Marry Me, Cowboy (Copper Mountain Rodeo)

by Lilian Darcy

  Inside the house, they found Jamie’s mom sitting in a chaotic sea of fabric scraps, which she said she was sorting, but she looked helpless about it and there was no evidence that any progress had been made, just pretty colors everywhere.

  She had dark hair scraped back in a ponytail, a petite build softened by a little middle-aged padding, and a sweet, vague sort of face. She must have been the prettiest thing when she was young, and in many ways she still was.

  She looked younger than Tegan had expected, quite a few years younger than Tegan’s own parents, maybe mid to late forties. Jamie was the same age as Tegan, twenty-six, so his mother must have been young when she had him. She knew he had siblings, but wasn’t sure where he fit in the birth order, or how many siblings there were.

  Mrs. MacCreadie gave a cry of pleasure at seeing Jamie, and scrambled to her feet for a big, warm hug. “Dad and RJ are out on the range. Somewhere about. We’ll have to call them and get them to come in. My phone is…” She waved a hand. “Oh, this is so nice. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? And this is Tegan? She’s from Austria? Well, sweetie, if it’s anything like how beautiful it looked in “The Sound of Music” it must be a gorgeous place.”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. MacCreadie, not Austria, Australia.”

  “Oh, well, I get those two places mixed up, because they’re both…” Again, she waved a hand vaguely, as if to link Austria and Australia in some thematic way that Tegan couldn’t guess at. “Now, should we have coffee? Or lunch? Or…? And you have to call me Melinda. What’s the time? Is it early?”

  “Coffee,” Jamie suggested. “Too early for lunch, and we had a pile of pancakes for breakfast. Let me help, okay?”

  It was good seeing his mom. It allowed both of them to let go of what had begun to happen in the truck. Tegan was dizzied by it. Half horrified, half lightheaded and fizzy and full of need. Did she want it? Wasn’t it just out-there impossible and ridiculous and wrong? Her and Jamie?

  And she was leaving the country in less than six weeks.

  “Well, no, I can do it perfectly well,” Melinda said to her son, “but you can come keep me company in the kitchen, both of you.”

  They followed her, keeping a safe distance from each other. Jamie stepped back and let both his mom and Tegan go first. She could almost feel him behind her, feel the warmth and weight and movement.

  She imagined in another sudden rush of heat where his eyes might be focused on her body. Was he looking at her butt? Her hair?

  She wanted to stop dead in the corridor so that he would come up against her. The thought of feeling that hard male body cannoned into her made her weak at the knees. She would turn into his arms. She wouldn’t be able to resist. She wouldn’t care what he did to her, where his hands and mouth went, what they said to each other.

  They needn’t say anything at all.

  Ever.

  Thank heaven there was his mom here, because Tegan needed to think about this, and give it time. Her and Jamie?

  The kitchen was a big farm-style one with lots of bench space and a wooden table at one end and gorgeous vistas of land and sky out the windows, similar to the kitchen Tegan had grown up with, and it gave her a stab of homesickness so strong she had to sit down and live through it till it ebbed, like waiting for a stomach ache to go.

  Similar kitchen, she decided, but not the same. Mum was a pretty efficient house-keeper.

  Here, there was a mess of dishes covered in soapy water in the sink, and a large, half-chopped onion on a chopping board on the counter. The dishwasher was partway open, with dishes inside that might have been clean or dirty, you couldn’t tell. Pinned to the refrigerator with promotional magnets from local stores was a typed sheet of paper headed, “Do one thing at a time!” Then there was a list:

  1) Empty dishwasher

  2) Empty drain board

  3) Stack dishwasher

  4) Wipe down counter and table

  The list of simple tasks went on down the page. There was a second list on the fridge, too, headed in a fancy printed font, “Things to remember.” But the good intention hadn’t been followed through on, there, because there was nothing on the list.

  On the table where Tegan sat was another sheet of paper, hand-written this time, with the heading, “What I am going to do today.” Then in brackets, the same instruction as before. “Do one thing at a time!”

  In a different hand, there was more writing. “Do kitchen, sort fabric, make a salad.”

  “Now…” said Jamie’s mom, looking vaguely around.

  “You sit,” he said. “I’ll get coffee on.”

  “Maybe I should finish that onion? I got distracted…”

  “Sit, Mom,” Jamie said, brief but patient, while Tegan wondered what kind of a salad required that much onion.

  “Maybe I should see if I can bring the fabric in here.”

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “Sort some of it while we’re having our coffee.”

  “How’re you going to sort it?”

  “Oh, you know. What I want to keep. What might make a good project.”

  “Maybe you should have a yard sale. There’s a lot of it.”

  “Well, that’s what your dad says. He says it doesn’t help having it around, because then I get stressed about the projects.”

  “He’s right.”

  “Jess finished a quilt for me. I thought maybe I could package up sets of quilting quarters for each of the girls….”

  “Jess is the only one who quilts, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, I guess, but - ”

  “Have a yard sale,” he repeated.

  “Maybe I could give most of it to Jess, and just keep a little. For a Christmas project.”

  “Mom, I don’t think you have enough time to finish a Christmas project. It’s October already.”

  “I guess…” she said again, even more doubtfully.

  “Anyhow, let’s not talk about it now, because it’s not that interesting for Tegan, and it stresses you out.”

  “I should do the coffee.” She looked around.

  “I’ve done the coffee. It’s dripping through, don’t you smell it?”

  “Oh, right, so you have.”

  “Are there some cookies we could have with it?”

  “Well, your dad went to the store…”

  “I’ll check the pantry.” He went toward it, and Tegan helplessly watched the way his body moved.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I’m sorry,” he said outside a little later, after they’d drunk their coffee, eaten a couple of the store-bought chocolate chip cookies he’d found, and talked over some bits of family news. His mom had stayed in the house, vaguely promising to try to reach his dad on his cell phone to tell him Jamie was here. Tegan had the feeling something would happen to distract her from the call. “She’s always like that.”

  “She seems nice,” Tegan said truthfully.

  “She is. She’s the nicest person in the world.” He let them both into the small, grassed paddock where they’d put the horses, leaving the gate closed against the gatepost but not fastened. The gatepost had dropped in the ground and the gate dragged, so he’d had to lift it, the action turning his forearm into a twisted rope of tanned muscle. “But she’s not… you know… strong, and she doesn’t cope with stuff, and she can’t focus.”

  “Yes, I could see. That must be hard, on a ranch.” Tegan knew the work required on any piece of acreage. Successful farm marriages and ranching marriages had to be working partnerships as well as loving unions. Both the man and the woman needed to pull their weight, share the load.

  “It’s frustrating,” Jamie agreed. “For years when we were little, Dad had her going to doctors and people, trying I don’t know what, but nothing helped. Or if it did, it was minimal, and she couldn’t take the effort, so she stopped. They were both such young parents. She was eighteen when she had my sister Rose, and nineteen when she had RJ, and twenty when she had my sisters and me.”

&n
bsp; “Your sisters and you? All at the same time? You mean triplets?”

  “Yeah, Jess, Jodie and me.”

  “Five kids in two years?”

  “Not surprising she couldn’t take the pressure, I guess. She just never… bounced back, or something. Aunt Kate lived with us for years, helping out, waiting for my mom to cope a little better, once we were in school. But nothing changed. Mom was still all over the place. She tries with stuff. Every week, still, she talks about new ways to manage or fresh starts or help from Dad, but everything she does ends up making more mess and chaos than if she hadn’t tried at all. She gets all excited and embarks on projects, or systems - like those lists on the fridge - but they peter out because they confuse her. She just can’t stay organized.”

  “So your dad has to try to keep things together.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. And my brother. Aunt Kate. My sisters. Any of us, when we’re around.” He hooked a lead rope through Faro’s halter and rested his hand on the gelding’s warm, satiny side for a moment.

  Tegan hadn’t caught Shildara yet. The mare wouldn’t give any trouble about it. She never did. In fact, she was standing right there, nuzzling Tegan’s shoulder, as if to say, “You riding me or what? I’m ready…”

  “When I was a kid,” Jamie went on, “I didn’t really notice how much Mom drifted around, how little she actually did, how much she depended on Dad and Aunt Kate. I thought everything was normal.” He paused again, leaned his forehead on the horse’s neck, this time, then rolled it against the smooth expanse of neck so he could look at Tegan with that narrow, thoughtful look in his blue eyes. “You know, looking back, I feel like I grew up with half a mom.”

  The words kicked home, kicked Tegan in the gut.

  She said in a scratchy voice, “Me, too.”

  “Yeah?” He was studying her as if he, too, was trying to work out what the heat meant, and what they should do about it. The air was thick with it, and they could both read each other’s thoughts. Or each other’s bodies.

  “Different.” She tried to shrug it off, at once sorry that she’d said anything. “No, it’s different.”

  “How?”

  Okay, do I talk about this?

  Jamie was waiting. She’d accused him of not knowing how to talk to women, but she’d been unfair about that, she decided. Talking was hard. No wonder he couldn’t do it. She couldn’t, either. “Step-mother, actually,” she said.

  “Oh, okay, I didn’t know.”

  The horses didn’t know what was going on. Were they being caught and ridden, or not? There were two saddles resting over the top rail of the fence, but nothing was happening. They stayed very close, almost touching their riders, but bent their heads to the grass and started to eat, leaving Tegan and Jamie in the middle of a glossy, warm, horse-shaped sandwich that was oddly private, under the huge, sunny Montana October sky.

  “I don’t remember my real mother,” Tegan said. “Or maybe just the tiniest bit. She died when I was two. Cancer. And my dad remarried a year later. I always thought my step-mum was just my mum. I don’t remember her not being around, not being the one to tuck me in bed at night.”

  “Mum. Cute how you say it.”

  “That’s how we say it in Australia. Shorter. Mum. Not Mo-o-om.”

  “Don’t get off topic,” he scolded her softly.

  “Maybe I want to.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not letting you.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” she said rudely, like a five-year-old.

  “Oh, I’d like to be.” He gave a dark, syrupy laugh. “Give you what’s coming to you.”

  “Now who’s getting off topic?” she said, shaky with wanting him.

  He let out a breath between his straight white teeth. “You don’t have to talk about it, Tegan, if you don’t want to.”

  “You said I did.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a fine one to insist, aren’t I? I hate talking.”

  “But we’ve been doing a bit of it.”

  “We have.”

  They could have kissed at that point. They both wanted to. It was in the air again, thicker than ever. Her gaze kept dragging to his mouth. The scant six inches of air between them buzzed and heated up. Her crotch felt tender, sensitive, full. But somehow, by mutual and unworded agreement, they held off. Held their breath on it for a little longer.

  Because they were scared, or because it was hotter that way?

  Maybe both…

  “So you called her “Mum”?” he prompted. “But you knew she wasn’t?”

  “I knew, technically, because she and Dad both showed me pictures in albums, and said that was my other mummy, who died, and I think I do have a couple of tiny memories. But I loved her. Mum. My step-mum. I really loved her, and I felt like her girl, just as much as my brother Ben - my half-brother - was her son. And then - ”

  Do. Not. Cry.

  She made herself get practical again. “I did a three-year agriculture degree in animal husbandry, after I left high school. I made it totally clear that I was committed to the farm and wanted to take over from Mum and Dad when they were ready. Maybe share it with Ben, if he wanted a farm life, too.”

  “He’s how much younger?”

  “Six years. He’s twenty. I made it clear. I talked to Dad about the horse thing, trying rodeo. What you said this morning, remember? You needed some time away, so that you could come back and be happy. I was the same. I talked to him about it.” The lump of anger and hurt and indignation and burning loss formed in her throat again and she had to stop.

  “What happened?”

  “I got a phone call from Dad. A year and a half ago, about six months after I came over here.”

  “Few months after I met you.”

  “About that.”

  She remembered. Chet was the one person she’d thought she might talk to about what had happened. But Jamie was along for the ride, that night, so she hadn’t, and the moment had passed. Maybe that was when she’d really decided that she and Jamie didn’t get on.

  “They’d sold the farm,” she told this very different-seeming Jamie, now. “Done deal. Dad was upset about it, and kind of weird. He sounded old. I couldn’t understand. I said why, when they knew… he knew… that I wanted to farm it myself. Help him, and then take over. I’d done the right degree. I came home whenever I could to help. This was going to be two years over here, that was all, and he knew that.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. He put Mum on the line, because he’s another one who’s not that great with talking about the important stuff. I don’t know if she meant it to hurt. Did she? She couldn’t have. Surely. But she said it, anyhow. That Ben had decided he didn’t want the farm, so it had to be sold so he could have his cash share. I said what would have happened if it had been the other way around? If Ben was the one who’d wanted it, and I was the one who didn’t? Would they have sold it then, so that I could have my cash share?”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “Not a word, for, like, a minute. I almost thought she’d put down the phone. Then she said in this weird, cold, uncomfortable voice, “That’s different,” and I knew what she meant. Ben was hers and I wasn’t. She put his needs ahead of anything of mine. She talked Dad into it. And this loving mother I thought I had… strict, looking back, and not that demonstrative, but, you know, she cooked my dinner and picked me up from the school bus and cleaned my riding boots until I was nine and told her I wanted to do it myself… This woman I’d called Mummy or Mum almost since I learned to talk… wasn’t quite the full deal after all. Half a mom. Just like you said.”

  “Rough.” He was looking at her.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s why you don’t really want to go back? Why you wanted to get a green card and stay on?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Could have married me. I offered, remember?”


  “You were just saying that to take the pressure of Chet, Jamie, I knew that perfectly well.”

  He didn’t argue. “So you’re going to go back?”

  “Not much other option,” she said.

  “When?”

  “I guess I’ll start working on it as soon as this rodeo is over. I need to buy a plane ticket, sell my horse, see if Kara will buy out my half of the trailer and pickup, find a friend to stay with when I arrive.”

  “You won’t stay with your parents?”

  She stiffened instantly, and he must have seen it, because he added quickly, “Okay, don’t answer that. I know you’re angry. And hurt. Have you talked to them since the phone conversation? You do, don’t you? I’ve heard you mention it.”

  “I call, and we’re on Facebook. I don’t want to hurt Dad. I kept waiting for Mum to apologize or explain. To say she didn’t meant it that way, that she loves me just as much. But she’s never said a word. Ben’s doing a law degree. You start that straight out of school, in Australia. You don’t have to do an undergraduate degree first. He’s bought a unit… apartment… in Sydney, with his share of the farm money. Mum and Dad have moved into town. Place called Tamworth, in New South Wales. Very big into country music and horse events. It’s a nice town. Not that that’s relevant to anything…. Shoot, if Mum had said it was different because Ben was male - strong, strapping farmer material - and I was just a girl, it would have hurt less. I loved my farm. I’ve lost that, and half a mother, and I’m angry at Dad. Well, at both of them, and… yeah.” She came to a stop.

  “Rough…” he said, the way he’d said it before.

  One word.

  Looking at her.

  Blue eyes.

  Jamie, who didn’t know how to talk to women, but somehow that didn’t matter. One word was enough.

  He reached up and closed his hand softly around her arm, ran it up and down a little. “Really rough,” he said for the third time.

  Oh, but it wasn’t rough. It was smooth, when it finally happened. They slid together through that last little bit of air, and their mouths met, and their bodies pressed together. He was only a couple of inches taller than she was, and they fit so perfectly, his thighs hard against hers, his chest a wall of muscle nudging her breasts.