. Same here.” She hesitated, then lifted her hand to glide the backs of her knuckles down his cheek, and his breath curled into a hot, dry knot in the center of his chest. “Crazier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  Emma saw Cash swallow, wanted to press her lips to those clenching muscles in his throat, to pull this man inside her—in more ways than one—so bad her own throat went dry.

  “Shouldn’t that be a bad thing?” he finally said.

  “Don’t know.” She shrugged. “Don’t really care.”

  His hand covered hers; she half expected him to remove it. To reject her, which she completely deserved. Heck, she didn’t know herself why she was making a move destined to end badly. So her insides flipped when, instead, he gently turned her hand over to place a kiss in the center of her palm, making her suck in a sharp breath.

  Once more his eyes grazed hers, a slight smile toying with his mouth. “You get turned on that easy?”

  “It’s a gift.”

  He chuckled, but there was a sadness about it that shattered her heart. “Just so there’s no misinterpretation…you coming on to me?”

  “Heh. Only as much as a woman who had major surgery three weeks ago can. The spirit’s willing, but the body’s probably not entirely on board with that idea for another three weeks or so.”

  Air rushed from his lungs before he pulled her into his arms, laying his cheek on her hair, and an untold number of tiny fire-tipped arrows launched in her stomach. “Just so there’s no misinterpretation,” she said into his chest, “this mean you’re interested, or taking pity on me?”

  His chuckle rumbled in her ear. “You’re a lot of things, Emma, but pitiable isn’t one of ’em.”

  She reared back to look at him. “Seriously?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” His eyes had gone thunderstorm gray. Oh, my. “But you don’t strike me as somebody who messes around for the heck of it.”

  “I’m not.”

  His sigh warmed her mouth. “I don’t want to hurt you, Em.”

  “Which is precisely why I’m not jumping your bones right now. Because I don’t want to hurt me, either.”

  “No,” he said on a dry chuckle. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean.” She slipped from his arms, forcing herself to find something to do, something mundane and real and unsexy. Like setting the table for the next morning. “I think that’s called making light of the moment,” she said, pulling bowls down from the cupboard.

  Except she nearly dropped one when he slowly lifted her hair to place a lingering, tender kiss at the nape of her neck, the imprint of his lips still burning when he eased her around. She barely caught the apology in his eyes before his mouth touched hers, almost tentatively, like he wasn’t sure he’d like the flavor. Then his hold tightened, his fingers tangling in her hair as he put some steam into the kiss, and her mouth opened under his, accepting. Welcoming.

  Oh, honey, you’re good, she thought as she sent her brain packing and let the kiss take over, let all that long-ignored need unfurl inside her, hot and sweet and hazy. If he touched her breasts, her milk would let down.

  But he didn’t. Instead he entwined their hands, bracing their linked fists on the counter on either side of her hips so that nothing touched but lips and tongues and teeth; he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, gently teasing, sending her hoo-hah into a tizzy.

  Suddenly she laughed, and he looked at her, his eyes darkening even more with desire, confusion. “You’re a whole lot of fun to make out with, Mr. Cochran,” she said, and he gave her another one of those regretful grins.

  “You, too,” he whispered. “Long as you understand you’re making out with a jerk.”

  “You’re not a—”

  “Shh,” he said. Then moved closer.

  A lot closer.

  So close he had to hoist her up on the counter and wrap her legs around his hips so he wouldn’t squish her.

  Emma nearly went cross-eyed. “I take it you’re real happy to see me,” she said, and this time he laughed, and kissed her again, possibly the deepest, wettest, knee-knocking kiss she’d ever had in her life—which was going some, truth be told— pressing himself into her with clear intent, and her hoo-hah said, Oh, yeah? right about the time Emma realized, holy mackerel, they were in her kitchen, and then Cash pressed into her just a little harder and all hell broke loose down there.

  Oh. Hmm. Wee doggies.

  For a second, if that, she panicked, wondering if her recently C-sectioned innards were earthquake-worthy, but since they apparently were she figured Oh, for pity’s sake, relax and enjoy it. Which she did.

  A whooole lot.

  When the room stopped spinning, she opened her eyes to see Cash grinning down at her. “You did that on purpose!”

  “Yep. Had a sudden yen to see how you looked when you came apart.” He swept her hair aside to have another go at her neck. She nearly swooned. “Didn’t think you’d take offense, somehow,” he murmured. Nibbling.

  “Um…ah…n-no…”

  On another soft laugh, he lifted his face. “You really don’t hold anything back, do you?”

  “What would be the point of that?”

  Which apparently prompted some more tongue-tangling before Cash rested his forehead on hers. “Three weeks, you said?” She nodded. “You sure?”

  “I’ll have to check with the doctor, but—”

  “No. You sure you want to do that again?”

  “Um…yeah?”

  “Naked?”

  She laughed. “Oh, yes.”

  He paused. “With me?”

  Man was gonna break her heart and that was no lie. She cupped his cheek. “Heck, yeah, with you.”

  “Even though—”

  “Yes. Even though.” Then she skimmed her thumb along his cheekbone and whispered, “You sure you want to stick around that long?”

  “Something tells me it’ll be more than worth the wait,” he said, kissing her one last time before walking out of her kitchen. Which she would never think of in the same way again.

  Twenty minutes later the gang returned, Zoey holding a new peach-colored kitten—“Don’t get your panties in a wad, I’ll pay to get him fixed!” Annie said—Skye fussing for his food. Feeling far too mellow to give Annie grief, Emma carried the baby into her bedroom, not surprised to discover her nursing pads were soaked when she put him to breast. For several minutes she watched her baby boy chow down, waiting for the ramifications to hit. You know, those pesky things like guilt. Anxiety. Remorse.

  Nada.

  At least, not yet. Possibly because she was too busy basking i
n the afterglow for reality to get its foot in the door. That, and yearning for the man who’d produced that afterglow, which— not being born yesterday—she knew would come back to bite her in her ample butt.

  When it did, she’d deal. But right now, with her mouth still tingling from Cash’s kisses and her skin from his touch, his scent in her nostrils keeping that sweet ache pulsing in the pit of her belly…later seemed very far away.

  Which was just fine with her.

  Well, Emma thought, three weeks later as she stepped back into her jeans, smiling for Skye gumming his fist in his baby seat—here it was:

  Later.

  Moment of truth and all that.

  “Everything looks great,” Naomi Wilson said with a big smile. A dozen long braids, like chocolate licorice twists, swished against her white coat as she walked back to her desk in the no-frills office. “The incision’s healed up nicely, and you say you’re feeling pretty good?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Emma said, taking a seat across from the family doctor who’d been tending to the kids’ boo-boos— and Emma’s girl parts—for the past year or so.

  “How long since the bleeding stopped?”

  “Three, four weeks. So…I’m good for resuming, um, normal activity?”

  A question which could have meant anything. Like lifting bushels of fruit. Or whatever. Except when Naomi’s black eyes met Emma’s, she blushed.

  “Don’t see why not,” the doctor said calmly, looking back at Emma’s chart. “Although you might want to…ease back into things. Take it slow and easy at first.”

  “Of course.”

  “Nothing too strenuous—”

  “Got it, Naomi!”

  Chuckling, the doctor looked up. “I’m happy for you, honey.”