Her Cowboy Boss

by Patricia Johns

  “Rise and shine, gentlemen!” he called. “It’s a bad storm, and we’re on duty!”

  He knocked sharply on every door he passed, and he could hear the moans, curses and rustle of men rousing themselves for a night of work. Avery’s door was at the end of the hall, and he paused in front of it for a moment before knocking.

  “Avery?” he called. He didn’t hear a response, and he knocked again. “Avery?”

  There was the sound of movement, then the chain lock scraped and the door opened. Avery stood there in a nightgown. It was simple—a cotton T-shirt-style garment that ended at her knees. Her hair was tangled and she blinked at him blearily.

  “Hank?” His name in her sleepy voice made him want things that he had no right to, and that he certainly didn’t have time for. He glanced irritably down the hallway. Men were emerging from their rooms, hopping on one foot as they pulled on socks. A couple of ranch hands were looking at him in curiosity. The last thing he needed was to have more gossip flying around...

  “There’s a bad storm,” he said, turning his attention back to the bleary-eyed woman before him. “We’ve got to go patch a roof, so we’ll need food and hot drinks for the men when they come for a break.”

  “Oh...” She was waking up now, and she nodded, licked her lips. “So sandwiches, maybe? Muffins? Coffee?”

  “Perfect,” he said. “We need you to start right away, and I’ll get the guys organized.”

  “Okay.” She pushed her hair away from her forehead. “I’ll just get dressed.”

  He wanted to kiss her again, even if only on her forehead. He wanted to pull her against him, feel the warmth of her face through his shirt. He wanted to tell her how pretty she looked when she was all foggy from sleep... “Thanks,” he said instead and headed back down the hallway.

  “Alright, guys,” he said, raising his voice. “I need two teams...”

  The night was only beginning.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when Avery brought the coffee carafes into the dining room. She had made two platters of sandwiches. That likely wouldn’t be enough, but it was a start. She’d pulled a large plastic bag filled with muffins out of the deep freeze and put them in a warm oven to thaw. They were still a little frozen in the centers and rather warm on the outsides, but they’d be edible, and the men wouldn’t be complaining at this time of night. The creamers were full, as were the sugar dispensers.

  She stood alone amongst the tables, listening to the storm crashing outside. Hank was out there somewhere, and she wished she knew where. That wasn’t her business, though, was it? He wasn’t her concern—and if she tried to make him her business, she could get him fired. What they had was some strange attraction, a connection like she’d never experienced before, but it wasn’t enough. Hank had a lot more life experience than she did, so maybe there was a name for this... Star-crossed? But still, she wanted him to be safe.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” she muttered to herself. He’d been working a ranch for over a decade, so she wasn’t exactly going to rescue him from work he knew like the back of his hand.

  When he was nineteen and started out as a ranch hand, she’d been helping her mother in the flower shop. She used to cut stems and make simple arrangements. Her mother used to praise her for having the eye of an artist. And now, as she stood here knowing that she was in over her head with Hank, that she couldn’t pull herself out unscathed, she missed that store so desperately that it brought a lump to her throat.

  In Winona’s Wilderness, there had always been answers and explanations. In that shop, she’d been adored and treated like she was the most important person in her mother’s life.

  I can’t leave you much, sweetheart, her mother used to tell her, but I’ll leave you a thriving business. A woman needs to be able to provide for herself if she’s going to make her own rules. And, Avery... Her mother would look her in the eye at this point. Trust me. You’re going to want to make your own rules.

  Avery spun her bracelet on her wrist, looking down at the words etched across the front: Home is where the heart is. That little flower shop on the corner of a street in a medium-sized town in Kansas had been filled to the brim and overflowing with heart.

  She needed to go home. She’d come here for a reason—to meet her father—and while she didn’t intend to leave without telling him who she was, she desperately wanted to get back home, where she knew who she was. She could worry about flower orders and deliveries. Instead of being in a drafty canteen, she’d be in her cozy apartment above the flower shop where rain would just be rain, drumming on the windows and making the indoors that much more snug.

  What would her mother have told her about Hank, had she been here? Avery could hear her mother’s voice. He told you from the start that he didn’t want more, dear. You have to believe people when they tell you who they are. I’m sorry he hurt you, but you can’t say he wasn’t honest.

  The front door opened and a rush of cold, wet air flooded inside followed by the broad shoulders of a man in a rain slicker. When he lifted his head, she recognized Louis.

  “Mr. Harmon,” she said. “I’ve got some refreshments out if you’re hungry.”

  “No, no...” Louis shook off his coat. “That’s not for me, that’s for the boys. Just came to check on you. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, fine.” She nodded and stepped away from the table so that he could see the waiting food. Louis crossed the room and stood next to her, surveying her hard work. The front door opened and a couple of ranch hands came inside and beelined toward the food.

  “Nicely done.” He nodded, and they moved farther across the room, giving the men some space to eat. “Not bad for being hauled out of your bed at midnight.”

  She smiled tiredly. “I was fine once I woke up all the way.”

  Louis nodded again, and he looked at his boots but didn’t speak for a couple of beats. Then he looked over at her. “So you saw Chris Mayfield?”

  “Yes, I did.” Avery pulled a hand through her hair. “And Hillary confirmed all that when I saw her at the school.”

  The door banged shut again as two more men came inside, shaking their wet hats off as they headed toward the food.

  “Hank told me that you wanted to speak with me,” he said, “but I wanted to talk to you, as well. Maybe somewhere more private? It’s going to be busy in here.”

  Avery followed Louis into the kitchen and they let the door swing shut behind them, muffling some of the noise outside.

  “I mentioned to Hank that I wanted you to see Chris Mayfield because...” Louis paused, huffed out a breath, then looked toward her cautiously. “Do you know who your father is, Avery?”

  “Yes,” she replied. But the question was, did he?

  Louis brightened. “That’s really good. I wasn’t sure if your mother told you or not.”

  Her heart clenched in her chest and she stared at him, looking for some sort of emotional reaction from the man. He knew? So was he just generally indifferent?

  “She didn’t tell me for a long time,” Avery said hollowly, and apparently this was why. Louis had room in his heart for his legitimate children, but not for her.

  “I didn’t put it together at first,” Louis said. “I mean, your hair is a lot lighter than his, and you don’t look much like the Mayfields, but—”

  He thought... She almost laughed. “Chris Mayfield isn’t my father.”

  Louis stopped, blinked. “He isn’t?”

  “No.” She took a wavering breath. “You are.”

  Louis regarded her in silence for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

  Avery hadn’t expected him to refute her that quickly. “She told me on her deathbed,” she said, softening her tone. Why was she trying to lighten the blow here? “I know this i
s probably a shock, but she told me very clearly that my father was Louis Harmon.”

  Louis licked his lips, then pressed them together.

  “And before you tell me that she might have made it up, my mom was a deeply religious woman. She wouldn’t have chosen that moment to lie to me. If she didn’t want me to know who my father was, she could have just as easily not said a word. She named you, Mr. Harmon.”

  “Perhaps she was thinking of the one night we spent together...” Louis smiled wistfully. “She must have taken pity on a dorky kid, because she was gorgeous and I was all elbows and knees.”

  “But you did share something,” she prodded.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Once. She’d broken up with Chris Mayfield for the fifth or sixth time, and she was sad, and I cared. One thing led to another, and...” He spread his hands. “But it never happened again. It was our secret.”

  “Well, your secret made me,” Avery said with a shrug. “I hate to break it to you.”

  “The red hair?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Genetics can be weird. I’m sure there’s a redhead somewhere in my family.”

  He didn’t want to believe this, and while she’d known that she wouldn’t be good news, exactly, this was worse than she’d imagined it. It wasn’t right that a woman had to argue her own father into acknowledging her.

  “I know you have a family,” Avery began. “I know you have kids and you’ll want to protect them. I’m not asking for anything. I don’t need money—my mother left me an inheritance including her flower shop. All I wanted was...” Tears misted her eyes. “I wanted you to know that I existed.”

  “Oh, dear girl...” Louis reached out and squeezed her hand. “I would be more than honored to claim you as my daughter if it were true. You’re beautiful, kind, persistent—and I’d be so very proud. It isn’t that. I can’t possibly by your father, Avery.”

  “That one night—” Did she really have to give him a biology lesson? “It was enough, you know.”

  “I’m sterile.”

  Avery blinked. “What?”

  “I got mumps as a young teenager and it left me sterile. I can’t produce children. It’s a secret that I’ve kept for a long time because I didn’t want my children to know.”

  “Owen and Olivia...” Her voice shook. “They aren’t yours?”

  “Carla and I had a rough patch and she left me for about six months. She came back pregnant with twins.” Louis swallowed hard. “I had a choice. Send her packing and try to move on with someone else, or accept her back, babies and all. I loved her too much, and I told her that we’d raise those children together. Everyone in Hope assumed that we’d finally gotten pregnant after we reconciled, and that’s the story we put out there. But my kids aren’t mine...biologically.”

  “Oh...” Avery swallowed hard, her mind spinning as she processed this new information.

  “I’m not your father, Avery. It isn’t possible. I’m sorry.”

  There was a rustle behind them. They’d been angled away from the door—some semblance of privacy, perhaps—and Avery turned to see Owen through the window in the swinging kitchen door. It was open a crack, and Owen’s anguished gaze was fixed on his father. He slowly shook his head.

  “Owen!” Louis started forward and hauled open the door.

  “You aren’t my dad?” Owen’s lips trembled. “Seriously? You aren’t my father?”

  The rumble of ranch hands’ voices broke off into a jagged silence in the other room. They had an audience.

  “Of course I am!” Louis said, his voice suddenly too loud for the space. “Owen, come here.”

  “You just told her—”

  “And that was true,” his father replied, his tone growing firmer. “All of it is true. But your mother put my name on that birth certificate, and no one can tell me that you aren’t my son. I raised you. I love you—”

  “And you lied to me!” Owen looked around the kitchen in one frantic sweep and took a step back into the canteen. All of this was wrong... Louis wasn’t her father—and she’d just forced a family secret out into the open. This was all her fault.

  “Just leave me alone!” Owen said, tears welling up in his eyes, then he turned and wove past the tables toward the door. Avery and Louis followed. Owen shoved open the door, nearly colliding with Hank on his way in, then the boy disappeared out into the storm. Everyone stood there immobile for a beat, but Avery knew what she had to do... She had to fix this somehow. She’d caused it.

  “I’m going after him,” she said, tightening her sweater around her and heading out into the canteen. Every eye was pinned to her as she wove through the same tables that Owen had.

  “Avery.” Hank put a hand out to stop her. “What’s going on?”

  But she didn’t have time to explain. She needed to talk to Owen and fix this if she could. She shot Hank a look of apology, then ducked her head against the downpour and dove out into the rain.

  * * *

  HANK LOOKED AT Mr. Harmon, confused. His boss crossed the room and the cowboys all dropped their gazes. What had just happened in here? All he’d seen was Owen storming out, just about in tears, and Avery dashing after him. He shook rain droplets off his sodden hat.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “She thought I was her father,” he said, sounding a little stunned. “I’m not.”

  The other ranch hands stared at each other mutely, then headed for the door. That was the right call in Hank’s opinion. This was family business, and they had a barn roof to patch.

  Hank looked back at the door. Avery was already out there in the pounding rain. Another peal of thunder rumbled overhead. She shouldn’t be out there running around in a storm. Owen was probably headed to the barn or somewhere relatively safe. She didn’t have any protection from the elements.

  “Owen will be fine,” Mr. Harmon said, as if reading his mind. “But that girl shouldn’t be running around in a storm. We’re liable if she hurts herself.”

  “I’ll go find her,” Hank said. His boss nodded. Although he had a point, it wasn’t about the dangers of a storm. She’d just found out that Mr. Harmon wasn’t her dad, and he knew what that would do to her. Hank pushed open the door and headed out into the rain.

  Owen was out of sight but Avery stood in the pouring rain clutching her sweater around her thin shoulders. Her hair was slicked to her head and hung in sodden ringlets down her back.

  “Avery!” he called. She turned, her face as pale as moonlight in the darkness.

  “I don’t know where he went!” she shouted back.

  Hank jogged across the muddy ground and stripped off his slicker, settling it around her trembling shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  “I told Louis...and...” She swallowed, looked over her shoulder again. “He’s not my father, to start with, but it’s more complicated than that. Owen heard it all. And I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Hank said. “I know that kid. He’s probably at the barn by now.”

  Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks. “This is my fault.”

  “What’s going on? I don’t get it. How do you know that Mr. Harmon isn’t your dad?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “Because he isn’t the twins’ father, either. He’s sterile.”

  “Wait...” Hank struggled to make sense of it all. “What?”

  She explained the situation and when she was done, Hank was stunned. He’d had no idea.

  “Come back inside,” Hank said.

  She shook her head. “No. Hank, I can’t stay. I’ve caused enough trouble as it is—”

  “So you’re just leaving?” he demanded. “Just like that?”

  “What would you have me do?” He’d known she was going, but not like this—not with two m
inutes to put together everything he wanted to say to her before it was over. She didn’t need to do anything...He wasn’t asking anything of her except—

  He glanced over his shoulder. He could see Louis standing in the doorway watching them.

  “Stay!” Hank pleaded.

  “I just caused a major family rift in there!” She jutted a finger toward the canteen. “I’m not going to be welcome, Hank! I’ve said my piece, I’ve discovered that my mom was wrong and I need to go. That was the plan.”

  “Screw the plan,” he growled. “Stay with me.”

  “You know I can’t.” Her lips quivered with repressed emotion. “If it were just you and me...but it isn’t. And everything is so much more complicated—”

  “Damn it, Avery, I love you!” He hadn’t meant to say it—hadn’t even realized what all of these jarring emotions meant until the words tore out of him.

  She stared at him in stunned silence for a few beats. “You do?” she stammered.

  It was a strange relief to just admit it. Denying his feelings hurt more.

  “Yes. Don’t just walk away. Give us a chance.”

  Avery wiped at her face with the tips of her fingers—all that showed from under his slicker.

  “My mother would have warned me away from you,” she said with tears in her voice.

  “Do you feel it, though?” he asked, pulling her closer. “Or is this completely one-sided? I need to know.”

  “I love you, too.” Her voice was so quiet that he almost didn’t catch her words. He knew that Mr. Harmon was watching them, but he didn’t care anymore. He pulled her against him and caught her lips with his. She loved him... That was more than he’d even dared to hope right now.