Welcome Home, Cowboy Read online

  “More or less. Yeah.”

  Even as the words left his lips, though, she caught the that’s-my-story-and-I’m-sticking-to-it look in his eyes. So. He was only here out of a sense of duty, then. Of obligation. And yet…

  And yet, Cash had never actually promised to fulfill the favor Lee had asked of him. Meaning that, in reality, there was no obligation. Except, apparently, in Cash’s head.

  Forget enigma. The man was flat-out bizarre.

  “Well. Thank you. Again. But I somehow doubt Lee meant ‘looking out for’ to include butting in about how and where I give birth.”

  “And maybe I think it does. I mean…what would Lee want?”

  They glared at each other for a moment or two before the absurdity of the whole situation set a laugh to tickling deep inside Emma’s chest, before, a split second later, it erupted in a loud screech.

  “I’m serious,” Cash said, clearly offended.

  “Oh, honey, I know you a-are.” She swallowed, fighting for control. “And I appreciate your concern, I really do. But since Lee was completely on board with a home birth for Zoey, I don’t think he’d be terribly wigged out about it this time. Anyway, since Lee’s not here, the issue is…moot.”

  When she struggled to stand again, Cash lunged forward to grab her hand, his own strong and rough and warm, and again she was struck by how he seemed to take up far more space than his body warranted. How that raw animal magnetism seemed at such odds with the sense of unworthiness vibrating at its core.

  He just needs somebody to love him. Like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

  Cash let go and stepped back, like he’d read her mind, and it hit her that something more than simple obligation was definitely at work here. Something confusing the heck out of him.

  But pointing out what was so clear to her would only embarrass him, she was sure. If not fall on deaf ears altogether. Because she doubted Cash was ready to believe in his own goodness any more than he did the Tooth Fairy. Not that this was her problem.

  Problem, no. Opportunity, yes.

  One day she was gonna have serious words with that chick in her head.

  For now, though, she said, “There’s something you need to understand, Cash. Sure, Lee and I made all the major decisions about the kids, our life, together. But we also trusted each other to do whatever we thought was best when the other one wasn’t around. And right before he died…”

  Emma glanced down, taking a careful, deep breath before looking at Cash again. “He said he’d come back and haunt me if I made any decisions out of some misguided sense of honoring his memory. Or from fear of what other people might think. So I’m guessing Lee would want you to trust me, too. After all, you were the one who said we shouldn’t get tangled up in each other’s lives, right?”

  Never mind that she was already getting more and more tangled, simply because she couldn’t pull off detached if her life depended on it. Any more than Lee did. But Cash didn’t have to know that.

  After a moment, he nodded. But he didn’t look real convinced.

  Men, honestly, Emma thought, then said, “If it makes you feel better, Patrice has been doing this for twenty years. The woman knows her stuff. I swear, taking unnecessary chances isn’t her thing. Any more than it is mine. I had Hunter in the hospital,” she said before Cash could protest again, “because we knew he was a Down’s baby and might need extra attention after he was born. But Zoey was a low-risk pregnancy, so we had her at home. Good thing, too, since I would’ve never made it to the hospital, she came so fast.” She shrugged. “It’d be great to do it again, but if it doesn’t work out…I’ll deal.”

  His eyes grazed hers. “Like you do with everything else.”

  “Exactly.”

  Bumble stretched, yawned, glanced over at the goats to make sure everything was okey-dokey, then padded down to Cash for a head scratch. He obliged, then said, “Looks like the weather should hold long enough to get those two fields planted in the next couple days, if that’s okay with you.”

  But he was gone before she could answer, trudging across the yard like the whole world was sitting on his shoulders. With a sigh, Emma went back inside.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Annie called from Emma’s bedroom.

  “Baby’s breech,” Emma said when she eventually made it down the hall. “I’m supposed to lie upside down to encourage him to turn around.”

  “Then you best get to it.”

  “Can’t. Got dinner to start—”

  “And the day I can’t stick a chicken in the oven you can go ahead and shoot me. Oh, by the way—” this said with a smack to Emma’s arm “—I’m all out of white acrylic. And canvases. And it looks like we’re running low on dog food. Cat food, too. In fact, have you even looked at the pantry recently? Gettin’ kinda bare in there. So next time you go into Santa Fe, let me know, I’ll give you a list.”

  Then she pointed one steady, take-no-prisoners hand at the board. “Now,” she said, and Emma released a long, surrendering breath and awkwardly lowered herself onto the board, where it occurred to her that upside down pretty much described her entire life these days.

  Chapter Five

  As the setting sun rippled across the fields in jagged orange stripes, Cash opened his car door the precise moment Emma flagged him down, a bulging plastic grocery bag knocking against her thigh as she marched out to him.

  He steeled himself. Not because of whatever she wanted to say, but because the woman was seriously messing with his head. Her busting out laughing like that earlier, for instance… he bet she had no idea how contagious it was.

  Or how much he’d wanted to crawl inside that laugh, pull it around him like a thick, soft sleeping bag. Not good.

  “Got a favor to ask,” she said as she neared, her hair so bright from the sun he could barely look at it. The dog followed her, a giant, four-footed, peach-colored marshmallow.

  “Oh?”

  “I know you were fixing to get the peppers and beans in tomorrow, but I was wondering if you could take me and the kids into Santa Fe instead?” She shielded her eyes from the sun. “I’ve got a list a mile long for Sam’s Club and I don’t think I should be hauling around bags of dog food that weigh more than the kids do. Normally I’d ask one of my girlfriends, but everybody’s busy. We can take the Suburban,” she said, nodding in the direction of the rhinoceros-like relic, parked next to the muddiest, most beat-up pickup north of Albuquerque. Cash stared at the car, his brain frozen. “’Course, if you’d rather we go in your car, that’d be okay, too.”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s…”

  Yeah. Can’t wait to hear how you’re gonna finish that sentence.

  “I promise, I’ll keep quiet, if you want,” she said, a smile flirting with her mouth when he faced her again. “But you’re on your own with the kids. Unfortunately they don’t come with off buttons—”

  “We can take whatever car you like,” he said, thinking this would be a helluva lot easier if Lee’d married somebody mean. Or stupid. Or ugly. “When you wanna go?”

  “Early, before it gets crowded. I wouldn’t normally have the kids, but they’re off from school and I don’t like leaving ’em alone for that long. And Annie’s got her art class at nine. So we can drop her on the way. Here.” She handed over the bag. “It’s the last of the stew, the troops have threatened flat-out insurrection if I pawn it off on ’em one more time.”

  The bottom of the bag was warm, the rich fragrance teasing even through the tightly closed plastic container inside. “Green chile?”

  “You bet. Wouldn’t feel like New Mexico otherwise. Enjoy,” she said, then turned and walked away, her wide hips swaying to balance the load in front as the dog trotted along beside her.

  Don’t look. Don’t think. Just…don’t.

  By the time Cash got back to his house, he couldn’t get the lid off fast enough. He dimly remembered his mother saying how the last of the stew was always the best, and it was certainly true here—yo
u could hardly see the large, tender chunks of beef, the onion-and-chile-saturated potatoes, in the thick sauce. He settled into the leather sectional that’d come with the place and dug in, frowning slightly at the still-unpacked boxes lining the far wall. By rights he should’ve hauled ’em into the garage by now, since they’d probably never get unpacked.

  Sighing, Cash set the half-empty container on the end table and melted into the sofa cushions, his hands laced behind his head as he stared at the boxes. And beyond them, the custom-made plank table in the dining room he never used. Would never use, more’n likely.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  On another heavy breath, he propelled himself off the sofa and down the hall, to the room he’d set up as his music studio. God knew why, since he’d had no desire to even pick up a guitar since he’d come back. For years, he’d been inseparable from his music. But now…

  He banged his palm on the doorjamb and returned to the living room, his scratched-up, blistered hands buried in his front pockets. Limbo, that was where he was, caught between a life that no longer worked and one that didn’t even exist.

  Who the hell was he?

  His reaction to Emma’s wanting a home birth had damn near knocked him for a loop. That it mattered. That he cared about something that, like she said, was none of his business. And yet, looking at her belly, catching glimpses of her kids laughing and fooling around, it was hard not to feel like he’d missed out on the only real worthwhile thing there was—

  Yet another road he knew better than to go down. But, man, those entrance ramps sure did sneak up on a person.

  Expelling a humorless chuckle, Cash plucked the container off the end table, spooning in the last few bites of now-cold stew, telling himself the sooner Emma had this baby and he could leave, the better. Except…

  Except what the hell was he supposed to do then?

  The silence rang in his ears.

  Wasn’t even eight-thirty when Cash showed up, apparently ready to get this little field trip over with.

  “So. Your car—” this said with a derisive glance toward her banged-up Suburban “—or mine?”

  Ignoring the dull ache in her lower back, Emma gave him a smile. “And good morning to you, too,” she said, then called back into the house, “Annie! Kids! Let’s go.” Then she faced Cash again. “Yours is fine. Especially since I don’t much feel like driving.”

  He immediately frowned. “You sure you should go?”

  “Yep, unless you want to take the kids to Sam’s on your own.”

  They barreled past them. Screaming. “How hard could it be?”

  “You don’t want to know. Annie! For pity’s sake—!”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming, keep your shirt on!” Cheerfully attired in a bilious lavender exercise suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat with scarf ties, Annie finally appeared in the doorway, struggling to keep cats inside while hanging onto her paint box and tabletop easel. “These bones don’t exactly move at the speed of light, you know. Hello, Cash. You’re looking fit this morning. You’re also looking…different. Lordamercy, what happened to your hair?”

  Emma’s head snapped back around. Yes, she’d officially reached the stage where the pregnancy was pushing against her eyeballs, because she’d totally missed that little detail. She didn’t miss, however, Cash’s almost-sheepish smile when he lifted his hand, skimming his free hand over the skull-hugging haircut that made his eyes glow like polished silver coins in his darkened face and brought every bone in that face into sharp relief. “Like it?”

  “Hell, yes,” Annie said, finally shutting the door and nearly dropping her paint box in the process.

  “Here, let me get those,” Cash said, taking the box and easel from her and carting them out to his car.

  “Say what you will,” Annie whispered. Sort of. “He’s a polite young man.”

  Uh-huh.

  “Not to mention hot.”

  Yeah. That, too. Could life get any more unfair?

  To save wear and tear on her nerves, Emma sat in the very back until they’d dropped Annie off at her art class, by which time the old woman had talked the poor man’s ears off. Although about what Emma couldn’t say, since the kids’ excited chattering between them gobbled up Annie’s conversation.

  Annie settled, Emma hoisted her pregnant self into the passenger seat, almost immediately wishing she hadn’t. Although her sense of smell had dimmed a bit from first-trimester-bloodhound stage, it was still up there. Enough that Cash’s shower-fresh scent sparked a not-so-tiny urge to take a bite out of the man’s neck.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked when she giggled.

  “Um, nothing.” She giggled again, only to wince when Junior clobbered her one.

  “You look different, too,” Cash said, sparing her a brief glance as they pulled out onto the highway to take them to Santa Fe. “But I can’t figure out how.”

  “That would be makeup.” She batted her eyes. “Because trips to Sam’s Club bring out the girly-girl in me.”

  He almost smiled. Maybe. Hard to tell. Then he leaned forward to punch on the radio, only to punch it right off when one of his own recordings came on. Emma didn’t think she’d ever seen a man blush so hard. Especially when her darling son said behind her, “That was you! On the ra-dio! Put it on again! Please? I real-ly like that one.”

  Looking like he wanted to vanish into thin air, Cash slowly turned the radio back on. Only to laugh—God bless him— when Hunter and Zoey both started singing along. At the tops of their lungs.

  “At least I don’t have to hear myself this way,” he shouted over the caterwauling in the backseat.

  Finally the song ended, followed by Martina McBride, who the kids apparently didn’t want to do the karaoke thing with. Thank God for small blessings.

  “Mr. Coch-ran?”

  “Yeah, Hunter?”

  “Can you teach me to play the gui-tar?”

  “Hunter, for heaven’s sake—!”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Emma gawked at Cash, then frowned out the window until the noise level behind them rose sufficiently for her to speak undetected. “Please don’t patronize him, Cash.”

  At his silence, she dared to look over. His jaw was working overtime. “God knows I’ve got my faults, but patronizing a kid isn’t one of ’em.” Another chilly glance preceded, “If I said I’ll teach him, I’ll teach him.”

  Facing front again, she said, “He’s…he’s not exactly a fast learner.”

  “Then it’s lucky for him I wasn’t, either.”

  Heat scorched Emma’s cheeks. “Sorry. I’m just…”

  “Looking out for your kid. I get it. Maybe I didn’t exactly have a lot of firsthand experience with the concept, but I do recognize it when I see it.” His gaze flicked her way, then back out the windshield. “You’d be surprised how many songs you can fake with only three chords,” he said, more gently. “Judging from how careful Hunter is with his chores, I imagine he’ll do fine.”

  “You’ve seen him do his chores?”

  “Occasionally, yeah.”

  Emma drummed her fingers on her knee. “Where do you plan on giving him these lessons?”

  He paused. “In the house. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Me? Yes.” She glanced over. “But you—”

  “It’s just a house. And your house, to boot. Like you said— nothing in there to hurt me anymore.”

  For a moment or two, Emma stared at Cash’s hand on the steering wheel, the graceful curve of his strong fingers, before letting her gaze scuttle away as she contemplated the man so sure he wasn’t a good person.

  The seat belt was about to strangle her; she tried to adjust it, gave up. “What I said before, about being sick to death of Lee talking about you all the time? That didn’t mean there weren’t times when one of your songs would get me to crying like a baby.”

  “No need to butter me up,” he said after a moment. “You’ll still get your fields planted.”r />
  Emma laughed. “I’m not that conniving. But it’s true. I mean, I haven’t got a molecule of musical talent, but what you have…it comes from the heart. I can see why you made it big.”

  After a long pause, he said, “Thank you. But whatever you think you hear or see…” His eyes cut to hers. “It’s called performing, Emma. Making the illusion seem real.” He returned his gaze to the road. “I have no idea, to be honest, where it comes from, but it’s not my heart. Gotta have one of those for that to happen.”

  Honestly. If he hadn’t’ve been driving, she would’ve smacked him upside the head for sure. Instead, she said, “You miss it?”

  Another several seconds’ silence preceded, “At the moment? Not really.”

  She couldn’t decide whether to believe him or not.

  When they got to Sam’s after picking up Annie’s supplies at Hobby Lobby, the kids clambered onto one of the flatbeds, begging Cash to push. Emma headed toward the pet food section, which seemed to take a lot longer to get to than during her last trip here. Behind her, kids yakked away to Cash over the flatbed’s rumbling and rattling, the occasional beep beep beep of a forklift gliding down an aisle of the megawarehouse store.

  “Two of those, two of those and three cases of that,” she said when they stopped, after which Cash toted those fifty-pound bags like they were nothin’ and Emma ogled. Cheap thrills and all that. Amazingly, not one soul recognized him. Or at least not that she could tell. Even with the hair gone bye-bye, she would’ve expected at least one fan to pop up out of the woodwork—or steel shelving, in this case—and ask for his autograph. Weird.

  ’Course, he’d been dead silent since they’d gotten inside, too. Minute he opened his mouth, though, the jig would be up. Unfortunately, the longer he stayed mute, the more uneasy Emma got. So as soon as the kids scrambled off their erstwhile amusement-park ride to run up and down the empty aisle, she apologized. While pointing to a jumbo box of toilet paper. Forty-eight rolls. Twenty-four of which, alas, she’d use all by herself within the week.