The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  “We didn’t mean nuthin’ by it,” Warren said nervously. “We were just talkin’.”

  Mace dropped over the fence and stood in front of them, his fingers curling into fists. “Well, I’ve got a suggestion for you—shut up.”

  *

  There might be more space at home than there was sitting side by side in a theater or studying paintings at an art gallery and sharing a meal in a restaurant. But somehow, Jenny discovered, it was also more intimate because it was more personal.

  The ranch house living room was her space. Those were her books on the bookshelves. Her hand-knitted afghan on the back of the rocker. Her pictures on the wall.

  Hers.

  And Mace’s.

  Maybe that was the problem, she thought as it seemed as if the walls of the room were closing in on her and Tom.

  When she and Tom went out, Mace was there, but in the background. He was a factor—Mace always seemed to be a factor—but he wasn’t everywhere they turned.

  Here—in this house—he was.

  His Stockman’s Journals still sat alongside her magazines. His muffler, the one she’d knitted him for Christmas and that he wore every winter day when he went out to feed the stock, still hung on the hook beside the back door. The pictures on the mantel were not just of Jenny, but of Mace, too.

  She couldn’t help but see him: Mace on their wedding day, Mace on horseback, Mace bottle-feeding a newborn calf.

  She turned her head and tried to pretend he wasn’t there.

  She tried to be casual and unconcerned, the perfect hostess, babbling a welcome, taking Tom’s jacket, commenting on the weather, gulping in surprise when he proffered a bottle of wine.

  She and Mace never bought wine, at least not the kind with a cork and not a cap that screwed on.

  “I-I don’t know if I have a c-corkscrew,” she mumbled, feeling her cheeks burn.

  “No problem.” Tom dug a pocketknife out of his jeans and proceeded to open it with that. “You do have wineglasses?” he asked hopefully moments later.

  They were on the top shelf of the cabinet over the refrigerator—and they were very dusty. More embarrassment. But she got them down, rinsed them and dried them and tried to pretend she wasn’t blushing as she handed them to Tom.

  He poured two glasses and offered her one.

  She shook her head. “Not . . . yet. I-I don’t drink while I’m cooking,” she excused herself. It was true. And tonight, of all nights, she needed a clear head if she wasn’t going to burn the house down!

  “You drink yours and keep me company,” she said, “unless you’d rather sit in the living room and read a magazine.”

  Tom lounged against the refrigerator. “I’d enjoy watching you cook.”

  Jenny felt like a monkey in a zoo—or a butterfly pinned to a board. She wasn’t used to being watched.

  She started making the gravy, reciting the process in her head, hoping she wasn’t forgetting anything. Tom stood watching, talking to her while she made the gravy and tried to look like she entertained gentlemen in her kitchen all the time.

  She wasn’t that good an actress.

  But Tom, bless his heart, didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, he didn’t care. He’d spent the day alternately watching Noah’s bronc-riding school and reading a new biography of Henry Fielding. And he enthused about both while Jenny stirred and listened and prayed that the gravy would thicken.

  It was a cream gravy for the chicken-fried steak she had keeping warm in the oven, and it had never failed to do what she expected. But there wasn’t much you could count on these days, as she well knew.

  Like Mace.

  So she stirred—and prayed—and tried to think of questions she might ask about Henry Fielding with what was left of her mind.

  It turned out the gravy was more reliable than Mace.

  Just as she was about to despair of it, the gravy began to thicken, and Jenny sighed with relief.

  “Finished?” Tom asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How about that glass of wine, then?”

  She wiped damp palms down the sides of her trousers. “All right,” she said, feeling more sanguine and a little braver, “why not?”

  He handed the untouched glass to her. Their fingers brushed. She jerked back and the wine sloshed in the glass. Quickly she took a sip and then a swallow.

  It was, even to her untested palate, a good wine, smooth and slightly musky. It warmed her and mellowed her, softening the edges of her anxiousness, making Tom’s touch seem more acceptable, making the walls of the room recede a bit.

  “It was amazing watching those bronc riders,” Tom was saying with a smile. “I wouldn’t get on a bucking horse in a hundred years.”

  “Well, a lot of those guys wouldn’t read Fielding’s biography in a thousand, so I guess you’re even.”

  “I guess. But Taggart was telling me he had a student in his bull-riding school who plays first violin in some university orchestra.”

  “Scott Hunter.” Jenny knew him. She set her glass down to ladle the gravy into a bowl. “Did Taggart tell you he’s a pretty fair baseball player, too?”

  “What is he? Montana’s answer to the renaissance man?”

  She smiled. “Something like that. A lot of the guys are talented in a variety of areas.”

  “I met your husband this afternoon.”

  His words were as blunt as they were unexpected. “Ow! Drat!” Jenny dropped the platter she’d just distractedly grabbed with her bare hand. “You met Mace? At Taggart’s?”

  Why hadn’t she considered that?

  She groped for a potholder, but Tom got it first and steered her toward the sink while he rescued the platter.

  “Run your hand under cold water,” he commanded. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Tell me about Mace.

  Tom put the rescued platter on the table, then took her hand, examining her reddened fingers for a moment. He stuck them back under the running water.

  “Keep them there for a few more minutes. I don’t think it’s a bad burn.”

  “I’ve had worse,” Jenny said. What about Mace?

  “You still need to take care of it as soon as you do it. Heals faster that way.”

  “I know.” What did he say to you? “How’s Mace?”

  The words came out fine, with none of the intensity and none of the desperation she felt. They sounded casual, normal.

  Maybe she was a pretty fair actress after all.

  “He seemed fine,” Tom said equally casually. “Taggart introduced us.”

  Did he say, “This is Mace, the man whose wife you’re dating? The one you’re having dinner with tonight?”

  Did Mace behave? Suddenly Jenny found herself searching Tom’s face for signs of mayhem.

  “He was pretty busy with the horses. Taggart said Mace used to ride broncs.”

  “And bulls now and then. A long time ago.”

  “Taggart said he was good.”

  “He was.” But he wouldn’t go down the road with them. He wanted the ranch more, and he always said rodeo was too hard on marriages.

  There were other things even harder, Jenny thought now. She took her stinging hand out from beneath the faucet and dried it off.

  “He told me you and Mace built up this ranch from scratch, that you built this house together.” Tom looked around the small, but homey room, appreciatively. “He said Mace felled the trees, put up the frame, made the cabinets, did the finish work. That’s pretty renaissance, if you ask me.”

  “Mace can do a lot of things,” Jenny agreed.

  She wondered what Tom would think if she told him Mace had been lurking on the hillside after he brought her home last week. He’d better not be there tonight, she thought grimly.

  “Taggart seemed to think a lot of him.”

  “They’ve been friends for a long time.”

  Tom smiled but didn’t reply. He stood waiting while Jenny hung up the towel.

  Was he expecting her to
say something? Did he want to know the reason Mace had left her?

  If he did, he was too polite to ask.

  Still the silence went on for a few more seconds, as if he intended to give Jenny time in case she wanted to add anything else. When she didn’t, he said, “The smell of that steak is making my mouth water. How does your hand feel?”

  Jenny breathed again. “Fine.” She wiggled her fingers. “Just fine. Come on. Sit down and let’s eat.”

  *

  It was the sideways glances that got to him.

  The whispers. The hushed voices.

  Were those snickers he heard?

  Every time he came upon a gathering of cowboys, the conversation stopped. Every time he left, it started again. Murmurs. Mutters.

  Yeah, those were snickers!

  Mace felt his neck burn and his face heat. He wanted to pound their faces into the dirt. Warren and Mick and all the rest of them.

  Oh, after Mick’s gaffe earlier in the day, he never caught another obvious reference to Jenny and him and Tom Morrison.

  But he was no fool.

  And even if he were, even a fool wouldn’t mistake the sudden silences when he came near, the speculative looks and sly smiles that followed when he walked away.

  “Poor Mace. Couldn’t hang on to his wife. Let her get away and she’s going with a college prof now.”

  “Poor Mace. Stupid fool Mace.” He didn’t have to hear the words to know what was being said.

  Damn them!

  And they didn’t even know!

  What would they be saying—and snickering—if they did?

  When Tom left the bleachers shortly after five, Mace was aware of it. When he came out of the house, all cleaned up, half an hour later, Mace saw him. When he got in his car and drove away, Mace almost put his fist through a fence.

  “Hey, dreamer! Let’s go. Move ’em up, for crying out loud!” Jed yelled at him.

  Mace gritted his teeth and slapped the horse in the chute on the rump, trying to move her into the next one. “Keep your mind on business,” he told her. Which was what he ought to be telling himself.

  He did the best he could for the rest of the day. He concentrated on the horses, ignored their riders, and refused to let himself think about Jenny and her intimate dinner that night.

  It was almost nine by the time Noah let them go.

  Mace’s stomach was growling. He was dirty and sweaty and aching and there would be no hot, home-cooked meal waiting for him—just as there hadn’t been last time. Just as there wouldn’t be for the rest of his life.

  “Hey, Mace,” Jed called from his truck as he and Tuck headed out. “Brenna’s got lasagna in the oven. You want to come?”

  His stomach growled, but Mace barely looked up. “No. Thanks.” He kept on loading the tack he had promised to mend for Taggart.

  When he finished, he opened the door of his truck.

  “Hi.”

  He turned to see Becky standing at his elbow and realized it was the first time she’d been around all day. “Hey, shadow, where you been?”

  “Me an’ Susannah went to Bozeman with her uncle to see a movie.”

  “Have a good time?”

  Becky’s shoulders winged up and she scuffed the toe of her boot in the dirt. “Better’n stayin’ around here.”

  Considering the day he’d had, Mace could go along with that. “What’s the matter? Twin trouble again?”

  “Dad trouble,” Becky muttered.

  Mace raised a brow. “That’s a new one.”

  “I forgot to feed Digger. Daddy says if I don’t remember to feed him, we’ll have to get rid of him.” There was a wavering note in her voice that sounded suspiciously close to tears.

  Mace reached out a hand and touched her hair. “I don’t reckon it will come to that, Beck. You’re pretty responsible.”

  “I try to be. But sometimes I forget. He forgets,” she said with annoyance. “He forgot to pick me up at Tuck’s last weekend. I went down to spend the afternoon, and he was s’posed to get me before dinner, an’ I ended up eating dinner there!”

  A corner of Mace’s mouth quirked. “Reckon I ought to suggest that if he doesn’t remember you, he won’t get to keep you?”

  Becky considered that with rather more seriousness than he’d anticipated. “He’d prob’ly be glad to see me go,” she said finally.

  Mace tipped her chin up so she had to look at him. “Don’t you ever say that, Rebecca Kathleen. You know he loves you more than anyone on earth.”

  “’Cept Felicity and Willy and Abby.”

  “Different than Felicity. Different than Willy and Abby. You and your old man go back a long, long way. Heck, you practically raised him while he was raisin’ you. Nobody has the relationship with him that you do.”

  “Nobody’d want it,” Becky muttered.

  “Maybe not right now. But he’ll come around. Give him time.”

  “Not if he gives away Digger!”

  “He won’t give away Digger,” Mace promised. “If he even thought about it, I’d punch his lights out.”

  “You would? Really?” Becky brightened at once. The beginnings of a smile played around the corners of her mouth.

  “Don’t you go forgettin’ to feed that dog just to test me,” Mace cautioned, having seen that look before.

  Becky shook her head. “I won’t.” She touched his sleeve lightly and looked up at him with wide green eyes. “Thanks, Mace.”

  He winked at her. “Don’t mention it.”

  They stood in silence a moment. Then Becky said, “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. “I’m all right,” he said.

  “Jenny an’ Tom are—”

  “I know.”

  “But—”

  A group of rowdy bronc-rider students came out of the barn just then, laughing and talking as they headed for their trucks.

  “Hey, Mace,” one of them called. “You wanta go grab a couple beers with us?”

  “An’ a couple of babes?” another yelled.

  Mace’s jaw tightened. “Not tonight.”

  “You can eat with us,” Becky said quickly.

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but I gotta go on now.”

  “Where?”

  Good question. Was he going to go back to the cabin to sulk and stew, knowing that Jenny was entertaining another man in his house?

  Or did he plan to skulk around outside watching like he had the night Tom kissed her in the doorway?

  Would Tom kiss her again tonight? Or wouldn’t that be enough for him?

  Would he make love to her?

  “I gotta go to Bozeman.”

  Mace needed space and distance and anonymity.

  He needed a few beers—or maybe more than a few. He needed a little whiskey. Or maybe a lot.

  Chapter Nine

  There was an elk on one wall, a moose on the other, and a couple dozen jackasses in between.

  The music was loud, the girls were pretty, and everybody wore a hat and boots, a fair number of which didn’t look like they’d ever seen a horse or a field or a barn.

  It was a Bozeman bar, so it had a scattering of better-heeled younger folks than if Mace had stayed closer to home. But unlike most bars in the college town, it had been around a long long time, and it had a bedrock authenticity that said it had seen ‘the real thing’ when it came to Montana’s cowboy past. Mace could relax there. Best of all, it was far enough from home that he didn’t expect to see anyone he knew.

  There was no way he wanted to tip a glass with the likes of Warren and Mick tonight—or any of the rest of Noah’s bronc riders at the Dew Drop back in Elmer. He’d considered heading to Livingston, but there was always the chance he’d run into somebody he knew there, too—somebody who’d take it into his head to commiserate or, worse, ask questions.

  He wasn’t likely to find that in Bozeman. The town had grown so big over the past twenty years it looked almost like a million tiny lights sprea
ding out in the valley. Every time he came to town he found more development—new houses, new businesses. New bars.

  But Mace didn’t want a new bar, either. A new bar would mean a horde of sandal-wearing students drinking special label beers and playing pool and looking down their educated noses at him while some hippie bluegrass guys ruined good old-fashioned music.

  Mace wanted Hank Williams and George Jones and Faron Young. He wanted real honky-tonk music to soothe his battered soul. He wanted the rough-and-ready, tried-and-true.

  So he’d parked his truck outside the Six Gun and went in. The Six Gun had been around for years, probably since its clientele had packed ’em. It was, in a word, a cowboy bar.

  Low-key during the day, with not much music on the jukebox at all. If there was, it’d be Patsy Cline or Jim Reeves singing an old lonesome tune for the depressed, serious and unemployed to feel sorry for themselves by while they drowned their woes in cheap beer and rot-gut whiskey.

  But at night, especially Friday and Saturday nights, it was a different story. Oh, the cheap beer was still available. So was the rot gut. But it wasn’t quiet now. It was the loudest place in town.

  Cowboys and ranchers alike came in to blow off a little steam, find an old friend or two, and make the long solitary hours spent on the range recede for a while. There were the requisite number of cowgirls, too, and a few buckle bunny hangers-on who made life interesting.

  Mace reckoned his life was interesting enough at the moment. He didn’t need the added complication a woman would provide, even though it’d serve Jenny right if he took one home with him.

  The thought of Jenny made him tip his beer up and drain the glass, trying to drown out any notion of her. He realized pretty quick that beer wasn’t going to do it. He’d be all night if he was intent on drowning his sorrows in that.

  He chased the second one with a shot of tequila.

  Ah, yeah. That was more like it. It burned all the way down. The edges of his mind fuzzed a little. His toes curled. But the worst visions of Jenny in bed with Tom Morrison blurred a bit, and that was good.

  He had another beer. And another shot of tequila. It still helped. But not enough. He kept drinking—more than he ought to have, but fewer than he needed to forget.