The Cowboy and the Princess

by Lori Wilde

  Annie could not stop the giggle from bubbling up her throat.

  “Shh,” Brady said, but he was laughing too, his chest heaving from trying to hold in the sound.

  The last rays of sun tipped the trees. Fireflies scooted through the gathering twilight, twinkling up there in the sky with their ghostly glow. Slinking and duckwalking as fast as they could, they made it to the barn. Inside, it was hot and stuffy and smelled strongly of horses.

  “We cannot see fireworks from inside here.” Annie’s nose itched. She had been taught it was crass to scratch one’s nose, so she wriggled it instead. Horses shifted in their stalls, munching oats. Some of the ranch hands must have just fed them. The air tasted dusty.

  “C’mon.” Brady guided her to the back of the barn, his palm against her hip. There was a ladder leading to the hayloft. “You first.”

  “You just want to look up my dress.”

  “I want to be here to catch you if you were to slip and fall, but yeah, the looking-up-your-dress thing is a perk.”

  Holding her skirt flat against her fanny with one hand, she climbed the ladder using her other.

  “Spoilsport,” he accused, his voice filled with smiles.

  The first fireworks went off with a shriek and a boom.

  The hayloft was dark and mounded with earthy, sweet-smelling straw. Annie could barely make out her hand in front of her face. Brady scaled the ladder behind her, then moved to open a set of wide double doors. Moonlight poured in just as another rocket went off, showering the sky with vivid yellow sparks. From here, it was like having nature’s big-screen television set right in front of them.

  Brady took a pitchfork, rearranged the loose hay in a big pile near the open doors. Once he had it to his liking, he sat cross-legged, took Annie’s wrist, and tugged her down beside him. “Lean back.”

  She leaned back against the prickly straw, kicked off her sandals, felt the rough boards of the loft beneath her feet. Another rocket went off and then another; the smell of gunpowder drifted in on the wind. In the distance, they could hear their friends applauding and making noises of approval.

  It was warm and sticky up here, but Annie did not mind. Brady cradled her in the crook of his arm and she inhaled his masculine scent. He kissed the soft indention where her ear connected to her head. She had never seen fireworks so close or been in such a private and primal place as this hayloft, Annie in her borrowed pink dress with the snug-fitting bodice, at the other edge of the world from Monesta, the other edge of an imaginary future—the edge of simplistic beauty and Brady’s mouth; the rim, the summer border of holiday bliss.

  She was crazy with happiness. Delirious with it. Sick. And now Brady was kissing her and holding her hand.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Thank you for bringing me up here.”

  “But not as beautiful as you.” His fingertips tracked over her bare arms.

  At first, she felt nothing but a slight tickling, but she trusted him. He was a man who knew how to make a woman feel good. So she waited, held her breath, readied herself for the sensation she knew he would deliver.

  And then it came.

  The pressure, rolling in on waves heavy as ocean swells. She closed her eyes and let the swells encompass her. She felt his mouth play over her body, nibbling and kissing, licking and swirling. The pleasure was beautiful, sublime. She wanted it to last forever, but then Brady stopped and sat up.

  She opened her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Everything’s changed.”

  “I know.” She sighed. They hadn’t been able to keep the focus on happiness. The moment was only a moment and then there was another one and in this moment, the fantasy faded, dimmed.

  He reached out a tender hand and brushed an errant lock of hair from her forehead. “We have to talk.”

  “I know.”

  A rapid fire of firecrackers went off in the background, but neither one of them was looking. Their gazes were hung on each other.

  “You’ve got your secrets that you don’t want to talk about,” Brady said, “and I’m trying to respect that, but if we’re going to be closer, if we’re going to take this relationship to the next level, we really have to be honest with each other. I’m not going to push you, but it’s time I told you about me.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Annie said, fear supplanting her earlier delight. She was toeing a tightrope here, wanting to hold on to the dream, to have her proverbial cake and eat it too.

  It was an impossible dream, but so sweet. How she wanted to hold on to it!

  She wanted to beg him to please, please stop talking and just kiss her, but she knew Brady was going to have his say. It was time. The least she could do was listen. She owed him that. He’d given her so much. This sweet memory she could hold on to for the rest of her life.

  A tumble of emotion swelled in her. She blinked, turned her head from him, looked at the sky. More fireworks exploded, a burst of red, white, blue, green. They popped, shattered, and for one brief second it was the most beautiful explosion, and then just as quickly as they had ascended, the sparks sputtered, spent, fell to earth.

  Brady let out a pent-up breath, pushed fingers through his unruly hair.

  “There is no need to unburden yourself to me,” she said.

  “If you don’t want to be my sounding board, I understand,” he said. “But I really do want to tell you.”

  “All right,” she murmured, feeling both trapped and privileged to hear his story.

  “I told you that I ran away from home when I was fifteen,” Brady began.

  She burrowed her toes into the hay, pressed the soles of her feet against the boards, brought her knees to her chest, pulled the hem of her skirt down over her knees, hugged herself. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t even have a driver’s license, much less a car, so I hitchhiked.”

  “That is why you picked me up on the side of the road? Because you remembered what it was like to be alone on the side of the highway.”

  “I knew what kind of trouble you were courting, even if you didn’t.”

  “Why did you run away?” she asked, fully aware that she was opening herself up to the same probing questions.

  He did not answer.

  She rested her head on her knees, slid a sidelong glance at him. The muscles in his forearms bunched as he flexed his fingers, tension riding his nerve endings. She reached out to touch his arm. He calmed instantly, his muscles relaxing under the heat of her hand. “It’s okay. You owe me nothing.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But I owe it to me.”

  Another burst of fireworks lit the sky, but neither of them watched the colorful rockets. She moved a big toe against the rough wood of the loft floor, felt the rippling ridges. His breathing was heavy, deliberate, as if he was trying desperately to control the flow of oxygen. As if it could control the chaos of his memory. He was hurting and Annie couldn’t stand it, but neither could she do anything to change the past.

  “My father beat on me pretty regularly.”

  Annie didn’t mean to cry out, but her horror was a startled, sharp gasp in the shadowy confines of the hayloft. “Those scars on your back,” she whispered.

  Absentmindedly, he reached a hand around to touch his back. “The son of a bitch was fond of soaking the bullwhip in water before he used it on me.”

  Annie moved her hand from his arm down to find his hand and squeezed it. “Oh, Brady.”

  Silently, he clung to her hand. She could feel the painful memory of that long-ago time travel from his body into hers. “This was your real father?”

  “There’s the rub,” Brady said.

  “He was your stepfather?”

  “In a way, but I didn’t know that until I was fifteen.”

  A cluster of Roman candles went off in rapid succession. Pow. Pow. Pow.

  “You told me you had four brothers. That you were the middle child. How many were half brothers?”

  “All of them.”
/>   Annie frowned. “I am not following you.”

  “My father never whipped any of my brothers. Not once. Never touched a hair on their heads in rage. Just me. I was the only one singled out.”

  “That’s horrible! What kind of father does that?”

  “For years I thought something was wrong with me. That I deserved this kind of treatment. I was punished for the slightest infraction. If I didn’t put out the garbage, I’d be whipped. If I got a C in math. If I didn’t cut the lawn in a perfect pattern.”

  “That is child abuse! That is criminal!”

  “Yeah, but I was a kid. I took his discipline to heart. I took it to mean that I was defective in some way.”

  “You were not defective.”

  “I can see that from an adult point of view, but when you’re young and living it . . .” He shook his head. “I compensated by becoming the class clown. Get everyone on my side by making them laugh. I tried to pack as much fun in a day as I could because I knew when I got home at night . . .”

  “Why did your mother not intervene?”

  Brady gave a harsh laugh. “I suppose she feared he’d take his anger out on her the way he took it out on me.”

  “He didn’t beat her?” The hot barn was suddenly ice cold.

  “No, just me. The whipping boy.”

  His pain was her pain. She felt it. Swallowed it. Her stomach burned. Her heart seared. “I can see how that would confuse and hurt a child.”

  “I thought it meant I wasn’t worthy of the things other people got, but Dutch Callahan taught me different.”

  “Mariah’s father?”

  “Yeah. He might not have been a good dad to her, but to me, he was salvation. He took me off the road. Brought me to Jubilee. Gave me a job tending horses. He changed the direction of my life. Kept me from getting into serious trouble with the law. Kept me sane.”

  She admired how he raised his chin, squared his shoulders. He had been through a lot, but he had survived. She admired too how he had turned violence into tenderness. Transmuting the hatred his father had dished out into love for horses. “Dutch sounds like he was a very good man.”

  “He was. And after my father I desperately needed a good role model.”

  “Did you ever find out why your father singled you out? Why he treated you so terribly?”

  Brady paused again, stared out at the night. The air smelled smoky, black. “Because of my mother’s dark secret.”

  Overhead, more brilliant starbursts of light, a breathtaking panorama of sight and sound. Their hands stayed clenched, their backs resting against the hay.

  Annie said nothing for a long time, and then finally she nudged him. He had come this far. Now, she had to know everything about the past that plagued him. “What was her secret?”

  “My father lost his job after my brother Colton was born. To make ends meet, my mother took a job as a cook at a ranch near our home. Dad took to drinking to cope with unemployment.”

  “Job loss can be so difficult on a man’s ego.” Annie had read this somewhere. She had no real idea what she was talking about. In her world, the men were born into their positions. There was no taking it away. She could not really identify with Brady’s situation, but she could certainly feel his pain. It was in his face, his muscles, and his tone of voice.

  “My mother dealt with his drinking by taking comfort where she could find it,” he said. “She had an affair with the businessman who owned the ranch. Later, he got elected to the Texas state senate.”

  “That man is your real father?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “He came to our house.”

  “Your real father came to your house?” Annie echoed. She did not know what to do or say to make things better. There was no fixing this for him.

  “Yes, and as result, the man I thought was my father gave me the beating of my life.”

  “The beating that caused the scars on your back?”

  “Yeah. After he left me bloody and unable to walk, my mother found me, tended my wounds, and finally told me the truth.”

  “I cannot begin to imagine how you felt.”

  “The emotional pain was worse than the physical pain, but at last, everything made sense. I knew I would never get along with the man who raised me and that there was no point in staying and taking his abuse.”

  “Why did your real father come to see you?”

  “Thinking back on it, I realize he probably just wanted to see me. I don’t remember the excuse he made for coming there. I only remember my old man took it out on me.”

  Annie stroked his head, letting him know he was safe with her. “You don’t have to say any more.”

  “I had known all along I was different. That I did not fit in. My brothers knew it too. They tried to defend me from the old man, but once you become the scapegoat, there’s no scraping that stigma off.”

  “So you are not really close with any of your brothers.”

  Brady shook his head. “They have their lives. I have mine.”

  “What happened after your mother told you her shameful secret?”

  “I went to see the senator at his ranch. He didn’t admit to being my father. He said my mother was lying, but I could see the truth in his eyes.”

  “How could he be so cavalier?”

  “He had a family of his own and he was too cowardly to let his secret out. But he did give me some money. So I took it and I left and I told myself I would never go back. That I would never have that kind of life. I was afraid to trust. I knew how badly secrets hurt. If I’d only known why I was different, why my father did not accept it, I could have dealt with it. But my mother kept her secret and it hurt everyone involved. It’s why I hate secrets. Why I keep prodding you to reveal yours. Secrets can only hurt.”

  She wanted to tell him. She’d have to tell him eventually. She might as well tell him now. “Brady, I—”

  A deep, anguished, keening wail shattered the night.

  Annie stared at Brady. “Was that fireworks?”

  The second gut-ripping scream told them it was not.

  Fear pulsed through her. “Something awful is happening.” She searched for her sandals, slipped them on her feet. Brady had already started down the steps. He waited at the bottom of the ladder for her. The minute her feet touched the ground, he took her by the hand and they ran back to the ranch house.

  Fear seized Annie by the throat and would not let go.

  Brady shoved open the front door, pulling Annie along with him, and they bulleted into the backyard to find their friends pale and trembling. Mariah was on the ground with Lissette cradled in her arms. Lissette clung to her, sobbing helplessly, completely broken.

  The air smelled of burnt fireworks. The children stood wide-eyed. One girl sucked on her thumb. Another little boy was crying. The adults seemed frozen, unable to move. Joe stood by the patio door, his head in his hands.

  “What is it?” Brady whispered to Joe. “What’s happened?”

  That’s when Annie saw the two military men standing off to one side looking stiff and solemn in their uniforms. Her pulse leaped in her throat.

  “It’s Jake Moncrief,” Joe said. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  You might be a princess if . . . you keep your head in a crisis.

  In the wake of the news of Jake Moncrief’s death, Brady couldn’t believe how Annie immediately leaped into action, herding the children inside the house, taking them upstairs, calming them down, putting the younger ones down to sleep while putting a movie on the television for the older children to watch.

  Brady felt lost, helpless, but Annie seemed made for a crisis. Once the children were settled, she came back downstairs, made a pot of coffee, and began cleaning the house. She stayed in the shadows, out of the way, unobtrusively doing what needed to be done so everyone else could concentrate on consoling Lissette.

  Near midnight, once Lissette’s parents arrived fro
m Dallas and took her and Kyle home, and after the military casualty notification officers had departed, everyone else collected their sleepy children and somberly filtered out, until it was just Mariah and Joe and Brady and Annie left. At two o’clock in the morning, the four of them sat in the living room without talking. There was nothing to say.

  “I guess we should all try to get some sleep,” Joe said vaguely. “It seems so unreal. Jake was so vital.”

  “I keep thinking of those Disney World tickets he bought Lissette. How he promised he’d come home.” Mariah sniffled into a Kleenex.

  “Shh, shh.” Joe took his wife in his arms, kissed the top of her head, rubbed his hand up and down her back.

  “I’m going to take Annie back to the cabin,” Brady said, getting up off the couch.

  “There’s no need. We’ve got a guest room.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” Brady said, “but you all need time to grieve.”

  “The shop is closed tomorrow. Sleep in,” Mariah told Annie.

  “You do the same as well,” Annie said.

  “As if Jonah would let me. When you’ve got a baby, life goes on.”

  Mariah’s words echoed in his head as Brady took Annie back to the cabin. When you’ve got a baby, life goes on. Very soon, that could be his reality.

  Neither spoke on the short ride over. He pulled to a stop in the driveway.

  “Are you coming in?” she asked, her hand on the passenger side door.

  “Do you want me to come in?”

  Silently, she got out, went around to his side of the truck, opened the door, took his hand, and led him inside the cabin. It was her turn to take charge. To be in control. Brady let himself be led.

  They let the dogs out, and then let them back in again. They fell into bed with their clothes on. Exhausted and gritty, their hearts heavy. They wrapped their arms around each other and just let sleep claim them.

  Hours later, the chiming of Brady’s cell phone awakened them simultaneously.

  “God,” he muttered, fumbling for it on the bedside table. He felt as hung over as if he’d downed a quart of whiskey. “What now?”