The Cowboy's Secret Son

by Trish Milburn

  When she looked up some time later, the corrals were empty. A glance at her watch showed that the morning session had already passed. She’d spent more time working than she’d realized. Her stomach growled as if to reiterate the time.

  She closed her sketchbook and made her way down toward the barn, dodging pint-size campers and their parents as they filed out in search of lunch. When she didn’t see Evan or Nathan, her heart rate spiked and she hurried into the cooler interior of the barn. The earthy scents of feed, hay and horses assaulted her as she checked each stall without luck.

  When she started to step into the tack room, she bumped right into Nathan. She gasped and he reached out to steady her even though she’d already gripped the edge of the door frame.

  “Where’s Evan?”

  Nathan released her and stepped to the side, his expression hardening almost imperceptibly, as if he were trying to hide his true feelings. “Right here. I was showing him how we put away the tack.”

  Evan walked up beside Nathan, stood next to him and emulated how his new hero stood. She couldn’t let him get so attached, even if he didn’t know Nathan was his father. She motioned for Evan to come to her.

  “Come on, let’s let Mr. Teague get to his lunch.”

  “Why don’t you two join us up at the house?”

  Right in the middle of Evan’s family, where he could see photos of his father as a boy, where someone might let too much information slip.

  “Thanks, but we already have plans.”

  “You do?” Nathan asked at the same moment Evan asked, “We do?”

  “Yes, I wanted to show Evan a bit of the town, have lunch at the Primrose. I assume they still have the best country-fried steak in the Hill Country.”

  Nathan opened his mouth, no doubt to voice an objection, but his father interrupted by calling him from the other end of the barn. As she met Nathan’s eyes, she saw the moment he decided not to press the issue. Still, he reached over and tapped the edge of Evan’s hat.

  “I’ll see you at the roping lessons this afternoon.”

  Nathan met Grace’s gaze for another suspended moment before he exited the tack room. Only then did she exhale in relief.

  “Are you okay, Mom?”

  She looked down and saw a too-familiar worry that shouldn’t be in a six-year-old’s eyes. He was young, but not so young that he didn’t understand how very sick she’d been. When she’d been at her sickest, he’d refused to sleep in his own bed, saying he had to stay with her to make sure she was safe—as if he could battle the cancer for her.

  “I’m fine, just hungry. I’m going to take you to the best place in town.”

  A place free of the confusing presence of Nathan Teague.

  WHEN SHE’D USED LUNCH at the Primrose Café as an excuse to get away from Nathan, Grace hadn’t considered the inevitable crowd. The Primrose was always busy with locals alone. Add in the tourists in town for the wildflower tours, and it was busting at the seams. As she maneuvered Evan and herself through the crowd waiting for tables, her eyes met Barrett’s. He smiled and stood, edging his way toward her.

  Too late to leave now.

  Now she regretted not accepting Laney’s invitation to go shopping with her and Cheyenne.

  “Grace, if I’d known you were coming here, we could have all ridden together.”

  “It was a last-minute decision.”

  “Well, I’m glad you made it. Come sit with us.”

  “Oh, no, we’ll wait our turn.”

  “Mom, we’re going to be late for the roping.” When had her child gotten so whiny?

  “Really, we have plenty of room,” Barrett said.

  Grace couldn’t refuse again without being deliberately rude, so she nodded and steered Evan through the maze of packed tables. When he reached the table, he launched right into a conversation with Barrett’s sons, ignoring her completely. Her boy—never met a stranger.

  “Boys, this is Ms. Cameron. Grace, this is Tyler and Jason.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said.

  The two tow-headed boys nodded and went right back to debating with Evan over who was going to get the Cowboy Camper award at the end of the week. Posturing and testosterone already at work at such a young age.

  “Maybe one of the girls will win,” she said.

  Evan seemed to consider the possibility, but the twins made similar faces that showed their abject horror at the idea. “It’s a cowboy award,” Tyler said, as if she were dense.

  “Manners,” Barrett warned.

  “Yes, sir,” Tyler replied, though he didn’t seem particularly thrilled about it.

  “You’d think living with their mother most of the time would make them a little less like Neanderthals.”

  Grace smiled, unable to not like this man. “Just boys being boys.”

  After the waitress came and took their orders, the boys started taking turns playing a treasure-hunting game on a hand-held gaming device. They seemed to derive great satisfaction in poking fun at each other when one of their characters lost one of his virtual lives.

  Grace let her gaze wander around the restaurant. She didn’t recognize anyone else, but the place hadn’t changed much. The walls were still covered with a jumble of photos of wildflowers, cowboys and ranches. A line of weathered older men sat on stools along the bar at the front, drinking coffee and talking about the weather and politics. Tourists gorged themselves on Texas-size meals while they read tour brochures.

  “Are you two having a good vacation?” Barrett asked, drawing her attention back to their table.

  “Yes, Evan is having a ball.”

  “How about you?”

  She wasn’t certain where Barrett was going with his line of questioning, but instinct told her to tread carefully. He seemed like a nice man, was attractive, but she wasn’t in the market for a man. Her life was complicated enough without adding a romantic relationship to the mix—and a temporary or long-distance one at that. Maybe someday, when Evan was older, but not now. Not until she’d provided for Evan and she was more sure the cancer was gone for good.

  “It’s a nice place, peaceful.”

  Throughout the meal, Grace managed to answer questions so that they didn’t reveal too much or give Barrett false hope. And in an odd way, she was sorry, because the more she got to know him, the more she realized he’d be a good catch—for someone else. Too bad he lived in Oklahoma, or she’d set him up with Emily. After all, he owned a construction company. He could build the houses, and Emily could decorate them.

  Barrett sat back after finishing his meal, a satisfied look on his face. “I can see why this place is so popular. Can’t remember the last time I was this full.”

  “Did you eat here when you were a kid?” Evan asked, catching her off guard.

  “You’re from here?” Barrett asked.

  She answered Evan first, that yes she’d eaten here a few times, before turning to Barrett. “My family lived here for a while when I was younger.” Please don’t ask anything else.

  “Then you’d be the perfect tour guide.”

  “What?”

  Barrett patted his flat stomach. “I think after that meal, we could all use a walk around town.”

  Grace felt like she was being drawn further and further into a web. “We really need to get back.”

  “We’ve still got plenty of time before the afternoon activities.” He eyed the boys. “There might be ice cream involved.”

  The chorus of excitement from the kids erased any further protest on her part. She didn’t want to be the mean, no-ice-cream mom, especially not on vacation. Though she and Evan were going to have a conversation about not getting everything they wanted.

  Suspecting that Barrett might try to pay
for their meals, Grace made sure she reached the cash register first. She’d already handed over her credit card by the time Barrett had wrangled his boys toward the front of the café.

  “I was going to treat you to lunch,” he said when he stepped up next to her.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, not when you have two black holes to feed.”

  Barrett laughed, and she was struck again by the pleasant sound.

  “Spoken like the mom of a little walking appetite of her own.”

  Over the next several minutes, Grace played tour guide, showing Barrett and three woefully uninterested boys the highlights of Blue Falls. She showed them the Sunday houses used by early German settlers when they came into town from their ranches on the weekends, various shops, the wonderful-smelling Mehlerhaus Bakery and Blue Falls’s favorite watering hole, the Frothy Stein. How her parents had despised the bar’s very existence.

  As she passed the office for Wildflower Tours, she grabbed a brochure from the rack outside. Maybe she and Evan could have a little botany lesson later.

  When they reached the path that made a U around three sides of the lake, Barrett made good on his promise of ice cream. She tried to decline any for herself, but he insisted.

  “What is a vacation without a little splurging?” The way he looked at her, she suspected he was talking about much more than ice cream.

  Feeling a strange combination of uncomfortable and flattered, she stepped up to the ice cream stand’s window and ordered a scoop of black cherry.

  As they made their way back toward the Primrose on the opposite side of the street, Grace resumed her duties as tour guide. When they approached the Blue Falls Music Hall, she gave a few tidbits of its history.

  “The music hall in Gruene is the oldest in Texas, but this one isn’t far behind. It’s been fixed up a lot since I moved away.” Whoever had done the renovations had made sure to keep the rustic clapboard frontier feel, though.

  “Care to give us a tour of the inside?”

  What she wanted was to sink into the protected confines of her car where she didn’t have to worry about how to fend off advances that were nice but still felt wrong somehow. Maybe because this trip was for Evan, not her.

  Not because of Nathan.

  “Afraid I’m no help there. Never been inside.”

  “Then it’ll be an adventure for all of us,” Barrett said as he opened the door and stepped inside.

  When the boys barreled in after him, Grace had little choice but to follow in their adventure-seeking wake. She couldn’t believe how much the inside matched how she’d imagined it. Tall ceilings with rafters, wooden floor, posters on the walls advertising some of the big names and not-so-big who had played there. A long, plain bar lined one wall, and round tables sat scattered around the edges of the huge, polished dance floor. At the opposite end of the building stood the hall’s famous stage, complete with old-style microphones.

  Barrett, obviously reverting back to his own boyhood, rushed onto the stage and started attempting to sing a Tim McGraw song into the unplugged microphone. Evan and the twins, getting into the spirit, scrambled onto the stage and pretended to play invisible guitars and drums.

  Grace laughed at their antics, which only made them goof off even more.

  “I don’t think they have a future on American Idol.”

  Grace started at the sound of Nathan’s voice close to her, the way it still managed to make her skin tingle. When she looked at him, she couldn’t read his expression. “What are you doing here?”

  He hesitated for a moment, continuing to stare toward the stage, then lifted a guitar case. “Dropping off equipment for tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. The band that was supposed to play cancelled, so we’re filling in.”

  She glanced back at the sound of the front door opening. In stepped Ryan and Simon, the latter in a sheriff’s uniform, carrying the pieces of a drum kit.

  “You’re in a band?”

  “Yes, the Teagues of Texas.”

  She couldn’t help but shoot him an amused smiled. “Original.”

  “We were going to go with Three Dudes with No Talent, but it lacked a certain ring to it.”

  “Ya think?” She didn’t fool herself by thinking all was suddenly well between them, but even a smidge of a thaw was welcome. Even if it might be part of his plan to change her mind about telling Evan the truth.

  “Hey, Grace,” Simon said as he and Ryan walked by. Ryan just nodded, always the quietest of the three Teague brothers.

  “So Simon is a cop now?”

  “Sheriff, actually.”

  She laughed. “This from the boy who put honey in Coach Sanders’s gym shoes?”

  “Oh, that was me.”

  Grace noticed Nathan’s mischievous smile and laughed again. “And you let him take the fall for it?”

  “He loved the status it gave him.”

  “And this is the man protecting the good folks of Blue Falls. Good thing it’s not a hotbed of crime.”

  “Looks like our karaoke session is over,” Barrett said as he approached them, stepping a bit too close to Grace.

  Grace eased a step away, trying not to be obvious and hoping she wasn’t about to be in the middle of some stupid testosterone battle. But that made no sense. Nathan wasn’t interested in her. But was he now the type of man who would make her think he was interested in order to convince her to tell Evan that Nathan was his father? How well had she ever really known him anyway? She examined his face as he watched Barrett. The easy expression he naturally wore was gone, replaced by a slight tightening of his jaw and an assessing look in his eyes. Did he think Barrett posed a threat to Evan?

  “Well, we need to be getting back to the ranch,” she said. “Evan will never forgive me if he misses the roping.” No matter that the man who’d be giving the lessons stood next to her.

  Her interruption of the staring contest edged things back into motion, and Barrett turned to call his boys from where they stood laughing at the clothes and hair in a seventies-era poster of Conway Twitty. Her eyes met Nathan’s, and the intensity there shocked her. She looked away before she could identify its source or meaning. All she knew was that the air inside the Blue Falls Music Hall had grown too warm and she wasn’t sure the extra heat wasn’t coming from her.

  Chapter Six

  Nathan became aware that he was still standing in the middle of the empty dance floor when he looked up and saw his brothers staring at him from the stage. Not wanting questions he was pretty sure he couldn’t answer, he headed for the stage steps.

  “You okay?” Simon asked as he put a cymbal on a stand.

  “Fine.” Except for the way all his muscles had tightened and his gut had knotted when he’d seen Grace with Barrett Farnsley, laughing at his comedy routine. He’d had the irrational desire to strangle the man.

  “Can’t say that’s convincing,” Simon said. “Did you think that was convincing, Ry?”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t recall asking you two for your expert opinions.”

  Simon lifted his hands in surrender. “Just making conversation.”

  “How about we just do this sound check. I’ve got to teach some kids about roping.”

  “One of those kids know you’re his daddy yet?”

  Nathan slammed down his guitar case. “Damn it, Simon. Why do you always have to dig?”

  Simon shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  “The boy is really yours?” Ryan asked.

  Nathan met his younger brother’s gaze. “Yes.”

  “How the hell did that happen anyway?” Simon asked. “I don’t remember Grace being your kind of girl.”
>
  “And what kind was that?”

  “Beautiful, not really in contention for valedictorian.”

  “You saying I just went for the dumb blondes?”

  “Mostly, yeah. Though you obviously went for a smart one somewhere along the way.”

  Nathan rubbed his hand over his face. “It was a mistake. I think I mentioned she should drop by one of Blake Chester’s parties. Didn’t think she’d actually do it. I’d been drinking a bit, one thing led to another.”

  “But—Grace Cameron?”

  For some reason, Simon’s disbelief rubbed Nathan the wrong way.

  “She had a thing for Nathan,” Ryan said. “And because of her, he got to play football.”

  Simon eyed Nathan. “So, it was a pity thing?”

  “No!” Nathan took a few steps toward the edge of the stage, as if he could clear the fog that had clouded his brain that long-ago night. “It was…just a mistake.” Why did something feel wrong when he said that? It had been a mistake, one brought about by stupidity and carelessness on his part. Maybe it felt wrong because it made Grace seem easily tossed away. He hadn’t had a thing for her back then, but he hadn’t thought of her as disposable, either. She’d been a nice, quiet girl who’d helped him.

  And he’d repaid her by getting her pregnant, which led to the hardest years of her life and her nearly losing their son. Yeah, he was a real winner.

  But she’d made mistakes, too, he reminded himself. Two wrongs didn’t make a right.

  “Is that why she moved away?” Ryan asked.

  Nathan didn’t know if his younger brother meant her pregnancy or the way he’d treated Grace after the night he’d had sex with her, but it didn’t matter. The answer was the same, either way.

  “Yes. Her parents made her.”

  “And you didn’t know about the baby?”

  Nathan shook his head. “Not until she showed up here two days ago.”

  “Man,” Simon said. “Talk about out of left field.”