How to Rope a Real Man

by Melissa Cutler

  Jenna’s heart squeezed at the revelation that Matt had threatened Carson on her behalf. Lord, she wished she didn’t love him. She wished she didn’t want him in her life so badly that a huge hole had opened up inside her at the thought of being without him.

  Carson thought Matt was going to be around for her and Tommy in a forever kind of way. How could she tell him that Matt didn’t want her? That she was too damaged to be worthy of his love? She gave another look at the whiskey bottle, then stood and leapt over the side of the truck.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Both men tracked Jenna’s movement. She paced the gravel next to the truck, keeping her attention on Carson. “You should know that I never stopped thinking about what you went through, the beating, the cover-up by your parents. I’m haunted by what happened to you to this day, differently than it haunts you, I know, but it changed my life all the same. It’s time that we faced the truth that the reasons I never let on about you being Tommy’s father haven’t changed.

  “This stupid, small-minded town isn’t safe for Tommy and me. It never was and it never will be, especially now that you’ve come out publicly. That’s why Tommy and I are moving to Santa Fe this week. We’d already planned to and I’ve got it all set up, so you don’t need to worry.”

  Fire shone in Carson’s eyes. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet, but you’re right about this place. Shit. What do we do now?” He pushed his fingers into his hair, the wheels clearly turning in his mind.

  “We don’t do anything. Hate like that is too insidious to weed out. Bucky, Lance, and Kyle aren’t the only violent bigots in Quay County,” Jenna said.

  “I can’t not do something. If I take care of those three assholes at the rodeo like I’d originally planned, then maybe I’ll send a message to the others like them that you and Tommy aren’t to be messed with. In five days, my leave is over and I’ve got to report for duty in San Diego. I won’t be here to protect you and Tommy after that. I’ve got to do everything I can.”

  Jenna hadn’t thought about how being on active duty might affect Carson’s choices. She pressed her palm to her forehead as a whole new strain of questions flashed through her mind. When was his next deployment? Was he planning to be a career soldier? Even if he wanted to be a part of Tommy’s life, father and son may not ever live in the same state. If he wanted visitation rights, did that mean Tommy would have to fly to wherever Carson was stationed? That was, if Carson wanted to be a part of Tommy’s life.

  Matt stood. “Hey, listen, violence isn’t a solid plan. You’re on the sheriff’s department’s radar now. They’ll be expecting you to try something, and if you get arrested, that doesn’t help Jenna and Tommy, and it would take away all your choices for your future.”

  Carson threw his hands in the air. “What good am I if I can’t go after the bullies that would threaten my . . . my . . .”

  “Your son?” Matt supplied. “He’s our son, too, and you being arrested wouldn’t be what’s best for any of us.”

  Jenna gaped at him. He’s our son, too?

  But Matt wasn’t done. “You said you went into the Marines to get strong so you could come back and hurt the people who hurt you, but the truth is, now that you have the strength and skill to do harm, you have to be man enough not to. If you want to get those guys who hurt you, I can help you with that. I’m a lawyer. We’ll get those bastards where it really hurts—in court.”

  Carson’s fire was doused. He dropped onto the side of the truck bed, hunching into the arms he’d propped on his knees. “I hope you’re right. I hate feeling this helpless.”

  “I know what you mean, but you’re making the right call. You and I, we’ll talk, okay? I know the Quay County district attorney well, and so does Vaughn. You’ll be here for five days, which is enough time for you to meet with her and the sheriff’s department so they can start building a case against Bucky, Lance, and Kyle. You want me to call Vaughn in the morning and make arrangements for you to meet with him and the D.A. for an interview?”

  Carson took another hit from the whiskey bottle. “Thank you. That would be good. Will you be there, too?”

  Matt squeezed his shoulder. “If that’s what you want, then absolutely.”

  Carson nodded. With a sigh that drew his shoulders up and made him look more at peace than he had been since arriving at her house that night, he turned his focus to Jenna. “You said you were moving to Santa Fe? What’s up with that?”

  “Yes, we are. And we won’t be back except to visit my sisters. I’ll make sure you have my contact information. After you’ve had time to think, we can talk about how you want to handle things with Tommy.”

  “Where are you going to live—with Matt?”

  Why did everybody assume she planned to move in with a man? Didn’t anybody have the modern sensibility to think she might be competent enough to live on her own? “I found an apartment. I’ve got a job lined up with the state as a software programmer. Good starting salary, great benefits, retirement plan—the works. Tommy’s already signed up for kindergarten there and everything.”

  She could tell the news threw him off-kilter again. “You’ll be programming computers? How did you manage to get a job like that?”

  “I’ve been going to college.” A flash of panic still seized her when she said the words, but she sounded strong and confident. A definite improvement.

  “She graduates next month from UNM as a computer engineer,” Matt added. Though his eyes and expression remained dark and guarded, his tone carried a note of pride in it, as it always did when he talked about her schooling.

  Huffing, Carson grinned at her like he was impressed. “You never needed any of us, Jenna. You were always above the fray, better than the rest of us. You really have your shit together.”

  She tried not to laugh outright at the assessment. “Not exactly.”

  Rubbing her arms, she walked to the picket fence and studied her little cottage. It’d been the foreman’s house back in the farm’s heyday. After he had been let go, it’d sat empty until Tommy was two, when her mom’s health began to spiral downward and she no longer tolerated Tommy’s little-boy energy or his occasional “terrible twos” tantrums. Jenna and Rachel had decided it was time to spruce up the cottage and move her and Tommy out of the big house.

  It’d been a great choice. Jenna liked the solitude. It was so much easier to study in secret out from under her parents’ and Rachel’s watchful eyes. She’d miss her home when she moved to Santa Fe. She’d miss wide open spaces and horses and seeing Rachel every day. Moving was the right decision on many levels, and she had no regrets or second thoughts, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to get sentimental about what she was leaving behind.

  A hand on her shoulder made her jump.

  “Jenna . . . ,” Matt said.

  She inhaled, countering the raw, ready-to-shatter feeling pervading her by drawing herself up tall, straight-spined and proud. “I get it now, what you were saying about how messed up I am,” she said in a quiet voice for his ears only. “Tommy deserves better than a pathological liar for a mother. I’m going to get myself some professional help in Santa Fe. You don’t have to stick around for all that. You said you wouldn’t leave, but I won’t hold you to it. Like I told Carson, you’re free to walk away and never look back. No one will think less of you for it. Tommy and I are going to be fine.”

  It took a lot of swallowing and teeth grinding not to shed any tears, but she managed it. She looked him in the eye and poured every last ounce of her fraying strength into her expression.

  Balling his hands in his pockets, he turned his face up to the sky and released a tremulous exhale. When he dropped his chin again and looked at her, his eyes were crowded with moisture. With a blink, a tear rolled over his cheek. He smashed his lips together and cleared his throat. “I have a lot to apologize for. And I’m going to. But first, I need to make it absolutely clear that I will not be walking away from you—from us—again. Not tonight,
and not for the rest of my life.”

  He swiped at the tear, but three more followed. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s up to you to keep me from turning into one of those creepy stalker guys because I’m not going anywhere.”

  She tried to smile at his lame attempt at levity, but her heart was too heavy to bear it.

  “Guys?” Carson called to them. “I’m going to get out of here, give you two some space. I have a lot to think about. Jenna, are you still going to be in town tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  He stowed the whiskey bottle under the backseat again. “I’ll come back in the morning. Maybe we can talk about . . .” He scratched his neck, chortling. “Actually, I have no idea what we’ll talk about. Where we go from here, I guess.”

  “You’re going to choose to be in Tommy’s life, right?” Matt asked. “You’re not bailing, are you?”

  Even though Carson’s expression turned apologetic and distressed, Jenna was glad Matt had asked because the same question had been weighing on her mind. “I don’t know, man. I really don’t. Are you going to be here tomorrow, too?”

  “Definitely.”

  Carson opened the driver’s-side door. “We’ll talk then. About Tommy and my case against Bucky, Lance, and Kyle.”

  “I’m looking forward to that,” Matt said. “I’ll let you know when the D.A. is available for a meeting.”

  They watched him leave in heavy silence.

  “Carson’s not a bad man,” Matt said, staring at the darkness where they’d last seen the taillights of Carson’s truck. “Misguided and angry, but I think he’s going to step up.”

  Jenna surprised herself by hoping he did because Matt was right; that would be best for Tommy. “Whether he does or not, Tommy and I are going to be fine.” The only dicey part was figuring out how to get through her last month of school while juggling her mommy duties in a new town and new apartment without her support network close by. After that, life would get easier—at least, she had to hope it would.

  “Of course you two will be fine. I’m going to see to it that you are.”

  Probably because it’d been a long, draining day, Jenna’s throat tightened at his words and tears threatened in her eyes all over again. “I meant what I said, Matt. You don’t have any obligations where Tommy and I are concerned. I lied to you more than once, about big things, and I don’t expect you to overlook that. I’m so sorry. It was never my intention to hurt you like I did.”

  He set his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I meant what I said, too. I’m not leaving. This isn’t about obligations or how much I love Tommy, this is about honoring and loving the most magnificent person I’ve ever met for the rest of her life.”

  “Matt, please . . .”

  “I can’t live without you, Jenna. More importantly, I don’t want to. I know I let you down, but I want to be there when you graduate. I want to be there when you come home after your first day of your new job. I want to make love to you under the stars and draw you dirty stick-figure drawings and dance with you every chance I get. I want to tuck Tommy in every night and sing him the cowboy song and take him camping. And I want to help Carson figure out how to be a dad to Tommy, too.”

  Jenna closed her eyes. They were such pretty words, but she felt so raw, so vulnerable. How could she trust what he said was true?

  Matt rubbed her arms. “I’ve dedicated my life to helping people, yet I’m doing a terrible job helping myself. I was so wrapped up in your choice to keep Tommy’s paternity from Carson, so jealous of the gift he’d been given, that I didn’t see the gift you’d already given me. The gift of your love, of opening your heart and family to me. You invited me into Tommy’s life, into your life, and I couldn’t see the blessing that was right in front of my face.

  “When we first got together, I asked you to think hard about whether or not you could live with my flaws. You accepted me. You decided to love me anyway. And I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain. You’re not a pathological liar. You don’t have any more wrong with you than any other man or woman in this world does, including me. It was reprehensible that I lashed out at you like that. I was so afraid of getting hurt that I hurt the most important person in my life.”

  His words filled her with a fresh surge of hope. Maybe there was a chance for them after all. She did need to correct him about one point first, though. She opened her eyes and placed a hand over his heart. “For the record, I didn’t decide to love you anyway, despite your genetic condition. I decided that I loved you period. There was no compromising or settling involved. I fell in love with you and that’s all there is to it.”

  His eyes welled with tears anew. “I can’t tell you what it means to me to know you think about it like that. To know you love me, there are no words.”

  She smoothed her hand over his shirt. “You would really co-father Tommy with Carson?”

  On a huff, he smiled, his brows raised, and shook his head. “It wasn’t what I ever dreamed for myself, but I’m on board with it one hundred percent. Men co-father kids all the time—dads sharing duties with stepdads, gay dads—there are all kinds of blended families out there. I honestly hope Carson does step up because it would be best for Tommy—and him. But if Carson doesn’t, Tommy will still have me. He’ll never want for love.”

  She liked the way he was thinking. She liked it a lot. Kids could use all the parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents they could get. “No, he won’t.” The raw wound of vulnerability still nagged at her, though. Despite Matt’s words, despite the love they had for each other, it didn’t change the fact that in her moment of greatest need, he’d walked away.

  “You’re thinking something dark. What is it?”

  She looked into his eyes, tempted to withhold the truth. But she thought better of it. If they were to have any chance of a future together, she had to be completely honest from here on out. “When I needed you most, your instinct was to think the worst of me. How do I know you won’t do that again if I give you my heart?” Her face crumpled and she could no longer hold back her tears. She wrenched her face to the side, looking out over the darkened hills, fighting for composure.

  She felt a tug on her hands and turned back to look. Matt had dropped to his knees before her. His eyes and cheeks were as wet as hers. “Jenna Sorentino, I love you and I swear to you that I will never walk out on you again, no matter what. I need another chance at us. I need you to save me. Please. Save me from a lifetime of regret over what I ruined with my petty, misguided pride. I don’t want to live without you, Jenna. You give me breath, you give me hope, you give me strength. Save me from the hell that a life without you would be.”

  She touched his face, love blooming inside her, crowding out her heartache. The man whom she’d once thought was only interested in people he could save wanted her to save him. What a turn-about. “What if we saved each other?”

  “I like that idea.” He stood and slid fingers along her cheeks, cradling her face as he lowered his lips to hers for a kiss that told her how very deeply he loved her. Giving a little purr in the back of her throat to let him know how welcome his touch was, she opened her lips for him, opened her arms, opened her heart.

  When the kiss ended, he stroked her hair. “There’s only one thing left to do tonight.” He fished his phone from his pocket. “Jenna, may I have this dance?”

  Wiping the last of the tears from her eyes, she beamed at him. “Only if it’s a waltz.”

  Skimming through his music library, he smiled so big that her favorite dimple appeared. “Of course. That’s my favorite.”

  “Mine, too.”

  He set his phone on a rock and kissed her again. “I knew that already.”

  As the phone played opening notes of the same song they’d waltzed to at the Sarsaparilla Saloon, he took her hand, met her in closed hold, and stepped her back into the grass.

  Epilogue

  “He’s not going to show. I know it.”

  “Yes,
he is,” Rachel shot back. “He said he would, so he will.”

  Amy shouldered her way between Rachel and Jenna. “He’s not here yet. Maybe Jenna has a point. How much longer should we wait for him? What if we can’t find seats?”

  Rachel scowled. “There you go planting ideas in her head, making her even more worried. Don’t you have enough sense to keep your mouth shut, or has pregnancy robbed you of that precious skill?”

  Amy shifted her weight with a sassy swish to her hips. “That would be a precious skill you know nothing about. You’re such a smart-ass, I bet you could sit on a carton of ice cream and tell what flavor it is.”

  Jenna groaned and covered her face with her hands. “You two are killing me. I’m freaking out here. This day is too important to me for you two to ruin it with your bickering.”

  “I’ve got just the thing we need,” Amy said. She turned and looked at the group of their family and friends standing off to the side. Kellan, Jake, and Vaughn were deep in discussion with Mr. Dixon, Tina, and Sloane. “Kellan? Did you bring that—” She brought her cupped hand up to her mouth like she was drinking from it.

  “Huh? Oh!” He felt around in the inner pocket of his flannel shirt and produced a stainless-steel flask, which he handed off to Amy with a smile.

  Amy pushed it into Jenna’s hands. “Here. This’ll help you relax.”

  Jenna made the mistake of sniffing the opening. Alcohol tingled up her nose and brought on a sneezing fit. “What is that?”

  Amy grinned. “Just a splash of New Mexico’s finest tequila.”

  “Gimme that,” Rachel said, lifting the flask from Jenna’s hands. She took a long pull from it and scrunched her face up. “Yep. That’ll do. But I still don’t understand why you can’t pack whiskey.”

  Amy frowned with mock-offense. “Jenna likes tequila.”

  “Actually, I don’t.”