The Cowboy's Claim

Her tired feet nearly danced to the front door, where she knocked softly. The door opened and Sophie greeted her with a surprised smile. “Courtney, you’re a bit early tonight.”

“We weren’t too busy so Mary let me go for the night.”

Sophie opened the door to allow her into the neat living room with modest furnishings. Sophie was a young widow with two small children. Thankfully there had been enough insurance money to allow her not only to keep her house and the surrounding land but also stay at home with her two little daughters for the next couple of years.

For extra money she had become a licensed day care provider, and her family room off the kitchen had been turned into a kid’s playland.

From that room a cacophony of sound escaped. It was the happy chaos of children at play... The squeals of little girls, the laughter of little boys and the squawk of the cockatiel that hung in a cage on a large stand near the window.

“Sounds like you have a full house this evening,” Courtney said as they headed toward the family room. Usually by the time Courtney arrived there was only one or two extra children.

“The Morrises asked if I could keep the twins late tonight. It’s their anniversary and they wanted to have a nice romantic evening together without the boys,” Sophie explained.

As they entered the family room, Courtney’s gaze automatically darted around the room for the fifteen-month-old dark-haired, blue-eyed little boy who owned her heart and soul.

Garrett. He was clad in a pair of cowboy-printed pajamas and sat on the floor playing with a stack of colorful wooden blocks. When Courtney drew closer, he looked up and his face was wreathed in smiles.

“Ma-Ma!” He raised his chubby little arms toward her.

As she picked him up, her heart swelled full in her chest. “Hi, baby. Hi, Garrett,” she said as she kissed the side of his face. “Were you a good boy today for Sophie?”

“Sophie,” he echoed and pointed to his daily caretaker.

“He’s always a good boy when he’s here. He’s the most laid-back toddler I’ve ever met. He’s freshly changed and ready for bed.”

Courtney smiled and gave Garrett a hug. “Thanks, Sophie. We’ll get out of your hair, and I’ll see you tomorrow around eleven-thirty.”

Sophie walked with her to the door, and a minute later Courtney had Garrett in his car seat in the back of the car. By the time she arrived at the motel, he was fast asleep.

She gently lifted him from the seat and carried him into the motel room they called home. Next to her bed was the crib, where she gently placed the sleeping boy and covered him with a light blanket. She laid her finger lightly on his little cleft chin, as if wanting to hide the characteristic that marked his paternity.

For several long moments she gazed at the son who had been conceived the night of Cherry Benson’s death. That night, as Nick had come at her with silent, horrible grief and she’d embraced him, needing to somehow ease his pain, neither of them had thought about birth control.

And when Nick had blown out of town, he’d had no idea that he’d left her with a piece of him that would change her life forever.

He hadn’t called. He’d offered no explanation. He’d just disappeared. And now it was too late. He had left her without a word, broken all the promises they’d made to each other. He didn’t deserve to have a son, and she had no intention of ever telling him of Garrett’s existence.

Chapter 2

The Benson ranch had always been a source of great pride. Not only had it been financially successful, but Sam had worked hard to keep the large ranch house, surrounding lawn and outbuildings in pristine condition.

As Nick got his first glimpse of home, his heart dropped to his feet as he realized it was far worse than what he’d expected. Despite the summer heat, the lawn was a jungle of overgrown weeds and brush. A tractor-style mower sat amid the mess, as if at some point the operator had simply given up on any attempt to restore order.

Nick got out of his truck, momentarily overwhelmed by the neglect around him. Obviously Cherry’s death had yielded far-reaching effects that none of them could have ever foreseen.

For just a minute Nick wanted to jump back into his truck and drive as fast as he could back to his uncomplicated life in Texas. Run...avoid...escape painful and difficult things. That’s what he’d done on the day of Cherry’s funeral. But, that was the man he’d been two years ago. That wasn’t the man he was now.

Straightening his shoulders, he headed for the stairs leading up to the front porch, noting that one of the handrails was missing.

He opened the front door and his nose was instantly assailed by the odors of overripe fruit, dirty socks and sour booze.

“Hello?” he called. “Adam...are you here?”

“In the kitchen,” a deep voice returned.

Nick found his older brother seated at the kitchen table, his fingers curled around a coffee mug and his bloodshot blue eyes narrowed to near slits. “So, the prodigal son has finally come home.” There was a touch of censure in Adam’s voice that Nick ignored.

As Nick went to the cabinet to grab a mug, he tried to ignore the mound of dirty dishes in the sink and the garbage bag that overflowed onto the floor. “Is that coffee fresh?”

Adam nodded. “I made it about an hour ago when I finally decided to get out of bed.”

Nick poured his coffee and then sat in the chair opposite his brother. “Been spending a lot of time in bed?”

“In bed or drunk.” Adam raised his chin as if in defiance.

“Sounds productive.” Nick took a sip of the strong coffee and held his brother’s gaze above the rim of his cup. Adam was thirty-three, but at the moment he looked ten years older.

“You should have been here, Nick.” Adam finally broke the gaze and instead stared at some point over Nick’s shoulder. “You should have stuck around after Cherry died, then maybe you would have seen the sickness in Sam, the sickness I didn’t see.”

Nick sat back in his chair, surprised as he continued to look at his brother. “Surely you aren’t blaming yourself for what Sam has done?”

Adam raked a hand through his thick, dark, unruly hair. “I should have seen that he was sick, that he was howl-at-the-moon crazy. He and I were so close. If I’d known how he felt I might have been able to stop him. But somehow I missed something, and now there’s nothing left of our family. Cherry is gone, Sam has disgraced us all and there’s nothing left.”

“There’s you and me,” Nick replied. “Adam, you’ve got to pull yourself up out of this funk and get back to the job of taking care of this place, taking care of yourself.”

Adam shoved back from the table. “I don’t want to hear you telling me what I have to do. You ran out on us. I figure you’ll be here for a week or two and when you realize how tough it is to live in a small town where everyone’s talking about your family, when things get just a little bit too hard, then you’ll do what you always do—you’ll run out again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bottle of whiskey waiting for me in my room.”

As Adam left the kitchen, Nick remained at the table. Yes, it was definitely worse than he thought. He and Adam had never been particularly close. Sam had been thirty-four and Adam thirty-one when Nick had left town. The two older brothers had always aligned with each other, while Cherry and Nick had bonded together as the younger siblings.

He finished his coffee, rinsed his cup and then went outside, deciding the dishes and the other kitchen cleanup could wait until later. He headed for the stables in the distance, wanting to ride the pastures and check out the livestock.

Surely Adam hadn’t fallen so deep into the bottom of the bottle and his depression that he hadn’t been feeding and caring for the horses and the cattle that provided their livelihood.

He sighed in relief as he walked into the stable and saw that all the horses were in good shape. It took him only minutes to saddle up his old mount, Diamond, and head to the distant pastures.

As he rode with the heat of the sun on his shoulders, he finally began to relax, but he couldn’t help the way his thoughts went back to Courtney. He’d been so shocked to see her working in the café.

As the horse rocked him in the saddle, he thought of the last time they’d been together. It had been hours after he’d learned that his sister had died, and he’d needed Courtney’s warmth, her life force and energy to take away the icy-cold grip of grief.

When he’d left Grady Gulch on the day of Cherry’s funeral, he had no plans to stay away for as long as he had. It had just happened. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and suddenly two years had passed.

A hundred times...no, maybe a thousand times in the time he’d been gone, he’d stared at his cell phone and mentally punched in Courtney’s number, just wanting to hear the sound of her voice, to feel some sort of connection with her.

For months after he’d left Grady Gulch, Courtney had been like the phantom limb of an amputee. But with each day that had passed, it had gotten a little easier to stop himself from contacting her.

After all, he’d always been her dirty little secret, a walk on the wild side that she’d kept private from everyone in her life. The promises they’d made to each other to love one another forever, to eventually marry and have a family together, had been nothing more than silly fantasies they’d spin in moments of happy delusion and sexual satisfaction. The promises, the love, all of it had never left the abandoned Yates barn.

She had been the princess of Evanston, and he’d been the bad-boy cowboy from Grady Gulch, never welcomed to her home, never even introduced to her family or friends, but rather hidden in the shadows of the old barn.