The Cowboy and the Kid

by Anne McAllister

  "It was … kind of you to come and apologize. You didn't really need to. I don't blame you for being a little … testy. It must have been a shock to see me right in front of you in church after seeing me all those other times." She gave an awkward little laugh.

  Taggart raised his one good eye and met hers. "A bigger shock than it ought to have been."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I should've realized about all that following Becky and Susannah were doing."

  "What about it?" Felicity looked at him, confused.

  "We were being set up."

  "Set up?"

  "By a pair of scheming girls." Taggart dragged the ice bag down his face, then looked at her over the top of it and said flatly, "Becky reckons you'd make a fine mother for her—and a wife for me."

  Felicity was grateful she was clutching the back of one of the chairs. Otherwise, she might have sat right down on the floor. She stared at him, astonished.

  "A wife! That's what they were doing?" She felt her cheeks warm. His face was red, too, and not just from the ice. Felicity thought about all the times in the past two weeks when Becky had turned up in those very same places with her father in tow. She thought how odd it was, what a small town they lived in. She hadn't connected it, but Taggart had known! No wonder he'd dragged Becky off after church today. No wonder he'd said what he had!

  "Oh, my," she said now.

  Taggart lifted his head. "Oh, my, indeed."

  Flustered, she sat down, then bounced up again, feeling somehow that she was contributing to an excess of familiarity by simply seating herself in her own kitchen. She did a lap around the tiny room, picked up the dish cloth, put it down again. "Oh, my."

  "Don't worry. I set them straight. At least I thought I had." He shrugged. "Judging from church this morning, I didn't do a very good job."

  "Whatever would make them think that we…" Now her cheeks were burning!

  "Susannah, I'd bet," Taggart said grimly. "She got her folks together a couple of years back."

  "They were separated?"

  Taggart shook his head. "They weren't married. Noah didn't even know Susannah existed."

  Felicity goggled. "Didn't know?"

  "Not till we got in an accident two Christmases ago comin' back from the National Finals. We got smacked by a semi on the Interstate near Laramie in a snowstorm."

  Felicity shuddered. "Were you badly hurt?"

  "Concussion. Broke my leg. Once I came around and they got things sorted out, I got to come home pretty quick. But Noah punctured a lung and hurt his knee and wrist and shoulder. So he ended up in Laramie doing physical therapy over Christmas. He knew Tess—she's a nurse—'cause he'd recuperated there once before. He reckoned maybe she'd take him in again, so he showed up on her doorstep—" he paused "—and met Susannah."

  "Tess hadn't ever told him?"

  "She didn't figure he'd want to know." Taggart gave an awkward shrug. "They hadn't parted on the best of terms. There isn't much future if one of you is goin' down the road all the time." His mouth twisted wryly. "Guess I should've figured that out for myself. Anyhow, Susannah talked her mother into letting Noah stay. Just for Christmas, you understand. But, well … Noah wasn't about to let her go again, and eventually they got together, happy as pigs in—" He flushed and broke off. "So, I figure it went to her head and now she and Becky are convinced they can do equally well for me. And you."

  "Not your … ex-wife?" She was careful to get it right this time.

  "No, thank God." His tone was fervent. Maybe he didn't love her anymore. Maybe he was getting over it. Like she was getting over losing Dirk.

  Was she getting over losing Dirk?

  Certainly Felicity had never felt as intensely aware of any man since Dirk's death as she did of Taggart Jones. But marry him? That was a little drastic.

  "Have they done this before?" she asked cautiously.

  "Never. And they won't do it again, I promise you."

  She smiled. "I'm sure they were only … trying to help. They're young. They'll realize before long that you want to pick your own wife."

  "I'm not in the market for a wife." His tone was flat and hard, brooking no argument.

  "Oh." Felicity felt oddly deflated. "I see."

  Something in her tone must have made him take notice. "Not that you wouldn't be a great candidate if I were," he said quickly.

  She gave him a faint smile. "Thank you. I think."

  "Hey." His own smile was rueful. "Can't seem to stop sticking my foot in my mouth, can I?"

  "Don't worry. I won't be coming after you with a wedding ring. Actually," she admitted, "I came up here to get away from matchmaking friends in L.A."

  "All the way to Elmer? Wasn't that a little drastic?"

  "Well, I didn't see myself staying in Los Angeles, and I didn't want to go back to Des Moines—that's where I grew up. So when Uncle Fred died and left me the house, well, it seemed like fate, I guess." Her cheeks warmed slightly as she thought he might consider her foolish, but a glance told her that he was simply listening, not judging at all.

  Encouraged, she went on. "I remembered how much I loved it here. I spent a summer here with my mom when I was ten—helping Uncle Fred put out his paper, going hiking in the mountains, riding horseback, picking berries—they're all part of my fondest memories. And so—" she shrugged "—I came."

  "And?"

  "I love it."

  "Love it?"

  "I do." And as she said the words, she knew firmly and fully that they were true. She'd been living in what had amounted to a holding pattern all the while she'd stayed in Los Angeles after Dirk had died. Perhaps at the time she'd needed to.

  But she needed to no longer; in fact, she needed to be somewhere else, to grow somewhere else. Elmer.

  "Good for you," Taggart said after a moment. His voice was a little gruff, and he looked at her only for a moment, then stared away into space.

  "Can I get you a cup of coffee or something?" Felicity asked. She felt hesitant, not wanting to break the tentative rapport that seemed to be developing.

  Taggart's eyes focused on her once more. He blinked as if he was suddenly aware of the intimacy of their surroundings and of the possibility that his daughter might be already busy picking out Felicity's engagement ring. He set down the ice pack and stood abruptly. "Nope. Thanks, but I've gotta get going."

  "I won't try to marry you tonight," Felicity said lightly, forcing a smile. "If that's what you're worried about."

  Taggart flushed. "Sorry. I just … don't want you to get the wrong idea … thinking I'm trying to … you know." He shrugged awkwardly.

  "I know," Felicity said gently.

  "I really do have work to get done."

  "Teaching bull riding?"

  "Not tonight. Paperwork. An ad to put together. Some correspondence."

  "For your bull-riding school?"

  "Yep."

  "What's it like, teaching bull riding? I can't imagine."

  "Fun. Challenging. I've got some two-day schools. Some three. Some five."

  "And what do you teach? How, I mean?"

  "We go over fundamentals—the way the bull moves, the way the rider is supposed to move. How to get your head screwed on straight. Bull riding is a mind game as much as a strength game. You're never really stronger than the bull, so you have to succeed some other way. You have to understand that and go with him."

  Felicity was fascinated. "How did you get started?"

  "It was just something I did. I won a ribbon ridin' a sheep when I was five. Mutton bustin' they call it. Then I started on steers, and when I was in high school, broncs and bulls. Kids hereabouts do that. It's not all that rare. I was good at it. I liked the bulls the most. I was never much for sittin' still."

  No, she could see that. She could see it in his daughter, come to that. "But teaching?"

  "I like that better than riding most of the time." A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. "I like figuring things out. Helping
guys make the best of themselves. They won't all go on and be world champs. In fact, damn few of 'em will even go pro. But what they learn, they can use in whatever they do."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Confidence. The ability to focus. The determination to do something hard and follow through."

  "Yes, I see." At least she was beginning to. "And there really are enough hopeful bull riders around for you to do that full-time?" She flushed at her nosiness. "I'm sorry. That's none of my business."

  But Taggart didn't seem to mind. "I teach maybe fifteen schools at home a year. I do about the same number on the road. Noah does the same with bronc riding. It works out."

  "I'm impressed."

  He shifted from one foot to the other, looking embarrassed. He tugged on his hat. "You oughta come out sometime."

  "Maybe I will." She smiled at him.

  He swallowed quickly and took a step backward, then gave a quick, jerky nod. "Well, good. Now, I really gotta get goin'." He started for the door.

  Felicity rose and followed him. "It was … kind of you to come."

  "Had to, after what I said this morning. I was an ass."

  "You were embarrassed."

  He grimaced. "Ain't that the truth?" Then he grinned and shook his head. "Reckon I'll have to keep a firm hand on that girl."

  Their gazes met, clung, electricity arcing once more. Felicity nodded. "Reckon you will."

  * * *

  "Didja see her?" Becky asked. They were in the truck driving home from Susannah's, where Taggart had dropped her while he'd gone to apologize—not that he'd told her so. "Have to see a man about a bull" was all he'd said.

  "See who?" he asked his daughter now.

  "You know who." Becky looked up at him unflinchingly, waiting for a reply.

  "I saw her," Taggart admitted, his tone gruff.

  Becky got a small smile on her face. Then she gave a little bounce. "I like her. Lots."

  Trouble was, so did he.

  * * *

  Her daydreaming about Taggart Jones should have abated. Realistically, she told herself, there was no point. The man had out and out said he didn't want another wife. But then, she wasn't really in the market for a husband, was she?

  Of course not. And besides, these were just dreams. They didn't require confirmation in reality. They were, by their very nature, fantasies—unrelated to real life.

  Whatever they were, Felicity had a ton of them. Every sleeping moment. Almost every waking one.

  It was because she'd been emotionally dead for so long, she reassured herself. It was healthy. Promising. It meant she was waking up to live again, thinking about the future, about moving on.

  Mostly, though, she was thinking about Taggart Jones. Perversely, she no longer saw him everywhere she looked. In fact, he might as well have dropped off the face of the earth.

  She should have taken it for the message it undoubtedly was: that he wasn't interested in her. He was annoyed and embarrassed by his daughter's actions. He'd been embarrassed and ashamed of his own, and he'd done what needed to be done to put things right. End of story.

  Still, Felicity looked for him. And when she didn't see him, she asked about him.

  "Taggart Jones?" Cloris said.

  "Oh, my, yes. Of course we know Taggart." Alice's face was wreathed with a smile, and she gave a little giggle. "Isn't he just the sweetest boy? Always was."

  Cloris sniffed. "Bit of a devil, if you ask me."

  Alice made a tsking sound. "You're just saying that because of the cow pie, and you know it."

  "Cow pie?" Felicity was agog.

  Cloris pressed disapproving lips into a thin line. "Don't ask," she said, folding her hands in her lap and giving Alice a quelling look.

  But very little, Felicity had begun to realize, quelled Alice Benn. She just giggled and said, "Well, it was rather funny."

  "You," Cloris pointed out, "didn't sit in it."

  "Oh, dear." Felicity stifled her own giggles as she imagined the very proper Cloris as an unsuspecting victim of a well-placed cow pie.

  Cloris gave them both a steely glare, but even as she did so, Felicity detected a glimmer of amusement in the older woman's eyes.

  "As I recall," Cloris said tartly, "his daddy made it a little difficult for him to sit down a day or two after. I suppose he didn't turn out too badly," she allowed after a moment. "He seems to have done rather well with that little girl. She's in your class, you say?"

  "Yes." Felicity told them about Becky coming to school in spurs.

  Alice laughed heartily. Even Cloris cracked a smile.

  "Chip off the old block, isn't she?" Alice said. "Why ever did she wear them, do you suppose?"

  "She's her father's daughter," Cloris said dryly. "What other reason does she need?"

  Which was a fortunate comment because it saved Felicity from having to give the real explanation. She had no intention of telling them it was a matchmaking ploy. Even though neither of them had commented today on her need for a man in her life, last Thursday evening, when she'd had dinner with Alice at her house, the entire conversation had focused on the vital statistics of both of Alice's unmarried grandsons.

  "You could do worse, dear," Alice had told her.

  "I'm not really interested," she'd said, so she certainly didn't want them getting ideas about her and Taggart now!

  She wondered if his eye was still black and swollen, if his cheek was still raw. She remembered the briefest touch of his callused fingers on hers when he'd taken the ice pack. In her fantasies his touch lingered.

  "…distracted this evening, dear," Alice said.

  Jolted, Felicity tried to follow the conversation. Both older women looked at her indulgently. She flushed. "I'm just about to start a new project with the children," she lied. "And I've been thinking about that."

  "More projects?" Cloris's brows arched. She wasn't quite sure about this "project" nonsense. A little old-fashioned reading, writing and arithmetic never hurt anyone, she told Felicity. Felicity had assured her the children got that within the projects, but she could tell Cloris wasn't convinced.

  "This one's about families," she said. "Occupations. I want the children to begin thinking about the way their parents earn a living—what skills it takes, how they began to learn those skills as children, how they might already be learning skills themselves."

  Not bad since she was making it up as she went along. A curriculum committee with its nose in every teacher's classroom would have a fit about her improvisation. But the more she thought about it, the better it sounded. She'd often told Lori that her California students had no idea what their parents did all day while they were at school. And they lived, in many cases, so far away from the places their parents worked, that they had no sense of how their parents contributed to the life of the community. It would be easier to make the connection in Elmer. It would be good for the students—and good for the parents.

  And, incidentally, it would allow Felicity to watch Taggart Jones teach his students how to ride a bull.

  * * *

  "You don't mind, do you?" Becky asked. She had on her innocent waif look, the one he knew was designed to make him give in. She stood looking up at him while he flipped pancakes for their breakfast.

  He sighed. "No, I don't mind."

  He did. But how could he possibly tell her that Ms. Albright wasn't welcome to observe a session of bull-riding school tomorrow afternoon? Especially when he'd all but invited her himself.

  "It's for school," Becky informed him. When he raised his eyebrows in doubt, she added, "We're doin' occupations. 'What keeps our valley alive,' Ms. Albright calls it. We're makin' a documentary."

  Taggart's brows lifted even higher. He didn't even know Becky knew the word documentary, much less what it meant.

  "We're writing the script, and she's doin' the videotaping. Showing what our parents do. Then we're gonna do voiceovers, an' when we get done, we'll have a real movie."

  It didn't sound like schoo
l the way he remembered it. He was reluctantly impressed. But he still wasn't sure he wanted Felicity Albright hanging around his bull-riding school. He'd had a hard enough time putting her out of his mind this past week. Now that he could imagine her in her house, at a table, leaning her cheek against her palm as she listened to him, smiled at him, it was all that much easier to imagine her other places—like in his bed. He'd made sure he didn't run into her again. But even the "out of sight" business wasn't as successful as he'd hoped.

  He slid the turner under the pancakes on the griddle and scooped them onto Becky's plate. "Eat," he told her. "I'll run you up to the bus. We're late."

  They wouldn't have been if he hadn't burned the first two batches. It was because she'd kept prattling at him, telling him all about what Ms. Albright had done this week—the stories she'd told them about growing up in Iowa, about living in Southern California, about traveling around Europe with her husband. Her husband, according to Becky, had been a concert cellist.

  "That's a very accomplished musician," Becky informed him.

  He sure as hell didn't think it was a calf roper.

  When he dropped Becky off at the bus stop, he didn't go right home. He stopped the truck on a rise overlooking the pasture. He sat there, letting the engine idle as he stared at the bulls. His pride and joy, bread and butter.

  He tried seeing them through the eyes of a woman who'd been married to a cellist, a woman who'd traveled around Europe on her holidays, a woman with golden wavy hair and a smile that made the ice around his heart begin to melt. He tried to imagine what she'd think of a man who rode them for a living—who even went so far as to teach others to ride them.

  He didn't have that good an imagination. Until he remembered how Julie had come to see him.

  Then he gunned the engine and headed home.

  * * *

  Even though she had a rough idea of what Taggart must do, Felicity didn't quite know what to expect the morning she showed up for bull-riding school. Surely they didn't sit in rows and listen to lectures and raise their hands to ask questions, did they?

  What she saw when she opened the door to the "classroom," which was a steel-sided building beside the barn, was a sea of cowboy hats. Black and white and ivory, wool felt and straw, they topped the heads of more cowboys than Felicity had ever seen in one place in her life. Where, she wondered, had they all come from? There must have been twenty at least.