Her Cowboy Boss

by Patricia Johns

  “I’m sorry to have dragged you into that,” Avery said, breaking the lengthy silence. She turned back toward him.

  “It’s okay.” He glanced at her, then back to the road. “That wasn’t easy to hear, I’ll bet.”

  “No.” She swallowed hard. “I almost wish I’d left well enough alone. She didn’t want me to know this stuff.”

  “Does it change anything?” Hank asked. “Times have changed. It isn’t quite as shocking as it was twenty-five years ago.”

  “I know...” She sighed. “But you didn’t know my mom. Having me find this out—it would have really embarrassed her. She worked hard to hide all of this from me.”

  It had embarrassed Avery, too. She’d expected to discover that her mother had been quiet and nerdy. She thought that her mom might have been the kind of girl who kept to herself and didn’t have many friends, who fell in love with a boy and things went too quickly... She’d pieced together the crumbs of information her mother had let fall, and she could imagine her mother heartbroken at a breakup, determined to start fresh alone. But now she saw that that hadn’t been the case. Her mother had been outgoing and flirtatious. She’d had a lot of boyfriends. She’d crossed lines and betrayed friendships.

  But still, she couldn’t imagine that her mother would have lied about who her father was...especially not knowing that she didn’t have much longer for this world. Winona had truly and deeply believed that she was going to meet her Maker, and she wouldn’t have had a lie stand between her and God...not then.

  “It’s hard having people remember my mother that way,” Avery said quietly. “Because I remember her much differently. They didn’t know her like I did.”

  The people of Hope didn’t know her like the people of Salina knew her, either. In Salina, she had a lot of friends. She’d been there for the baptisms of their babies, for their weddings and funerals. If they’d known the truth about Winona’s past, would it have made a difference? Would they have trusted her like they did?

  “Maybe my cousin was just jealous of her,” Hank suggested. “She did say that her boyfriend preferred your mother. That might have colored her memory somewhat.”

  “Louis said the same thing,” she confessed. “Without quite so many details, but he said that she’d been looking for love in all the wrong places here in Hope, and he was glad that she’d found the right places in Kansas.”

  Hank was silent.

  “It might not be good news that Louis has another daughter,” she said. “I was prepared for him to think that. I just wasn’t prepared to agree with him.”

  Hank slowed and signaled a turn onto a side road. The tires crunched over gravel as he made the turn, and her gaze slid over the reeds growing in the marshy ditches. It looked like Kansas here—but Louis’s joke had been more accurate than she’d ever imagined. She most certainly wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and she ardently wished that she’d been content enough to just stay home.

  “What do you mean, you agree with him?” Hank asked with a frown.

  “I mean, with my mother’s reputation, he might not be very proud for people to know that he’d been one of the guys she’d been with...” It felt horrible to say, but there had been a reason why her mother had never brought her back here. Her mother had a reputation, and Winona hadn’t ever wanted to face it again.

  “I think you’re underestimating Mr. Harmon,” Hank replied, his voice low. “He’d want to know his daughter, no matter how you were conceived.”

  “You can’t know that,” she said. “I came here to tell him who I was, but that might have been a mistake.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Hank asked.

  “I might go back, let this rest.” She sighed. “It doesn’t change how I see my mother. I just understand her a little better now. But it does change my expectations about my father.”

  Hank pushed his hat back and sighed. “A decent man wants to know, Avery.”

  “I might be doing him a favor,” she replied. “What do I want from him at this point? To announce his secret to his teenage children? He’s raising kids. That changes things.”

  “He will want to know.” His voice grew firmer. “I know that.”

  “What makes you so sure?” she asked wryly. “Sometimes ignorance is bliss.”

  Her own ignorance felt like bliss right about now... She’d preferred the uninformed version of her mother’s history—the nearly immaculate conception. It was more comfortable, and she knew for a fact that her mother preferred it, too.

  “Because I’ve been there,” Hank said.

  Silence settled into the cab, the only sounds the motor and the whistle of air coming through the cracked-open window. Avery stared at Hank in surprise.

  “What do you mean, you’ve been there?” she asked.

  “Vickie was pregnant.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t realize you had any children. I thought you said—”

  “I don’t. She got pregnant senior year, just like your mom. I’d gotten a football scholarship that was going to pay my way through a degree in agriculture. But with Vickie pregnant, I needed a job right away to provide for her, so I turned it down and went straight to work at the Mason ranch. I did the right thing and asked her to marry me. She miscarried before we got married, and I had a choice—walk away from her or stand by my word. Thing is, marriage is supposed to be for the good times and the bad, and losing the baby—that was the worst. So I decided that the right thing to do was to marry her. I’d proposed, and I’d been more than willing to get married when I thought we were having a baby, so that had to mean something.”

  “But you knew about her pregnancy,” Avery said. “It’s different.”

  “Yeah, but finding out that you’ve made a baby with someone changes things,” he countered. “It did for me.”

  “What if she’d left town and you’d met someone else—someone you really loved deeply—and you started a family and built a life...and then that child came back?” she asked.

  “She’d still be mine, Avery.” His voice was low and warm, and his words sank deep into her heart. That was what a daughter longed to hear—that she belonged by virtue of her DNA. But they weren’t talking about Hank, they were talking about Louis. Hank had a failed marriage under his belt, and Louis had had two decades of love with a wife he had adored.

  “Thing is,” Hank went on. “I never met my daughter. I was at football practice when Vickie was rushed to the hospital, and no one called me until it was over. I guess it all happened pretty quickly.”

  “That’s awful.” She winced. The father should have mattered just a little bit more.

  “So I never saw her,” Hank said. “But I loved her. And I still do. There’s this little part of my heart that will always belong to the daughter I never met. A man deserves to hear the truth, Avery. And knowing my boss like I do, he’s going to care.”

  “So you think I should stick to the original plan,” she said slowly. “Let him know...”

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” he said. “This is too personal for me to even pretend I can give you answers. But don’t be scared away.”

  Avery was scared, she had to admit. She was scared of the rejection—seeing her father’s face when he realized this terrible cook he’d employed was more than just a subpar worker, she was a twenty-four-year-old reminder of something he might not be terribly proud of...but then, the way Avery had imagined her conception—the one ill-conceived night that they both lived to regret—might not have been so far off the mark.

  Louis said they were nothing more than friends, and it looked like Winona dated football players, not Future Farmers of America. So whatever happened between them, be it a pity connection Winona bestowed upon him or a brief entanglement, it might very well have been just once. Of all the possibilities, she didn’t really want that one to be
true. She’d wanted to find a father who had loved her mother. She’d wanted to find a man whose heart would have filled at the memory of the girl who got away. But that wasn’t the truth.

  Hank slowed the truck again, this time at the arch that read Harmon Ranch. They were back, and Avery had a decision. She could see this through and tell Louis what she knew, or she could do them all a favor and quit. They needed a real cook, not a stand-in who didn’t have the guts to say why she was really here. She’d have to make her choice.

  * * *

  AFTER HANK DROPPED Avery at the canteen, he headed toward the barn. He had supplies to unload, but more than that, he needed time to sort through his thoughts.

  He’d been married to Vickie longer than he’d been divorced, and talking with Avery had brought her back to mind as sharp as broken glass. When she’d walked out, it had broken his heart, but the betrayal was all the deeper because of what he’d given up for her. Because of her, he’d passed on a college scholarship. Because of the baby on the way, he’d proposed, and he’d stood by her during the upheavals of the miscarriage and the grief that followed. He could have walked away then—a lot of guys would have—but he hadn’t. Tough times weren’t an excuse to bail, so he’d followed through with his promise to marry her. A man was nothing if he wasn’t good for his word. But what about a woman? She’d vowed love and fidelity, too.

  Marriage wasn’t what either of them expected, but Hank had been raised by two parents who loved each other dearly and who put every ounce of effort they could into maintaining their relationship. They put each other first, always. Hank had thought that if he just worked hard enough like his parents had, that he’d eventually reap a happy, devoted marriage, too. Except it hadn’t worked that way for him and Vickie. No matter how hard he tried to make her happy, she only got more frustrated. And no matter how hard she tried to “loosen him up,” he just couldn’t do it. It went against his nature.

  But still—he’d stood by her, and he’d believed she’d do the same for him. So when she left, he’d been even more deeply betrayed. After all, he could have walked away long before that and made it much easier on himself. He’d believed their vows were for a reason—because life together wasn’t easier than life apart—not always.

  Maybe it was for the best that they hadn’t had any children. It seemed like a karmic punishment that their first child should be conceived accidentally, but once they’d gotten married and established the home that should have given future children a stable environment, they hadn’t been able to conceive again. And they’d both wanted children even more than they’d wanted each other.

  Which was why not having children when she finally walked out on him was probably for the best. The last thing they needed was to be fighting about custody or child support. No kid needed to be in the middle of that... But when their marriage ended, he’d vowed that he’d never just blindly do “the right thing” again. Good intentions and integrity of granite didn’t guarantee happiness or even a fighting chance, and he’d learned that the hardest way possible.

  That was also why he held back when it came to women now. He hadn’t been enough for his wife. The thought of marriage left him feeling slightly panicked when he considered doing it again. So he figured he’d save any woman he got involved with the heartbreak and just be up front about where he stood.

  The truck bumped over a pothole, the shocks squeaking with the force of the jolt. He muttered an oath under his breath and pulled his attention back to the road. The barn’s round roof came into view, its red paint starting to crack and peel. It was definitely due for another coat. This was where they housed the cows that were recovering from illness or injury. Cattle that were given any medication had to be kept separate from the herd until it was out of their systems. Any meat that was tested in the slaughterhouse and came up positive for antibiotics would be at their expense, so they took this very seriously. No rancher wanted to take a financial hit like that.

  Hank parked out front and hopped out of his truck. He grabbed the plastic bags of supplies and headed for the side door. It opened just as he got to it, and Owen came out. His hair was a mess of dark curls and he looked up at Hank gloomily.

  “Hey, Uncle Hank. Need a hand?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Hank passed Owen the bags of salt licks and they went into the barn together. “You okay, kid?”

  “Yup.”

  That was a lie. Owen was ordinarily a pretty open, happy teen. This morose act was new.

  “Put the salt licks in the cupboard,” Hank said, and Owen did as he told him. “So what’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look, Owen, I know you better than that,” Hank said. “So what’s her name?”

  Owen smiled wanly. “Chloe.”

  “There you go. What’s the problem?”

  Owen regarded him in silence for a moment. “You’ll tell my dad.”

  “No, I won’t,” Hank replied. “Unless it’s something really weird...”

  If his daughter had lived, she’d have been about Owen’s age now. That had been part of his soft spot for his boss’s twins. He didn’t get to raise his own girl, but he was a part of these kids’ lives, and they’d taken to him. It was an honor to be trusted, to be thought of as their uncle.

  “It’s not that weird.” Owen barked out a laugh. “But I’m not sure what I’m gonna do.”

  “Is she pregnant?”

  “No!” Owen shot Hank an incredulous look.

  “Then it’s less complicated than you think. What happened?”

  “I went up to the water tower with the guys, and Chloe texted us and said that she was bored. So we drove down to her ranch—”

  “Her father’s ranch,” Hank corrected him.

  “Yeah, well, she said she could come out with us, so we swung by to pick her up, and it was, like, 11, I think...”

  This story sounded lengthy, and Hank crossed his arms and waited. Owen would get to it eventually.

  “So Chloe was saying there was this guy who was creeping her out at school. He kept following her around and putting these creepy notes in her locker. And she doesn’t like him...at all. So we said we’d get him off her back for her. So we drove past his place—”

  “His parents’ place,” Hank corrected him again.

  “Yeah, well, so he lives in that subdivision on the west end of Hope, you know with all the old trees, but everyone’s been renovating and all that...”

  “Yeah, I know the area.”

  “There was the big Dumpster outside the house because they’re ripping out a bunch of old carpet and all that, so we tried to pull out some old carpet, but we couldn’t get up there—”

  “What did you do?” Hank had a bad feeling about this.

  “We were pulling some tree branches out of the Dumpster, and we tossed one and it went harder than we thought... It broke the front window.”

  “Who threw it?” Hank asked.

  Owen licked his lips. “Me.”

  “Got it.” Hank sucked in a breath.

  Owen eyed him cautiously for a moment. “So...”

  “I’m not the one who broke someone’s window.” Hank shrugged. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Owen shook his head. “The guy’s a creep. He started some rumor at school that me and Olivia are adopted. Which is dumb, but he’s that kind of guy. He’s a loser...”

  “So this is about you, then—”

  “No, I’m just saying that it isn’t just her. But he’s in, like, three of her classes, so he figures he has a shot with her.”

  “But you do, not him?” Hank raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, maybe I do.” Owen’s tone got slightly cockier. “Who’d she text when she needed help?”

  Hank smiled wryly. “Here’s the thing. If you got caugh
t, you could have been charged with all sorts of misdemeanors, not to mention this is bullying. You don’t like the guy, so you and a pack of friends go to his home and break his window.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Owen retorted.

  “Sort of was,” Hank replied. “Looks that way from the outside, at least. And all this was for a girl who wouldn’t open her mouth and stand up for herself.”

  “He was creepy—”

  “Yeah, you said that. But there was probably a better way to deal with it than to go to his house somewhere close to midnight.”

  “This is why I didn’t want to say anything.” Owen shot him an annoyed glare. “I don’t need to be lectured. Dad could have done that.”

  Fine. The kid had a point. Hank took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair.

  “There are two kinds of girls out there,” Hank said. “Actually, three. There are the girls who aren’t interested, and that’s good to know. Because if she isn’t into you, you just have to let it go. Like our friend the creep is going to learn. Then, of the girls who are interested, there are the ones who bring drama into your life and the ones who don’t. Simple as that.”

  “Meaning?” Owen dug the toe of his boot into the floor.

  “Meaning, Chloe is the kind who brings drama. She could have told her dad that there was a guy giving her grief. She could have told a teacher. Instead, she sneaked out of her place and drove around town with a truck full of guys from school. Then she got you all to fight her battles for her.”

  He knew that type of girl, because he’d married her. It never got better. Vickie was fueled by drama, and if she wasn’t flirting with guys at the Honky Tonk, she was fighting with him. People got older, but their basic makeup didn’t change.