The Maverick Cowboy

by Kate Pearce

  “Ruth’s in with Nate and Maria in the parlor. They should be done in a minute.” Blue came in quietly without his boots and Jenna jumped. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  She needed something to do that didn’t involve grabbing handfuls of Blue Morgan’s T-shirt and ripping it off him. It was quite shocking that even when he was super worried and surly, she still couldn’t stop lusting after him.

  It was his fault for getting up close and kissing her. But she could hardly have stopped him, seeing as she was trying to cheer him up.

  Yeah, right.

  “You okay?” Blue slid a mug of coffee in front of her.

  “I’m good. What did Nate want?”

  “He’s been following up with the bus company that dropped Maria off and dealing with the local CPS rep.”

  “They aren’t going to put Maria in a temporary foster home, are they?” Jenna slammed her mug down so fast coffee went all over the table.

  Without a word, Blue fetched a cloth and wiped up the flood of coffee. He refilled Jenna’s mug and rinsed out the washcloth before sitting back down.

  “You weren’t adopted as a baby, I take it.”

  “No.” She concentrated on sipping her coffee and avoiding his gaze. “I was about Maria’s age when I was formally adopted.”

  “Not all foster homes are bad places,” Blue said cautiously.

  “That’s true. The vast majority of them are excellent. My sister—” She swallowed down the rest of that sentence with some coffee. But of course he wouldn’t let her get away with that.

  “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “I have two.”

  “The one who had a better experience in foster care than you did.” He made it a statement rather than a question.

  “That’s Tessa. She was only in one place, so she transitioned into our permanent home really well.”

  “How many homes were you in?” Blue didn’t look up as he traced the swirling pattern on the pine table with his spoon.

  “A few.” Jenna sighed. “My birth mom would occasionally get her act together and convince the authorities to let her have her children back.” She attempted a smile. “It never lasted—especially if there was a man involved. So out we’d all go again.”

  “Until you were properly adopted, right?”

  “Yeah. I was lucky. The McDonalds are such good people.”

  Blue nodded. “You certainly seemed to have turned out okay.”

  She managed to look up at him. “I’m the slacker in my family. Tessa’s a surgeon and Lily went to MIT.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Yeah.” She finished her coffee, her smile dying.

  “I bet neither of them has ever held down a calf and castrated him, right?”

  “I can’t quite see either of them doing that, no.”

  He shrugged his powerful shoulders. “Then they aren’t very useful around here, are they?”

  She studied him over the rim of her coffee mug. “Are you trying to make me feel better now?”

  “I’m just stating a fact.” He held her gaze. “I’m going to do my damndest to make sure Maria gets to stay here and not go into a foster home, okay?”

  “That would be good.”

  The kitchen door opened and Maria came through with Ruth. She looked as if she had been crying, and Blue shot to his feet.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Ruth patted Maria’s shoulder. “She’s fine. A big glass of milk and a cookie will settle her down nicely while you go talk to Nate, Blue.”

  Blue went out and Jenna turned to the child, who had taken the seat beside her.

  “Hi, Maria, I’m Jenna. I sort of met you last night.”

  “Hi.” Maria’s voice was barely audible. Her hands were clasped tightly together on the table and her shoulders were hunched almost up to her ears.

  Jenna wanted to wrap an arm around the girl’s shoulders and tell her that everything would be okay, but she also knew that sometimes it wasn’t. Whatever had led up to Maria being kicked out of her home certainly hadn’t happened overnight and must have left longstanding scars.

  “It’s kind of scary leaving all your stuff behind and moving to a different place super fast, isn’t it?” Jenna glanced casually over at Maria. “I had to do it a couple of times when I was a kid. Is there anything you forgot to bring with you? Anything you need?”

  Maria swallowed hard. “I got my ponies, my journal, and my plushies, so I’m good.”

  “Cool.” Jenna smiled at her. “I used to keep a bag packed with all my special stuff just in case, you know?”

  Maria nodded. “I started doing that a while ago because sometimes Dad didn’t come home, and then I’d get worried, and I’d go sleep at my neighbor’s house.” She hesitated. “Did your family kick you out as well?”

  “Yeah—well, my mom had some problems, and sometimes she couldn’t cope with us being at home, so we went somewhere else for a while.”

  “So you went back?”

  The hope in Maria’s eyes made Jenna’s stomach hurt.

  “Not for long. She really couldn’t handle dealing with us.”

  “Just like my dad.”

  Jenna patted her hand. “You never know. Maybe he’ll work it out. Just remember you’re in a good place here with people who want to take care of you, and if there’s anything you need or want to talk about? You can always ask me.”

  Ruth placed a glass of milk in front of Maria and a plate of cherry and chocolate cookies.

  “Now, don’t you worry, my darling girl. Leave Nate and Blue to sort everything out.”

  “He won’t want me back.” Maria stared down at the table.

  “Who won’t?”

  “My dad who says he’s not my dad. He hates me.”

  Ruth sat opposite Maria, her gaze full of sympathy. “Nate is probably going to have to talk to him, Maria. He can’t just abandon you.”

  “Yes, he can, if he’s not my dad.” Maria took a sip of milk. “He told me.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Ruth said firmly. “Is it, Jenna?”

  “Um.” She really wasn’t the best person to ask about fatherly behavior, seeing as her biological father was a complete failure as a human being. “I don’t suppose it is.”

  “He said I wasn’t his child and that meant he had no responsibility for me.” Maria’s voice cracked.

  “Then he’s an idiot,” Jenna said. “Don’t you worry, Nate and Blue will set him straight.” She looked up to see Nate waving at her in the doorway. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  * * *

  Blue waited outside as Nate went to fetch Jenna. He wished he had his gun and something to kill. Even if Maria wasn’t his kid, he still wanted to get hold of Daniel Lester and wring his neck. What kind of man did that to a child? Maria had believed that ass was her father for almost eleven years and had all that security and love ripped away in one day. He knew how that felt. What kind of selfish idiot put a ten-year-old on a bus to travel hundreds of miles by themselves?

  Nate came and stood beside him. “I’ll talk to the Sacramento Police Department. They might be able to find Daniel Lester’s address.”

  “Cool, and I’ll chase up the Lester I knew in the military.”

  “Is there a list you can consult or something?” Jenna had come out with Nate and stood listening quietly to them both.

  “Not really an official one, but we had enough friends in common that I’ll be sure to pick up his trail.”

  “Good to know.” Nate put on his hat. “I’ll keep in touch.” He nodded at Blue and smiled at Jenna before giving her a peck on the cheek. “Bye, hon.”

  Blue wanted to roll his eyes, but just managed to restrain himself until Nate was in his vehicle.

  “His kissing still needs work. He missed your mouth again.”

  “He was being polite in front of you.”

  “Yeah, right. I had to handle the screen door and stop you getting b
y me, and I still managed to find the right spot.” He sighed as Nate pulled away with an airy wave. “I suppose I’d better get on with finding Jim Lester.”

  “And I’d better check in with Ruth about whether there are any jobs for me to do on the ranch.”

  * * *

  Blue punched the number he’d jotted down in the back of his notebook into his cell and took a deep breath. He’d spent most of the afternoon chasing old Marine buddies on social media and had finally come up with a current cell phone number for the Lesters.

  “Hello?”

  It was a woman’s voice.

  “Hi, you might not remember me, Rosa, but it’s Gunnery Sergeant Blue Morgan here, I—”

  “I remember you. How are you doing? Did you want to speak to Jim?”

  “Yeah, if I could. That would be great.”

  “He’s at work and he can’t take calls there. Do you want me to ask him to call you when he gets home?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Just let me get a pen and paper.”

  He waited as she bustled around banging drawers and heard a small yappy dog barking in the distance.

  “Okay. Fire away.”

  He gave her his number and she repeated it back to him. “And what are you doing these days, Blue? Still barhopping and lady killing?”

  Blue winced. “Nah, I’ve settled down. I’m too old for all that now. Once I get out of the military, I’m going to help run a cattle ranch.”

  “How cool is that?” She laughed. “Do you remember that night you took me and my sister-in-law out when she was visiting and Jim was still overseas? It was really kind of you. We had such a blast.”

  “That was Angelina, right?” Blue took a chance even as his stomach knotted up. “She was your sister-in-law? I thought she was your sister.”

  “She might as well have been. We practically grew up together.” Her voice sobered. “She married Jim’s brother.”

  “After I met her?”

  “Well, when you met her they were going through a bad patch, and she’d kind of left him and wasn’t acting like a married woman—if you know what I mean.”

  Yeah, he knew. Blue briefly closed his eyes. Oh crap.

  “She did go back to him, though, and they were together until quite recently.” The sadness was back in Rosa’s voice. “She had cancer—the kind they can’t cure, and she recently passed away. They have a daughter called Maria. I do hope she’s okay. I’ll have to call and see how she and Dan are doing.”

  Blue stared at the old green drapes in his bedroom and took a deep breath.

  “I know where Maria is. That’s why I called today.”

  There was silence filled only with yappy barks and then Rosa spoke again. “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Apparently Dan decided that Maria wasn’t his child and put her on a bus to me.”

  “Madre de Dios,” Rosa whispered. “I thought no one was ever supposed to know.”

  Chapter Nine

  After something of a search, Jenna finally found Blue out in the barn. She’d come back out to the ranch to attend to one of the piglets that had been badly bitten by a rat and walked into a Morgan family conference about where the hell had Blue gone? She’d offered to help look for him while Ruth got dinner and had started in the most obvious place. He was sitting in Messi’s stall with his back against the wall. He didn’t look up when she sat next to him and adopted the same pose.

  Messi was finishing up his hay, and his long tail swung gently back and forth, providing some very basic air-conditioning as wisps of hay floated down to the floor to join the straw bedding. The heat coming off the horse suggested Blue had just returned from a long ride.

  “Hey.” Jenna kept her tone casual. “You know they are all worried about you up at the house, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what’s up?”

  Blue sighed. “Just that I’m a complete bastard.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Jenna put a comforting hand on his denim-clad knee. “What happened?”

  “I tracked down Jim Lester and spoke to his wife, Rosa.”

  “The military family you knew? What did she tell you?”

  He stayed quiet for so long that she almost expired from holding her breath.

  “I did meet Angelina Lester. I didn’t know that was her name at the time. Back then she called herself Angel. I also didn’t know she was married.”

  “Ah.”

  “I took Rosa and Angelina out as a favor to Jim when he was overseas. It was Rosa’s birthday, and he didn’t want her celebrating alone.”

  “You slept with Angelina?”

  “Yeah.” He groaned. “I was eighteen, she was gorgeous, and I was an idiot.”

  Jenna let that sink in. For some reason the thought of him with any other woman made her cross as crabs. But this wasn’t about her. This was about Maria and the future.

  “Why didn’t Angelina tell you that she was pregnant?”

  “Well, apparently having sex with a complete stranger was enough to send her running back home to make things right with her husband.”

  “Wow, you must’ve really sucked.”

  He turned to look at her. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She hesitated. “But seriously, if she went back that quick and reconciled with him, she might not have realized the baby wasn’t his.”

  “That’s true.”

  “It also means that Maria might not actually be your child.”

  “But there is the faintest possibility that she could be.”

  “You only slept with her the once?”

  “Yeah. I even used protection, I always do, but something went wrong, and I was too damned drunk to do much more than apologize and be glad when she said she was on the pill.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, that’s probably more than you wanted to know.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “I dunno. Why do you think I’m sitting out here in the dark?”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “Hell, I know.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. I think I’m over my pity party now. I need to get that DNA test done and talk to Dan Lester.”

  “Agreed.” Jenna put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it’s not, Jenna. Not for that little girl. You know that just as well as I do.”

  She rose to her knees, wrapped her hand around his neck, and got right in his face. “You’ll do your best. I know that.”

  “Thanks,” he murmured, his mouth so close to hers that she felt the vibration of the words rather than actually heard them. “Jenna—”

  She closed the gap between them, and his mouth met hers, bringing them both into the kiss and enveloping them within it. He angled his head, slanting his lips over hers, and she leaned in even closer, allowing his arm to slide around her waist and practically drag her into his lap.

  The kiss went on and on and she just let herself fall into it, the softness of her breasts now crushed against his chest, his big hand cupping her butt, pressing her closer and closer to the hard ridge of his jeans-covered cock. His fingers closed around her head and she moaned into his mouth, moving with him, wanting the intense waves of pleasure never to stop.

  “Jenna—I’m so damn sorry about all this.” He eased back a fraction so that he could see her face.

  She gathered her wits and tried to smile. “It’s okay, I know this isn’t what you want and that this is possibly the worst time in your personal universe to have a woman sitting in your lap making you kiss her.”

  He frowned. “You didn’t make me kiss you.”

  “I definitely made the first move.” She put her hand on his chest. “If you just let go of me, I’ll get off you.”

  “And what if I don’t want to let go?”

  She gave him her best glare. “Your current schedule doesn’t permit personal relationships. You know that.”

  “We’re just kissing.”

  “And kis
sing leads to other things and . . .” She tried to ease away, but he held firm. “We can’t do those things here—not that we would even want to do those things anywhere else, I mean.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve obviously never had sex in a barn before. We could do it right now. All you’d have to do was take off one boot and one leg of your jeans and I’d unzip and—”

  She slapped her hand over his mouth. Why did he have to be so darned practical about everything? “We are not having sex, we are just kissing.”

  This time when she pushed on his chest, he let her go. She struggled to her feet, leaning against the wall for support as the rest of her felt like molasses. She made the mistake of looking down just as he curved a hand under the obvious length of his erection and ran his thumb along it.

  “Unfair . . .” She breathed.

  He looked up at her, his hand remaining in place. “Yeah. Bad timing in so many ways. I mean, why the hell would anyone want to get involved with me? I’m a bona fide loser.”

  “You are a good person.”

  He slowly rose to his feet and put his hand on the wall beside her head. “I am trying to be a better person, which is why I’m not going to push this issue with you right now.”

  “What issue?”

  “The us one.”

  “There is no ‘us.’ It’s not on your timetable, remember? And I’m going out with Nate.”

  “Screw Nate.” He kissed her until she stopped spluttering and just kissed him back. “Actually, rewind that. Don’t screw Nate.”

  “Have you quite finished?” Jenna demanded.

  “Apparently.”

  “Then shall we go back to the house?”

  “If that’s what you really want to do.”

  She wanted to strip him naked and lick him all over and then she wanted . . .

  “Yes.”

  He straightened and then bent to pick up his hat. “Then after you, princess.”

  * * *

  Jenna walked ahead of him up to the ranch house, which was now lit up like a Christmas tree. Had they really been worried about him? Blue wanted to kick himself for scaring Ruth. She’d had enough of waiting for her family to come home to last her a lifetime. Shame washed over him as he thought about what he had to tell them all. He’d always been so quick to judge everyone else, and now he was the one at fault, and it was entirely his own doing.