Home with the Cowboy

by Mary Sue Jackson

  “This weekend!” Sarah’s eyes went wide. “And leave that baby with two old bachelors who couldn’t keep a cactus alive? Is she crazy?”

  The corners of Uncle James’ mouth turned downward. “Now, don’t be insulting—”

  Sarah put the empty glasses back on the table and put her hands on her hips, leaning over James to drive her point home. “I ain’t insultin’, just speakin’ the truth. You don’t have any business raising a baby by yourself.” She pulled up a chair and sat at the table with the two men like they’d invited her to come and sit a spell. Dropping her voice to a conspiratorial tone, she added, “Now, tell me everything if you want me to help.”

  Daniel told Sarah about his conversations with Willa and passed on the minimal information she’d revealed about herself. Sarah nodded, her eyes narrowing at parts of Daniel’s recitation.

  By the time Daniel had finished, Uncle James looked fit to be tied. “Well?” he demanded. “You got any ideas in that nosey brain of yours?”

  “Don’t distract me. I’m thinking.” Sarah tapped her lip. “It sounds like Miss Markson isn’t so great at making friends. I mean, your brother hired her and he was always a straight-shooter, so there’s that, but you say she doesn’t have lots of friends in New York?”

  “So she says,” Daniel replied.

  “I have a feeling that she needs to feel like she belongs somewhere. She needs to feel like she belongs here.” Sarah nodded, looking as if she’d just figured out the secret to the universe. “That party of yours was a good idea, but you can’t let up. If she gets attached to the people here, she won’t want to leave so soon.” She repeated the nod, then stood up from her chair and dusted her hands. “So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

  Daniel wasn’t sure how that would be different from anything he’d thought up already, but he wasn’t stupid enough to tell Sarah that.

  Uncle James snorted. “So, what, you’re gonna pester the poor girl until the end of days?” He looked to his nephew. “Danny boy, don’t let this woman near Miss Markson.”

  “You’re such an old grump, James Gunn, and we both know it. And my ideas are always brilliant. You just don’t want to admit it.” Sarah touched Daniel’s shoulder. “We’ll get her to stay. Don’t you worry your head.”

  Sarah returned to work, leaving Uncle James to grumble under his breath and Daniel to feel hope rise inside his chest.

  Sarah was right, though. Willa needed to feel like she was a part of this town, not just some outsider who was temporarily stuck here, with a whole life waiting somewhere else.

  You could make her feel extra welcome, a sly voice in his head told him. In the same moment, he realized that getting Willa to stay meant that he’d have more time with her—and more time with her alone, except for Bobby’s presence. That thought made him want to groan.

  He pulled himself up short with a firm yank on his mental reins. He needed Willa for Bobby; he didn’t need her for himself. The question was: Could he keep temptation at bay, or would he give in and make Willa into more than just Bobby’s caretaker?

  Eight

  “He’s doing well, but as I’m sure you’re aware, moving to a brand-new place with someone he’s never known would be a huge adjustment for anyone, let alone a two-year-old boy.” Dr. Ramsey, the child psychologist Daniel and Willa had traveled to Austin to see, frowned as she looked down at Bobby playing near Willa’s feet. “You say that his tantrums have increased since you got here?”

  Willa knew that saying yes would seal her fate. She could feel Daniel’s gaze boring into her, but she ignored it. She’d had to travel for two hours with Daniel driving, Bobby in the backseat, to attend this court-ordered session with a child psychologist in Austin. Dr. Ramsey was one of the best in her field when it came to small children and trauma, and when Daniel had gotten custody, the judge had also ordered that Bobby and the little boy’s caretaker should receive counseling and assistance. Daniel had argued Willa into coming along. “You count as his caretaker, you know.” She’d had to admit the truth to this. For a little while longer, anyhow.

  “The tantrums have increased,” Willa admitted. “Not anything too terrible, but he seems more likely to lose it over something small. During breakfast yesterday, he wanted pancakes, and when I told him no, he screamed for twenty minutes straight.”

  Willa’s head still hurt from that particular tantrum. It had come out of nowhere. One second, Bobby had been happily babbling away in his high chair. The next, he was shrieking so loudly that Daniel had heard and come in from his work outside, he’d been so concerned.

  Dr. Ramsey scribbled something down. “That’s not surprising, given the upheaval in his life. He’s lost his parents,” she looked from Willa to Daniel to emphasize her words, “the two most important people in a child’s life.” She shook her head. “He can’t understand what it means when people are gone forever, of course.”

  “He keeps asking for them,” said Daniel gruffly. “Mostly at night. He wants his mom to put him to bed,” he gulped and then cleared his throat before continuing, “and when I can’t get her for him . . .”

  Hearing the sadness in Daniel’s voice for his nephew, Willa was tempted to take his hand. Come to think of it, she was feeling in need of comfort herself. They were all in upheaval, trying to figure out a situation that no one could’ve predicted. Willa thought of the funeral, how Bobby had kept asking Willa where his daddy was, where his mommy had gone. Her heart had broken afresh each time he’d asked.

  “I understand that you’ve been his caregiver since he was born?” Dr. Ramsey asked Willa.

  She nodded and tried to smile. “Yes, that’s correct.”

  The doctor looked down at her notes and then back to Willa. “Although you aren’t family, I would advise that, if at all possible, you stay to help Bobby adjust as long as you can.”

  “For how long?” said Willa, her mouth gone dry.

  Dr. Ramsey sighed. “Three months at the very least, but ideally, a year.”

  Willa inhaled sharply, feeling punched in the gut. A year! She couldn’t stay in Texas for an entire year! She’d lose everything: her apartment, the job she was so close to getting. The life she’d built, the dreams she’d just started chasing.

  Daniel cleared his throat. Willa could almost hear him exulting over Dr. Ramsey’s pronouncement. This would just give him more leverage over her, she thought darkly.

  “What would happen if Ms. Markson left too soon?” he said.

  Willa shot him a glare, which he ignored.

  Dr. Ramsey frowned. “It’s difficult to say, but given Bobby’s current behavior, it could lead to more serious trauma and abandonment issues. He’d most likely have behavioral issues as well.”

  It was like hearing the clanky noise of her jail cell door close in front of Willa. She swallowed against the lump in her throat, torn between wanting to see Bobby happy and healthy and wanting to live her own life. She never would’ve thought that answering Stacey Gunn’s online ad, a lifetime ago, could’ve resulted in this.

  After the appointment ended, the three went to get lunch at a nearby cafe. Willa’s spirits rose a little when she saw the menu—actual vegetarian options!—but it wasn’t enough to improve her mood entirely. Not with Mr. I-Told-You-So looking at her like he was just waiting to say those words to her face.

  They ordered and then sat in silence broken only by Bobby’s babbling. Willa drummed her fingers against the wooden tabletop.

  If only she could get the interviewer to agree to do her interview remotely! She’d contacted Grayson West, the art gallery owner and man responsible for her fate, a few days ago, but Grayson had yet to respond to her email. She’d left him a voicemail this morning as well. She’d had to restrain herself from constantly checking her phone, although after handing Bobby a green crayon to scribble on the outlined grass on his ready-for-coloring placemat, she found herself checking her email for the thousandth time.

  Nothing. Had Grayson been offended that she
’d even asked? Her stomach turned at the thought.

  Grayson West owned Sensation, one of the most prestigious new galleries in New York. The trendy place was known for discovering exciting new talent on the cusp of stardom, and Grayson had become a celebrity in his own right within the art world. The little interaction Willa’d had with him had shown her that he was brilliant but thought very highly of himself.

  When Grayson had first contacted her about interviewing for the position, he’d told her point blank that “most candidates are a waste of my time, but you seem slightly better than most.” She’d been too excited by the phone call to take offense at that backhanded compliment.

  “Waiting for someone to call you?” said Daniel as she put her phone away.

  “No.” She didn’t offer any more information.

  She knew it wasn’t his fault that the psychologist had said she should stay longer, but at that moment, she almost hated him. He stood for everything she’d wanted to escape when she’d left Macon in the first place. She’d wanted something different—why was that such a bad thing? But now Daniel, her father, Bobby—they were all dragging her back into a world that had never understood her and had never wanted her in the first place.

  Except, she had to admit, that was unfair to Daniel. He was gruff at times, but under that exterior, Willa had seen kindness. He’d thrown that welcome party for her without her even asking. It took a thoughtful man to plan a party in a stranger’s honor.

  She stared at him across the table, her heart in her throat as she watched him smiling at Bobby, asking if the cows in the picture should be red, or blue, considering there were only three colors in the little set of crayons that had come with the child’s placemat. She could be honest enough with herself that she found Daniel attractive, but that didn’t mean anything. If she were to entangle herself any further with anyone from Texas, she’d be in an even worse fix than she was now.

  Daniel looked up from the blue cow he was helpfully coloring to meet her eyes. “I went to New York once,” he said, unprompted. “About five years ago.”

  Willa stared at him in surprise. “Why?”

  He grinned. “You probably couldn’t credit it, but I’ve been a number of places. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Even went up to Alaska one year for fishing.”

  “What did you think of New York?”

  He snorted. “Too many people and not enough sky.”

  Willa bit back a smile, mostly because she’d thought the same thing when she’d moved there. It was one thing to dream of living in a place you’d seen in movies and on TV. It was another to experience it for yourself.

  Willa had never seen so many people packed together in one place in her life. Where she’d grown up, you could go for miles without seeing any human being. In New York, you couldn’t escape humanity, no matter how hard you tried.

  “What were you doing in New York?” she asked, swirling the water in her glass to loosen the ice cubes.

  “Convention.” He nodded, probably at Willa’s continued look of surprise, and added, “I go to lots of conventions for farming, raising cattle, things like that.”

  It made sense. “So that’s why you’ve been so many places.”

  He rolled his shoulders, then bent to tackle another blue cow while Bobby scribbled over the cartoon sun on the placemat with the red crayon. Head bent over their art masterpiece, he continued. “I liked New York, though. I liked that people don’t mess around there. They say what they think. More people could be like that instead of pussy-footing around when everybody knows what they’re really thinking.”

  Willa took a sip of her water. “I didn’t think you’d been anywhere but Texas,” she admitted. “Cowboys like you tend to stick with their own kind.”

  Daniel frowned. “You may be from Texas, but sometimes I think you don’t have the slightest notion what it’s actually like to live here.”

  Willa bristled, prepared to argue the point, when Bobby decided to toss the remainder of his lunch onto the cafe floor. He laughed as if he’d done a neat party trick. Willa decided she’d take up Daniel’s comment at another time.

  The ride back was silent. Bobby fell asleep in his car seat almost as soon as they started moving. Willa thought, her mind going around and around the number one question that was eating at her. Daniel was obviously more comfortable with Bobby, but he was still learning. And the psychologist had spoken a truth that Willa had already known deep down: if she went away too soon, her leaving could traumatize Bobby.

  She thought of Stacey and Robert, how they’d immediately welcomed her into their home. Willa had become particularly close with Stacey, and Stacey had pressed a continuing stream of little gifts on Willa over the two years Willa had worked for her. Paint, brushes, tickets to art gallery openings. Stacey had been one of those people everyone liked, with her infectious smile and kind heart.

  Willa’s heart squeezed, tears threatening at the bittersweet memories of her dear friends. She couldn’t leave their little boy. Stacey had entrusted him to Willa’s care, and although they couldn’t have foreseen this tragedy, Willa had made them a promise to care for him as best she could.

  She didn’t know how she’d manage to hold onto her life in New York, but at this point, the sleeping two-year-old in the back seat was what was most important.

  Nine

  Willa had been told that the local rec center was worth a trip, but she hadn’t expected anything this new and this big, considering the small size of the town. She was fairly certain the town’s whole population could fit into this one huge building.

  Nondescript on the outside, inside it boasted an indoor swimming pool, an exercise room, basketball courts, and a brightly colored indoor playground for little ones. The second Willa stepped onto the playground with Bobby, his eyes widened, and he headed straight to the giant foam blocks near the door.

  Small children were playing everywhere, the noise bouncing off the walls, making it hard to hear. But Willa didn’t care about the noise. Bobby, who’d been both prone to tantrums and lately extremely clingy with Willa, was finally smiling and laughing the way he had back in New York.

  “Want that one!” said Bobby suddenly, eying a large blue block that another child was playing with.

  “You can play with this one.” Willa bent down and handed him a yellow block. She picked up another block, laid it down in front of Bobby, and began to stack other blocks on top of it. Soon they had started a game that involved Willa stacking blocks and Bobby pushing the tower of blocks over onto the ground and then laughing.

  “Wiwah, look, look!” Bobby shouted to Willa to get her attention and then upset the block tower onto the ground, squealing with laughter.

  A woman and her daughter were playing nearby, the daughter about Bobby’s age. The little girl joined in the game, which to Willa’s relief, Bobby allowed without throwing a fit.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” the little girl’s mother said, sitting herself down on the floor next to Willa. “I’m DeeDee McClair. That’s my daughter, Izzy.”

  “I’m Willa Markson.” Willa shook DeeDee’s hand. “That’s Bobby Gunn.”

  DeeDee’s eyes widened. “Oh, Robert’s boy! You must be his nanny that’s in town. No wonder I didn’t recognize you.” DeeDee dimpled as she smiled, and her Texas twang was infectious. She didn’t look much older than Willa, although opposite in terms of looks: blonde, busty, and wearing all kinds of jewelry, she was like a parrot to Willa’s sparrow.

  “I guess I’m getting a reputation around here,” said Willa wryly.

  “Mostly people are only curious. We don’t get a lot of new folks, you know. Anytime we do, it’s like the president has stopped by for some sweet tea.” DeeDee suddenly turned away from the conversation and raised her voice to say, “Izzy, play nice!” DeeDee rolled her eyes. “That girl is gonna be a heap of trouble when she’s older.”

  Seeing Izzy grabbing at Bobby’s block and Bobby resisting with all his might, Willa had to
agree. The two women stopped the potential fight before it could erupt into screams, blows, or tears. A moment later, the two toddlers were playing like old friends, having forgotten their disagreement.

  Willa wished adults could be like that, but their memories were too long, their hearts too prone to bitterness.

  “You staying with Daniel while you’re here?” said DeeDee, breaking into her thoughts.

  Willa could hear the unspoken question in DeeDee’s words, but she ignored it. “Sort of. I have a room at the bed and breakfast, but I haven’t been sleeping there because of Bobby. He doesn’t do so great when I’m not around.” She sighed. “I’m sleeping on a cot next to his crib every night.”

  DeeDee clucked her tongue. “Poor baby. I was so sad to hear about Robert. He and I were just a year apart in school. He graduated the year before I did.” She shook her head. “He and his brother were famous around this town.”

  Willa was surprised. That didn’t sound like the Robert she’d known. “Why? What did they do?”

  DeeDee laughed. “Nothin’ but be handsome and charming! Well, Robert was; Daniel tended to be too focused on the farm after their parents died.”

  Willa’s ears pricked. Robert had mentioned that his parents had died, but Willa hadn’t known how long ago they had died or how it had happened.

  Her curiosity got the better of her. “What happened to their parents?”

  DeeDee’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you don’t know?” She lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Drunk driver hit ’em. On the way to the feed store in town, can you believe it? I remember the day it happened, because I was at Jack’s drinking a milkshake with Doug—he’s my husband now—and we heard the crash. We all ran outside and knew it was the Gunns’ truck that had been hit.”

  She frowned deeply. “The driver was some trucker from out of town who’d gotten drunk that afternoon and had tried to go on with his route. He hit them head-on. They died instantly.”