Cowboys Don't Marry Their Enemy (Sweet Water Ranch Western Cowboy Romance Book 9)

by Jessie Gussman

  He didn’t owe her anything, but he said, “I’m going for a walk.”

  Her head jerked. “I have a design job I’m finishing.”

  He appreciated the consideration, since she didn’t owe him.

  He left without opening his mouth again, telling himself as soon as the funeral was over tomorrow, he was getting on his bike and pointing it west.

  North Dakota called.

  He kept his mouth shut when he set the bottle down in front of his mother on the table. Maybe he should try to comfort her, but they’d never been close. He couldn’t remember her hugging him, even once. It would be weird to start tonight. The bottle seemed to be the only comfort she wanted anyway.

  He couldn’t leave, couldn’t head west like he felt called to do, but he could at least get out.

  The wind had picked up and the cold was biting, but he walked for several hours, hiking to the stone quarry he’d visited a time or two as a teen. Always in the summer.

  There was a high wall and a deep pool below, black as tar on a night like tonight. Deep, dark blue on a sunny summer day. Deadly at any time. He knew of at least two kids who’d stepped off the cliff and into the clutch of eternity, hitting the water and never resurfacing.

  He’d jumped a couple of times, but daredevil stunts were never a thrill to him. He did like the challenge, though. Working on a roof on a hot summer day, jumping off a cliff, or, apparently, mooning over a woman who saw every man but him as a potential bed partner and father.

  He was so leaving tomorrow.

  He didn’t want her anyway.

  Standing at the edge of the cliff, swaying slightly in the wind that howled down the ridge and tunneled along the high wall, he looked down into the darkness below. Knowing what was there, unable to actually see it, not needing to in order to know he was inches away from joining his grandmother, not tempted in the slightest to breech those inches, but not afraid, either.

  He looked up at the night sky, at the high, gray clouds that raced across the moon, blocking even that light from illuminating the ground around. This wasn’t North Dakota, but he felt closer to God out here than he had in the church. His fault, not God’s. God was in the church, just the same as he was in the wind and the cliffs and the ridge and every space between. There was just less out here to distract him from noticing his Creator.

  In the church, all he could see was Cora. All he could feel was his anger at what she’d done. All he could think was how much he loved her.

  Here, he could feel God’s spirit. See the truth. Hear the Word. It was all the same. Jesus was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He didn’t understand, but he knew it to be true just as sure as he knew one more step would plunge him into eternity.

  The Bible was the Word. He believed that and read it daily. Only, he hadn’t today.

  The wind swirled. His jaw tightened. He swayed.

  He hadn’t read it, because he’d stopped at the beginning of Hosea.

  A gust shook the bare branches on the ridge and whistled below his feet. Then, suddenly, there was silence. Complete quiet. Nothing moved, and he held his breath, waiting.

  Long seconds passed. Abner couldn’t even tell how much time slipped by with no sounds, no movement. Even the clouds seemed to stop.

  He shook his head, turning on his boot. It caught on a loose stone as he pushed off. His foot slipped and he fell to his knee, the stone slipping off the edge and falling into the night. He never heard it hit.

  His heart pounded and his knee burned as he rose slowly back to his feet. Not really fear but definitely adrenaline spiked his blood pressure.

  Maybe God was trying to tell him something, maybe he was just homesick. He didn’t know, and he started back.

  It was well after midnight when he stood in front of his mother’s house. One more night, then he was leaving.

  But as he walked through the broken gate and up the path to the house, a squeaking sound came from behind the house.

  Plenty of things could squeak in the night, and he shouldn’t have thought a thing about it, but his feet took him off the path and around the house where Derrick and Andrew had run just yesterday when he’d first stood at the gate and just before he saw Cora for the first time in years.

  She was on the kids’ swing now, her hands gripping the chain and her cheek leaning against one of them, facing away from him. He watched her for a bit, wondering what she’d do if he walked over, placed his hands over hers, and bent down, kissing her temple and breathing in her scent. Standing behind her, giving her his heat.

  He wanted to.

  Despite everything he knew and everything he’d seen, he wanted to.

  The girl he’d loved in high school was still there. Sweet and funny. Sassy. Cute and giving. It wouldn’t be hard to fall for her again. She’d never left his heart anyway.

  But he was leaving.

  He turned, quietly and carefully, and walked back to the porch, noting the sagging gate, the rickety steps, and the porch that needed to be patched and painted.

  He stepped in the hall and, from the light of the kitchen, saw the unfinished wall that had been spackled but not sponged off for the last time and still needed to be painted.

  He couldn’t leave a job unfinished.

  And, yeah, maybe his mother hadn’t been much of a mother to him, but it didn’t excuse him for not being a good son. He could stay and fix a few things before he left.

  Chapter 9

  Cora woke to the smell of bacon and coffee. Funny how much easier it was to get up when her brain begged her body to follow her nose.

  It also felt good that she’d gotten her project done the night before and sent it off to be approved.

  Of course, what Doug had told her at the viewing had spoiled most of her plans, and she didn’t know what to do.

  She’d sent a couple of text messages off to friends, including one to Bob Price. She didn’t really want to take him up on his offer, but since Doug had said he truly was taking Aunt Sandy back to North Carolina with him, she needed to find another place to live. Fast.

  She already knew she couldn’t afford a house. A two-bedroom apartment might work. If she could find one cheap enough, she could put the kids in the bedrooms and sleep on the couch. She’d spent a lot of time trying to figure something out last night after she’d finished her project. Abner had been gone, and she’d spent some time wondering about that, too. Said he was taking a walk. There weren’t exactly a lot of places one could hang out in town. Maybe he’d gone somewhere with someone else.

  It was almost two a.m. when she’d gone in, and he’d been in the recliner in the living room. It was hard to tell herself she didn’t care, because she knew she did.

  Thinking about Abner wasn’t going to help her find a house.

  She could think about it later. After coffee.

  Aunt Sandy was actually up when Cora went down, with Luna on one hip and Claire on another. She was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in her hand.

  Her eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. Her hands shook as they lifted the coffee cup to her mouth, and she’d slept in the clothes she’d worn to the viewing.

  But she was up. Unusual for sure.

  Abner stood at the stove with his back to her.

  “Good morning, Aunt Sandy,” Cora said, setting Luna in her booster seat before strapping Claire into her highchair.

  “Morning, Cora.” Abner’s voice came over her shoulder. She didn’t want the shiver that curled her toes and made her fingers tingle.

  Ugh. She wanted to bite her tongue. He said a simple good morning; why couldn’t she respond in kind?

  Because she wanted to know where he was last night. Or maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe she’d never forgiven him for leaving without giving her a chance to tell him what had actually happened.

  She was partly to blame, but he’d left.

  Her mouth opened and she forced the words out. “Good morning, Abner. Out rammi
ng around until pretty late last night.” That was more than she wanted to say.

  “I was out ‘ramming’ around. I almost left.”

  What did he mean by that? She snapped the buckle on the booster seat. Abner set a plate with eggs, toast, and bacon down in front of her seat.

  “I’m sorry. Thank you so much for everything that you’ve done since you’ve come.” She managed to get the words out of her mouth, but she couldn’t look at him as she said them. “It’s none of my business what you were doing. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “It’s because he left you.” Aunt Sandy’s coffee cup clanked down on the table. Her bloodshot eyes looked Cora up and down. “Things would have been a lot different if he’d’a stayed.” Her head shook. “Men. Pride makes them stupid.”

  Cora could agree with that to some extent. Abner had a lot of pride.

  But he wasn’t the only one in the room who had been stupid. She’d been a lot dumber for a lot longer, and she couldn’t let his mother sit there and insult only him.

  “It’s not all his fault, Aunt Sandy. He didn’t know everything, and I had too much pride to tell it all to him.” That wasn’t entirely true. She’d had every intention of telling him every sordid detail. But hadn’t gotten her nerve up before he left. She’d been worried he’d be disgusted. Hate her.

  Then he’d been gone, and it hadn’t mattered.

  “What didn’t you tell me?” Abner asked softly. His voice was almost gentle, but when she looked up at him, the hardness in his eyes was still there.

  He didn’t believe her. Didn’t believe that there was anything she hadn’t said. Or maybe he thought what she hadn’t said was worse than what she had.

  It was. But not in the way he thought.

  Derrick and Andrew came into the kitchen, saving her from answering. Summer and Kohlton came not long afterwards, and things were crazy from then on until it was time to leave the house for the funeral at eleven.

  Chapter 10

  Abner walked out of the house with Claire in one arm and Kohlton holding tight to his other one. She held Summer’s hand and carried Luna. The boys walked on either side of Aunt Sandy, who was as sober as Cora had ever seen her.

  She could almost pretend they were a family. After their tense exchange at the breakfast table, they’d been able to work together to get the kids ready again.

  If she didn’t harbor so many complicated feelings about Abner, she’d think he was nice.

  Their timing stank, though, since Jason and his family pulled into the church lot as they were walking in.

  “Don’t squeeze so hard, Mommy,” Summer said.

  “Sorry, sweetie,” Cora murmured.

  Really? Of all the times in the world they could show up, it had to be at the same time she and her children did.

  She tried to hurry her children along, so they’d get in the church first, but a two-year-old could only walk so fast.

  If Abner noticed her distress, he didn’t say anything, which was probably best, since they could hardly fight if they weren’t talking to each other.

  Jason and his wife were out of their car and hit the church steps right behind Cora and her kids. She didn’t turn around to greet him, although Aunt Sandy stopped to say hi to her son.

  She walked into the church, breathing in the scent of hymnbooks and Bibles and the faint smell of coffee. Furniture polish. There was only one full pew left that had been saved for family, and Cora began arranging her children in it.

  But Abner wasn’t behind her like she’d assumed. She sat Luna and Claire on the seat, putting Derrick and Andrew on the end and leaving enough room for two more little bodies. She looked around.

  Abner was in the back, talking to Jason’s wife, Erin.

  Well, hopefully he would drop her kids off when he was finished. She turned and sat.

  Jason slid in beside her. Her entire body froze.

  “Hey, Cora.”

  No. She wasn’t doing it. Years ago, she’d kept her mouth shut to protect her half-sister. Her silence didn’t mean that what he’d done was okay. She wasn’t sitting beside him.

  Conscious that they were in the front and it would look bad if she popped up like toast out of a toaster, she counted slowly to ten before she moved to stand.

  He put his fingers on her arm. “Ignoring me?” he said softly. “Why? We used to have fun together.”

  She continued to straighten, and his fingers tightened before they fell off.

  The pianist played softly. Sweet hymns that floated gently through the sanctuary of mourners. Cora was no longer noticing that, nor the murmurs and movement of others around her.

  Her sole focus was getting away.

  “Excuse me.” The voice, coming from behind her, was familiar and welcome.

  She turned in time to see Abner moving past Jason and sliding in behind her. She felt his heat at the same time she caught his scent, masculine and rugged, though somehow not at odds with their environment. A complement to it.

  She didn’t take the time to try to figure out the apparent contradiction, and she didn’t try to hide her relief, either.

  Luna’s arms reached up for Abner, and he picked her up, brushing against Cora and making her uncomfortable in a deliciously distracting way, one that she really didn’t want to acknowledge.

  Much better than the creepy vibe she’d been getting from Jason. Memories she’d rather not relive.

  “I’ll sit here.” His eyes searched hers like he might be realizing that everything he thought he knew wasn’t all there was to know, but it was probably wishful thinking on her part. Too late now to change anything anyway.

  “Thanks,” she said simply.

  His eyes narrowed, and he pitched his voice low, for her ears only. “I think it might be time for us to talk. Later.”

  Pulling her lip back, she shook her head. Too late. Too late. Too late.

  The funeral was blessedly short, and there was no graveside service, but there was a meal afterwards. Aunt Sandy sat with Jason and Doug while Abner helped Cora, almost like they were married and her six children were theirs.

  Everything was so much easier with a man beside her. But she couldn’t let herself get used to it. She’d quit this game.

  Maybe not if a man like Abner were interested.

  Except she’d promised herself.

  Of course, she’d do whatever was necessary to put a roof over her children’s heads.

  Thinking of that, she looked around for Bob. He wasn’t hard to look at, and he’d offered her a place to stay. He hadn’t responded to her text or email, but he wasn’t much for writing, so it wouldn’t surprise her if he just showed up. He was a firefighter and worked odd hours, so maybe he was on call and couldn’t.

  Her stomach curled, and she tried to calm herself. Something would work out. She’d make it.

  Since her project was finished and she hadn’t gotten another one, she’d search the internet tonight after the kids went to bed to see if she could find a place. She hated to move them out of the school district, but if she had to, she would.

  By the time the meal was over, her children were fussy and needed naps.

  Abner, holding Luna, had stopped to talk to an older lady with a cane. Cora didn’t recognize her, and Claire needed a diaper change, so she kept going, holding tight to Kohlton’s hand, Summer trailing behind.

  Jason and Doug met her at the door.

  “We need to talk to you,” Doug said, serious but not unkind.

  Jason had more of a smirk. “About your living arrangements.”

  “I understand Aunt Sandy is moving out.” She hadn’t wanted to be confronted about it again, after what Doug had said last night, but figured she needed to face this head-on.

  “Rent’s paid until the end of the month. You need to be out by then.”

  “I figured.”

  “I’ll be taking Aunt Sandy down with me when I leave tomorrow.” Doug put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his feet. “My wi
fe’s tired, and she wanted to rest in our hotel this evening, so I thought you could help her pack.”

  Cora bit the insides of her cheeks. She was tired, too. And Aunt Sandy was their mother. But Aunt Sandy had done so much for her. She was also Abner’s mother and Abner had been nothing but helpful to Cora. Cora could do this one thing. Not for Doug and Jason. But for Abner and Aunt Sandy. “Of course. I’ll work at it this afternoon and have things ready to go tonight.”

  “That’d be great. I might stop in then, this evening, that way we can leave straight from the hotel tomorrow.” Some of the tension in Doug’s shoulders eased, like he’d been afraid Cora would give him a hard time.

  “I’ll make sure everything is ready.” Claire wiggled in her arms, and Cora juggled her while keeping a hold on Kohlton’s hand. He pulled against it and swung back and forth, but she’d been doing this for years and barely noticed. As long as he wasn’t running around knocking people down, he could do a little swinging on her arm.

  Jason clapped Doug on the shoulder. “Hey, Doug, you go on and see about getting Mom. I want to talk to Cora for a minute.”

  “Sure, Jason. I’ll meet you in a bit. I have numbers for two treatment centers.” Doug walked away.

  Cora lifted her brows. “So, she’s getting some help?”

  “It’s pretty obvious she needs it.” Jason’s gaze didn’t meet hers but settled somewhere lower. She tried not to squirm, feeling that’s what he wanted.

  She started to move away.

  He shifted. “I have a place where you can stay.”

  This wasn’t something she wanted to listen to. If it were her, she’d sleep on the street first. But she had her children to consider.

  “We used to have a good time together.” Maybe he thought his voice sounded sexy. To her much younger self, it had. Not anymore.

  “You used to have a good time.”

  His face jerked back like he was surprised. “Everything we did was consensual.”

  “It was.” She forced the words out because they were the truth.

  “And you were above the age of consent.”

  “I was.” That was true too.