by Leigh Riker
Now she was living on borrowed time, waiting for her dad to throw her out. He’d risen early this morning as he usually did, but he took his coffee and daily toast out to the barn instead of eating with Becca. He must have come into the house to have his full breakfast once he sensed she’d left for work. And she still hadn’t heard from Calvin.
“What do you want me to do with these flyers?” she asked.
Jenna took a batch from Clara. “If you don’t mind—I know Elizabeth wouldn’t—we’ll leave a stack by the front register. We’re going to paper every store in town.”
“Let’s put one in this front window,” Clara added. “The more people who become aware of the rodeo, the more successful it will be.”
Becca hurried to the counter for some tape. While Clara tacked the flyer on the glass, Becca felt Jenna watching her. Her gaze moved from Becca’s face, down her front, then settled on her abdomen before she quickly looked away.
“There will be a kids’ event too,” Jenna said. “If you know anyone who might be interested, please let them know.”
“I don’t know any kids,” Becca murmured, thinking, except my own.
Clara turned from the window. “Thank you so much, Rebecca. We’d better go, Jenna, to the other shops. If I’m not back in time to feed three hungry men their lunch, there may be a riot.” She laughed. “They’re eating me out of house and home, though I could never manage without them.” She and Jenna were at the door when Clara faced Becca again.
“Two men, I should have said.” Clara’s expression dimmed. “When I served breakfast, Calvin was nowhere to be seen. Hadley tells me the bunkhouse has been cleared of all his belongings. No notice,” she said with a sniff, “just when we’re going to need his help on rodeo day.” Her voice was tinged with concern. “Calvin Stern seems to have vanished.”
* * *
AFTER WORK THAT AFTERNOON, Dallas pulled into his driveway. Living in town wasn’t really his thing, and at the McMann ranch, he loved hearing the soft lowing of cattle, smelling the sweet scent of grass, being outdoors all day. He’d never liked closed-in spaces. He liked living next door to Lizzie, though.
Still, kissing her was one thing. Making a commitment he wasn’t ready for, and that she would shy away from, was another—even when he wanted something more than friendship. And where might that lead them? He had no clue. Maybe he’d simply lost his head with Lizzie, but he wouldn’t apologize this time. She’d liked kissing him too.
Dallas went into the house, dropped his mail on the kitchen counter, then walked out the back again, where he’d heard a lot of taunting and name-calling from next door. He found Lizzie’s kids chasing each other around the yard with big water pistols, or rather the two boys were chasing Stella, who was screaming at the top of her lungs. Dallas didn’t hesitate. “Hey!” He whistled through his teeth. “Leave your sister alone!” He couldn’t believe Lizzie would let them fight like this, not with Bernice keeping watch, ready to report anything amiss to Lizzie’s mother, if not the whole town.
“You’re not the boss of me,” little Seth threw back over his shoulder at Dallas as he ran. He spun around, then squirted Stella right between the eyes.
More bloodcurdling shrieks. “You got my hair wet! Brat!” she yelled.
Dallas considered confiscating the pistols, but they weren’t his children. He had no right to discipline them. He sprinted from the rear lawn to the door, where he didn’t bother to knock.
“Lizzie! There’s a war going on in your backyard,” he announced, but she wasn’t in the kitchen. Where was she? There was another telling silence in the house like last night, but she would never leave her kids home alone.
He strode through the living room. Empty, yet cluttered again with debris that only three kids could create. There were candy wrappers strewn on the coffee table. A pair of Nerf rifles lay abandoned on the carpet alongside a one-armed doll with glazed eyes—as if there’d been a murder here. The area behind the chutes at a rodeo would look neater. “Lizzie?” he called again.
Now he was getting worried. This wasn’t his business, and yet it was. If something was wrong, he couldn’t ignore it. What if there’d been an accident, and Lizzie had been electrocuted by a hair dryer falling into the bathtub? Slashed her finger while trying to fix dinner and was bleeding somewhere? Upstairs? The kids wouldn’t hear her cries for help.
Trying to shut out the still-growing clamor from the yard, Dallas took the steps two at a time. The first bedrooms on either side of the hall were clearly the boys’ rooms, one in blue with a mountain of stuffed animals on the bed, which was shaped like a race car. Seth’s, most likely. The other had a space theme with a large decal of a Starfighter blazing across the wall. Jordan’s room. Next on the right looked to be Stella’s—it boasted one purple wall, three pink, and shelves lined with dolls. The last room on the left had to be Lizzie’s with its door shut.
Dallas pushed it open. Dark, with the draperies closed, at first it seemed empty too. Then he heard a soft moan, a shape moved under the covers and his pulse shot up. “Lizzie.” Remembering how pale she’d been the night before, he crouched by the bed. “You sick?”
“Um,” she answered, then shifted the blankets enough to reveal one eye, dull and not quite aware. “I missed work. Didn’t get to the store.” She waved a limp hand toward the ruckus still coming from the yard. “Oh, God, what are they doing out there?”
“Torturing each other.”
“So. Normal,” she said but didn’t smile. “My stomach’s not good. I called Olivia’s sitter. Isn’t she with them?”
“No.”
“What time is it?”
“Five thirty.”
She groaned. “I should have known. Her boyfriend’s always the priority. She never told me she was leaving. I could have phoned my mother instead, but you know how that would turn out.”
He frowned. “Why didn’t you call me? You have my cell number.”
“When I came out of the bathroom for the third time—which I thought was the last—this morning, I saw your truck leave. I assumed you were on your way to Clara’s.”
He touched her forehead. “Fever?”
“I don’t think so.” She clamped a hand on his forearm. “Don’t fuss, it’s likely...some sort of flu.”
He disagreed. He wouldn’t let her light touch distract him, and he sure didn’t miss her evasive gaze. First, food poisoning, now this, along with the way she kept avoiding some subject she might have told him about. Dallas had experience. His parents were forever trying to reassure him they were fine, not to worry, and the more they protested, the more serious the problem might be.
“I’m sorry the children bothered you,” she murmured. “I really am a bad mother. I appreciate you coming over, but I’m getting up now, so you can go—”
Through the upstairs window, he heard the battle in the yard escalate. Seth cried out, Jordan yelled back, then Stella melted down again. Dallas could have throttled all three of them. And Lizzie still hadn’t moved from bed. Under normal circumstances, nothing would keep her from tending to her kids.
“Don’t worry about me,” he finally said, “and you’re not a bad mom.” He hooked a thumb toward the window. “But your three running around like banshees? You falling on your face—like you almost did last night? Doesn’t that tell you anything? You seem pretty sick to me.”
She sighed. “By tomorrow I’ll be on my feet again.” Even she couldn’t believe that.
“I think you should call Doc Baxter.” He pulled out his phone. “No, I’ll call him. But first—with your permission—I’m going downstairs to get control of the situation in the yard. That okay with you?”
She nodded before she laid a hand across her eyes. “I don’t need Doc.” Her face had turned green again. “Take the water pistols away...” She didn’t go on.
“I’ll handle them,” he said.
After that, he intended to handle Lizzie.
Better not give her any warning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“JORDAN, CLEAN THIS UP.” Hands on his hips, Dallas surveyed the mound of clothing that had spilled from the boy’s bedroom out into the hall and shook his head. Seth had tripped over the pile and was lying on the carpet, clutching his knee and wailing as if he were being murdered.
“Mama! I broke my leg!”
While Lizzie was at the doctor’s office this afternoon, Dallas was babysitting, which he’d been doing most of the past three days, juggling his work at Clara’s ranch and canceling his rehab sessions. Lizzie had protested that she didn’t need to see Doc Baxter, but at last she’d given in.
Gently, he probed Seth’s leg. “Your mom’s not home yet, buddy, but nothing’s broken.” Dallas should know. Once, after a rodeo outside Reno, he had in fact set one of his friends’ arms. No doctor or medic had been around by then, no hospital nearby either, but the break had been simple. Just pull on it, the guy begged him. The rough-and-tumble world of rodeo, as his mom had said—not a story he’d share with Lizzie. “Probably bruised, pardner, or at most a sprain. Can you get up? Let’s put some ice on that.”
Dallas couldn’t lie. Taking care of Lizzie’s kids was not his area of expertise. In the past few days, he’d confirmed to himself that he was indeed better off staying single, honing his fitness to get back to the circuit, working on his local rodeo plans. His, and Lizzie’s. Too bad he couldn’t keep his mind on that while he waited for her to come home from the clinic, fearing, as he always did with his mother, that the news wouldn’t be good.
As he started to help Seth to his feet, Stella emerged from her room to glare at Dallas. “What did you do to him!” A hard case if he ever saw one. She’d instantly decided Dallas was an intruder, not to be trusted, especially near her mother. Stella held out her hand. “Seth, come with me. You can stay in my room. We can play—”
“Not dolls.”
Dallas assumed she’d tried that ruse before.
“Legos,” she conceded, sending Dallas another death stare. To eliminate him from the scene, she would lower herself to fitting plastic bricks together with her baby brother.
Seth’s face brightened. “The new spaceship model Daddy bought me?” He scrambled up off the hall carpet, plunged through the pile of Jordan’s clothes and followed his sister with no limp to be seen.
Dallas poked his head into Jordan’s room. At least Lizzie’s oldest remained on his side, still entranced at having a rodeo star living next door. “Get moving, man. Don’t let your mother see that mess in the hall—plus it’s a hazard. When you’ve finished hanging up those clothes, you owe Seth an apology. He could have been badly hurt.”
“He wasn’t.” Jordan’s voice had an unexpected stubborn tone. A chink in the armor of his hero worship. “Not my fault he’s clumsy and stupid and fell over his own feet.”
“Jordan, don’t call your brother stupid.” Clumsy at six years old was a different matter. Hadn’t Seth seen the mound in the middle of the hallway? Or had he been running helter-skelter like he did most of the time, not looking where he was going? Cute, though. The kid melted Dallas’s heart—but not enough to make him want one of his own just yet. “Why did you throw your clothes out there anyway?”
“Most of ’em are too small. Mom can give them to baby Seth.”
“Don’t call him a baby, Jordan.”
He ignored that. “The rest are not cool. Besides, I’ll need new clothes for school and my closet was too full.”
“Makes sense to purge your room, then, but get a plastic bag for the things you don’t want.” He paused, remembering the time when he’d carried all his belongings in such a bag from one foster home to another. “Pretend you’re getting ready to rodeo. You know, when I’m on the road, everything I need is in my one gear bag. No extras. Just me, my truck, my rope and a dream of the next bull I’ll ride.”
Jordan’s eyes widened. “I wish I could run away, be in the rodeo with you.”
Not the right thing, then, for Dallas to have said. “Let’s start slow, okay? When you’re finished here, we’ll put on that rodeo tape. You can see what I normally do every day. So, cowboy up, Jordan. Now.”
With a grin, Jordan shot from his room down the hall to the stairs. “I’ll be back with the bag. You can show me how to pack.”
Dallas congratulated himself. He’d corralled Lizzie’s children like a bunch of calves he’d roped. Not that he was winning any popularity contest with Stella, and as the front door opened downstairs, he stopped patting himself on the back.
“Hi, sweetie,” he heard Lizzie say. “Did you guys behave for Dallas?”
Jordan said, “We were good, Mom.”
Dallas grinned. That was putting a spin on things, but oh, well. Anything less would worry Lizzie, especially when she wasn’t feeling well. He clambered down the stairs, pausing on the bottom step to simply look at her. Dark hair neatly in place today, better color in her face, but her green eyes avoided his. He was almost getting used to that touch of suppressed—was that guilt?—he kept seeing there. She held Jordan tight before letting him go with a kiss on top of his head, though he squirmed. “That’s my boy,” she said. “Where are Seth and Stella?”
“In her room,” Jordan said, not mentioning the accident in the hall.
Finally, Lizzie glanced up at Dallas. Even then, her gaze landed on his shoulder. “No trips to the emergency room?”
“Nope.”
“The water guns are still in the closet?”
“Yep.” Dallas watched Jordan head for the kitchen. “Jordan’s cleaning his room, getting some things ready maybe for charity.”
Lizzie stared at him. “You must be a miracle worker.”
He shrugged. “I managed. That’s what the Hulk would do. What’s the word on you?”
Her blank expression looked as evasive as the other. “Word? Oh. Doc Baxter, um, said I’m fine. No medicine or anything.”
“What about the flu?”
“Another day or two, he said.” She set her purse on the entry table. “I feel better already. Really,” she insisted when he cocked his head. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not dying. I am, however, eternally grateful for all the help you’ve given.”
“I like looking at you,” he said. And she was changing the subject. Again.
Jordan skimmed past them, carrying the plastic trash bag up the stairs. “I’ll be done in a minute. Get the tape ready!”
“Which gives us a little time. While I was kid sitting, I made coffee. Want some? We can talk in the kitchen.” Dallas added, “Then I promised Jordan we’d watch some bull riding.”
“That’s generous of you, but I hope you didn’t mention the kids’ rodeo. I haven’t told them yet. If I say something too soon, they’ll get overexcited.”
“It’ll be a lot of fun for them. Maybe Jordan will get to chase a calf?”
“Another reason to wait. I haven’t decided. I don’t want him hurt.”
“You saw how safe it really is. How much fun it can be.”
She smiled, then admitted, “I don’t want you hurt either.”
He tried to tease her. “Then I’ll stay out of the calf event.” He sobered. Her interest had pleased him, though. “I’m not looking for a fight about Jordan,” he said. “The kids’ rodeo is your choice, like anything else, but I am wondering why you want to avoid talking about what Doc said. Are you telling me the truth?”
She didn’t answer. She riffled through the mail on the hall table, her back to him, shutting him out. She had the right to do that too—they weren’t married or anything—and she didn’t know how he felt about her despite his current commitment phobia, but her rejection stung. Made him worry more.
Lizzie reminded him of his mother, always covering up the true state of her health. That ch
oice was hers too, but he wished she would talk, ease his concerns or simply admit the truth, whatever it might be. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen now.
But Dallas would bet every one of his bull ropes and belt buckles that she was lying.
* * *
“I SHOULDN’T HAVE trusted him. I guess Calvin made his decision.”
At the defeated tone of Becca’s voice, Elizabeth glanced up from the rug order she’d been processing in the store’s office. With luck, she’d finally be caught up before Olivia returned, but Becca’s statement made Elizabeth close the window on the computer. “He hasn’t come back?”
Biting her lip, Becca shook her head.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Elizabeth said, quelling the soft roll of nausea in her stomach. “Are you feeling better otherwise?”
She should ask herself the same question. Physically this morning she could at least function enough to work. Since her visit with the doctor, she was being more careful about what she ate, which included a few soda crackers before she got out of bed, but emotionally she felt awful. Are you telling me the truth? Dallas had asked. She hated keeping this secret, but finding the right time to tell him hadn’t happened yet. Plus, after he knew, their friendship might well go up in smoke. The help he’d provided with her children, the kisses they’d shared, the easy comfort of his presence would end. What if, once he knew, Dallas couldn’t get back to the circuit fast enough? He might even leave before his rodeo.
“I don’t know how I feel,” Becca finally said.
At least she’d had the inner fortitude to let Calvin know he was going to be a father. Because of Elizabeth, Dallas remained clueless, and for the past few days she’d been avoiding him. Of course, he had a right to know, but she could only hope Doc Baxter’s wife hadn’t overheard from the reception area during Elizabeth’s appointment. If she talked, Dallas might hear before Elizabeth told him.
