The Cowboy's Valentine

by Donna Alward

  “Have you seen Quinn yet?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Of course I did. He was the welcoming committee.” She smiled saucily.

  “Oh, great. You weren’t too hard on him, were you?”

  She gave him a swat. “So much for family loyalty. What about how grouchy he might have been to me?”

  Duke’s frown deepened. “Was he?”

  “Of course not.” No matter her issues with Quinn, she wouldn’t put Duke in the middle of it. He relied on Quinn too much. She wasn’t here to stir up trouble.

  “Hey. If I had one reservation about you staying at the house, it was that you’d be sharing space with Quinn. I know you don’t get along. I don’t know why, but you don’t. I’m hoping you can coexist peacefully.”

  “We’ve laid out some ground rules.” She sat back down at the table.

  “Well, try not to kill each other. This place doesn’t run without him.” Duke raised his cup, drained what was left of his coffee, and stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’d better get back.”

  “Anytime. This is your place, after all.”

  “No, it’s yours. For as long as you want it, Lace.” He put his hand over hers on top of the table. “I mean that. I wasn’t around a lot, definitely not when you were going through some rough times. I’d like to be there for you now.”

  The backs of her eyes stung and she nodded through blurred vision. “That means a lot, Duke.”

  “Right. Better be off.” He went down the hall and put on his gear again. “Oh, Lace?”

  She looked up.

  “Maybe next time you can have some cookies to go with that coffee? Carrie’s on a ‘no sweets’ kick with the pregnancy. And somehow her kale chips just aren’t cutting it for me.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll see what I can do,” she replied. “Now go, so I can find a job, will you?”

  With a wink he disappeared.

  Lacey turned her attention back to the document on the screen but didn’t really focus on it. Instead she was thinking about what Duke had just said, and thinking about how it felt to be here. It felt good. It felt...right. Somehow being with family, having that support, was exactly what she needed.

  She just had to be careful not to get too used to it, or use it as a crutch. This time she was making her own decisions and standing entirely on her own two feet. At least if she relied on herself, she wasn’t being set up for disappointment.

  * * *

  JACK, ONE OF the regular hands, was out with the flu so Quinn spent the rest of his morning mucking out stalls in the horse barn. It was a job he actually enjoyed. The slight physical exertion kept him warm and he usually talked to the horses as he worked. Even the scrape of the shovel on the barn floor had a comforting sound to it, and he worked away with the radio playing in the background, just him and his thoughts.

  He had a lot of thoughts, as it happened. Most days it was about what needed to be done at the ranch, or worries about being a good single dad to Amber as she got older. He already knew far more about Disney princesses and ballet slippers and hair ribbons than most dads. And it wasn’t that he minded. It was just...he knew Marie would have done a much better job. A little girl needed a mom. And Quinn wasn’t sure how to solve that, because he wasn’t really interested in getting married again.

  Not when it had hurt so much the first time.

  Thankfully he had Carrie and Kailey. Carrie was around even more now that she and Duke were married, and Amber loved spending time at Crooked Valley. Kailey was Carrie’s best friend and lived at a neighboring ranch. Between the two of them, they provided Amber with some great girlie time. On Sundays, too, they visited with Quinn’s mom, who lived in a little one-bedroom apartment in Great Falls. She’d moved there after his dad had died and she had a vital, happy life in the assisted-living complex, and help with the arthritis that sometimes made her day-to-day living a challenge.

  Visits and special time were great. The girls were great. But they weren’t her mother, and Quinn couldn’t help but feel like he’d somehow let Amber down even though Marie’s death had been a freak accident. A heart defect that had gone undetected until it was too late. One morning she’d been laughing with him over breakfast. Two hours later she’d just been...gone.

  At noon he ventured back to the house and lifted his hand to knock at the door, then pulled it back again. Lacey had said to come and go as he pleased, and he should. This was, after all, a working ranch. He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be running around the house in her Skivvies at twelve o’clock in the afternoon.

  The thought gave him pause, because he pictured her that way and his body tensed in a familiar way. Oh, no. That would be too inconvenient. He had no business thinking about Lacey Duggan in her underwear and even less business liking it.

  He reached for the doorknob and resolutely turned it. He stepped into the foyer and heard a radio playing, heard a soft female voice singing along. He was transported back two years earlier, when he’d still had the perfect life, and the joy he felt coming home to a scene much like this one. There was the sound of something opening and closing, and the rattle of bake ware. The aroma of fresh-baked cookies reached him and his stomach growled in response.

  After hanging up his coat, he wandered to the kitchen to get his lunch out of the fridge. He’d just go eat in the office, out of Lacey’s way. It was a lonely-sounding proposition but he realized that if he stayed in her little sphere of existence, they’d probably end up arguing. They always did.

  “Don’t mind me. I’m just here to get my lunch.”

  He forgot that she had music on. That she probably hadn’t heard him come inside. But he remembered now as she squeaked and jumped with alarm, jerking the spatula which held a perfectly round, warm, chocolate chip cookie. The cookie went flying and landed with a soft splat in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  “Cripes, Quinn!” Her brows pulled together in annoyance. “Do you have to creep up on a person like that?”

  She looked so indignant he had the strangest urge to laugh. “I wasn’t trying to be quiet. I came in like I always do. I guess you didn’t hear me because of the music.”

  “Whatever.” She bent to pick up the cookie, which broke into pieces as she lifted it off the floor. She put the remnants on the counter and then went for a piece of paper towel to wipe the little dots of melted chocolate from the tile.

  Quinn went to the fridge and took out his lunch bag. “Well, if it’s any consolation, they smell great.”

  He turned around and headed back towards the hall.

  “Where are you going?”

  He paused and looked over his shoulder. “I was going to eat in the office.”

  “Is that where you normally eat?”

  He didn’t know how to answer. He usually grabbed his lunch, made himself a coffee, used the microwave if he had leftovers to heat. Today he had leftover spaghetti, which he’d planned to eat cold.

  “I assume your lack of a fast reply means no. You normally use the kitchen, don’t you?”

  He sighed. “Sometimes.”

  “Truly, Quinn, I don’t want you to alter your routine for me. Pretend I’m not here.”

  It was pretty hard to pretend because she was there, with her burnished curls caught up in a ponytail, her blue eyes snapping at him. He noticed, not for the first time, that she had the faintest dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Duke was thirty, so that had to make her, what, twenty-eight or so?

  Twenty-eight, with a career job behind her, married, divorced. Quinn was thirty-three, and he knew exactly how life could age a person so that numbers were insignificant. He tried to remember that Lacey had faced her share of troubles. Duke had made it plain that the family wasn’t too impressed that her ex had walked out on her.

  He went back and put his lun
ch bag on the island, unzipped it and took out the plastic container holding his lunch. “Do you mind if I use the microwave?”

  She rolled her eyes. “What did I just say?”

  Saucy. At least she was consistent.

  He popped the container in the microwave and started it up, then stood awkwardly waiting for it to beep. Meanwhile, Lacey finished removing the cookies from the pan and began dropping batter by the spoonful on the parchment.

  His stomach growled again.

  When his meal was hot, he took it to the kitchen table—no laptop in sight now—and got out his knife and fork. The pasta didn’t look as appetizing as it might have. He was an adequate cook only, but he was getting better. Trying new things now and again. The trouble was that by the time he got Amber from day care, he had to cook stuff that was relatively fast if they hoped to eat before her bath time.

  He was nearly through when Lacey put a small plate beside him and a glass of milk.

  “Uh, thanks,” he said, looking up. She was smiling down at him, and for the first time there was no attitude in her expression.

  “I’d be pretty heartless if I didn’t offer you fresh cookies,” she said. “Besides, I don’t dare eat them all myself. I’m counting on you and Duke to eat the lion’s share.”

  She went back to the sink and ran soapy water to wash the dishes.

  Quinn bit into a cookie and sighed in appreciation. God, the woman knew how to cook. He’d realized that at Thanksgiving and then again at Christmas when she’d bustled in with all her bossiness. He and Amber had both enjoyed the home-cooked meals they’d shared here at the ranch. It had actually stung his pride a little when Amber asked if they could go back to “Uncle Duke’s” because Lacey was there and doing a lot of the family cooking along with their mother, Helen.

  “They turn out okay?” Lacey called from the sink, her hands immersed in the water. “I didn’t have my recipe with me and went from memory.”

  He bit back a sarcastic comment. Why did she push his buttons so? Instead he reminded himself that she’d gone out of her way to be nice. To be accommodating. “They’re delicious,” he replied honestly. “Maybe the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had.”

  She dried her hands on a dish towel, then grabbed a cookie and her coffee cup and joined him at the table. “Can I tell you a secret, Quinn?”

  They were sharing confidences now?

  “Um, sure. I guess.”

  She bit into the cookie, chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “I bake when I’m stressed. I think it’s a combination of things, from focusing on something other than what’s going on, to the process of making something and maybe even the aromas. They’re comforting smells, you know?”

  He did know. He missed them around his place, and the absence of them sometimes made his chest ache.

  “You’re stressed?”

  She broke off another piece of cookie. “Of course I am. Know what they said when I packed up my desk at the office? ‘Oh, no, who’s going to bring us treats all the time?’ I mean, it’s been better up until a few months ago, but when Carter first left...”

  Right. Carter. That was the bastard’s name.

  “When Carter left it was weird, being all alone. We’d planned to be together forever, you know?”

  His last bite of cookie swelled in his throat as a heavy silence fell over the table.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, and to his surprise she put her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry. That was so thoughtless of me. Of course you know.”

  He forced the cookie down and looked up at her. Her eyes were soft with sympathy and understanding and her hand was still on his wrist. Something passed between them, something that, for a flash, felt like shared grief. It was gone in the blink of an eye, but it had been there. He got the feeling that she understood more than he realized. Still, could divorce be as bad as a spouse dying? As bad as a child without a mother?

  Lacey pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It’s been so quiet here that I’ve talked your ear off. I should let you get back to work.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes. Thanks for the cookies.”

  “Anytime. They’ll be in Grandma Duggan’s cookie jar if you find yourself snackish.” She gestured towards a stone crock that she must have unearthed from somewhere, now sitting on the counter next to the toaster.

  “Will do.”

  Quinn put the lid on his dish and shoved everything back in his lunch bag, then put it in the fridge, empty, where he’d collect it at the end of the day.

  Back in the office he pulled up a spreadsheet and tried to wrap his mind around the numbers in the columns, but nothing was fitting together right. His focus was shot. He kept getting stuck on the look on Lacey’s face when she admitted she using baking as a coping mechanism. She’d looked lonely. Vulnerable. Feelings he could relate to so easily that when she’d put her fingers on his sleeve, he’d been tempted to turn his hand over and link his fingers with hers.

  Ludicrous. Crazy. Duke Duggan’s sister, for Pete’s sake. His boss’s pain-in-the-butt sister who hated anything to do with ranching.

  With a frown he tweaked the column again, fixing the formula at the end. It wouldn’t do to start thinking of Lacey Duggan in a friendly way. Certainly not in a kindred spirits kind of way.

  A few hours later he heard her go out the door, heard her start her car and drive away. He let out a breath. Working here while Lacey was living at the house was going to be tougher than he thought—and not for the reasons he expected.

  She wasn’t back yet when he got his lunch bag from the fridge and left to pick up Amber. But when he got home, and as supper was cooking, he opened the bag to take out his dirty dishes. To his surprise, the container that had held his lunch was perfectly clean, and a little bag was beside it, full of cookies. A sticky note was stuck to the front. “For you and Amber,” it said.

  Quinn swallowed. Lacey had to stop being so nice, trying so hard. She was going to make it difficult for him to keep disliking her if she kept it up.

  Chapter Three

  Lacey had only been at Crooked Valley three days when she got her first phone call, asking her for an interview. A company in Great Falls was looking for someone to do their payroll. When Quinn came in for lunch on the day of the interview, she was running a lint brush over the dark material of a straight skirt. For some reason little bits of fluff kept sticking to the fabric, and she wanted to look perfect.

  Her head told her it was just an interview at a manufacturing company, not a high-powered lawyer’s office or anything. Neat and tidy business wear would have sufficed, but she was determined to put her absolute best foot forward. She’d brought out the big guns: black pencil skirt, cream silk blouse, patent heels.

  She was turning into the kitchen from the downstairs bath at the same time as Quinn entered from the hall. Both of them stopped short, but Quinn just stared at her. “Oh. Hi.” He sort of recovered from the surprise but his expression plumped up her confidence just a little. It was definitely approval that glowed in his eyes for the few seconds before he shuttered it away.

  “I have an interview this afternoon,” she said, grabbing some hand lotion from the windowsill above the sink. She rubbed it into her hands as Quinn opened the fridge. “In Great Falls.”

  “That’s good news,” he answered, but now she noticed he was avoiding looking at her.

  She frowned. Maybe she’d misread his expression before. “Do I look all right, Quinn? Should I maybe wear a different top or something? Are pearls a little too much?” She touched the strand at her collarbone. They were her grandmother Eileen’s pearls. As the only granddaughter, they’d automatically gone to her. She rarely wore them, but it seemed appropriate somehow now that Lacey was living in the farmhouse. Like a good luck charm.

  “You look fine
,” he answered.

  Her frown deepened. He hadn’t looked up when he said it, just stuck his lunch in the microwave and set the timer.

  “I was hoping for something more than fine. More like, ‘Wow, let’s hire this one on the spot.’”

  He turned and looked at her then, his face set in an impersonal mask. “You look great, Lacey. Very professional.” He paused. “Very pretty.”

  It might have meant more if it didn’t seem as if it pained him to say it.

  “Thanks,” Lacey replied, and then felt a bit silly. She hadn’t really been fishing for a compliment, but it felt that way now.

  She wanted a splash of color, so she transferred her wallet and necessary items from her black purse to a turquoise handbag. “I made a coffee cake this morning,” she said, doing a check for her car keys. “It’s under the domed lid. Help yourself.”

  The microwave dinged and Quinn took out his lunch. “You trying to fatten me up with all this baking?”

  “Not much chance of that.” The words came out before she could think. She’d noticed Quinn’s build. A little on the slim side, and she wondered if it was because he found it hard to work and be a full-time dad and do all the household things that needed to be done. “Like I said, I enjoy doing it. And I don’t really have anyone to cook for. Duke’s started coming in for coffee break each morning, and sometimes Carrie comes with him, but she’s really watching her diet with the baby and all.” Once again, the little pang of envy touched her heart but she pushed it away.

  She’d never have a big family to cook for. She might as well accept it.

  She took a minute and looked at Quinn. Really looked at him, and wondered what it must be like to lose a spouse and try to raise a small child on your own. Certainly he was doing a good job, but at what cost? She noticed he didn’t smile all that often, and his eyes had lines at the corners. He wasn’t that old, either. Maybe midthirties at the most. It seemed more like life had aged him.