The Cowboy's Sweetheart

Clues to who her mother was. In a sense, Andie thought these might also be clues to who she was. She waited, wanting her mother to say more. She didn’t. Etta didn’t push. Instead she turned the Caddy into the parking lot of the Mad Cow. And Ryder was already there. He was getting out of his truck and a little girl with dark hair was clinging to his neck. He looked like a guy wearing new boots. Not too comfortable in the shoes he’d been forced to wear.

He saw them and he stopped. Etta parked next to his truck.

As they got out, Wyatt came around the side of the truck. The older of the two girls was in his arms. She didn’t smile the way the other child smiled.

“We didn’t beat the church crowd.” Ryder tossed the observation to Wyatt but he smiled as he said it.

“No, you didn’t, but you can eat lunch with us.” Etta slipped an arm around Wyatt, even as she addressed the response at Ryder. “And you’ll behave yourself, Ryder Johnson.”

“I always do.” He winked at the little girl in his arms and she giggled. And she wasn’t even old enough to know what that wink could do to a girl, how it could make her feel like her toes were melting in her high heels.

Andie wished she didn’t know what that wink could do to a girl. Or a woman. She didn’t want to care that he looked cuter than ever with a two-year-old in his arms. He looked like someone who should have kids.

But he didn’t want kids. He had never wanted children of his own. He said the only thing his childhood had prepared him for was being single and no one to mess up but himself.

“You look nice.” He stepped closer, switching his niece to the opposite arm as he leaned close to Andie. “You smell good, too.”

Andie smiled, because every answer seemed wrong. Sarcasm, anger, the words “Is this the first time you’ve noticed how I look?” and so on.

She didn’t feel like fighting with him. She felt like going home to a cup of ginger tea and a good romance novel. She felt like hitching the trailer back to her truck and hitting the road with Dusty, because she could always count on her horse and the next rodeo to cheer her up. She could head down to Texas.

“You look a little pale.” Caroline stood next to her, another problem that Andie didn’t want to deal with. She felt like a tiny ant and people were shoveling stuff over the top of her, without caring that she was getting buried beneath it all.

“I’m fine.”

“You really don’t look so hot,” Ryder added.

“You just said I look nice. Which is it, Ryder?”

“Nice, in a pale, illusive, gonna-kick-somebody-to-the-curb sort of way.” He teased in the way that normally worked on her bad moods. Ryder knew how to drag her out of the pits.

But not today.

Today she wanted to be alone, to figure out the next phase of her life. And she didn’t want to think about how Ryder would have to be a part of that future.

Or how he was going to feel about it.

Chapter Three

“Why aren’t you eating?” Ryder had tried to ignore Andie, the same way she’d obviously been ignoring him. She had talked to Wyatt, to the girls, even to her mother.

She was ignoring him the same way she was ignoring the chicken-fried steak on her dinner plate. And her mother was right. She did look pale.

“I’m eating.” She smiled and cut a bite of the gravy-covered steak. “See.”

She ate the bite, swallowing in a way that looked painful.

“Are you sick?”

She looked up to the heavens and shook her head. “No, I’m not sick.”

“You act sick.” He grinned a little, because he just knew he had to say what was on his mind. He couldn’t stop himself. “You look like something the cat yacked up.”

His nieces laughed. Even Molly. At least they appreciated his humor. He sat back in his chair, his hands behind his head, smiling at Andie. Kat giggled like she knew exactly what her Uncle Ryder had said. He hadn’t expected to really like a two-year-old this much, but she already had him wrapped around her little finger.

He didn’t think Andie was as thrilled with him. As a matter of fact she glared at him as if he was about her least favorite person on the planet. And with her mother, Caroline, sitting at the same table, he was pretty shocked that he’d be Andie’s least favorite person.

“That’s pleasant, Ryder. I’m sick of you asking me what’s wrong. You haven’t seen me in two months. Do you have something else you’d like to say to me?”

“Right here, right now?” That made his hands a little sweaty, especially when everyone at the table stared, including his nieces. Kat, who sat closest to him, looked a little worried. “No, I guess not. Well, other than wanting to know if you’d like to go the arena with me tonight. I could use a flank man.”

“I’m not a man.”

“Good point,” Wyatt mumbled.

Ryder shot his brother a look. “Keep out of this.”

Kat, two and innocent, clapped her hands and laughed.

A chair scooted on the linoleum floor. Ryder flicked his attention back to Andie. She was standing up, looking a little green and wobbly. Maybe it was the dress, or the three-inch heels. He stood, thinking he might have to catch her.

“What’s wrong?” Etta started to stand up.

“I’m going outside. I need fresh air.”

“I’ll go with you.” Ryder grabbed his hat off the back of the chair and moved fast, because she was practically running for the door.

She didn’t go far, just to the edge of the building. He stood behind her as she leaned, gasping deep breaths of air.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Stop.” She kept her face turned, resting her forehead against the old concrete block building. “I must have caught something from Joy’s kids when I stopped in Kansas. One of them was sick.”

“I could take you home,” he offered quietly, because he had a feeling she didn’t need more questions at the moment.

“I’m fine now. I would just hate to make the girls sick. They don’t need that.” She turned, smiling, but perspiration beaded along her forehead and under her eyes. She was still pale.

“No,” he agreed, “the girls don’t need to get sick. I don’t think I could handle that.”

“They’re just little girls.”

“Yeah, and I’m not anyone’s dad. That’s Wyatt’s job. He’s always been more cut out for the husband and father gig.”

And saying the words made him feel hollow on the inside, because he remembered standing next to Wyatt at his wife’s funeral. He remembered what it felt like to stand next to a man whose heart was breaking.

Ryder hadn’t ever experienced heartbreak and he didn’t plan on it. He enjoyed his single life, without strings, attachments or complications.

“You’re good with the girls,” Andie insisted, his friend again, for the moment. “Just don’t slip into your old ways, not while they’re living with you.”