Her Texas Rodeo Cowboy

by Trish Milburn

  Her eyes widened as he put the necklace over her head. She lifted the little horseshoe to look at it. “Thank you.” And then she kissed him on the cheek and his heart melted.

  “You’re welcome.” A glance at Sloane told him that it was time for Phoebe to go. He stood and offered her his hand. She put her much-smaller one in his and walked beside him back toward the others.

  After saying several goodbyes to the kids, he noticed Brent hanging back and not speaking or making eye contact. It gave Jason a bad feeling in his stomach, a knot of concern wrapped in a layer of nausea.

  “You okay, little man?” he asked Brent.

  All the boy did was shrug. Jason experienced the strong urge to pick up the boy and keep him. Not only was that thought shocking but also totally unfeasible. Instead, he lowered himself to Brent’s level so he could make eye contact.

  “You really impressed me this weekend. Remember all you learned here. I know you’re going to grow up and do great things. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different, okay?”

  It was a weak one, but Brent did manage a nod. He looked toward the van then back at Jason. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”

  Jason felt as if he’d been sucker punched in the heart. How did Sloane go through this over and over?

  “Never say never. Life has a funny way about it.” He wished he could tell the boy something more hopeful, more definite, but he wasn’t willing to outright lie to him.

  As the kids climbed into the van and Angel helped the driver get everyone buckled in, Sloane came to stand next to him.

  “This is the worst part of what you do, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I can’t fix everything though. I had to come to grips with the fact that I can only do this small part, give them some good memories.”

  He got the impression she wasn’t as okay with not being able to do more as she claimed.

  Part of him didn’t want to know, but a stronger part made him ask, “Phoebe and Brent, what are their stories?”

  Next to him, Sloane sighed. “Both in foster care. Phoebe’s parents died in a car crash when she was two, and there weren’t any members of her family willing to take her. Brent...” Sloane paused, and Jason would swear he could hear the lump in her throat. “His mother was a drug addict. She overdosed and died in their house when he was four. By the time the police found him, he’d been in the house with his mom for three days.”

  Jason cursed. The boy’s words about never seeing Jason again took on a new, horrible significance. No wonder the kid was quiet and withdrawn. How much did he remember about what he’d gone through? Did it haunt him?

  “How do you do this, sending them back?”

  “No choice. All I can do is give them a break from their lives.”

  He shifted his gaze from the van to Sloane. “You do more than that. You show them that a different life is possible.”

  Sloane looked shocked at his words. He was equally surprised she hadn’t come to that conclusion herself.

  “You’re pretty damn amazing, Sloane Hartley.”

  * * *

  JASON’S COMPLIMENT STUNNED Sloane so much that she found herself at a loss for how to respond. “Um...nothing really amazing about trying to help out where I can.”

  “I disagree. The world is full of people who don’t care enough to do something like this.”

  Part of her knew he was right, but she’d also crossed paths with plenty of people who were giving, too. She didn’t have to look any further than her adoptive parents.

  Thankfully, the van making its departure drew Jason’s attention away. The combination of his words of praise and the way he’d been looking at her, as if she was some sort of saint, made her uncomfortable.

  The kids had their faces pressed up against the windows, waving at them. Sloane made herself smile and wave back, maintaining the positivity for them right up to the last moment they could see her. Jason was right about one thing. It was damned hard to send the kids back after getting to know them, especially if she thought about what many of them would face when they returned home.

  Best not to dwell on it, however. It wouldn’t make any difference in their lives and only serve to invite depression into her own. She’d been down that road and she never wanted to travel it again.

  “Well, where you headed next?” she asked.

  “According to your mom, dinner with your family.”

  Of course her mom had invited him to dinner. That didn’t mean he had to accept.

  “Don’t feel obligated. She’s always inviting people to dinner. She has this compulsive need to feed people.”

  “I thought about leaving, but I was informed by your dad and brothers that if I bailed they would never hear the end of it.”

  Inside her head, she growled. If everyone in her family was joining forces to set her up, she was going to have a sudden need to be elsewhere. She glanced toward the house and took a calming breath. The best way to handle the situation was probably to act as if she didn’t care. Maybe she could even convince herself of that.

  “Well, you’re in for a treat. My mom is the best cook in Texas.”

  “Lucky me.”

  She didn’t look at Jason as she turned to go inside, unwilling to seek out the answer to whether his response was about more than his taste buds’ good fortune. As he followed her across the threshold of the front door, she headed for the kitchen, leaving Jason to navigate his own way through the sea of Hartleys.

  Her mom looked up at her entry. “Where’s Jason?”

  Sloane pretended she didn’t notice the unspoken question about whether Jason had already left. Instead, she made a vague gesture over her shoulder. “In the living room.”

  Normally, she’d have some faith in the male members of her family to run off any potential suitors. But from what Jason had said, it sounded as if they were on board with her mom’s matchmaking efforts. And there was no mistaking that her inviting Jason to dinner was exactly that.

  “Oh, good. He’s such a nice guy, so good with the kids.”

  Play it cool. “Yeah, this was a good group. Easy to interact with them.” All of which was true, but she hoped it also made the point that Jason wasn’t anything special.

  Except what if he was? She’d been envious of how easily he’d fit in with the kids, how quickly they’d come to adore him. She told herself that was a good thing, that the point was for the kids to have a good time. So what if she was the one who’d started the camps? The person who did most of the legwork? That she’d dreamed of making the camps a reality for years before she’d been able to launch them and still had hopes of expanding and helping even more kids?

  She roped her runaway thoughts, remembering that she needed to be realistic. Someday she’d reach her lofty goals, but it was necessarily going to be a slow build because of the time, manpower and, most of all, money available. She wasn’t the most patient of people, so it was hard to think about how long it was going to take her to reach her goals. But she had to be thankful she was able to do anything at this point, especially with the financial hits the ranch had taken in the past year. She already struggled with the guilt of being a drain on the collective resources when her siblings were working on ways to bring in more streams of revenue.

  “You okay?” her mom asked, making Sloane realize she’d gotten lost in her tangle of thoughts.

  “Yeah, just thinking about ways to improve the camps.”

  “Maybe convince Jason to help out with each of them. The kids seemed to love him.”

  Sloane engaged her best pivot by saying, “I saw an article about an elephant sanctuary that sells paintings done by the elephants. It’s not so much that it’s good art but rather a way people can connect and get something unique while supporting a good cause. Maybe we could sell hoof painti
ngs by the cows and horses, have them step in paint and then walk over the paper.”

  “That might work.”

  The response didn’t come from her mother but rather Jason, who’d managed to enter the room without Sloane noticing.

  Remember, act casual.

  Sloane lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re an art expert in addition to steer wrestler and kid whisperer.”

  Ugh, did that make it sound as if she admired him too much? She didn’t dare make eye contact with her mom to find out.

  “No, but my sister works in marketing for a nonprofit in Boise.”

  Of course she did. Again, Sloane mentally told herself to chill and look on the bright side. Maybe the world had put Jason in her path not as some sort of cosmic romantic setup but so that she might garner some helpful hints for how to move another step closer to being able to offer ranch experiences to hundreds of kids.

  “If she has some ideas to toss my way, I’d be grateful.”

  “That was nice of you to offer, Jason,” her mom said as she placed a platter of barbecue ribs on the table, then patted him on the upper arm.

  “Least I could do considering I might just eat half those ribs.”

  Her mom laughed. “Good thing we have plenty more where those came from.”

  When her mom turned back toward the kitchen, Jason caught Sloane’s gaze and gave her what appeared to be a teasing smile. Resisting the urge to snort and roll her eyes, she instead went to the cabinet that contained the glasses and started pulling out enough for everyone.

  She hated the tense, fidgety feeling enveloping her as she did her best to go through the normal motions of preparing for a family meal. Something about Jason specifically knocked her off-kilter because this wasn’t the first time her mom had tried to nudge her toward a guy. Though she wondered why her mom had zeroed in on a man who would be leaving town as soon as he got a good, home-cooked meal in his belly.

  When Arden and Mandy, her sisters-in-law, showed up, indicating that Neil and Ben wouldn’t be going home for dinner, Sloane suspected there’d been a lot of texts flying back and forth between her family members that afternoon. Texts to which she, suspiciously, was not privy.

  That was it. Tomorrow she was going to find Verona Charles, the town’s unofficial matchmaker, and point her toward Adam or Angel. Turnabout was fair play, after all. She just had to get through this dinner and see the last of Jason Till as he drove off for wherever he was headed next.

  When she turned to put glasses filled with tea on the table, she found that the other members of her family had already seated themselves. Other than her mom’s normal spot, there was one empty chair left. Right next to Jason.

  A lot of things could be said about Sloane—she was a hard worker, a loyal friend, determined and liked to help others. She also was really good at paybacks, no matter how long she had to wait to mete them out.

  Chapter Five

  Sloane had just taken her first bite of the delicious ribs when her mom said, “So, Jason, tell us about yourself.”

  Her mother sounded like her normal, sweet self, but to Sloane’s ears there was no mistaking what this was—one part interrogation and one part highlighting the résumé of a potential son-in-law. She bit her lip to keep from telling her mom to back off.

  She tried and failed to deny to herself that she was interested in his answer.

  “Not much to tell really,” he said. “I’m from Idaho, but while I was growing up I probably spent more time on the road than anywhere. Both my parents were in the rodeo.”

  Sloane got the image of that tumbleweed in her head again. If she’d thought him not the type to settle down before, here was even more evidence.

  “Was your dad a steer wrestler, too?” her dad asked.

  “No, he rode bareback. Mom was a barrel racer. Both retired now. My sister and I grew up on the circuit.”

  The sister who was now a marketing person. “So your sister didn’t go into the family business,” Sloane said.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at her, but she didn’t look toward him.

  “We both did junior rodeo when we were young, but Shannon didn’t want to do it professionally. So she went to college instead.”

  She had to be imagining things because she thought she heard a hint of envy in Jason’s voice. But everything about him said rodeo, just like so many other riders she’d seen roll into town for a weekend, long enough to compete, party at the music hall and do their best to make a local gal fall in love with them.

  Well, that sure as heck wasn’t happening to her.

  “Probably a lot less likely to break her neck in marketing.” She winced inwardly, realizing as the words left her mouth that she sounded harsher than there was any reason to be. Was it because his coming back to the ranch for a second day had given her mom more ammunition in her matchmaking efforts?

  Still, she was determined to act as if his presence didn’t bother her. She wasn’t exactly doing a crackerjack job of it at the moment.

  “We’ve always said she has more brains than the rest of us put together,” Jason said, easing the layer of tension before she could figure out how to do it herself.

  “So what kept you in the rodeo?” Neil’s wife, Arden, asked, every inch the reporter looking for answers.

  Jason shrugged. “Decent enough at it to make a living. Even made it to the Finals one year.”

  No one else seemed to notice it, but again there was something in the way Jason answered the question that made her wonder if he wished he’d chosen a different path. She wondered if maybe he didn’t even realize it.

  “That must have made your parents proud,” her mom said.

  “Yeah. I think they yelled louder than anyone else there.”

  As the meal progressed, Sloane listened as first one family member and then another asked Jason questions. It was obvious from his answers that he was close with his family and that he’d had his share of good times on the rodeo circuit. She suspected he wasn’t much older than her, so he probably still had a few years of viable competition left. Then she’d bet he’d go back to Idaho and get a ranch next door to his parents’ land, spoil his niece and nephew rotten, maybe even start a family of his own.

  The image bothered her. But it couldn’t be because of Jason. She barely knew the guy. She’d heard women talking about their biological clocks, and she’d always shrugged it off as a bunch of hooey. But had hers just made its first tick?

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, even her brain was working against her best interests. Though Jason managed to turn the conversation away from himself several times, her family always found a way to shift it back toward him or, even worse, her. By the time they were all done eating, she felt as if her nerves were about to pop like a cork in a champagne bottle.

  Just as she believed she was on the verge of being free of the forced togetherness, her mom delivered to the table her famous chocolate cake.

  “Oh, you’re in for a treat,” Ben said to Jason.

  Angel leaned toward Sloane’s left side. “Mom’s not playing.”

  Sloane slowly turned her head to face her sister. “This is all your fault,” she said under her breath, quietly enough that the conversation around the table kept her words from being broadcast to everyone within earshot.

  To Sloane’s right, she heard Jason’s long mmm of appreciation that told her he’d just taken a bite of the cake. When she noticed Neil watching her from across the table, she pulled out all the stops to hide how much the sound of that mmm made her feel odd and tingly inside.

  “So, Jason, where are you off to next?” she asked as casually as she could manage.

  “New Mexico.”

  “Long drive.”

  “Yeah, I’m used to it though.”

  “Doe
sn’t it get old?” her mom asked. “I’d think you’d want to settle down at some point.”

  Sloane couldn’t help staring at her mom. Could the woman be any more obvious?

  Jason didn’t answer immediately. Sloane glanced at him to see he was wiping chocolate icing away from his mouth.

  No, don’t look at his mouth.

  “Rodeo life can’t last forever,” he said.

  Well, that was a rather nonanswer answer, wasn’t it? She couldn’t tell if he was trying to avoid any sort of commitment or if he really hadn’t thought about what came after he became too old or injured to jump off horses and wrestle steers anymore. She supposed he wasn’t the only rodeo cowboy not to look any further into the future than the next competition.

  Most people had to put a bit more planning and thought into their lives. Sure, rodeo competitors chasing a spot in the Finals had to do some planning along the way. Some probably even already had ranching operations they helped run when not competing, but there were a fair number who had a bit of vagabond about them, too.

  “But I figure I have a few years left in me,” Jason said.

  “Do your parents come to see you compete?” Sloane wasn’t sure why she asked the question. Maybe it was just as a blocking maneuver to keep her mom or any of the rest of her family from asking something more frustrating.

  “Sometimes, when the rodeo is close enough. Dad had a hip replaced, and driving long distances is uncomfortable now. But they still expect a full report after every competition.”

  “Living vicariously, huh?” Adam asked.

  Jason nodded as he scooped up the last bite of cake with his fork. “Yep.”

  Sloane noticed how he quickly shoved the cake into his mouth. Was he tired of being grilled, no matter how laid-back he seemed?

  Though he’d had the option of not accepting her mom’s dinner invitation and avoiding all the questioning, she also knew her mom and how she didn’t like to take no for an answer when issuing dinner invitations. Sloane suddenly felt as if she needed to throw Jason a life preserver. She pushed back from the table.