Down Home Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  Someday. Someday they would do that.

  He shook his head and turned back toward the house, nothing but the sound of his boots crunching on the gravel to keep him company.

  He didn’t want to get too cocky, because historically that hadn’t worked out well for him. But right at the moment, it seemed like things were going okay.

  He looked up at the night sky, at the little patches of velvet blue and bright white stars that were fighting their way through the clouds.

  The mountains and trees cast inky shapes against the gray. It certainly wasn’t the wide-open space of Texas, but it was beginning to feel a little more like home.

  Beginning to feel a little more like what he had hoped it might when he’d first decided to uproot Violet and himself and drive across the country.

  Like their life. Like his life. One that wasn’t so tied up in the past.

  He shook his head. Whatever happened next, whatever happened in the future, right now was pretty good.

  And it had been a long time since he had been able to say that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS A beautiful day for a wedding. And if Alison wasn’t such a marriage Scrooge she would very likely be thinking that this venue would be perfect for her own wedding.

  But it wasn’t her wedding. She was never going to have another wedding. Anyway, her first wedding hadn’t been anywhere near this extravagant.

  Really, it hadn’t been much of anything at all. She and Jared had made it legal at the courthouse, and that was basically the beginning and end of it.

  Well, unfortunately the end hadn’t come until eight terrible years had passed. She frowned, putting the truck in Park and looking over at Violet. She had borrowed Lane’s rig again to get the massive cake all the way to Grassroots without incident. She had feared that if she stuffed it into her tiny back seat it wouldn’t hold up.

  That brought her back to much better memories than her previous marriage. Like to what she had managed to accomplish in the back seat of her Camry just last night. She had managed to fold up a cowboy and fit him back there, and ride him like she was saving a horse.

  Suddenly, the awkwardness inherent in the fact that she was fantasizing about the father of the girl sitting next to her made her throat tighten, and she cleared it, trying to get a handle on her brain. They had to get through this wedding without her having errant fantasies.

  But she was thirty-two years old; it should be easy enough for her to control herself.

  “It’s pretty here,” she said, “isn’t it?” Because she was desperate to get her mind on something other than the night before.

  She and Violet both got out of the truck and surveyed the scenery for a moment.

  “Yeah,” Violet said. “Weird though.”

  “How?” Alison asked.

  “Oh, it’s just...our ranch in Texas was in the middle of nowhere and all the trees and everything were totally different. The air smelled different.”

  “Do you miss it?” Alison asked. She’d never left a place before, so she didn’t know what it was like to feel homesick like that.

  “Sometimes,” Violet said. “But sometimes...sometimes I’m glad because there’s fewer bad memories.”

  “Violet...”

  “We should do the cake,” Violet said, rapidly switching the subject.

  Alison decided to honor that.

  She surveyed the scenery. Then, she paused when she saw a man walking past. “Excuse me?” She looked back at Violet. “We need help to move this behemoth. He’ll do.”

  The guy, dressed in a dirty white T-shirt, white cowboy hat and battered jeans, turned toward them and started to walk in their direction.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  Okay, he was pretty cute, and definitely charming, but being called ma’am didn’t do a whole lot for her self-esteem. And whatever. He was probably in his early thirties so he had no call to ma’am her. “Maybe,” she said. “We need help moving this giant cake into the tasting room.”

  “Normally I would volunteer myself, but I’m not real steady on my feet these days. I can get you a cart though.”

  “That will do.”

  “I’m Dane Parker,” he said, extending his hand. “I work here, temporarily. Just helping my sister get back on her feet. She just went through a divorce.”

  “I was sorry to hear about that,” Alison said.

  Dane’s smile turned sharp. “I wasn’t.”

  “I can appreciate that. Nice to meet you,” she said, reaching out and taking hold of his hand. It was rough and calloused, a lot like Cain’s. A working man’s hand.

  “And you are?” he asked, turning his attention to Violet.

  “Violet,” she said, her cheeks turning noticeably pink.

  Dane Parker smiled, a little too friendly for Alison’s liking. “Very nice to meet you.”

  “Violet is working with me to get some job experience. Her first job. A summer job. Until she goes back to high school in the fall.”

  His smile barely slipped, but she saw the momentary shock, and noticed him take a step back. “That’s very nice. I’m going to go get that cart for you. I could carry it, but I doubt you want to chance it.”

  “Yeah, lope away, cowboy,” she muttered as she went to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate.

  “He was cute,” Violet commented, her tone muted.

  “He’s the kind of guy that’s a little too cute,” Alison returned.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The kind of guy that gets you in trouble.” Alison cleared her throat. “Actually, you would get him in trouble at this point. He’s way too old for you.”

  “I didn’t mean I wanted to date him,” Violet said, looking mildly horrified by the idea. “I meant that I appreciated looking at him.”

  Alison shook her head. “Sorry. I may be projecting. I made some pretty bad decisions when I was your age.”

  Violet frowned. “Really? You don’t seem like the kind of person who makes bad decisions.”

  Alison tilted her head to the side. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “I don’t know. You own the bakery. And you’re doing all this stuff. You just seem...responsible.”

  So responsible that she had done it with a guy in the back seat of her car last night. But she kept that to herself. “Well. I learned the hard way that being responsible for your own self is important. You can’t hand that to anybody else, Violet. Because nobody is as invested in your future as you should be.”

  “Well...”

  “Will this work?”

  She turned to see Dane Parker standing there with exactly the kind of cart she needed. “Yes,” she said. “It will more than work. Actually, I think we can take it from here. Thank you for the help.”

  This time, when he grinned, the full force of that smile—the one she had a feeling had brought stronger women than her to their knees—was directed at her.

  “If you need anything else just let me know. It was nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” she said.

  “Well,” Violet said when he was out of earshot, “he likes you.”

  “I’m up to my eyeballs in cake,” she returned, sounding prim even to her own ears. “Sexy cowboys have to get in line.”

  Actually, that sexy cowboy would have to get in line behind the one she was currently sleeping with. Wow. For a moment there she had to stop and wonder whose life she was living. Not that she was in a hurry to jump into another man’s bed. Quite the contrary. She was content to let the thing with Cain play out as long as it might.

  No other man had elicited the kind of response in her that he had, not even other good-looking men. There was just something about him. Something that w
ent beyond the physical.

  Well, there was certainly plenty of physical. But if that was all she’d been after, any man would have done. Any good-looking man, that was.

  But really, as cute as Dane Parker was, she had absolutely no inclination to grab him and drag him into the back seat of any vehicle at all.

  “Is that a choice that you have to make? Cake or men?” Violet asked, helping Alison maneuver the cake out of the back of the truck and onto the cart.

  It was a beautiful, simple design with four layers of lightly frosted white cake heavily laden with berries. She would add cream when she served it, and a few extra berries for good measure.

  In spite of the fact that she was pretty cynical about romance where she was concerned, she did like to watch other people find happiness. And she liked contributing to that happiness in any way she could. In this case, via a very lovely cake.

  “No. I don’t think you have to choose.”

  “I wondered,” Violet said. “Because you know...” She trailed off. She cleared her throat, then started again. “Well, my mom didn’t seem to be able to have a husband, or a kid and anything else. Like, she had to burn it all down to go do something else. So I wondered if that was an accepted truth that nobody tells you when you’re in high school because it’s depressing as fuck.”

  Alison’s heart clenched tight. “No. That’s not the case at all, Violet. I have a specific set of circumstances. I mean... I kind of got lost in a bad relationship and it’s taken me some time to dig out of that. It’s a good thing to be alone sometimes. But not after you already have a husband and a child. Please, don’t think I’m putting my stamp of approval on what your mother did.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  Ugh. “Yes. But we had serious problems that... He... He wasn’t a good man, Violet. And those are the kinds of decisions you make when you’re really desperate for somebody to give you the kind of love that you think you’re missing. In my case, it had to do with attention. And what I thought of as passion. My parents withheld their approval for me pretty much at all costs. So, I was looking for a man who was different than that. Who made me feel... I don’t know. Something exciting.”

  “It’s nice to have somebody pay attention to you when you feel like you’re mostly ignored,” Violet muttered.

  “Right. But when you’re reacting to feeling like you’ve been wronged, whether you actually have been or not... You can make really, really bad choices.”

  “Is this a roundabout way of lecturing me because my dad told you about what happened?”

  Alison froze, sucking her lower lip between her teeth. “Um. I... Why would he have talked to me?”

  “Because he can’t help himself? Because he has to get all up in my business all the time? I mean, I knew he would tell you. Because you see me, so he probably has you watching out to see if there’s any shady characters hanging around me.”

  Alison grimaced. “Okay. He might have...said some things to me.”

  “Right,” she said, suddenly going all brittle and distant.

  “Don’t be mad. I’m not making stuff up. And I told him that I wasn’t going to report back to him. So, if you’re worried about this being covert ops, it isn’t. I promise. But I am going to say something if I think I should. And I’m just saying that sometimes we do things because we’re reacting...”

  She pushed the cart up into the tasting room, which was empty for now. Everyone was still at the ceremony, and wouldn’t be filtering in until the reception.

  “What did you do?”

  Alison let out a frustrated sigh. “I slept with guys I shouldn’t have. Then I married one that I really shouldn’t have. And I let him treat me badly for a long time because I felt like I had gone too far to turn back. Because I was too stubborn to admit that I had made a bad choice when I had kind of grandly stormed away from everything, from all good decision-making, from my family. I’m just saying, don’t make decisions just to make your parents mad. You can’t make your life about getting back at people. It just backfires.”

  She glanced over at Violet, who was looking a little bit shocked.

  “You wanted me to be less vague,” Alison said. “So, that’s kind of the situation.”

  “Well, I haven’t done anything like that.” Her face turned red. “I do like him though. The guy. I’m sure that my dad told you there was a guy.”

  “He might have mentioned it. But you have your whole life to get involved with guys. That’s one reason I took a break to focus on myself. Because I spent so many years wrapped up in someone else, in a relationship, that I kind of forgot to figure out what I wanted to be. I think you can do both. I just... I couldn’t. But you are strong, Violet. Definitely stronger than I was at your age. I think you’re going to be okay.”

  “If I were stronger maybe I wouldn’t feel so confused all the time. But I thought I knew what I wanted. I thought I knew how my life was going to go. I thought everything was secure. And then my mom left.” Violet blinked. “She wasn’t bad, Alison. That’s what scares me. Because it’s not like she neglected me all of my life. It isn’t like she was evil. I can’t even think of her as being evil now. I miss her. I shouldn’t. What she did was wrong. To me and my dad. It’s not like he hurt her or anything. He’s not bad either. I get frustrated with him sometimes, but he’s not bad.”

  Alison’s chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe. “I can’t pretend to understand why a mother would leave her daughter, Violet. I can’t justify it. I do know that it had nothing to do with you.”

  “What if it is me?”

  “It’s not. You could be the worst, most awful little monster on the face of the planet, and unless there’s something broken in your parents, they’re going to stick with you. Thinking that it’s you... There’s no benefit to that. Trust me. Again, we’ll use my marriage as exhibit A. I thought there was something wrong with me, and I thought it was magical that he paid any attention to me. I thought that having a man love me, no matter how broken that love was, no matter that it didn’t look like any kind of love I had ever heard about or imagined, made me incredibly lucky. It made me want to stay, no matter what. Because my parents had convinced me that I was never going to be good enough.

  “My mother got sick and I canceled all my plans to go to school to help take care of her. She still didn’t think I did anything right. Until she died, she didn’t think I did anything right. It hurt so much and I was...lost. My friends had left town, I’d given up on going to school. I was just...here. Profoundly unwanted by the only family member I had left. So, when Jared wanted me—even though his version of wanting could be so angry and jealous. Controlling.—I thought that I had to take that. It took me a long time to realize that it was my parents who were broken, it wasn’t me. And it was Jared who saw that I was broken and picked up those pieces so that he could use them for his own ends. It wasn’t me. It was never me.”

  She took a deep breath, perilously close to confessing much more than she wanted to. Not so much because she didn’t want to confide in Violet, because she wanted this girl to understand. She didn’t want her to make the same mistakes that Alison had. But she didn’t want Cain to know the truth. It would ruin things. It would turn that hard, certain grip of his soft and gentle, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want him to be careful. She didn’t want him to look at her like she was a victim, not when he had been looking at her like she was a woman.

  “How do you... How do you convince yourself of that?”

  “Sometimes? You have to stop and do it every day. Sometimes, it gets heavy, and you’re convinced that it must’ve been you, even if you went through a long period of time where you knew better. It’s a process. And I think if you remember that it isn’t just going to be finished, and that sliding back into believing those lies isn’t a failure, you can really start to move on. But
anytime someone has hurt you, mistreated you, especially someone you’re supposed to trust... It’s hard. I know it. But your dad loves you. So much. He was down at the bakery the morning after your incident desperate to talk to somebody about it.”

  The corner of Violet’s mouth quirked upward. “My dad was desperate to talk?”

  “He was. He’s worried about you.”

  “He says that. But mostly he just gets mad at me, and then he goes to work on the ranch, or to work on the barn thing that he’s remodeling.”

  A little kick of defensiveness rallied in Alison’s chest. “He does that for you.”

  “I think he does it for him, but that was nice of you to say.”

  Violet had clearly misconstrued the reason behind Alison’s statement. “No, I think he really does do it for you. I think he doesn’t know what else to do. What else to do beyond going out and physically working at something. Because you’re right, he doesn’t strike me as a talker.” Cain was a man of action, she had witnessed that firsthand. And she had no issue with that, since it was exactly what she was looking for. But Violet needed something else.

  She had a feeling that he was getting there, that she had walked in on the beginning of him trying to connect with her last night. But it was going to take a long time for Violet to internalize any of it.

  When it was your own parents, your own mother, who made you feel like you didn’t deserve love, approval, and in Violet’s case made you feel like you weren’t worth sticking around for, it was hard to overcome. Alison knew, because she had waded through that swamp for years. She just hoped that she could help Violet avoid making the same kinds of ridiculous mistakes she had.

  “We need to get in our positions,” she said.

  Violet nodded, rallying, helping Alison push the cart across the room and set the cake on the table. Then they stashed the cart behind the bar and took their positions. Alison gave Violet a quick tutorial on how to do the cream and the berries, so that service would go quickly.