At the counter, Abby stilled. Those were words that meant far more to her than he’d ever know. She couldn’t help wondering if fatherhood might make a difference to him. Perhaps he would change his life for Austin. But what if he wouldn’t? Austin would gain a father in name only. One who might remember to send him a birthday card, maybe even visit with him a couple of weeks a year. She couldn’t bear to see her son’s heart broken.
“He told me that he likes to ski, but only went once with you.” Jack returned to the table as she did. Beneath the morning sunlight, her hair had a rich reddish tone. “When did you learn?”
“I haven’t.” After placing napkins by their plates, she settled on a nearby chair. “Thank you,” she said about the cup he set before her. The scent of coffee drifted up to her. “We were both on the bunny hill. We might go again this winter.” Where would he be then? she wondered, and felt an unsettled sensation in the vicinity of her heart as she experienced the first hint of what she’d feel without him. “Are you entered in a rodeo after the wedding?”
Cautiously, Jack sipped the steaming brew in his cup. “I’ve been off the circuit because of the injury.”
“And eager to get back?”
“What else would I do?”
Abby knew it wasn’t a question he expected her response to. While she stood at the sink later, her hands in the sudsy water, she accepted what hadn’t been said. If he wasn’t in rodeo, he would be a rancher. But because of how he now felt about Sam that would never happen.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby at nine-thirty, and we can drive to the rodeo,” Jack said while drying a plate.
Abby bad forgotten about it. That was amazing since Austin had talked about nothing else ever since Sam had announced the rodeo taking place. With the reminder, she left Jack to finish the dishes and rushed upstairs to dress. Anxious to go to the rodeo, Austin may have already been looking for her. It took only minutes to slip on clothes. When she returned downstairs, she saw Jack waiting outside for her.
The sound of a woodpecker, the sight of roadrunners scurrying between desert brush, the warmth of the morning sun accompanied their walk toward the lodge. Hand in hand with Jack, she felt like that young girl so full of dreams who’d been here nearly a decade ago. She’d wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Here, at this ranch. Now, because of his estrangement from Sam, he would never ask her to do that.
“What are you daydreaming about?” Jack asked.
You. Us. “How much Austin is looking forward to today,” she said, because that was partially true. She sent him a smile that she thought he was looking for, but her gaze strayed to Wendy, sitting nearby, under one of the large elms. “Something’s wrong,” Abby said, certain by the look on Wendy’s face and her pinkish nose that she’d been crying. “I’d better go to her.”
Jack squeezed her hand before releasing it “Yeah, okay.” He’d already decided to find Guy, and learn for himself what was happening. “I’ll meet you later.”
Not wanting to startle Wendy, Abby said nothing with her approach and quietly dropped to the summery green grass beside her, waiting until her friend looked up. “Can I help?”
Wendy gave her hand a backhand wave as if her problem was unimportant. “It’s nothing.” She sighed. “No, forget that. Everything is wrong,” she admitted. “Guy and I had a biggie of a fight.” Annoyance instead of sadness crept into her voice. “He’s twenty-nine years old. I know there are cowboys older than him, but Sam has offered him the stable manager’s job, and a great salary if Guy wants to stay home. I want him to,” she said adamantly.
Abby braced her back against the tree trunk. The warmth of the sun pressed down on her. “What has Guy said?”
“He’d think about it.” Wendy bent her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “He told me that he’d think about it.”
Abby noted that she didn’t sound too hopeful. “Some of them can’t get rodeo out of their blood.”
“Someone like Jack, I suppose. He’s one of those guys who needs danger and thrills. He likes living on that edge. That’s fine for him. He isn’t married, and doesn’t have kids.”
Abby frowned with her words.
Wendy obviously saw it. “I’m sorry, Abby. That probably wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
“It’s the truth.” As Wendy began to stand, Abby pushed to her feet. “I know that as well as you do.”
“I’m afraid so. Guy’s made a decent living in rodeo, won a few titles in single events, but rodeo isn’t ever going to be for him what it is for Jack.” As if aware she’d unwittingly drooped Abby’s spirits, she offered encouragement. “Could be Jack’s ready to settle down now. That would be great for you two.” She gestured with her head toward Jack’s barn. “I saw you come out with him. You know, I always thought you two were perfect for each other.”
Looking over her shoulder. Abby brushed dried grass from the back of her jeans until she felt she’d reveal less when she met Wendy’s stare. “I thought the same about you two. Maybe Guy will see that you’re right.”
“I can only hope.” Worry veed Wendy’s eyebrows even though she produced a smile. “Are you going to the rodeo?”
“We’ll see you there.”
Curiosity sprang into her friend’s voice. “Is we—you and Jack?”
“And Austin.”
“See, that sounds promising,” Wendy said a little too brightly, as if trying hard to lift her own spirits.
With their steps closer to the lodge, Abby heard laughter. Her gaze traveled to a corral. Several guests were taking turns to rope a hay bale that wore a set of plastic horns. Not feet away was her son.
His eyes looked bluer, his smile brighter. “Hi, Wendy,” he said first, remembering his manners. “Mom, we had a terrific time at the camp-out.”
“That’s great.” She curled her fingers over his shoulder to have some contact with him. “You can tell me all about it upstairs. You need to shower now, so we can leave for the rodeo.”
“Why do I have to take a shower? It’s going to be dusty.”
Abby didn’t argue. She directed a look at him that silently communicated he was stretching her patience.
On a mumbled, “Aw, Mom,” he whipped around and climbed the stairs.
Wendy chuckled softly, then, looking more serious, she placed a hand on Abby’s arm. “Thanks for listening to me.”
It seemed like so little. Abby hugged her. “Anytime. I hope everything goes well.”
“Me, too.” Her voice wavered slightly, indicating her emotions were still shaky.
Feeling sad for friends, Abby went up to her room. All she could do was hope Wendy and Guy worked out their problems. While she changed into clean clothes in one room, she heard Austin in the shower, singing off-key some song she guessed he’d learned last night. The volume on the song rose right before the sound of the running water stopped.
Abby was pulling on her boots when he came out of the bathroom. Though his hair still dripped, he tugged a T-shirt over his head. She passed him and retrieved a clean towel from the bathroom.
“Here,” she said, handing it to him after his wet head popped through the shirt opening. “Tell me about the camp-out.”
“It was really neat, Mom.” His eyes sparkled. “We ate all kinds of good stuff,” he said, draping the towel over his head. “Like hot dogs. And we roasted marshmallows and stuck ’em between graham crackers with some chocolate candy. And they told us ghost stories.”
“Scary ones?” She knew if they scared him a little, then the evening was a success.
“I wasn’t scared.” That meant he was, Abby knew. “Though some of the little kids were. And this morning I helped cook breakfast.”
“You did?” Her baby was growing up. “What did you make?” she asked while they descended the steps to the lobby.
“I made orange juice. I squeezed oranges into a pitcher.”
She felt motherly relief that his step toward independence was smaller than she’d origi
nally thought. “Hmm. I bet it was good.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I didn’t like it. It had seeds and some other stuff in it. Do you think we’ll see a bull chase anybody today?”
“I hope not.”
“Jack says he had one chase him around the arena.”
Abby thought that sounded like an exaggeration.
“And did you see that scar on his arm? A horn from a bull as big as a car did that. Did you know that?”
Interested in who said what, Abby prodded, “Did Jack tell you that?”
“No. Chris did. And his sister told him.”
Chris had a sixteen-year-old sister with a rose tattoo on her upper left breast and a tendency to tell tales filled with embellishments. “Who told her?”
“Dunno.” Feet from them, he saw Chris and his family, who were waiting for the ranch shuttle that would take them to the rodeo. “Can I go over there?”
“Yes, go ahead.”
Several other guests were returning from a cattle drive, and still talking, not only about the breakfast they’d had on the range but also about the beetle someone declared was big enough to saddle that had perched on the brim of a guest’s cowboy hat.
Not far from everyone, lawn mowers buzzed. Abby noticed the landscaper’s truck parked near one of the sheds. In preparation for the wedding, he and his crew were mowing grass and clipping shrubbery.
“It’s going to look lovely, isn’t it?”
Abby swung around in response to her aunt’s voice. A Cheshire cat grin appeared fixed on Laura’s face while she surveyed the area as if visualizing it on her wedding day, when rows of white folding chairs would line the immaculately kept grass.
“Yes, it will be,” Abby answered. She’d been with her aunt at the florist’s when she’d placed her order. Along with Laura’s bridal bouquet and her own, the florist would bring a flowered trellis and set pots of blossoms, mostly carnations, mums and gardenias, around the swimming pool.
“Everyone is excited about going to the rodeo today.”
Abby noticed the round spots of color on Laura’s cheeks. Lately, she was excited about everything. One of the fringe benefits of being in love. Hadn’t she thought that the sun shone brighter when she’d fallen in love with Jack?
“Austin’s walk in the desert certainly provided a scare, didn’t it?” Laura asked.
“Uh-huh,” Abby said distractedly as Sam came close to them.
“Hello, ladies.” An arm at her aunt’s waist, he kissed her temple.
“We were talking about Austin going into the desert,” Laura said.
Sam looked at Abby. “A scary moment for you.”
Abby nodded. Just being around them made her smile. They looked so in love. It seemed as if nothing was wrong in their lives.
“There’s Jack,” her aunt said as he came out of a nearby supply shed.
Abby noticed the light in Sam’s eyes had dulled with a sad regret when he looked Jack’s way. “I should go,” she said. “I’ll see you both later.” She moved forward to meet Jack. It seemed so wrong that the closeness he and Sam had once shared was gone.
“I missed you.” To satisfy a need he’d had since leaving her this morning, Jack slipped an arm around her waist and took a quick kiss. He had missed her. That realization had hit him half an hour after leaving her. The feeling hadn’t left until this moment.
Abby could have easily forgotten where they were. Her arm around his neck, her hip against his, she set a hand to his chest, felt the steady, even beat of his heart beneath her palm. “That was quite a hello.” The smile starting to curl the edges of her lips weakened as she spotted Austin approaching them. It occurred to her that he’d never seen a man kiss her before.
Not bashful, her son didn’t make her guess his thoughts about that for long. “He kissed you because he likes you,” he informed Abby.
“Is that so?”
“Uh-huh.” Austin darted a look from her to Jack and back to her. “We talked about that.”
Jack looked rather smug, piquing Abby’s curiosity. “And exactly what did you talk about?”
“That we both like you,” her son said so matter-of-factly that her heart twisted with the deeper meaning in those words. She was also grateful for his logic. That reason obviously was a good enough reason for the kiss.
Austin rocked back on his heels in the manner of someone satisfied with life.
“Ready to go?” Jack looked from Austin to her.
“He’s been ready since last week,” Abby informed him.
Jack laughed and tapped the top of Austin’s hat. “Then let’s go.”
They caught the end of the parade, then enjoyed hamburgers and french fries at a restaurant with a rustic exterior. At the fairgrounds, the scents of leather, hay and livestock mingled in the air.
Austin walked between them while they moved along with a crowd of tourists, his eyes wide as he took in the sights.
In the fenced area near the chutes, a few contestants rested on the ground, leaning back on their saddles. Others checked rigging bags or practiced lassoing while some riders used the time before competition to tape wrists, rosin some ropes or walk their horses.
Abby kept Austin close and, along with Jack, trailed the crowd to the grandstand. The music of a country band grew louder.
Fascinated with everything, Austin craned his neck to see the musicians who were performing for the spectators already seated. “Will there be clowns at the rodeo?”
Jack touched the boy’s back to steer him to a VIP section near the announcer. “Always. They’re important. Without them, the riders could get hurt.”
“Hey, Jack,” one fellow called out. A contestant’s number was pinned to his back. “You signed up for the Calgary Stampede?”
“Not yet,” Jack replied.
But he would, Abby assumed, recalling that the Calgary Stampede was one of the bigger rodeos. “Austin, look.” Abby turned his attention to the bull being led toward a livestock pen as much to distract herself from Jack’s conversation as make sure the boy saw the animal. She couldn’t afford to forget what she’d found with Jack wouldn’t last.
“Sit here, honey,” she said to Austin, guiding him to a spot.
Before Jack joined them, he was stopped several times. Another reminder, Abby reflected. When he entered a rodeo arena, everyone knew him. This was his world.
“Mom, see that!”
She traced Austin’s excited stare. In the dusty arena, clowns scurried about, entertaining the crowd while a bull banged at the wall of a nearby chute.
Jack joined them in time for the singing of the national anthem. As it finished, clowns rolled barrels into the arena.
“Going to have barrel racing, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said. “But first, just heard we got rodeo’s own Jack McShane here, folks. How about a big hand for four-time World Rodeo Champion, Jack McShane.”
Standing, Jack waved his hat at the applauding and whistling crowd.
Austin gaped, awestruck. “Wow, Mom.” His eyes were riveted to Jack’s gleaming gold and silver buckle with the embossed words World Champion on it. It was not something he’d worn at the ranch. “Do you see his buckle, Mom?”
The child’s delight carried over. With everything he watched, he burst with new enthusiasm. “She was really fast,” he said about one of the women riders who’d finished racing her horse around barrels that were set in a cloverleaf fashion in the arena. “Wasn’t she real fast, Jack?”
Jack had suddenly become the authority on everything.
During the next event, Austin literally sat on the edge of his seat watching the bull riding.
Jack, too, seemed tense when one contestant was announced. Leaning forward, his arms braced on his thighs and his hands clutched, he never took his eyes from the arena.
When the gate opened, the bull charged forward. Clinging to the rope, the young-looking contestant struggled against the animal arching and bucking. Veering left, then right, the bull tossed hi
m. His head lowering, the animal spun around and charged. The crowd gasped. While the rider scrambled to his feet, a clown danced before the bull, dodging the horns long enough to let the rider escape.
Abby waited until the rider reached the safety of the fence before she satisfied her curiosity. “Do you know him?”
Over Austin’s head, Jack met her stare. “I know his dad better. The kid’s just out of Junior Rodeo. Bet his dad’s chewing off his fingertips.”
Abby understood. Young, inexperienced, the boy could make a tragic mistake. “How old is he?”
“Sixteen.”
Abby scowled. In nine years, Austin could do that. She mentally shuddered, unable to imagine being the mother who was watching her child risking injury for eight seconds of fame, a silver buckle and prize money.
“You did all this?” Austin regarded him with a look of wonder.
Abby had an overflowing scrapbook as a record of Jack’s whole career. “He won them all,” she was quick to remind Austin. If Austin was going to admire him, he might as well do it with gusto.
For the rest of the afternoon, Austin’s vocabulary was limited to oohs and wows. Exhausted from a full day of excitement, he was quiet with sleepiness on the way home. With nightfall, when they were halfway home, his head found Abby’s shoulder. As he snored softly, Abby slipped an arm around his shoulder to cuddle him close and smoothed hair back from his forehead. “He’s had a busy day.”
Jack peered at them in the dark confines of the truck. She looked so right with a child in her arms. With the two of them, he felt a solace and happiness he hadn’t known in years. She would be good for him, but he wasn’t sure the opposite was true. Seeing her like this, with the boy, he knew even more than before that she would want security and the home with the white picket fence.
Abby stirred from her seat after Jack braked the truck near the back door of the lodge. Before she could gather Austin in her arms, he came around and picked him up. As if they belonged together, Austin shifted his head on Jack’s shoulder and wrapped a slim arm around his neck. Never had she expected this. They’d grown so close, so quickly.
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