Overdue for Love - A Long Valley Romance: Country Western Small Town Romance Novella

by Erin Wright

  “Yeah, I’m your daddy,” he said, and the love that ran through him at those words took his breath away. It was so damn amazing to say those words to someone he didn’t even know just days ago.

  “How did you find us?” Tommy asked. “Did you search for Mom and me through Google?”

  “No, I didn’t know to look for you. I was just stopping at Betty’s to eat lunch and there was your momma. I was so surprised, you coulda knocked me over with a feather. And then when I was leaving, you came walking through the door. Do you remember – you almost ran me over.”

  “I did?” Tommy asked, eyes round with surprise.

  “Yeah, you came barreling through that door, running for your mom. Didn’t even notice me. But as soon as I saw you, I knew you were mine.”

  Tommy got real quiet, shoving and chewing, shoving and chewing french fries into his mouth as he thought. Once he swallowed it all down with a gulp of Slurpee, he asked, “Why didn’t you look for me before?” His voice was quiet, and the pain was thick.

  Dawson’s heart hurt.

  “I didn’t know. If I’d known…Tommy, I would’ve been here. Every step of the way, I would’ve been here. What…what has your mom told you?” At least if he knew Chloe’s story, he could try to keep his in line with hers. She might already want to kill him just for saying what he has, but Dawson couldn’t let Tommy keep thinking that he hadn’t wanted him. The very idea made his soul ache.

  “She told me that she was in love with my daddy – that’s you – and then you guys had to split apart because of my grandpa. She won't let me see him, even though she says that he has a giant horse farm down in Arizona. Do you know my grandpa? Does he have a lot of horses?”

  This, at least, was safer ground. He could discuss Hank Bartell without bringing up his personal relationship with Chloe, or a lack thereof. She sure as shit didn’t want Tommy knowing that he was the result of one night of passion and hatred, and nothing more.

  “I worked for your grandpa for a long time,” Dawson said quietly. He didn't want to talk up the man, but he also didn't want to badmouth him. “He does own a lot of horses – one of the top breeding programs in the country, actually. I never could figure out how your momma came from your grandpa. Your mom doesn't care one lick about horses.”

  “I know,” Tommy said sadly. The look on his face was nothing short of heartbreaking. Dawson remembered what it was like to want a horse so bad, his teeth ached.

  “What does your mom tell you about your grandpa?” Dawson asked, curious.

  “Just that he wasn't real happy with her about me, but that she loves me anyway and that’s all that matters. That my grandpa has a lot of horses. That he lives in the desert where it's really hot all the time. Do I have a grandma?”

  “No, sorry. She died giving birth to your momma,” Dawson said quietly.

  “Darn. I like to think that I had a grandma out there who wants to make me all the cookies I can eat.”

  “I think that'd be a lot of cookies,” Dawson said with a grin and a wink. It felt good to smile about something, and get back to safer ground.

  “Lots and lots of cookies!” Tommy said, grinning back. “I only love cotton candy more than I love cookies.” He looked, not so subtly, towards the cotton candy booth just two stalls down from their shady retreat. Dawson laughed. The sheer conniving of his son was a sure sign he was Dawson's. He spent most of his own childhood trying to convince his grandmother to give him “just one more cookie.”

  “Well, it isn't a rodeo unless you're eating cotton candy,” Dawson said, mock seriously. They gathered up their trash and threw it away on the way to the cotton candy booth. After picking out the biggest one he could find and Dawson paying for it, Tommy tore into the sugary cloud, grinning ecstatically as he did.

  Oh yeah, he was Dawson’s son all right.

  ***

  Tommy bounced on the seat next to Chloe as the announcer's voice filled the air. “Coming up next is Dawson Blackhorse, a calf roper riding his horse Bolt. They’ve been climbing up the ranks for the last couple of years. Let's see how he does against our hometown roper, Dave Smithers, here in the Sawyer Stampede.”

  With that, the gate on one side of the arena flew open, allowing the calf to run in, as Dawson came tearing out of the other side. It was just moments and the lasso was flying through the air, wrapping around the calf's feet.

  “Yeaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!” Tommy was on his feet, crowing with excitement as his dad threw himself off his horse and onto the ground, wrapping the rope around three of the calf's feet and jerking clear. It was all over in just seconds and Chloe realized with a huff that she could start breathing again. She shouldn't care if Dawson did well, truly, but it was hard not to whoop and holler along with her son.

  As the crowd died down, the announcer's voice came back. “A smokin' hot 14.87 seconds! That easily puts Dawson Blackhorse in first place. Let's see if he can keep that speed tomorrow night, when he enters the arena again.”

  Dawson and Bolt trotted out of the ring, the calf scampering out the other way, and the next calf and rider were let into the ring to the roar of the crowd.

  “Mom?” Tommy croaked. Chloe looked over to find her son looking a little…green?

  “Mom, I don't feel so good.”

  Oh God. She jumped to her feet and grabbed Tommy’s hand, heading for the exit from the bleachers. “Let’s go,” she urged him, tugging his arm a little harder when he slowed down for a moment.

  “Mom?” he said. “I really, really don't feel good.” She glanced over and saw that he’d turned a nice pea green color. Oh lordy. She scooped him up in her arms and ran faster. She just needed to get him to a patch of grass or a trash can or at least not in the stands of the arena—

  Bleeeccccchhhhhh…

  He wretched in her arms, all down her shirt, her shoulder, down her back, and into her hair.

  “Eewwww…” a little girl squealed who'd been walking by.

  Tell me about it.

  Chloe didn't stop to find out if the girl'd been in the hit zone when Tommy had vomited or not. Let her parents take care of her. She had own little boy to take care of.

  And a shower to take.

  Her own stomach started to rebel as the stench of the throw up hit her nostrils. She'd always been a sympathy puker, and really, having her clothes covered in it was not helping the situation.

  She made it out to the parking lot and gingerly slid Tommy into the front seat. “We're gonna get you home,” she said, stroking the hair away from his forehead. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  She hurried around to the driver's side, holding her breath and refusing to look down as she scurried. She was not going to throw up, she was not going to throw up…

  “How long have you not felt good, baby?” she asked, throwing the car in gear and peeling out of the parking lot. She rolled the windows down, trying to keep the stench from overwhelming her.

  “Just for a couple of minutes,” Tommy said miserably. “I didn't know I was gonna throw up. I'm sorry, Mommy.” He so rarely called her that; it made her heart twist with equal parts pain and love when she heard it. She punched the gas, pressing the pedal to the floorboards.

  “What did you eat today?” she asked. Maybe one of the booths was selling rotten food. She'd have to tell Dawson to keep an ear out for other cases of food poisoning.

  “A Slurpee and an ice cream cone and a fried Twinkie and a corn dog and a hamburger and fry bread and two sticks of cotton candy and kettle corn and a pickle. Oh, and french fries.”

  She almost swerved off the road and into the ditch. “You ate all of that today?” she screeched. She knew she should keep calm and not yell, but there was only so much a body could take.

  “Yeah, Dawson bought it for me. Why?”

  “Why?!” she echoed, exasperated. “Because that's enough to kill off a grown man! You do not need to eat that much sugar! Or, that much food!”

  “Oh.” He was quiet for a minute. “So if I eat too
much, I get sick?”

  They were bouncing erratically along the rutted dirt driveway and Chloe slowed down, just a smidge. She couldn't handle the smell much longer but having her stomach jiggled that much wasn't helping things, either.

  “Yeah. That's why I don't let you eat everything in sight.” She wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry. Had Dawson never taken care of a small child before?!

  “Oh,” he said again. He was quiet the rest of the way down the driveway. She wondered if and for how long this lesson would stick. Her child was the king of junk food, and she'd fought with him for eight long years over how much crap he should be able to shove in his mouth. When they finally got to the house – which only seemed like an eternity and a half – she made sure to leave the windows rolled all the way down when she parked the car. The last thing she wanted to do was trap that smell inside of it.

  After cleaning him up and giving him a dose of the bright pink nausea medicine, she tucked him into bed and then climbed into the shower herself. She firmly closed her eyes as the hot water washed over her, refusing to look at the food chunks as they swirled down the drain.

  I think I'm gonna make Dawson and Tommy clean the car tomorrow morning. Maybe then they'll learn something from this.

  And then she headed to bed at the ungodly early hour of 8:30. Being puked on in public did tend to wear a body out.

  Chapter 10

  She awoke with her nose twitching.

  Is that…bacon?

  Her eyes popped open and she looked toward the bedroom window. The light was barely beginning to steal through the lace curtains. It had to be stupidly early.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and with a big yawn, brought her old-fashioned alarm clock – complete with two little bells on top – close to her face so she could read the time.

  5:30 in the morning? Why was there bacon cooking in her house at 5:30 in the morning?

  Or, at all, really? She yawned again and shuffled off the bed and toward her slippers. Despite her (in her opinion) well-deserved anger towards Dawson over the Food Incident of 2017, and the fact that he apparently just stole into her house this morning without asking permission beforehand, she couldn't find it in herself to actually be upset with him.

  She should be but somehow, she wasn't.

  Any man who broke into her house to cook bacon and – nose twitching – coffee was a-okay in her book.

  She shuffled her way down the stairs, and to the kitchen. There was Dawson, a kitchen towel slung over his shoulder, whistling a tuneless song as he cooked. He looked over and his face lit up.

  “Good morning!” he said cheerfully. “Coffee's ready.” He jerked his head towards the coffee maker that was bubbling and spurting its way through a fresh pot. She wandered over, pouring herself a cup, and then wandered back to the kitchen doorway, leaning against it as she watched him work. The silence between them was easy and she found herself smiling.

  “So, where'd the bacon come from?” she finally asked, as he laid strips of golden brown out on a plate and added fresh strips to the pan.

  “The grocery store.” He flashed her a grin. “I haven't been here long enough to build a pig pen and raise my own pigs, at least not yet.”

  She rolled her eyes playfully, even as her heart caught on the words not yet. Did that mean in the future…?

  “I asked Tommy what his favorite breakfast was, and he told me bacon and Mickey Mouse pancakes, and then very sadly told me that you guys don't eat bacon very often. So I figured that it was safe to assume you didn't have any in the fridge. I stopped at the Shop ’N Go after the rodeo ended last night.” He opened the oven door and slipped in the plate with the cooked bacon.

  She looked at the temperature dial – it was set on the lowest heat level allowable. She glanced at him, startled, and he shrugged. “I couldn't afford a housekeeper, so I had to teach myself how to cook. Number one rule of food: Keep cold food cold, and hot food hot. Things taste better that way. Why don't you sit down at the dining room table?” He nodded to the open doorway that led out into the dining room.

  She shook her head. She didn't want to be that far away from him as he weaved his magic. It was too much fun watching him work.

  “I have a confession to make,” he said, staring at the frying pan as the bacon cooked. He wasn’t meeting her gaze, which made the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

  “Yeah?” she said lightly, trying to pretend as if he wasn’t scaring her.

  “I told Tommy I was his dad yesterday. At the rodeo. I didn’t know what you wanted me to tell him, but he was asking questions and…I didn’t want to start our relationship out by bald-faced lying to him. He needs to know that he can trust me to tell him the truth, no matter what. I already have a lot of ground to make up with him. You know?” He finally tore his gaze away from the popping bacon and stared her in the eye. “If you want to rip me a new one, I understand. It was a big decision for me to make on my own.”

  She thought back to her own cowardly avoidance of the topic when Tommy had asked her, and she knew that Dawson’s way was better. Tommy deserved to know the truth.

  “You were right to do it. I should’ve told him that first night you walked into the diner, but I’d kept hoping you’d just keep on walking and not come back.” She gave a low, humorless chuckle. “Anyway, Tommy should get to know you as his dad, not just as a random stranger off the street. To be honest, I think he was probably already sure of the answer, and just wanted someone to confirm his suspicions. He asked me the same question and I ducked it, ‘cause I’m a coward.”

  He smiled gently at her. “Never a coward. You’ve lived through things that would kill off a lesser woman.”

  She settled back against the door jam, smiling as she sipped at her coffee again. What a way to start a Saturday morning, even if it was still stupidly early. This was worth it.

  “Oh!” she gasped, suddenly remembering. “Tommy and food! You and I need to have a talk about that, too.”

  She stopped and thought for a moment, trying to think of the best way to say it. She really didn't know how to discuss the topic tactfully, so with a mental shrug of the shoulders, she just dove in. “You can't just feed Tommy everything he wants. He puked all over me last night.”

  Dawson froze, hand mid-air as he was whipping the pancake batter. “What?” he breathed, dark eyes wide.

  “Yeah. All that junk food you fed him – enough to get a grown man sick? Well, guess what it does to an eight-year-old’s stomach?” she asked drily. “After we watched you ride, he started to get sick. He was so excited about watching you ride, he began bouncing up and down on the bench and I think that was just about the last straw for his poor intestines.”

  The corners of Dawson's mouth quirked up and she could tell he was fighting back laughter. She narrowed her eyes at him and glared. “Sooooo…” she said slowly, “next time you want to be a dad to Tommy, you need to do things like not say yes to every request he makes.”

  He sobered up. “Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. We were just talking about your mom and dad and he was making sad faces and then…I was saying yes to everything. I shouldn't have. It was…easier than saying no.”

  “Well, as punishment for you both, you two get to clean every last bit of puke out of my car,” Chloe said sternly. “Maybe that'll inspire him to ask less often and for you to say no more often.”

  Dawson grimaced but nodded as he poured the pancake batter into the frying pan, sizzling and popping as it hit the hot surface. “Fair enough,” he said. “Oh, I don't know what your plans are for today, but I wanted to take you two to the rodeo and fair. While there, I could feed our amazing son,” Chloe's heart clenched at the word our, “seven bags of cotton candy and then put him on the Tilt-O-Whirl. I mean, he should learn to toughen up, and not just upchuck at the slightest provocation. He really needs to stop being such a pansy.”

  Chloe, who'd started out thinking he was being serious, was laughing by time he
was done. She snagged the towel from his shoulder and began beating him over the head and shoulders with it.

  “You,” whack, “sir,” whack, “are no,” whack, “help!” He grabbed the end of the towel, and wrapping it around his fist, began drawing her closer, his eyes dropping to her lips as he reeled her in.

  “I have lots of ideas,” he breathed quietly, staring down at her, eyes alight. “Maybe some of the other ones would be helpful.”

  The grin faded from her face as she stared up at him, her breath caught in her throat. She wanted so badly to go up on her tiptoes and press her lips against his and…

  She backed away, dropping her hand from the kitchen towel. “I think I'll have to pass,” she said lightly, forcing levity into her voice, trying to keep it from shaking as she did. Casual. You're so casual. “I can go with you guys to the fair for a little while, but I need to go grocery shopping today, as you already noticed. That’s going to require a trip to Boise. I don’t make enough money to shop regularly at the Shop ’N Go – they’re just stupidly expensive, something else I’m sure you noticed. Usually, I drag Tommy along with me to Boise but I’m sure he’d much rather stay with you at the rodeo instead. Oh, and I also have go into work in a little bit and cover the morning rush. With the Sawyer Stampede in town, Betty’s is going to be filled to the brim.”

  Before Dawson could answer, Tommy shuffled into the kitchen, his midnight hair sticking up wildly in every direction. “Hey Mom, hey Dawson,” he said around a yawn and then collapsed at the kitchen table, putting his head down on his arms as he did so. “Smells yummy, Dawson,” he mumbled, not even bothering to open his eyes.

  “How you feeling this morning?” Dawson asked, flipping a pancake over, then pulling a jug of orange juice out of the fridge.