“Here.” He held it out to her.
She couldn’t bring herself to take it. Maybe it was cowardly, but she didn’t want another major shock. “You read it first.”
Ian looked as if he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. He opened the envelope and slid out several sheets of light blue stationery—her mother’s favorite kind.
As he skimmed the writing, Lacy wondered if she should still call Linda Mom or if she should call her Linda or what. They’d been Mom and Dad for so long it felt almost dishonest not to call them that. But they weren’t her real parents.
Her heart pounded as the familiar panic started to build. She could not deal with this, any of it. She’d hoped that maybe, in the months since she’d found the box, she’d learn to be rational about this. But no. The panic was attacking and all she wanted to do was hide until it was over.
Ian covered her hand with his. He gave it a gentle squeeze as he kept reading. Lacy felt herself breathe again. She wasn’t doing this alone. Ian was here. He’d been there for her last night and he was here still. The fact that she was someone else hadn’t sent him running for his truck.
Maybe, just maybe, it was going to be okay.
“You should read this,” he said, sliding the papers across the space between them. But he didn’t let go of her hand. If anything, he held on tighter.
Okay. She could do this. “Is it bad?”
“Just read it, babe.”
She didn’t like how much her hand shook as she picked up the papers. She didn’t like being this weak. But then Ian slid his other hand under the palm of the one he was already holding and linked his fingers with hers.
Right.
She began to read.
Dearest Lacy,
You turned fifteen today and we still didn’t tell you. We planned to—we always planned to tell you that you were adopted. But we put it off. We didn’t want to confuse you when you were little and we didn’t want to upset you as you grew older and every year your father and I decide that this is the year we’ll tell you and then we look at you celebrating another birthday and nothing changes.
We don’t have a good excuse why we didn’t tell you, except we didn’t want to make you doubt how much you were ours. We don’t know much about your birth parents. The adoption agency had no information about your birth father. The adoption was closed but we were able to get a medical history for your birth mother. We understand that she was very young—fifteen. The same age you are now. And yes, she was at least part Puerto Rican. She was healthy—and so were you.
If you’re reading this, you’ve found the box with the adoption papers in it. You might even hate us for not telling you the truth but the truth was, you are our daughter. I know I never told you this before, but it hurt too much. I wanted a child so badly but I couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term. I lost hope after the fourth miscarriage. It was a dark time in my life and in my marriage to your father. He’s the one who suggested we look into adoption. He filled out the paperwork and dealt with the agencies. And one day, we got the call that changed everything. You’d been born and you needed a family.
You are our daughter. The greatest joy of my life has been watching you grow up into the beautiful young woman you are today. Your father and I are so proud of you, sweetie. You were then, and you have been ever since, the answer to our prayers.
There were a few other sentences before the letter ended, but Lacy couldn’t make them out through the tears that streamed down her cheeks. “She always said that—every night. I was the answer to her prayers,” she told Ian. Talking made her cry harder, but she wasn’t running from it.
“And your birth mother was only fifteen,” Ian said, tapping the sheet of paper. His voice was gentle. “She was a kid, Lacy. She gave you the best life she could by giving you to your parents.”
She tried to say something, but her voice wasn’t working. Her mom had written that letter when Lacy had been fifteen. But her birth mom had had Lacy at fifteen.
Fifteen. That was when her mother had set her down and talked about the birds and the bees and waiting for marriage. Was that because Linda Evans had been afraid Lacy might go down the same path as her birth mother? Was that why Linda had always said, “I know you can do better” to Lacy when she’d done something disappointing?
Fifteen. Lacy kept coming back to that number. At fifteen, she’d been in the throes of awkward puberty, unable to even pull off adorkable. There would have been no way she could have taken care of a baby—and that was with two loving parents at home. Her mother wouldn’t have let her quit school—college was expected.
Instead, her birth mother, as Ian kept calling her, had given up Lacy. She understood now what Ian had been saying yesterday.
“I’ll never even know her name.”
“You don’t have to,” Ian replied. “You just have to know that she wanted the best for you.”
“Do you think she thinks about me?”
“Yes.” His mouth opened as if he wanted to say something else, but he closed it and cleared his throat. “I bet, especially on your birthday, she thinks of you and hopes you’re well and happy and loved.”
An image of a woman with wild, curly hair lighting a candle and saying a prayer in a church popped into Lacy’s mind. There was something peaceful about the image. She managed a weak smile. “I hope she had a good life, too.”
“You can probably find her,” Ian said, a note of caution in his voice. “If you wanted. Adoptions are a lot more open now. It’s a thought.”
“I don’t know...” She picked up the letter. All of our love, Mom was how her mom had signed it. She traced the letters with her finger. “Maybe not right now.”
Ian nodded. “When did you find the box?”
“A few months after they died.” The letter from her mom, explaining the whole thing, had been in the box, too, just a few layers deeper. If she’d been able to get it together, she wouldn’t have spent so much time lost in the hell of not knowing. The answers—as many as she would get—had been right there all along. She dropped her head into her hands. “God, I’m an idiot.”
Ian chuckled and stroked her hair. “No, you’re not. You’re dealing with a lot.”
That was true enough but she still felt like an idiot.
“Come on,” Ian said, standing and pulling her up. “That’s enough for one day.”
“One day at a time, right?”
“Right.”
Later, after they’d snuggled under the covers and Ian was stroking her hair again, she said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For...for being here, I guess. Except for Murph, I’ve felt so alone these last few months. Thank you for letting me share my secrets.”
“Your secrets are safe with me. Always.” They lay there for a little bit longer. His fingers drummed a steady beat along her arm. She had the weird feeling he wanted to say something, so when she heard, “Lacy...” in a tone that was more worried than anything else, she paid attention.
She leaned up on her elbow and looked at him in the dim light. “What is it?”
“I know this was supposed to be no-strings, this thing between us.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Disappointment bloomed in her heart. “That was the deal, right? No hysterical adopted women.” She was pretty sure she was not the definition of fun right now.
“That’s not what I’m saying.” He brushed her hair back and cupped her face. “I’m saying...maybe it could be something more than that. Maybe we could be something more than that.”
She blinked down at him. “More? This isn’t one of your white-knight attempts to save me from myself, is it?”
He snorted. “Yeah, you’re feeling better. No, it’s not that. It’s... I like you, you know? I like being with you. I want to spend more time with you. I want y
ou to know that you can depend on me.”
It was such a foreign concept—a guy as hot, as thoughtful as Ian and he wanted to spend his time with her? “You mean, like, dating?”
“Yeah. Dating. A relationship.” His hands slid down her bare back, pushing her up to his mouth. “More of this.”
“I’m a hot mess,” she warned him, because after the past few days? How could he want her still?
“Don’t worry,” he said, pulling her down to his lips. “I like you like that.”
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time in her life, Lacy had a boyfriend. Sort of. Much as she was still trying to get used to terms like birth mother, boyfriend didn’t seem to fit Ian. He was no boy.
Semantics aside, being an official couple meant after she did the rodeo in Cheyenne and he did his rodeo in Lincoln, they would meet up back at the Straight Arrow and spend another week together. Then they’d travel to the next rodeo in Des Moines and Ian would come home with her again. It wasn’t quite going public with their relationship, but it was something.
She wouldn’t be coming home to the empty house with the box in the office—they’d gone through the rest of the box together and Lacy was okay with it.
Ian was still living out of his duffel bag, but spending four or five nights out of the week in bed with her was pretty damned close to them living together. And while they’d discussed dating, no one had made mention of anything more permanent.
She thought back to her mom’s letter. Would Linda Evans still be proud of Lacy if she knew her daughter was shacking up with a bullfighter?
For the most part, Lacy managed not to think about those sorts of questions. She had a ranch to run, bulls to load and Ian to fill the rest of her time.
Thursday afternoon, Ian helped her load up her bulls for the hour-long trip to Cheyenne, and he kissed her goodbye. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“I wish you were coming with me now.” She had to take the bulls on Thursday so they could get acclimated before the rides on Friday. Ian didn’t have to be in Lincoln until Friday, so he was going to come down and keep an eye on things tonight.
Ian seemed to think whoever was behind the attacks would be more likely to hit again if they thought Lacy was on her own. He’d made arrangements with friends of his and had an elaborate cloak-and-dagger plan to hide in the shadows so he could catch bad guys in the act.
It all seemed a tad unnecessary to Lacy, but she did want to get to the bottom of the sabotage.
“I know, babe. Mitch and Paulo will be waiting for you,” he told her as he held her tight. “They’re good guys. You can trust them.”
“You better be right.” Because she was nervous about facing the rodeo without Ian by her side.
Her rib had healed up a good deal and she was confident she could handle loading and unloading the bulls, but she did not like the idea that she was supposed to be a sitting duck. And she did not like the idea of putting her trust in two men she’d never met before.
So, filled with trepidation, she arrived at the Cheyenne arena looking for two cowboys named Mitch and Paulo.
She’d just gotten the bulls into the corral when a single cowboy popped up. “Well, hello, gorgeous,” he said—and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. The cowboy was long and lean with a beak-like nose that held up a pair of glasses. He leaned an arm in a cast against the corral and looked her up and down, a knowing smile on his lips.
Lacy stiffened. She was not about to put up with another Jerome-style incident. “Really? That’s your pickup line? Back off. I’m not a buckle bunny.”
“Ooh, you’re feisty—I like that.” The cowboy winked at her while she debated punching him. “He needs that.”
That pulled Lacy up short. “Excuse me?”
“Ian. He needs someone who won’t take his crap.” The cowboy gave her another once-over and held out his hand. “I’m Mitch Jenner.”
She gave him the side-eye and pointedly did not shake his hand. “I was told there’d be two of you.”
“Two Mitches? My poor Momma wouldn’t have been able to take it!” He chuckled. Then he leaned in closer. “Paulo is around. Don’t worry. He won’t be seen until he needs to be.”
“Gosh, how comforting.” This was the cowboy she was supposed to trust? He was a walking horndog. She had to stop leaving her pistol in the glove box. Instead, she pulled out her phone and snapped a quick picture, then sent it to Ian with the text, Is this Mitch?
For some reason, this made Mitch Jenner laugh. “I like you. So tell me—how did a fine, upstanding woman like yourself wind up with a hunk like him?”
She looked at him. Unlike Jerome, Mitch hadn’t advanced on her or tried to touch her. And—had he called Ian a hunk?
Her phone chimed. Yep—tell him to be nice or else.
Are you here?
Yup, was the reply. Paulo and I are watching. Try not to punch him, okay? Go to dinner.
She scowled at her phone, and then looked around. She didn’t see Ian. “Please tell me Ian’s the one who broke your arm.”
“Oh, no—I wrecked on No Man’s Land. And the very next night, June Spotted Elk went out and rode the damned animal.” Mitch sighed dramatically. “So not good for my ego. Otherwise, I’d be back out on this circuit right now, trying to get back up to the bigs. Paulo took the year off to take care of me.” Everything flirty and snarky about Mitch Jenner softened unexpectedly. It didn’t last. “That’s neither here nor there. Tell me about you and Ian!”
Okay, something else was going on here but she had no idea what. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you?”
Mitch had the nerve to look amused. “Oh, I do like you. We’re going to get along famously. I’m under strict orders to make it look like I’m hitting on you.”
“What do you mean, make it look like that? Aren’t you hitting on me?”
Mitch smiled at her, but it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “Ah. I thought Ian explained the situation—but I see that he did not.” Before Lacy could ask what the heck he was talking about, he continued. “No worries. Trust me, girlie, I have no designs upon your person. Ian and I are old friends. He’s a good guy—for a jock, anyway—and he’s very good about keeping secrets.”
She faced Mitch, her hands jammed on her hips. “What are you talking about?”
This time, Mitch didn’t have a flirty comeback at the ready. “Easy,” he said, holding his one hand up in surrender and backing up a step. “He didn’t tell me anything more than you were a stock contractor who was having a run of bad luck—the kind that might be blamed on someone else.”
“That’s it?”
“Just that you were stubborn and that if anyone hit on you, I should let you shoot them.” Mitch rubbed his good hand along his jaw. “He didn’t tell you anything else about me or Paulo?”
“No,” she said suspiciously. “Just that you were good guys and I could trust you. Should he have told me something else?”
“Not necessarily. But it proves my point—he’s good at keeping information close to the vest. Now,” he said with great finality, “let’s discuss the evening’s plans. I’m to flirt shamelessly with you and whisk you away from the corral. Now, we can hit the bars after the rides, but I don’t think that’s quite your speed and I’m not such a great dancer these days,” he added, lifting up his cast. “Let’s say dinner?”
She glared at him. “I swear to all that is holy that if you say Ian told you to make sure I ate dinner, you’re both in deep trouble.”
The corner of Mitch’s mouth curved up into a smile that gave her all the answer she needed.
“Lord.” At what point had she agreed to this harebrained idea? She looked around the arena again, but it was her, Mitch and some bulls.
“Honey, they’re hiding,” Mitch said. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I happ
en to be very bad at keeping other people’s secrets. I can tell you all about June and Travis Younkin’s wedding,” he said in a promising voice, as if he were holding out a piece of candy to her. “Ian and I stood up with Travis.”
* * *
I do not think she cares for Mitch.
IAN STARED DOWN at the text from Paulo and grinned. The man might not say a whole hell of a lot in English, but he did just fine typing. I bet not, Ian texted back. Lacy had a low threshold for BS and Mitch was an expert at it. Everything okay?
Sim was the short answer in Portuguese.
Yes.
Ian put his phone in his pocket. This was killing him, not being with her. Instead, he was hidden in the shadows on the west side of the grounds. Paulo was somewhere on the other side. If they were lucky, no one had seen them get here.
Ian watched as Lacy sparred with Mitch before finally nodding. They climbed into her truck and drove off, just as they’d planned. Now, if Randy and Garth had done their job of making sure everyone knew Ian was in Lincoln and Lacy was on her own here, all Ian and Paulo had to do was watch and wait.
Ian hated waiting.
His phone vibrated again. He pulled it out, hoping to see a message from Lacy. Instead, he had an email from Eliot’s parents. His heart skipped two beats.
Hi, Ian. Hope this update finds you well. Eliot just had his six-year checkup. The doctor says he is doing really well. He’s in the 90% percentile for height and 80% percentile for weight and as healthy as a horse, the doctor says. Eliot’s ready to start kindergarten this year. Because his birthday was so late, we decided to keep him home one more year but he can’t wait! He’s already looking at cool backpacks. :-) He really appreciated the football you sent. I’ve attached some pictures from his birthday party for you. Best, Rayanne.
Ian made a mental note to keep his eye out for a cool backpack or pencil case to send to mark the big occasion of starting kindergarten. Milestones like that needed to be celebrated.
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 46
