The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  Then she turned and stalked out, her footsteps loud on the bare floor.

  The front door opened and shut. This time there was no bang.

  But that didn’t make the feeling any less fatal.

  *

  She should be shot.

  Jenny didn’t know what had possessed her!

  How could she have been so insensitive? How could she, of all people, have thrown Mace’s feelings in his face?

  She would have to apologize—tomorrow. There was no way she was going back up there tonight.

  It had taken her almost an hour to get there the first time. Used to finding it easily in the daylight on horseback, she hadn’t driven the narrow mountain track in years.

  She’d missed it in the dark and had bumped around barely visible ruts, trying to gauge where she was for ages before she’d realized she’d taken the wrong turn. The delay hadn’t improved her disposition any. By the time she got there, she’d been fuming.

  And Mace had borne the brunt of it.

  She’d seen the suffering in his face the moment she’d flicked on the light. Even though he’d tried not to show it, she’d seen the telltale bunch of muscle when his jaw had tightened and the way his knuckles had gone white as they clenched the sleeping bag. But she’d been too angry to stop and think at that point.

  And now?

  “Oh, Mace.”

  She turned onto her side and reached out her hand to touch the pillow where, for fourteen years, her husband had laid his head.

  Jenny drew his pillow into her arms and pressed her face into it.

  She found the scent of him there in the cotton against her cheek—that trace of soap and shampoo and shaving cream, the tantalizing scent of leather and lime and, always, the faint hint of horses, all of it combining indefinably into a scent that was purely Mace—but not all of Mace.

  Last night she had thought was the worst night of her life.

  Tonight she knew better.

  She pressed her face into the pillow and cried.

  *

  Mace was at the cabin again today.

  Becky was surprised. For ten years—minus the ones her dad, Taggart, had hauled her from rodeo to rodeo while he was competing—she had lived on the ranch next to the one Mace and Jenny Nichols now owned. When she was young and Mace had worked on their ranch, she had followed him everywhere.

  “Like a duck” Taggart always said. And it was true that Becky had always had sort of a crush on Mace Nichols. But she was mostly over that now. He was still her hero, but she knew better than to think he was going to leave Jenny and wait for her to grow up! She wasn’t a kid anymore.

  Still, she did notice Mace wherever he happened to turn up. She knew cowboys didn’t stay in one place for long. So seeing his truck at the cabin yesterday when she and Tuck McCall had ridden out after school to escape ‘the baby brigade’—which was what they called the sudden explosion of infants in their respective households—she hadn’t thought much of it.

  When she saw it there again today, though, she thought that was sort of odd. But then, lately, Becky thought the whole world was a pretty odd place.

  She used to think that once she got her dad married off, things would settle down and she would have a normal life. She didn’t expect to have all her problems solved in half an hour like they did on television. But she did expect that they wouldn’t keep getting worse.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. Nothing in her life seemed to quite fit anymore.

  Least of all her.

  Her whole life she’d been “Taggart Jones’s kid.” They’d been a twosome—just she and her dad.

  Now there was Felicity, of course. Becky wasn’t sorry at all that her dad had married Felicity. But she hadn’t figured on it changing who she was. It had. She wasn’t the only one who was “Taggart Jones’s kid” these days.

  Now there were two more—twins, William, after her grandpa Jones, called Willy, and Abigail after Felicity’s grandma, called Abby, born just a little over three months ago.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like her new brother and sister. She did. Most of the time she thought they were pretty amazing creatures. Like puppies or newborn lambs. Kind of cute and sort of cuddly—when they weren’t crying or spitting up on her.

  But they had changed everything.

  Nobody had any time anymore. Felicity was constantly changing them or feeding them or walking them around or rocking them in the rocking chair or reading in one of those stupid books that tell you you’re doing everything wrong.

  She really seemed to be afraid she was doing everything wrong. And even Taggart, who had managed one baby all right when it was Becky, seemed to be over his head in infants every time she looked at him.

  There didn’t seem to be any hands—or time—left over for her.

  Every time she thought that, though, Becky felt crummy. Like she was a bad person for thinking it.

  Probably she was a bad person for thinking it. She didn’t know anyone else who resented two helpless little kids.

  Susannah, her best friend, seemed to cope with her two little brothers all right. She played chopsticks on the piano with them and didn’t care if they just banged their fists on the keys. She played ball with Clay, the older one, and didn’t try to strike him out. She built towers with Scott and usually didn’t get mad when he knocked them over before she was done. She even babysat them sometimes when her mom and dad went out.

  The very thought terrified Becky.

  Puppies she could handle. Lambs were okay. Colts were actually fun. Even calves weren’t too bad. They were interesting—and sturdy.

  Becky liked sturdy. Nobody ever yelled at you to be sure you held its head up when you gave a leppy calf a bottle.

  Tuck, who had been her friend forever, said not to worry, that the twins were close to three months old and pretty soon would be able to hold their heads up on their own.

  It couldn’t happen soon enough for Becky.

  It seemed to her that even Tuck coped better than she did. And Neile wasn’t even his real half sister. He even lugged her around in a baby backpack sometimes.

  “Gotta show ’er the ropes,” he’d say. And he never got mad at all—except when Neile broke the points of his pencils and put his drawing charcoal in her mouth.

  Becky looked forward to the day when Willy and Abby were old enough to toddle around and put things in their mouths. It would be nice when they stopped waking up ten times a night and let people get some sleep for a change.

  She’d be glad when her dad heard her the first time she asked him a question, and when Felicity didn’t fall asleep at the dinner table and when she remembered to buy ponytail fasteners like she promised when she went to the store.

  But Becky didn’t say any of that. Not to Susannah. Not even to Tuck.

  She just thought it—and felt guilty for thinking it. And went on long rides to try to sort things out.

  But she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  It seemed to her as if she was the only thing out of sync in the whole world—until she rode up over the ridge and looked down on the cabin and saw Mace’s truck there again today.

  It was parked exactly where it had been the day before, as if he hadn’t gone home at all.

  Sometimes, she knew, cowboys and ranchers didn’t get home at night if they couldn’t find all the cattle or if they had trouble moving them. Maybe that was what happened to Mace. Maybe he was so late getting down last night that, if he still had more to do, he wouldn’t want to bother driving all the way home only to come back again today.

  She had been surprised when Jenny had called looking for him last night, though. Becky thought he could have called her on his cell phone. But maybe he didn’t have one. Mace didn’t have a lot of money and if he didn’t need one often, he might consider it unnecessary. Becky’s dad, Taggart, had thought that way for a lot of years.

  But now that Becky rode out alone and Felicity sometimes had to drive to Bozeman in the winter, he
made sure they had one along.

  It was a good thing Becky had seen Mace’s truck yesterday so she could tell her dad where he was. Then Jenny wouldn’t worry.

  Unless she should have been worrying! Becky thought, pulling up her horse so sharply, that he tossed his head and almost bucked her off.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” she soothed Blaze, patting his neck.

  But really, what if Mace’s truck was still there because he’d had an accident? What if he was up on the range hurt and alone?

  Becky put her spurs lightly to Blaze’s sides.

  If Mace was hurt, she would have to find him!

  “Don’t overlook the obvious,” her father always told her. So she banged on the door, and even opened it and called his name, but he wasn’t there. There were some cattle behind the cabin in a field Mace was obviously using as a holding pen.

  She rode Blaze down there, studying the ground as she went. You had to look at the way the grass was flattened or twigs were bent to see which way they’d come from or gone, her father told her. She dismounted and knelt to scowl at the grass and the hoofprints. There were a dozen steers in the pasture already and they hadn’t exactly tiptoed in.

  “Playin’ scout?”

  Becky’s head jerked up.

  Mace was sitting on horseback grinning down at her.

  Some scout, she thought, disgruntled, cheeks flaming. She hadn’t even heard him coming!

  Straightening up, she stuck her hands in her pockets and gave a little shrug, feeling self-conscious. “I was going to come rescue you. I thought you were hurt.”

  “Hurt?” Mace’s brows drew down beneath the cowboy hat that shaded his eyes. “Why would you think that?”

  “I saw your truck here yesterday. An’ it was still here today.”

  “You were here yesterday?” He sounded as if he was accusing her of something.

  Becky frowned. It was one thing if her dad and Felicity got mad and yelled at her sometimes. They were her parents, and even if she didn’t think they were being reasonable, she figured it was their right to yell if they wanted.

  But Mace wasn’t supposed to. He was her friend. More than her friend, actually. She dropped her gaze and dug the toe of her boot into the dirt. He was the cowboy she’d fallen in love with when she was five years old.

  Not that he knew.

  It’d embarrass him to death if he knew a thing like that. It would embarrass her! And anyhow, it wasn’t like she’d ever had a chance with him. Mace had been married to Jenny since way before Becky was born.

  They had a good marriage, too.

  She remembered her dad saying that years ago, when Becky had suggested kind of hopefully that maybe Jenny could divorce Mace and marry Taggart and become her stepmother.

  Becky thought Jenny would make a good stepmother. She didn’t yell. Much. She tolerated mud better than most women. And she made really good apple pie.

  Besides, Becky had thought, if Jenny divorced Mace and married Taggart, when she finally grew up, Mace could marry her.

  She didn’t say that part out loud, of course. But when she’d suggested that Jenny would make a good stepmother, Taggart had said, “Won’t happen, pard. Jenny and Mace have been a pair long as I can remember. I believe it’d take an atom bomb to split ’em apart.”

  It was just as well. Becky didn’t need another grouch in her life. Not even a drop-dead handsome one like Mace Nichols.

  She turned her back on him, put her boot in the stirrup and swung back onto Blaze’s back. Giving him a nudge with her heels, she started to ride away.

  “Hey!”

  Becky hesitated at the sound of Mace’s voice, then kept going.

  He caught up with her. “I didn’t mean to growl at you.” There was a sort of hesitancy in his voice that she’d never heard before. “I was surprised. That’s all. I didn’t see you up here yesterday. You didn’t stop.”

  Mollified, Becky said, “Me ’n’ Tuck came up riding. I saw your truck. I told Dad last night when Jenny called looking for you.”

  “Jenny called you?” There was no hesitancy now, only sharpness, and Becky wondered if he was mad because she’d told.

  “She was worried. You know moms worry,” she explained.

  It was something she’d just begun to understand since her dad had married Felicity.

  It wasn’t that her dad didn’t care, just that Felicity was more obvious about it. It was kind of nice most of the time, but Becky was looking forward to the twins getting old enough so that Felicity could worry about them, too.

  “Jenny’s not a mom.”

  Becky blinked at his harsh tone, then shrugged. “Guess not. But you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Chug sidestepped and Mace reined the horse in sharply.

  Becky cocked her head. “Are you mad at Jenny?” she ventured after a moment.

  Keeping his eye on his horse, Mace shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “You sound mad.”

  “I’m not mad, damn it!” His voice quieted. “I’m not mad.” He pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and rubbed it over his face. “It’s hot and I’m tired, that’s all. You want some lemonade?”

  Becky brightened. “You got some?”

  He turned his horse and headed toward the cabin. “Come on.” Becky followed on Blaze, dismounting and tying him next to Chug and loosening his cinch. Then she hurried to catch up.

  She thought he’d have an ice chest. Her dad brought one up when he was going to be up here for a day or two. But Mace went in and opened the small refrigerator, then took out a bottle of lemonade.

  Becky got the glasses out of the cupboard and set them on the table. Then she stepped back and looked around while he poured.

  Nobody had used the little cabin much since Tuck and Jed had lived there last year. All the things that had made it homey then were gone now. But there were dirty dishes soaking in a pan of soapy water in the sink, and through the open door to the small bedroom, she saw an open duffel bag on the soft pine floor.

  Mace cleared his throat.

  Becky turned quickly to see him holding out a glass to her. She grabbed it and gulped, coughing her head off when it went down the wrong way.

  Mace slapped her on the back. “You okay?”

  “F-fine,” she croaked as soon as she could. “Must’ve just gone down the wrong pipe.” Her gaze drifted back toward the open duffel.

  Mace stepped into her line of vision. “How come you’re up here two days in a row?”

  Becky shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Oh, you know, just, um, sorta riding around.”

  “Riding around?” She heard the doubt in his voice.

  She just looked at her boots and didn’t answer.

  “Riding around,” Mace mused after a moment. Then he said shrewdly, “Guess things must be pretty hectic at your house.”

  Becky dug her toe in the rug underfoot. “Yeah.”

  “Willy and Abby givin’ you trouble, are they?”

  “Course not,” she lied. She should have known better than to try any such thing in front of Mace Nichols. He knew her far too well.

  “How come you’re livin’ here?” she asked, hoping to distract him.

  “Who says I’m living here?” The sharpness of his tone rocked Becky back on the heels of her boots.

  “Nobody. I just . . . saw the duffel bag.” She craned her neck to look toward the bedroom door as she spoke.

  Mace’s gaze followed hers. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I had some fence work to do out this way after I moved the cattle. And I needed to fix the roof here. Figured it’d take me a few days, so I brought some gear.”

  “Oh.”

  Mace tipped his glass and drained the lemonade, then set the glass down on the counter with a thump. “It’s gettin’ late. You better get a move on or you’re gonna miss supper.”

  Becky blinked. It was bad enough that her dad and stepmother didn’t seem to have any time for her; was Mace trying to get rid of her
now, too? Hurt, she looked away.

  “I’ve had enough,” she said and put the glass down next to Mace’s, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

  Mace sighed, took off his hat and raked a hand through his short black hair, lifting it in spikes on his head. Then he jammed the hat back down. “I’m sorry, Beck. I’m not trying to throw you out. Go ahead and finish.”

  “I’m done,” Becky said stubbornly. “Really.” And she headed for the door.

  Mace followed her out. He tightened the cinch for her and stood there while she mounted. Then, before she could go, he caught Blaze’s bridle.

  “Thanks,” he said, “for caring enough to come looking.”

  Becky’s eyes widened. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. She swallowed hard and nodded her head.

  A faint grin touched Mace’s mouth for the first time that day. “Hang in there, shadow,” he said, calling her by the pet name he’d given her when she was five and had followed him everywhere.

  Then the grin faded, and his eyes got inexplicably bleak. “Don’t let the rug rats get you down.”

  *

  It was the second night of the rest of his life.

  The way he was feeling, Mace hoped his life was short.

  He lay on his back on the bed that, in the first days of his marriage, he had shared with Jenny. It was lumpier now. The mattress thinner. A spring poked him. If he rolled over to avoid it, he knew from experience that he’d keep right on rolling into the middle of the bed.

  If Jenny had been there to meet him, to wrap her arms and legs around him and take him home, he’d have rolled over in an instant.

  But Jenny wasn’t there.

  And tonight she wouldn’t come banging in the door to curse and yell at him. She’d done her yelling, spent her fury last night. She wouldn’t be back.

  Good. The worst was over. He’d survived.

  He stretched and shifted his shoulders against the mattress, feeling the tension still in them, trying to ease it, telling himself it was just tired muscles, no more, no less. That they ached only proved that he was getting lazy, that he’d needed a hard day’s work.

  Well, he’d had one. He’d worked his horses and dogs—and himself—far harder than usual. Harder, maybe, than he’d ever worked in his life.