Jenna's Cowboy Hero

“Timmy.” The bigger of her two boys, always a little more curious, a little more brave, spoke first. “And we don’t talk to strangers.”

He also liked to mimic.

“Timmy, mind your manners,” Jenna warned, smiling down at him.

“Of course you don’t, and that’s good.” Adam Mackenzie turned his attention to the smaller of her two boys. “And what about you, cowboy?”

“I’m David.” He didn’t suck his thumb. Instead he pulled his left hand free from hers and shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked up at the tall, giant of a man walking next to him. “And we have a big uncle named Clint.”

A baritone chuckle and Adam made eye contact with Jenna. She smiled, because that light was in his eyes. It hadn’t been a trick of the camera, or her imagination. She had to explain what David had meant to be a threatening comment about her brother. Leave it to the boys to think they all needed to be protected from a stranger.

“My brother lives down the road a piece.”

“Clint Cameron?” Adam’s gaze drifted away from her to the ramp at the side of the porch. Her brother had put the ramp in before she came home from the hospital last fall.

“Yes, Clint Cameron. You know him?”

“We played against each other back in high school. What’s he doing now?”

“Raising bucking bulls with his wife. They travel a lot.”

Jenna grabbed the handrail and walked up the steps, her boys and Adam Mackenzie a few steps behind, watching her. The boys knew the reason for her slow, cautious climb. She imagined Adam wondering at her odd approach to steps. In the six months since she’d been home, she’d grown used to people wondering and to questioning looks. Now it was more about her, and about raising the boys. She was too busy with life to worry about what other people were thinking about her.

It hadn’t always been that way. Times past, she worried a lot about what people thought.

She opened the front door, and he reached and pushed it back, holding it for them to enter. She slid past him, the boys in front of her.

“Do you want tea?” She glanced over her shoulder as she crossed the living room, seeing all of the things that could make him ask questions about her life. If he looked.

He stood inside her tiny living room in the house she’d grown up in. A house that used to have more bad memories than good. For her boys the bad memories would be replaced with those of a happy childhood with a mom who loved them.

There wouldn’t be memories of a dad. She wasn’t sorry about that, but then again, sometimes she was.

The walls of the house were no longer paneled. Clint had hung drywall, they’d painted the room pale shell and the woodwork was white now, not the dark brown of her childhood. The old furniture was gone, replaced by something summery and plaid. Gauzy white curtains covered the floor-to-ceiling windows, fluttering in the summer breeze that drifted through the house.

Everything old, everything that held a bad memory, had been taken out, replaced. And yet the memories still returned, of her father drunk, of his rage, and sometimes him in the chair, sleeping the day away.

Adam took up space in the small house, nearly overwhelming it, and her, with his presence. As she waited for his answer to the question about iced tea, he took off his hat and brushed a hand through short but shaggy sandy-brown hair.

“Tea?” He raised a brow and she remembered her question.

“Yes, iced tea.”

“Please. And the phone book?”

“The number for the garage is on my fridge.” She led him down the hall to the kitchen with a wood table in the center of the room.

She loved the room, not just the colors—the pale yellow walls and white cabinets. She loved that her sister-in-law, Willow, had decorated and remodeled it as a way to welcome Jenna home. The room was a homecoming present and a symbol of new beginnings. They had worked on the rest of the house as Jenna recovered.

Jenna poured their tea while Adam dialed the phone. When she turned, he was leaning against the wall, watching her. She set the tea down on the table while he finished his conversation.

“Is it taken care of?” She pulled a first-aid kit from the cabinet over the stove.

“They’ll be out in an hour. They wanted to call the police to write up an accident report.”

Jenna swallowed and waited for him to tell her how he’d responded to that. Accident. She hadn’t really thought about that. Her boys had caused an accident. She pulled out the chair and sat down, stretching her legs.

“I’m so sorry. You really could have been hurt.”

“Your boys could have been hurt.”

She nodded. “I know. The rule is that they don’t go down the drive. They’re usually very good boys.”

“I’m sure they are.” He picked up the glass of tea. “I’m going to need to rent a car.”

“Not around here. And I want to finish talking about the accident report. You’ll need to let them call the county so you can get this covered on your insurance.”

He drained half the glass of tea in one gulp and set it down on the table. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Just like that, you’ll take care of it?” She bit down on her bottom lip, waiting, because it couldn’t be this easy. “My boys caused an accident and major damage to an expensive car.”

“They didn’t really cause the accident. I saw their dog backing into the road….”

“And that caused the wreck. They were holding the leash of the dog that backed into the road.”

“Wow, do you plan on making this difficult?”

“No, I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

“You can give me a ride down to that Godfor—”

She lifted her hand and shook her head to stop him. “Watch your language.”

He shook his head. “Great, another Will.”

“Excuse me?”

“My manager, Will. Did he hire you to keep me in line?”

“Sorry, no, you’re a big boy and you’ll have to keep yourself in line. Now let me put a Band-Aid on your cheek. You’re bleeding.” She motioned to the chair as she stood up and opened the first-aid kit. “Sit.”

“I’m fine.”

“I can’t have you get an infected cut on my watch.”

The boys hurried into the room. They must have heard her mention that he was injured. They were wide-eyed and impressed as they stared at the cut.

“It’s gonna need stitches,” Timmy informed their victim, peering up, studying the wound.