Jenna's Cowboys

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “All right,” Jag said slowly with a confused expression. Jenna turned to Dillon.

  “Do you still have the flash drive?”

  “Yes, angel, of course. It’s in the safe.” He looked into her eyes for a long moment. “You sure about this?”

  She bit her lip and looked at Peter. “I wanted you here so you could learn about this if you want to, Peter, but it’s not…pretty,” she said after floundering for a word. “It could be…difficult for you. I’ll understand completely if you decide to pass.”

  “No,” Cole said, placing a gentle hand on Jenna’s shoulder. “Sorry baby, but I need to clarify that. Peter, this will be very difficult for you to see. I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I just want you to be clear ahead of time. This’ll give you nightmares.”

  Peter nodded slowly, the expression on Cole’s face telling him even more than his words how serious he was. “I understand, Cole, and I appreciate the warning.” Then he turned to Jenna. “We’re family, darlin’,” he said simply. Jenna nodded, blinking back tears. Then she turned back to Dillon and nodded again.

  “All right,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the forehead again before getting up. “Peter, Jag, would you come with me, please?” Both men got up and followed Dillon out of the room, but true to his word, Cole stayed with her.

  “Thank you for warning Peter, Cole. I didn’t know how to do it without sounding…well, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, honey,” he said. “This is real brave of you.”

  “It was a whole lot easier than I expected it to be,” she said. “I trust you and Dillon, Cole. I trust you not to hurt me, and I trust you to protect me and our children against anyone and everyone, no matter what. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do that, but I do, and it makes a big difference in the way I see things now. I’m not afraid to share my past any more, which is a good thing since it looks like maybe my past followed me here.”

  Cole reached up to brush a stray curl from her cheek, then leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead just like Dillon had done. “You trust us?” he asked with a slight tremor in his voice.

  “Yeah, I trust you,” Jenna said, reaching up to run her fingers along his jaw in a light, tender caress that raised a lump in his throat and made his eyes sting.

  “Thank you baby,” he said. “I promise, we’ll never break your trust again.”

  “I know,” she said simply.

  Cole smiled. Her faith in them doubled his determination to keep his promise. “How’re you feeling? Would you like something to eat or drink?”

  “Some of Bess’s raspberry tea would be wonderful.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Bess said entering with a steaming mug.

  “Thank you, Bess,” Jenna said, smiling.

  “You’re welcome, hon,” she said, setting the mug down close enough for her to reach. “Do you want anything else?”

  “You’re a sweetheart, but no thank you. The tea is plenty.”

  “All right then, I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.” Jenna picked up the mug and held it between her hands, enjoying the warmth that seeped into her palms. She took a couple of sips, then rested it on her knee.

  The silence of the house was broken by a muffled shout filled with shock and pain. Jenna took one hand off the mug, reached over and grasped Cole’s hand tightly, tears already filling her eyes. “That was Peter,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” Cole said, nodding. “I know.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have included him.”

  “No honey, it was the right thing to do,” Cole said. “Peter’s an ex-Navy SEAL. They don’t come much tougher than that. He loves you, so of course learning what was done to you is gonna be hard for him, just like it was for the rest of us. Don’t worry, he’ll be okay.”

  Jenna nodded and sighed before taking another sip of her tea. “How is it Peter came to be your guardian?”

  “Peter was an only child, and a late life child. His father passed on about a month before he finished high school and his mother not long after. He didn’t know what to do with himself after that so he joined the Navy. That’s where he met our Dads and since he didn’t have any family of his own, they sort of adopted him. He’s been a part of our family ever since, and that was before our Dads even met our Mom. He was Maxi and Marli’s godfather.”

  “Oh,” Jenna said softly. “No wonder he reacted so strongly when we told him the names we chose for the babies. Poor Peter.”

  “Yeah. He took it about as hard as we did when we lost our family. He’s been more of a parent than a guardian to us ever since, and still is.”

  “What about your own godfather?”

  “He died about three years before our parents,” Cole said. “That’s why they named Peter to be our legal guardian if anything happened to them.”

  “He’s never been married?”

  “No,” Cole said. “There was a woman once, when Cole and I were fifteen or sixteen. He was living with us at the time, of course, and invited her to dinner one night to meet us. That was a big step for Peter, one he’d never taken before or since. Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well.”

  “Why not?”

  “One whole wall of our living room was covered with pictures of our family. She was looking at them so Peter started telling her about them. When she realized we had three dads, she expressed her disgust rather bluntly. Peter dropped her like a hot rock.”

  “So he’s always been single?”

  “Yeah, mostly,” Cole said. “He’s no monk, but I think he’s happy with his life.”

  “Yes, he is,” Jenna agreed.

  After a while Dillon came back to the living room, but he was alone. Jenna looked at him worriedly and he understood exactly what she was thinking. “They just need a few minutes to compose themselves, angel. That’s all.” He sat down beside her and placed his arm around her shoulders. His arm was shaking and she understood that seeing the images hadn’t been easy for him even though he’d seen them before. She leaned into his shoulder a little and after a few minutes the shaking subsided.

  Finally Jag and Peter rejoined them. Peter approached her, placed trembling hands on her shoulders, pressed a kiss into her hair like he always did, then straightened up and went back to his place on the other sofa. Jag resumed his seat as well, and the room remained silent for several long moments during which Jenna looked back and forth between them, biting her lip nervously.

  Peter’s eyes were red, she noticed, but his jaw was set and he looked tense, as though he was about to explode. Jag appeared calm except for his eyes which somehow managed to look both sad and furious at the same time. She tightened her grip on Cole’s fingers, leaned a bit more into Dillon, and waited.

  “I have to say,” Jag began, then paused to clear his throat. “My estimation of you just jumped up a few degrees, Jenna. To have gone through…that…and still be sane, let alone be the sweet, caring woman you are, is something of a miracle.”

  Jenna stared at him in surprise. He smiled. “We’ve never met, Jenna, but I’ve seen enough of you, and heard enough about you, to know how lucky Cole and Dillon are.”

  She swallowed hard. “Thank you, Jag. I’m real sorry that was so hard for you guys to see, but I really couldn’t have…explained it.”

  “You did the right thing, Jenna,” Jag said, “I needed to see those files to have a clear understanding of what happened to you.”

  “I agree,” Peter said, his voice strained. “Don’t you worry none darlin’, we’re fine.” Jenna could only nod even though she didn’t think Peter was fine at all.

  “I do have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind,” Jag said.

  “Of course,” Jenna replied.

  Jag asked his questions, none of which touched on difficult or emotional subjects. He wanted names, dates, places, information that she had no trouble answering. When he was finished Jag put his pen in his pocket and rested the clipboard on his knee. “What I’m gonna do is s
end a crew up to Oregon right away to establish themselves locally, make some connections, develop sources and begin gathering intel. I’ll give them about ten days for that, then I’ll follow with a few more men.” Jenna’s hand tightened in Cole’s again which, apparently, Jag noticed. “We’re not gonna tell anyone where we’re from, so there’s no need to worry about that.” He hesitated a moment, then sat forward.

  “I understand why you wanted, even needed, to keep your past a secret, Jenna,” he said. “I’d have done the same thing in your place. It was the smart thing to do, just like changing your last name was the smart thing to do. But you’re part of Sparx now, and that changes things. We take care of our own here, and that means you can put all of that out of your mind from here on. All you need do now is let Cole and Dillon take care of you, and focus on Max and Marli.”

  “Thank you Jag, I appreciate that,” Jenna said, touched that even Jag, who she’d never met, knew and used the babies’ names. She tilted her head curiously. “It occurs to me that you probably could have found all this out on your own if you’d wanted to.”

  “I could’ve,” Jag said with a faint smile. “But I make it a habit not to go sticking my nose in other people’s business unless I’m invited to do so, or unless I think they’re a danger to the people of our town.” He rose to his feet. “I think I’ve got all I need from you. If I have any other questions, I can call Dillon or Cole.”

  Jenna understood he was asking her rather than telling her, and she appreciated that, too. “Yes, that’d be great, Jag, thanks,” she said, letting him know that talking to them on this subject instead of her was just fine as far as she was concerned. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “It was real good meeting you too, Jenna. You take care now.”

  “I will,” she said, then glanced at Dillon and Cole and smiled. “Or they will.” Jag chuckled along with Dillon and Cole.

  “I’ll walk you out, Jag,” Dillon said, pushing himself up off the couch. After they were gone, Jenna turned her attention to Peter, who hadn’t hardly moved since sitting down.

  “You okay, Peter?”

  “No, darlin’,” he said tightly. “I don’t reckon I am. I don’t want you to think I regret my decision to learn what all happened to you, because I don’t and I never will. Like I said, we’re family and to my way of thinking, that’s forever and unconditional. Now, if there was someone I could hunt down, that might help.”

  “I know what you mean,” Jenna said. “For a long time whenever my thoughts would turn angry and vengeful, which happened a lot more often than I care to admit, I’d hear my father saying, An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”

  “Who said that?” Cole asked.

  “Gandhi,” Jenna and Peter both answered at the same time. Peter shifted his eyes from Cole to Jenna. “Did it help you to think of that?”

  “No,” Jenna replied ruefully. “To be honest, it usually just pissed me off.”

  “I imagine so,” Peter said, cracking a smile. “Personally, I prefer what Heinrich Heine said; We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”

  Jenna nodded slowly, her brows lowered, a serious expression on her face. “Yes, yes, that’s good,” she said thoughtfully. “My absolute favorite though is something Ivanka Trump once said. Gorgeous hair is the best revenge.”

  Peter laughed. He couldn’t help it. One moment he was wondering if he’d ever get those blood soaked images of Jenna out of his mind, and the next she was drawing an honest to goodness laugh out of him. It was a rather pointed reminder that, despite what had been done to her, despite the horror and the heartache and the pain of it, she was alive and well and sitting right there, casting her own special brand of warmth and light over their lives without even knowing she was doing it. He shook his head and rose to his feet, then approached Jenna and crouched down to eye level with her. “I’ll be grateful every day for the rest of my life that I got to know you, Jenna James, and that I get to call you family.”

  Jenna leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Peter’s neck. For the first time in eight years she experienced the warmth and comfort that she’d only ever felt when her father had hugged her. She pulled back and kissed his cheek, smiling in spite of her tears. Peter returned her smile, then rose and left quietly.

  “I love you so much Jenna that I don’t even have words to express it,” Cole said. “Thank you for what you just did for Peter.”

  Jenna smiled at him, wishing she could say the words she wanted to say. But she couldn’t. They just wouldn’t come out yet. Instead she leaned over and pressed her lips to his cheek, then rested her head on his shoulder. She was feeling tired again but wanted to stay awake until Dillon returned so she fought it. A minute later Cole gently removed her empty mug from her hands, but made no move to get up.

  “I knew she’d be sleeping,” Dillon said when he returned to the living room. “How’s she doing?”

  “Good,” Cole said. “Just a bit wore out. How’d it go with Peter and Jag?”

  “About what you might expect,” Dillon said with a sigh as he sat on the edge of the coffee table so they could talk softly. “Thanks to your warning they knew what was coming was going to be bad. That helped some, but it was still rough.” Cole nodded, understanding that completely. “I showed ‘em the police reports first, answered enough questions that they had a good idea of what happened. Then I warned them how graphic the pictures were and asked if they wanted to see them. They did.” Dillon bowed his head and fixed his eyes on his boots. “Peter lost it a little, but he pulled it together fairly well, considering. Jag was so mad I could feel it rolling off him in waves. I swear I ain’t never seen that man so angry. He looked like he wanted to pick up the whole damn desk and throw it across the room. I showed them two or three pictures and then suggested that was enough for them to get the idea, but they insisted on seeing them all. Peter said that if Jenna could live through what was done to her, he could damn well live through learning about it.

  “After that I was ready to stop, but Jag saw the folder labelled Jacob and wanted to know what was in it. I couldn’t bring myself to describe that, and I knew they’d want to see them no matter what I said anyway, so I just opened it up and let them see for themselves. I swear, those ultrasound images of Jacob were as hard for them to take as the pictures of Jenna. They both broke down, which is why it took them so long to collect themselves before rejoining us.”

  Cole nodded. When he and Dillon had put the flash drive in the computer to see what was on it, they’d broken down over those images as well. There was nothing extraordinary about them. They were just sonogram images of a fetus taken over a span of several weeks. It was knowing what happened to that fetus that tore everyone up.

  Cole cleared his throat and focused on the now. “Jenna heard Peter shout and was worried it was a mistake to include him. She made him laugh, though.”

  “Did she?” Dillon asked, a half smile on his face.

  “Yeah,” Cole said, lightly stroking her arm as he told Dillon about it. Dillon chuckled softly. “She trusts us, Dillon.”

  “What?”

  “She told me that she trusts us. That’s why she decided it was okay to let them see those files. She trusts us not to hurt her, and to protect her and our children. I promised her we wouldn’t ever break her trust again, and you know what she said?”

  Dillon shook his head.

  “She said, I know.”

  Dillon nodded, unable to speak for a few moments. “Well,” he said, then paused to take a few calming breaths before speaking again. “Did you tell her the bedroom’s finished?”

  “No, I thought we’d do that together.”

  “How about we take her in there and put her to bed. It can’t be all that comfortable for her to sleep sitting up like that.”

  “Good idea,” Cole said. “She can wake up in her own bed for a change.” Dillon stood, then bent to slip his arms around Jenna, lifting her easily from the sofa.


  “It’s funny how she keeps referring to herself as huge when she’s so tiny,” he said as he cradled her gently in his arms.

  “Yeah,” Cole said, smiling. “What do you think, Dillon? Tonight?”

  “I hope so, but let’s see how she’s feeling first.”

  “Of course.”

  ***

  When Jenna awoke her eyes widened at her surroundings, then she smiled. “How nice,” she said to Dillon who was sitting on a chair beside the bed.

  “Surprise,” he said, grinning.

  “I’m so glad this is done,” she said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the guest room, but I missed this room. And this bed.”

  “So did we, angel,” he said. “Hungry?”

  “Nope, not in the least,” she replied, surprising him. “The piranha are starving, though.” Dillon laughed as he got up and stepped closer to the bed. “Bathroom?”

  “Yes please.”

  “Cole’s cooking tonight,” he said, scooping her up and carrying her into the bathroom.

  “Ah, I guess that means hamburgers or frozen pizza.”

  “The first one,” Dillon said as he set her down. “If you want something else I can make that happen.”

  “Nope, hamburgers sound good to me.” And they did, too. Cole didn’t cook much, but he made the best burgers she’d ever eaten. Not that she’d ever tell Meg that. Half an hour later, her hunger quieted enough to allow for some conversation, she asked Dillon about Peter.

  “It wasn’t easy for him, but he’s all right,” Dillon replied. “You don’t need to worry about him.”

  Jenna sipped her water, then picked up a french fry. “I know I don’t need to worry about him, but I do. Will you at least check on him in the morning for me? Make sure he’s okay?”

  “Of course,” Dillon agreed.

  “By the way, Meg called this afternoon while you were sleeping,” Cole said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry I missed her,” Jenna said. “Did she call for any particular reason?”

  “She did, actually,” Cole replied. “She’s planning that baby shower for you and wanted to confirm a date.”