The Maverick Cowboy

by Kate Pearce

  Jenna held open the outside door for him and he braced himself as he kicked off his boots and went into the kitchen. January and Chase sat together on one side of the table holding hands; Maria was between Ruth and Billy, who was talking quietly to her.

  “Hey.” Blue found a smile somewhere. “Sorry I was out in the barn for so long. One of the horses was limping.”

  “Which one?” Chase asked before January elbowed him hard in the side.

  Blue held out a chair for Jenna. “Here you go.” She’d remained by the door as she usually did, like she wasn’t sure if she was wanted. He’d noticed that before. Now it kind of made more sense. “You can’t leave. It’s dinnertime. I’m sure Ruth has enough to feed you.”

  “I do.” Ruth pointed at the table with her big spoon. “Sit down. I made mac and cheese for Maria, so you can share that while the rest of us dig into chicken and dumplings.”

  Blue waited until Jenna sat down before taking the seat beside her and opposite his father. “How’s it going, Billy?”

  “Good, son. I’ve been showing Maria around the ranch.” Billy smiled down into Maria’s apprehensive face. “I’m thinking you need to take her out on horseback to see the place more clearly.”

  “I can’t ride,” Maria said so quietly Blue almost couldn’t hear her.

  “Then we’ll teach you.” Billy patted her shoulder. “I taught Blue and his brothers when they were babies.”

  “Babies can’t ride.”

  Billy chuckled. “They can if their daddy sits them up on a horse in front of them, can’t they, boys?”

  Chase passed down the iced tea. “Yeah. I remember watching Dad hold you just like that, Blue. It got a lot harder when the twins came along. They used to try and jump off.”

  “Like a pair of squabbling puppies.” Billy’s smile died. “I wish they’d come home soon.”

  “They are coming for the wedding.” Ruth put the blue cast iron casserole dish on the table and the pan of macaroni and cheese, which was perfectly crisp and brown. “I heard from HW today, but Ry’s coming, too.”

  Blue looked up at her. “Yeah? That’s awesome.” He focused on Maria. “Chase and I have two more brothers for you to meet. They’re twins.”

  Maria nodded politely but didn’t say anything else, so Blue helped himself to the casserole. He soon noticed she would chat away to Billy, of all people, and then shut down like a clam whenever he tried to speak to her directly. But how could he blame her? In her world he guessed that fathers were no longer to be trusted. He totally got that.

  With everything that was going on, he’d also forgotten to check in with Chase about the search for their mother and sister. Wow, so much to feel guilty about and so little time.

  Blue put down his silverware, his appetite gone, and rose swiftly to his feet.

  “Excuse me, everyone. I have to make a phone call.”

  “Nothing’s that important. You can at least finish your dinner.” Ruth frowned at him. “I’ve got pie.”

  “That’s awesome, but I have to do this. I’ll come back as soon as I can, okay?”

  His cell was practically burning a hole in his jeans pocket, the number Rosa had given him for Daniel Lester still on his screen. Blue went up to his bedroom and pressed to connect the call. It rang for a long time.

  “Yeah, what?”

  Daniel Lester’s slurred tone was instantly recognizable to any son of a drunk.

  “Is this Mr. Daniel Lester?”

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  “This is Gunnery Sergeant Blue Morgan.”

  Silence fell, broken only by Lester’s hoarse breathing.

  “I thought you might like to know that your daughter Maria got here safely. Not that you care, seeing as you put her on that bus alone to start with.”

  “She’s not mine.”

  “Whatever, you still put a ten-year-old girl on a bus and took her phone away. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “To get her away from me. To send her to her real father, which is apparently you.”

  “You don’t know if that is true.”

  “Angelina fucking lied to me for years. She’s a fucking unfaithful bitch—”

  “Mr. Lester, if you want to have a discussion about this, may I suggest you refrain from speaking about your wife like that?”

  “Why should I? Fucking bitch told me all about you when she was dying, Sergeant, how she deceived me for all those years, how she fucked me over—”

  “As I said, your wife is dead. We need to work out how to proceed from here.”

  Lester laughed. “I’ve worked it out, dude. I sent her bastard to you. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of that. Now fuck off and don’t bother me again.”

  The phone went dead, leaving Blue staring out into the night sky, his jaw set so hard his teeth were hurting. He had to try to be charitable. Lester’s wife had recently died way too young, leaving him alone with a young child. Maybe the drinking was a temporary thing and once he got his shit together he’d realize what a douchebag he’d been to his daughter.

  “Yeah, right.”

  Blue spoke out loud as his cell screen went dead. There was no point calling the man back. Lester was already well on his way to getting drunk out of his head, or maybe he was just drunk all the time now. Maybe when Blue turned the phone number over to Nate, Daniel Lester would change his tune when he had to deal with the authorities.

  For Maria’s sake, Blue hoped so.

  There was a knock on his door.

  “BB?”

  “Come in, Chase.”

  His brother came in and closed the door behind him. He looked his usual calm self. “You okay?”

  Blue rubbed his hand over his head. “Not really.”

  “Whom were you talking to?”

  “Maria’s father.”

  “You got his number. How did that go?”

  “As you might expect when talking to a drunk.” Blue appreciated Chase’s lack of anxiety and matter-of-fact manner so much right now. “I want to tell you all what I found out today before I pass the information over to Nate.”

  “Cool.” Chase dropped a packet on the bed. “I got this for you and Maria. It’s a DNA kit that collects buccal cells from the inside of your cheek. You don’t need the mother’s DNA to get an accurate result. I know the guys who started the company, so you’ll get priority.”

  Blue took the package and placed it on his old desk. “Thanks, Chase.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s prepaid for return, so just call them up and they’ll get it back to the lab in California. I think it takes a minimum of five to ten days.”

  Blue nodded and Chase opened the door. “Now come on down, have some of your favorite pie, and we can talk it over after Ruth puts Maria to bed.”

  * * *

  When Blue came back in with Chase, Jenna sent up a silent prayer of relief. He looked okay, a bit stern around the mouth, but she hadn’t heard any shouting.

  “Do you want some more pie, Jenna?” Ruth asked.

  “No, thanks, I’m done.” Jenna smiled as she pushed her bowl away. “That was awesome.”

  “You’ll be coming back out here tomorrow to check on that piglet, won’t you?” Ruth cut a piece of peach pie as big as Jenna’s head and put it in a bowl for Blue with two scoops of ice cream.

  “Yes, I told Roy I’d try to come out. I have to visit the Lymond place anyway.”

  Blue’s gaze instantly came to her. “I thought you weren’t going up there anymore.”

  “Dave’s coming with me. One of Mark’s horses is about to give birth.”

  “One of the two he has left?” Blue grimaced. “Just take care, won’t you?”

  “I will.” She smiled at him and went to stand up. “Now, I’d better be going or my uncle will think I’ve been abducted by aliens.”

  Surprisingly it was Billy who laughed, making him look not only younger, but also very like Chase. “Ron’s had a thing about aliens ever since he was a kid.�
��

  Blue put his hand on the back of her chair. “Then he won’t mind if you stay a bit longer. I want you to hear what I’ve got to say as well.”

  She met his gaze. “Are you sure about that? I’m not really family.”

  “But I want you here. Is that okay?”

  “If you’re sure.”

  He nodded once and then turned back to the table, his expression resolute as Ruth returned from putting Maria to bed and brought Roy with her.

  “Okay, Maria can’t hear us talking, can she?”

  Ruth shook her head. “No, she’s the farthest away from the kitchen. I put her music on for her on her i-thing—well, Chase did, but it sure is loud for such a tiny little box.”

  Blue placed his hands flat down on the table. “I’m just going to tell it to you straight. I spoke to Dan Lester’s wife Rosa, and found out I did actually spend a night with her sister-in-law Angelina Lester.”

  “And when you say spent the night,” Chase said, “you mean you had unprotected sex with a married woman.”

  Jenna winced, but Blue didn’t take offense.

  “Number one, I didn’t know she was married. I didn’t even know until today that she was supposed to be separated at the time. Number two, something went wrong in the protection department, and I was too drunk to do much about it. She told me she was on the pill, and not to worry.”

  “Okay. So there is a possibility that Maria is your child.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence fell around the table, and Jenna instinctively reached out and put her hand on Blue’s knee. Despite his outwardly calm appearance, his muscles were so tense he was shaking.

  “If it was a possibility, why didn’t Angelina contact you before?” January leaned forward, her gaze sympathetic.

  “I don’t know.” Blue shrugged. “Maybe she just wanted to forget what she’d done, pretend everything was normal and that any child was her husband’s. I can understand that. What I don’t understand is why she decided to confess what happened on that one solitary night to her husband just before she died.”

  “She told him Maria was your child?” Ruth demanded.

  “She certainly implanted that suggestion at some point.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because when I spoke to Daniel Lester, he was drunk and abusive and told me he wanted nothing more to do with his wife’s bastard.”

  “The horrible man!” Ruth muttered. “He doesn’t deserve that sweet little girl.”

  “I agree. He sucks.” Blue reached over to take Ruth’s work-roughened hand. “The thing is—I wonder if Angelina knew anything more that would make even suggesting Maria isn’t his kid make Dan think it was a done deal?”

  “Like what?”

  Chase stirred. “Maybe during her treatment, the blood work threw up some anomalies and made her think.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.” Blue’s shoulders relaxed a little bit. “Maybe they tested Maria to make sure she wasn’t carrying the same genes and found out something else along the way.”

  “Unlikely if we’re dealing with the maternal line, but there were probably a lot of tests.” Chase frowned. “Did he sound one hundred percent convinced he wasn’t her father?”

  “Pretty much, but he was drunk, so you know what that’s like.”

  Billy looked down at Blue’s casual reference to his and Chase’s shared past.

  “I’m going to do the DNA tests that Chase got me. That will clear everything up once and for all.” Blue looked around the table. “And if she’s my daughter, I’ll take care of her. I hope you all know that.”

  “Of course we do, BB,” Ruth said. “I do have one favor to ask you. Can you do the test in a week or so when she’s gotten more used to the place?”

  “If we leave it that long, it will take another couple of weeks after that to get the results. Are you okay with that, Ruth?”

  “She’ll be fine here with us. She can treat it like a vacation and be our first guest at the new ranch.”

  Jenna smiled. “That’s actually a good idea. She can try out the programs January and I have been working on for the kids. We can teach her how to ride.”

  Blue sat back. “You all sure about this? It’s not like we’re taking on a stray puppy here, and we won’t be completely certain until we get the tests back whether she is my daughter or not.”

  “She sure looks like you, BB,” Billy said quietly. “And Ruth.”

  Blue met his father’s gaze. “She seems to like you a lot.”

  Billy shrugged. “I like kids.”

  “So—don’t let her down, will you? Don’t suddenly disappear on her or anything.”

  Billy swallowed hard, but he didn’t look away. “I won’t, BB. I promise.”

  “Don’t promise.” Blue stood up. “There’s nothing worse for a kid than a broken promise from someone they care about.”

  “BB.” Chase started to stand as well, his voice quiet. “Give him a chance, okay? We’re all trying to help you out here.”

  Jenna took Blue’s hand. “Will you walk me out to my truck? I really have to go or Uncle Ron will be calling Nate to round up a search party.”

  January winked. “I’m sure Nate would be more than happy to come and find you, Jenna.”

  She grinned as Jenna led Blue out into the cold night air and down the steps to where her truck was parked. He let her lead, which was a first, and stopped obediently beside her as she went to open the door.

  “Thanks for a great—”

  The rest of what she had been going to say was devoured by his kiss, which tasted of peaches and hot man—a combination that was rapidly becoming her all-time favorite. Her back was against the truck and his body covered her completely, one of his hands anchored around her hips and the other tangled in her hair.

  She fought to free one hand from between them and wrapped it around his neck, holding on to all that lean-muscled power for dear life. God, he was beautiful. It was like petting a jaguar. There was nothing else in her vision than Blue’s face and the thrilling sensation of his mouth moving over hers. Eventually, even she had to breathe and she broke off the kiss and buried her face in the crook of his neck.

  He held her close, his breathing slowing down along with hers, the tension in his body easing—apart from that one hard bit of him that she kind of longed to explore, but didn’t quite have the nerve to attempt. In typical Blue fashion, he took her hand and solved that problem by guiding her fingers around him until he groaned.

  “That was not a good idea,” he breathed out hard against her forehead.

  “You made me do it.”

  “I couldn’t help myself.”

  She petted him just a little until his hips rolled against her, and he hissed a soft curse. Taking her hand, he placed it within his own and drew it down to her side.

  “I want you.” His blunt statement didn’t surprise her. He was a man used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it. “But this really isn’t good timing.”

  “So you said.”

  “I have to take care of Maria first.”

  “I know.”

  He searched her face. “You’re making this very easy for me.”

  She attempted a shrug—difficult when your whole body was plastered over a man’s hard unyielding torso. “It’s all good. We’re still only kissing, and I’m officially going out with Nate.”

  “No, you are not.” His blue eyes struck sparks.

  “I believe that is up to me, Blue Morgan.”

  He sighed. “Jeez, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he’s a nice guy. You probably would be better off with him.”

  As her stomach dropped with disappointment, she gave him her sweetest smile. “I am. He’s my only boyfriend, remember?”

  “The way you just kissed me? I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  She shoved on his chest until he took an unwilling step back. There really was nothing left to lose, and she was determined that things wouldn’t always
run on his schedule. It was good for him to be thwarted occasionally.

  “You can’t have it both ways. You either stand aside and let me go out with Nate, or you ask me out yourself.”

  His jaw settled into a stubborn line she was becoming way too familiar with. “I just explained why that can’t happen right now, and you said you understood.”

  “I do understand.”

  “Then what exactly are we talking about?”

  “It would be better for both of us if you focus on Maria and I focus on my job.”

  He cocked his head to one side and observed her. “So what you’re saying is no more kissing unless we’re a couple?”

  “Exactly.”

  His slow grin held such a mixture of lust and devilry that she almost melted on the spot.

  “Right. Got it.”

  “And you understand why I won’t be kissing you anymore?”

  “Totally.” He nodded. “It’s only fair.”

  “Then we’re on the same page. Night then, Blue.”

  She nodded to him and went to get in her truck. Damn, she’d been way too confident, thinking he wouldn’t want to stop kissing her just because she couldn’t imagine not doing it anymore herself. She should know by now that she wasn’t hard to give up. She’d never been special enough for anyone.

  A tap on her window made her look up from fishing her keys out of her pocket to find Blue looking in on her. With a sigh, she rolled down the window. In her old truck, he was tall enough to be almost at her eye level.

  “Drive safe and be careful at Mark Lymond’s place tomorrow, okay?”

  She managed a nod.

  His smile disappeared. “Are you really okay?”

  “Peachy.”

  He took her tightly clenched fist in his hand and studied it. “You don’t look it.” He brought her fingers to his mouth and lightly kissed them. “Night, Jenna. Take care now.”

  She disengaged her hand and turned the wheel, reversing the truck in a wide arc around him, her lights sweeping over the slumbering barn and waking up the indignant chickens. He was still standing there as she bumped down the road, his gaze fixed on the departing truck.