A Cowboy's Heart

by Brenda Minton

  “James Duncan.”

  “Mr. Duncan, my bulls are not abused. My bulls receive excellent care, the best food and a home where they are prized for their abilities. I have nearly twenty animals that are actively used in bull riding, some in the top arenas, and some in smaller rodeos. Each month they work approximately ten minutes, ten minutes total, and yet they receive the best care. How can that be cruel?”

  “They’re forced to buck.”

  “No, they’re not forced. If I have a bull that doesn’t buck, then I sell him, because bulls either buck or they don’t. And my bulls are protected from abuse.” She ground out the words, no longer being careful. “The bull-riding community protects their animals, even at the events.”

  Her hands were shaking, and she knew that her voice had reached a higher octave. The man in front of her continued to smile, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Clint straighten from his relaxed pose, leaning against the barn.

  Willow shook her head at him, not wanting him to intervene. He backed up, but he remained tense, like a guard dog about to do damage, and her heart reacted. She nearly smiled at the reporter.

  “Mr. Duncan, I believe this interview is over. If you really want the truth, and not a sensationalized spin on my sport, then attend an event with us. Watch how my bulls are treated, and then write the article.”

  “That’s a nice offer, Ms. Michaels, but I have my story.”

  He walked away, his steps light, as if what he had done didn’t matter, as if he was happy with the way things had gone. And Willow was shaking, unable to stop because it did matter. It mattered when someone took away your strength or made you feel like less than a whole person.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Strong arms pulled her close. She stiffened, but he didn’t let go. And she didn’t want to pull free. She wanted to melt into his embrace, and for just a minute, let herself be protected.

  He bent and his cheek, rough and unshaved, brushed hers. His scent, mountain air and pine, teased her senses as his hands rubbed her arms and then slipped down to hold her hands.

  “You were amazing.”

  No, amazing was how it felt to be held by someone who thought she had been strong, when she had really felt like walking away.

  Slowly, regrettably, she backed out of his arms. “Now what happens? What story does he think he has that is better than the story of my bulls?”

  “The story of you. The story of bulls. Or maybe of us.”

  “Us?”

  He smiled, those gray eyes twinkling with amusement that she didn’t get. “Us, because he thought there was an us.”

  “There is no us. There is no story. He’s going to target a sport that I love, and my personal life. And there’s nothing I can do about it, or about the rumors that will fly once that magazine comes out.”

  “No, Willow, there’s nothing you can do about it.” He shook his head. “I have work to do.”

  He walked away. A cowboy in faded jeans, scuffed boots, and calloused hands that had held her close. His expression as he turned from her had reflected his own pain, and something in his eyes she hadn’t understood.

  Willow walked into her office and closed the door. She yanked off her hearing aids and threw them in the box, because there were days when it didn’t pay to hear.

  And days when she feared she would lose her hearing completely.

  She sat down in the leather office chair that swallowed her, wrapping around her, but feeling nothing like the arms of a cowboy.

  Cowboys didn’t understand how weakness felt, or fear. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Clint had watched his sister leave for Iraq, leaving behind two little boys. He understood fear.

  She bowed her head because God understood her fear. He understood forsaken. She whispered the words of Jesus on the cross, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.”

  Forsaken was how she had felt when her parents put her on a plane to Chicago. She had been ten years old, and frightened, but they had decided she needed to attend a private school for hearing-impaired children.

  Forsaken was how she felt when her husband told her she couldn’t be the wife he needed. He had ended it by telling her he needed a wife that would help his career. A wife who liked to socialize. A wife who didn’t embarrass him.

  He had picked her best friend to replace her.

  Forsaken. But not. Even when she had felt alone, pushed aside, and rejected, God had been there, a prayer away. God hadn’t forgotten her. He had a plan. Maybe not her plan, but His plan. And maybe it wouldn’t be easy, but she had to convince herself there would be moments of beauty that would make all the pain worth it.

  She reached into the box and withdrew the hearing aids, her life since age ten. It had started with meningitis she’d caught as a preschooler, and slowly progressed to severe hearing loss.

  And now, now the slow progression was increasing. She slipped the pieces of plastic behind her ears and found the number of her doctor in Tulsa. The way to deal with fear was to confront it, head on.

  When she walked out of the barn a short time later she had an appointment with her doctor. His nurse had told her that it was probably nothing.

  Laughter carried across the lawn, soft and fluttery. Willow glanced in the direction of the driveway in front of the house. Clint was helping the boys into the truck. They were “three-of-a-kind,” and that brought a smile she hadn’t felt five minutes ago.

  Little David turned and waved his tiny, sun-browned hand. His smile was timid and sweet. Timmy’s wave was big, and his smile consumed his face. Sunlight glinted from their silvery-blond hair, and she knew that someday they would be carbon copies of their uncle.

  Their uncle, Clint. He turned, a grimace on his face as he tried to smile with Timmy tugging on his left arm, still held to his side in a sling. Two weeks, the doctor had told him. Maybe longer. Not good news for a guy that made his living on the back of a bull.

  She walked in their direction, drawn by the boys. She wanted to hug them. She wanted to promise them that their mother would come home. She wanted to apologize to Clint, but she didn’t know what to say.

  “Where are you three off to?” She smiled at the boys.

  “We’ve gotta get in some kind of school.” Timmy answered as he always did, mimicking the last adult to give him information.

  She laughed, knowing that his words were an echo of something Clint had said to them. He had mentioned to her that the twins needed to enroll now for kindergarten in the fall.

  “That sounds like fun.” Her gaze lingered on David, because the look on his face told her he didn’t agree that it would be fun.

  “It will be fun.” Clint chucked David under the chin, smiling at the child. “And after we enroll, we’re going to get ice cream. Want to go with us?”

  Willow hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected to be included, and hadn’t thought she would want to say yes. The boys were watching her with twin gazes that said they wanted her to go. She looked up, connecting with Clint, and not sure if he really felt the same as the boys.

  But the boys wanted her to go. And David needed to eat. She smiled at the twins.

  “I could probably use your help.” Clint shrugged the shoulder that was still healing. “Sometimes they’re hard to hold on to.”

  Did he really need her help? Maybe not as much as she needed to spend time with Timmy and David, eating ice cream and laughing over silly jokes that children told.

  “I’d love to go. Let me tell Janie.”

  “She isn’t here. Her bridge group is meeting.”

  “Okay, then let me get my purse. If you need me to drive, it might help if I have my license.”

  “I can drive.”

  No more arguments or excuses. Willow climbed into the passenger seat of the truck. The boys climbed into the backseat. And then Clint was in the seat next to her, and she looked away. It was easier to glance in the backseat and smile at the boys, both jabbering about ice cream and school, childhood thin
gs that were easy and light.

  Clint had watched Willow’s smile disappear. He had seen the tears shimmering in her eyes. There could have been several reasons. The boys, maybe, or the reporter. Possibly the call he’d overheard her make. He hadn’t listened to the entire conversation. He knew she’d called a doctor’s office.

  Seeing that soft shimmer of tears, and knowing her fear, helped him to push aside his anger with her, or whatever he had felt when she pulled away from him, saying things that made him think that she had her own thoughts about being out of his league. She didn’t want rumors spread about the two of them.

  “My aunt isn’t really meeting with her bridge group.” She smiled now. He took his attention off the road for just a second, long enough to see that she’d pulled herself together.

  “Really?” He didn’t want to get in the middle of this mess.

  “She wants to move to Florida with her friends.” Willow fiddled with a ring on her right hand. “She thinks I don’t know. But a friend of hers was excited about the plan and let it slip.”

  “Willow, she doesn’t want to hurt you.”

  “And I don’t want to hurt her by keeping her here.”

  He wanted to ignore this side of her that cared about the happiness of others. He had already learned too much about Willow Michaels. He had learned that she was easy to like, and easy to care about. And he had a dad in a nursing home, and two boys to raise for the next year. He didn’t need more complications.

  She could be that and more.

  “I’ll miss her, Clint. But she isn’t hurting me by doing what she has always wanted to do. When I was a teenager, she talked about retiring to Florida someday. She wants to go with friends. She wants to learn to play golf, and figure out what shuffleboard is all about.”

  “Does anyone really understand shuffleboard?”

  “Someone must.”

  The day had started with a reporter ambushing her, and now they were talking about shuffleboard. She was a survivor. They had that in common.

  “She’s afraid you’ll sell the bulls if she leaves.”

  He glanced away from the road, to see how she took that news. She was smiling.

  “She’s always looking out for me. When my parents shipped me off to Chicago, Janie met me at the airport. They didn’t ask her to. She found out what they’d done, and she showed up without telling them. She didn’t want a little girl to get off the plane alone, in a strange city, to be met by strangers.”

  “She bought our Christmas presents and put us through college.” Clint smiled at the memory. “She didn’t believe in storing up, for herself, ‘treasure on earth, when there were little treasures down the road, needing so much.’”

  “I will miss her if she goes.” She was looking out the truck window. “But I won’t sell the bulls. I’ll figure out a way to make it work.”

  “Tell her that.”

  “I’ll tell her.” A short pause, and then she laughed. “That’s why she wants you working on the ranch. She’s making sure I have someone to help me. I was afraid it was all about matchmaking.”

  “She’s always trying to protect the people she cares about.” But he had sort of thought it might be about matchmaking, too.

  They drove toward Grove and past the house that Clint still planned to remodel. Soon. Clint’s mind switched in that direction, and away from Willow, thinking about that house and what needed to be done. He thought about the cattle he wanted to raise on a farm that had been neglected for more years than he could count.

  And then his thoughts returned to a part of their conversation that he had heard, but hadn’t really thought about.

  “Your parents sent you to the States alone? Why?”

  She shrugged. “They had a busy schedule, school was starting. That summer they realized how bad my hearing was. I hadn’t really noticed. Or maybe I had adjusted without realizing. As it got worse, I paid more attention to lips when people spoke, and I asked a lot of questions. But that summer my hearing got progressively worse.”

  The information poured out of her, surprising him. She was so matter-of-fact, so accepting. But he was imagining how it changed a person’s life, to be unable to hear conversations, or to be left out of what was going on.

  “But they sent you across the world, alone. That couldn’t have been easy.”

  She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but he wondered if that was the truth. “Who has a perfect story, Clint? Not you, not me. Some have stories that are a little sweeter, with less pain. But almost everyone has a story. My parents love me, but they were busy with their careers. And frankly, I was a little embarrassing. I was a clunky kid with thick glasses, hearing aids and a penchant for hiding in corners.”

  “You were a clunky kid?”

  “Tall, scrawny, and clunky.”

  She had more stories, he knew that. What had sent her running to Oklahoma and Aunt Janie? What kept her hiding in that corner and pushing people out of her life? Did it all go back to a little girl who thought she’d embarrassed her parents?

  But she was right, everyone had a story. And he wouldn’t push for hers. His story sat in the back seat of his truck, two little boys that needed him to focus on their lives, and their well-being. And he had a history of poor choices in the romance department that made him more than a little gun-shy.

  As if she understood, Willow glanced over her shoulder, her smile real, and not meant for him. “You know what, guys? I think we should eat pizza before we have ice cream.”

  It was that easy for her to shift the conversation away from her, to make it about two little boys. He thought she’d had a lifetime of experience, deflecting attention from herself. She knew how to build walls.

  He had built a few himself.

  Willow walked through the door that Clint held open for her and the boys. A wall of cold air greeted them: someone wasn’t afraid to turn their air conditioner on before June. Willow shivered and the boys reached for her hands, one on either side.

  She smiled at the hostess who mumbled something about seating them. A hand waved from across the restaurant. A farmer that had sold her a few cows. She nodded a greeting and then he noticed Clint.

  “Great.” Clint spoke close to her ear. “Here we go again.”

  “What?” Willow pulled out a chair at the table the hostess had led them to.

  Before Clint could answer, the farmer, Dale Gordon, stood next to their table. He was a big guy, with striped overalls and a wide smile.

  “Clint Cameron. I’d heard you were back in town. Don’t tell me you’re going to try and make something of that old farm.”

  “Sure am, Dale.”

  “Might as well sell it to me.”

  Now Willow understood. She pretended to help the two boys with their napkins as she listened to bits and pieces of conversation.

  “I’m not going to sell something that’s been in my family for over a hundred years, Dale.”

  “It was in my family first.”

  “Your granddaddy lost it in a poker game. Tough luck, but I’m not selling.”

  Dale laughed. “You’ve always been hardheaded.”

  “Sure have and so have you. I think we’re cousins, at least six or seven removed.”

  “Something like that.” Dale patted Clint on the back. “Let me know if you change your mind about the old place.”

  “Will do, Dale.”

  Willow smiled up at the waitress who had arrived to take their order. She was a cute girl with blond hair in a ponytail and pale blue eyes that sparkled with sunshine when she smiled at the boys.

  “Can I take your order?”

  Clint looked at Willow, waiting for her to order. Now would be the time to tell him she really didn’t like pizza. She smiled and ordered a salad. Clint ordered a large pepperoni pizza.

  “Has he always wanted that land?” Willow turned her coffee cup over for the waitress to fill it.

  “For as long as I can remember. There were a few times I was afraid my d
ad would sell. He always sobered up and came to his senses.”

  She tried to picture Clint as a kid, holding his family together, the same way he was holding it together now.

  “It couldn’t have been easy.”

  His brows arched at that. “What couldn’t have been?”

  “Your dad.”

  “It wasn’t all bad.”

  She waited for him to tell her more. But he didn’t share. Instead he moved aside their drinks and the napkin holder as the waitress arrived with their pizza. The boys lifted their plates for a slice, and for the first time in a long time, Willow was tempted by pizza. The crust was soft, and cheese dripped.

  Clint laughed. “You can have a slice. Surely you’re not on a diet.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing like that. I’m not much of a pizza person.”

  Both boys were staring, eyes wide. She felt like she’d just announced something scandalous. Clint laughed again.

  “Have a slice, Willow.”

  Pizza, a day with Clint and the boys, and her heart tripping all over itself. Willow didn’t know how much more she could handle.

  “Okay, one slice.” She took the plate with the pizza. Clint handed her a fork.

  “You’ll like it better if you just pick it up and eat it. But I have a feeling you’re a knife-and-fork girl.”

  She didn’t take the fork. “Don’t make assumptions, Clint Cameron.”

  The pizza was hot, but she picked it up and took a bite. And she wasn’t sorry that she had. She smiled at the boys as she pulled the slice away, cheese stringing along behind it.

  “Okay, I admit it, pizza is good.”

  Clint put another slice on her plate and moved her salad aside. “Some things grow on a person.”

  Yes, some things did.

  They were finishing lunch when Clint stood and pulled his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. Willow moved David’s cup away from the edge of the table and shot a glance in the direction of the man walking away from them, the phone to his ear and his conversation lost to her.

  “What kind of ice cream would you all like when we get to the ice cream parlor?” Willow smiled at Timmy, who licked sauce off his fingers and then reached for his soda. She handed him a napkin.