A Cowboy's Homecoming

by Leigh Riker

  “So, this morning,” his mother said, returning to the original subject, “after Midnight threw you, then ran off, how did you get that horse back? He has such a mind of his own.”

  “He took a nice tour of the WB, then on to Sweetheart Ranch—where Kate Lancaster managed to stop him.”

  She smiled. There’d been a time when his mom had hoped Kate might keep him here. “Ah. She’s an excellent horsewoman, a good rancher, too, and there you were on foot like some greenhorn. That must have been humiliating.”

  “It was,” he admitted, “but she was relatively nice about it. I met her son.”

  His mom’s face brightened. “Oh, isn’t Theodore the sweetest thing?”

  “Kate doesn’t have the same opinion of me, obviously.” Jean knew why.

  “Rob’s death was not your fault, Noah.”

  “Couldn’t prove that by her.” Which only added to the sense of failure that his father had instilled in him. “Anyway, we got by this morning—” he hesitated “—just as we did the night before I came...home.” He told her briefly about their impromptu stay at the Bluebird. “I would have been here on Saturday if not for that storm.”

  “My goodness,” his mother said. “It’s like the hand of Fate.”

  Noah shifted, which made his ankle throb even harder. “Mom, you can forget your daydreams of me with Kate. She picked Rob instead. And she does blame me for what happened.”

  “Time heals all wounds. You wait long enough—she may change her mind.”

  * * *

  “I’VE DEFINITELY DECIDED,” Meg told Kate the next morning. “I’m changing my name.”

  “Why?” Kate kissed Teddie, who sat at the kitchen table, on top of his head. She poured herself a first cup of coffee. “What’s wrong with McClaren?”

  “Everything.” Meg immediately dreaded the rest of this conversation and wished she hadn’t brought up the subject. The topic of her ex-husband always made her stomach hurt, yet Kate was usually a good sounding board. Now, she didn’t seem to agree.

  “By the way, he who shall not be named called again last night.”

  “Who called?” Teddie piped up, his mouth full of cereal.

  Meg made a zipping motion across her lips. “Little pitchers,” she murmured.

  She marched from the center island to the counter and began washing up her breakfast dishes by hand. Their dishwasher had broken down a few days ago, and the repairman couldn’t fit them into his schedule until next week.

  “Who called?” Teddie asked again, and Meg turned back, a dripping bowl in hand, to see Kate’s reaction. Even Bandit, lying at Teddie’s feet, looked interested. “Uncle Mac?”

  “Yes.” Kate wiped Teddie’s mouth with a napkin. “If you’re finished, sweetie, you may be excused. Go up and make your bed. Then we’ll go down to the barn.”

  “And I can saddle Spencer? Are we taking another snow ride?”

  “Not this morning.” After the season’s first blizzard, a warmish day was turning the snow into slippery slush, and Meg knew Kate wouldn’t risk injury to her son or the horses. “I need to talk to Gabe.”

  “And tell him what to do?” Teddie asked.

  Gabe Morgan was the ranch foreman. Meg avoided him as much as she could. Men in general were not her favorite thing these days, even if Gabe had never been anything but nice to her. He was, however, inclined to turn up wherever Meg happened to be. Which made her uneasy.

  Kate said with exaggerated patience, “Yes, we’ll go over today’s chores, then you can help me clean tack, including Spencer’s saddle. It got pretty dirty on our last ride.”

  “Then later, we’ll go visit Noah? I never get to see people, Mommy, or make new friends. Please, can we?”

  Kate’s features arranged themselves into a blank mask. “No,” she said.

  Teddie’s mouth set. “But he asked me to come over.”

  “He was only being polite.”

  “He told me—”

  “Not without my permission. That was your assumption, Bunny.” Teddie looked adorably perplexed. Chances were he didn’t know the meaning of the word, but Kate plowed on in full mommy mode. She didn’t look at Meg, probably for fear of seeing the smile she was trying to hide. “And you, young man, should call him Mr. Bodine. The same goes for Mr. Morgan.”

  His mouth looking mulish, Teddie slipped from his chair, then stomped off in his cowboy boots toward the front hall, Bandit at his heels.

  “That boy has your obstinacy, Kate.”

  She groaned. “I know.”

  Meg saw her opening to escape any further discussion of her ex. “But I’m curious. What do you call ‘Mr. Bodine’?” This conversation had been put on hold after the blizzard when Kate had returned from the Bluebird Motel.

  “I’d rather not call him anything. With luck, he’ll be on his way to New York in a few days. In the meantime, I don’t intend to see him again.” She brushed off her hands as if to rid herself of Noah, who was an old friend of Meg’s.

  “The poor guy gave you a ride home in the storm, and you repay him with the cold shoulder?”

  “You know the reason.”

  Meg lifted her eyebrows. “How is he? You promised me a full recap of your stay in that motel. Was he a gentleman—”

  “Of course. He’s...fine. If he had tried anything—and why would I think he’d want to?—he’d be missing an arm today.” Kate told Meg the barest details of the overnight she’d spent in the stellar Mr. Bodine’s company. “We passed the time, that’s all. I could hardly do otherwise when, as you said, he was bringing me home.”

  Meg gave in to the smile she’d been holding back. “Still. I think you’re being unfair.” She had known Noah from girlhood and couldn’t say a bad word about him. Even Teddie must agree. Meg could hear him banging around in his room upstairs.

  “I’m being unfair?” Kate shook her head. “Noah Bodine is a near-stranger to me at this point, but you refuse to even answer the phone when Mac, the man you married, calls?”

  “I don’t need to hear what he has to say. We’re divorced. I don’t have to care what he thinks, what he’s doing or who he’s doing it with.” The last words just slipped out. “I mean it, Kate. Changing my name seems the sensible next thing to do. What could be better for my sanity than a clean and final break?”

  “Seriously,” Kate said. “Do you have any idea how many other changes that will lead to? Credit cards, car registration, passport? But never mind that. Talk to the man, Meg. You don’t even know what he wants.” She waited a beat that put Meg on high alert. “What’s unfair is for you to expect me to answer his calls. I can’t bear that sad note in his voice.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” Meg muttered, then went back to washing dishes.

  She didn’t need a man in her life now.

  Especially Jonathan “Mac” McClaren.

  * * *

  GRITTING HIS TEETH with every step, Noah hobbled to answer the door at the WB. Both of the local docs had assured him, as did an X-ray, that he hadn’t broken his ankle, but he did have a wicked sprain that had kept him off his feet ever since he’d taken Midnight for a ride three days ago—or rather, Zach’s horse had taken him.

  Today his mom had gone out somewhere. Alone in the house, he opened the door to find Hadley Smith standing there. Noah hadn’t expected company when for the past few days he’d been trying to catch up remotely on J&B business from the sofa.

  “Hey, Noah.” A big man with dark hair and serious deep blue eyes, Hadley tipped his hat.

  What a surprise. Noah hadn’t seen him in years. Even when Noah had lived on the WB, his friendship with Hadley, who’d been a foster kid at Clara McMann’s ranch then, had never been more than casual, Noah, at thirty-seven, being older by a few years. They’d never even been in the same grade at school.

  “Hadley. Come on in,” he said, wo
ndering about the purpose of his visit.

  “Thought I’d stop by, see how you’re doing.” The WB wasn’t far from Clara’s ranch, which was partly Hadley’s now, Noah’s mother had said. Hadley grinned. “Heard about the spill you took. Word gets around.”

  “Small towns, huh?”

  “You may have forgotten, but there’s never a lack of information.” Hadley removed his hat, left his snowy boots at the door, then took the chair Noah offered him. Noah settled again onto the sofa. It had become his daybed, littered with books, his laptop and food wrappers. A half-finished milkshake sat on the end table. “Someone keeping you fed?” Hadley asked.

  “My mom, of course.” Having her fuss over him again seemed oh-so-familiar and, at the moment, especially welcome. “I’m supposed to be in charge of the WB, but so far I’ve had to rely on the foreman.” Which wasn’t going that well.

  Hadley frowned. “On your own, then, with Cody and Willow away on their honeymoon, Zach off somewhere with Cass. The latter case sure sounds like a setup.”

  “Yeah, I messed up about the wedding.” And around Barren, everyone knew everything instantly, which could be either an endearing sign that people did care or an invasion of privacy. Noah saw it now as the latter. “Paying my penance till the newlyweds get back.”

  Hadley toyed with the hat in his hands. “Zach told me he wasn’t confident his foreman would work out.”

  “Wilkins hasn’t been especially helpful. He could have tipped me off that Zach’s stallion wasn’t the best choice to take out after the blizzard, but he didn’t. Which is one reason I ended up on this couch. I was already mad because Zach left me holding the bag here.”

  Hadley snorted. “That’s a shock.”

  Again, there were no secrets. “Well, all those family issues have sure gotten worse. My fault. But you’re right. I wouldn’t have chosen this—another bit of information to pass on.”

  Hadley stiffened. “I’m not one of the gossips.”

  “Sorry.” For a few minutes they spoke instead about Hadley’s family, then J&B. Noah said, “I know I always talked about getting off this ranch, but I never thought I’d end up back east. At the moment, my partner and I are launching a new office in London, which has been nothing but trouble. I need to be there soon or in our New York headquarters.”

  “Noah.” Hadley leaned forward and crossed his forearms on his knee. “I don’t know how to say this, but I’ve heard, of course, about you and Rob Lancaster’s widow.”

  He groaned. “Then everyone knows she and I spent a night together in that storm.”

  “Word gets around,” Hadley repeated. “I was real close to her and Rob when he was...still at Sweetheart Ranch. Since he’s been gone—passed, I mean—even though she never asked me to, I’ve tried to watch out for her.”

  “We had two rooms that night. We talked. That’s all. People can spin that any which way they want.”

  “Doesn’t help her.”

  Noah tensed. The movement sent a spark of agony through his injured ankle. “Then maybe I should give one of those local gossips a call—set the record straight. That why you’re really here now?”

  “Nobody sent me, if that’s what you mean. I told you, I care about Kate. But everyone knows you’ll leave this town again. She’ll still be here. She’s pretty vulnerable, Noah.”

  “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill about a woman I used to know.” The woman I loved and lost, which he wasn’t about to reveal. “I would never do anything to hurt Kate. I probably won’t see her again before I go.”

  “Might be the best decision.”

  Noah rubbed his throbbing ankle. He couldn’t disagree, but could Hadley know about his past feelings for Kate? Even Noah wasn’t sure what they ought to be now. Years had passed since he’d lost her to Rob. Noah had been best man at their wedding. And then, he’d destroyed their three-way friendship with his offer for Rob to join J&B. Noah had done enough, not that he was in any position to do otherwise right now.

  Hadley stood, shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “I’ve never been the talkative type. Didn’t intend to step over any lines.” He half smiled. “Couldn’t stop myself, though. I’m counting on you—a lot of men in Barren are, I suspect—to recall your roots and be as protective of her as any of us, including me, would be.”

  “Message received.”

  Noah struggled up from the sofa, even though Hadley had motioned him to stay seated, then limped beside the other man to the door. Hadley put on his boots. Noah had no reason to be angry with him when he had just cautioned himself to be careful with Kate. Nothing good could come from his trying to be part of her life again. Yet he seemed to have put her in a bad position in this town, which bothered him.

  “You’re concerned about Kate,” Noah said. “I understand. I am too.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt for you to make that call to one of those women who run the town grapevine.” In the open doorway, Hadley tipped his hat as if in apology. “And those WB cowhands of Zach’s know you’re laid up. With your temporary status here, I doubt they’ll respect the boundaries they would observe with him. Think I’ll wander on down to the barn—check things out for you before I go.”

  “Thanks, Hadley.”

  “On my way in, I noticed they hadn’t put fresh hay out for the cattle. Those steers were milling around, bawling to beat the band. I’ll put the fear of God in those cowboys, if I have to. And I’ll talk to Wilkins.”

  Noah thanked him again. He stood in the door taking in the fresh air, watching Hadley cross the front lawn then head for the barn.

  Hadley’s visit had been part warning, yes; part insistence on helping, maybe; but also...friendship? Noah wasn’t sure. He took his pulsing ankle back to the sofa, unable to decide if, after his longtime absence from the WB, he was welcome in Barren. Or, merely suspect.

  Did anybody trust him?

  He knew Kate Lancaster didn’t.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KATE ENTERED EARL’S HARDWARE on Main Street the next day with a mental list of supplies she needed to order. She’d been a rancher all her life, but she was still getting used to running things without Rob, who’d often handled this chore.

  At the front register, she saw a tall man chatting with Earl. Her steps faltered. Kate would know that form, that voice, anywhere. Noah Bodine.

  Recalling her vow to keep her distance, she pivoted on her boot heel, then turned the corner into an aisle. And ran smack into Bernice Caldwell, the biggest gossip in Stewart County. Kate received the sort of pitying look she’d become accustomed to in the past year from many people. “Oh, you poor thing. How are you holding up? And that sweet little boy of yours?”

  “We’re fine, Bernice.” Fighting an urge to groan, Kate added, “And you?”

  “I was perfectly well, thank you very much—until my Barney moved out.”

  Bernice shifted her packages from one arm to the other. Her grown son had always lived with her, perhaps too intimidated by the woman to dare leaving home.

  “I knew he’d resigned—” Kate began.

  “Can you believe? Vice president of Loans at the Barren Cattlemen’s Bank, one of the most prestigious positions in this town, but he’d rather become a trainee at some brokerage firm in Kansas City.” She patted her brown hair. “He has broken my heart.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Kate gave a silent cheer for Barney Caldwell. Finally, he’d gotten out from under his mother’s thumb. “I’m sure you miss him terribly.”

  Bernice’s brown eyes welled with tears. “For now. I expect him to come running back any day. He has standing in this community. What on earth could be better than that? Certainly not living in a strange city far from his own people. A trainee,” she repeated with a sniff.

  Kate didn’t comment. She wished Barney every success. At least now he was on neu
tral ground, while the rest of Barren’s population still had to deal with Bernice, who, at this very moment, must have some agenda. She always did.

  Bernice squared her shoulders. “I don’t mean to pry into your business, but there have been a few whispers about—” she hesitated “—our recent blizzard. Staying overnight with Noah Bodine didn’t look good for your reputation, Kate, and so soon after poor Rob died. That man was your husband’s friend. And to move in on his grieving widow...” She let out a breath. “I thought I should say something.”

  Kate refused to explain. “I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing to worry about.”

  It also wasn’t the end of this, she felt sure. Bernice couldn’t wait to spread that gossip, adding her own interpretation to what was already out there.

  “Well, my own cross is mine to bear,” she said, then touched Kate’s arm. “Do take care of yourself, and give that boy of yours a hug from me. I don’t know how you cope with your loss.” Unless it was to fall into Noah Bodine’s presumably waiting arms.

  Bernice hadn’t left before Kate heard a thumping sound behind her. Please, not another well-meaning person with sympathy in their eyes. She turned, but it was Noah himself, limping. He leveled a look at Bernice before he spoke, his voice coolly authoritative. “Mrs. Caldwell, let me assure you, if it hadn’t been for that storm, Mrs. Lancaster would have been safely home long before dark—reading a story to her little boy at bedtime. Would you have preferred her to drive alone, perhaps ending up stranded? The roads were bad. I’d offered her a ride—only that—but, after a slight mishap in the snow, we had no choice except to stop overnight. Speaking of which, I stayed in my room and she stayed in hers. Period.” Which was a slight exaggeration, though Kate wouldn’t say so. “I’d appreciate your silence on the matter.”

  Bernice sniffed again but said nothing. She stalked off toward the store’s entrance.

  “Sorry,” Noah said to Kate. “I overheard and had to say something.”

  Kate, feeling the heat in her cheeks, sighed. “She is not alone.”