How to Rope a Real Man (25 page)

“College?” She sunk back into her chair, her head in her hands. “I’ve always been your biggest fan. I wish you would’ve let me be proud of you about that.”

Jenna puffed her cheeks full of air and released it in a steady stream. “I’m sorry. I started with UNM’s correspondence program when I was twenty, when Tommy was a baby. I did it on a whim, thinking it would give me something to keep my mind sharp while Tommy slept. I knew even then that as soon as I could get a good job somewhere else, Tommy and I could get out of this town.

“I didn’t tell you at first because, like I said, it was comforting to have a secret that was all for me. And then, after a while . . .” She shook her head. How could she explain? “You know how Jake didn’t tell Kellan about his partner’s stroke? He didn’t want to worry Kellan or ruin his day. He kept the truth a secret for all the right reasons. That’s the way it was for me with you about college, but it snowballed.

“The longer I went without telling you about me going to college, the more pissed and hurt I knew you’d be at me when you found out. It was never the right time. Mom’s mental instabilities got worse and, more and more, Dad wasn’t around. You had your hands full with the ranch. I couldn’t find it in myself to hurt you more. Then Dad died and Mom turned suicidal and, God, Rachel, I just couldn’t. I love you so much. But now, I’m about to graduate and I have a job lined up in Santa Fe with the state as a computer software programmer. It starts September first.”

Rachel looked utterly flabbergasted. She poured herself another whiskey. “You’re moving? What about Tommy’s schooling? He’s supposed to start kindergarten. What are you going to do about that?”

“I’ve already enrolled him in a school in Santa Fe.”

Rachel rotated her jaw, her whole being radiating the exact same kind of hurt that Jenna had feared facing every time she’d thought about telling Rachel the truth. “Well, I’ll be damned. I guess you’ve got it all figured out. I’m going to need some time to let that sink in.”

There was one more thing, though, and Jenna was determined to get it all out in the open now. “I put a deposit down on an apartment already, and Tommy and I are going to be moving this week. I can’t risk staying in Catcher Creek any longer now that Carson’s back and the whole town knows the truth—or at least they will soon enough. Word spreads like a wildfire in this place.”

Rachel swabbed her forehead. “I can’t believe—”

A pounding knock sounded at the front door. Both Jenna and Rachel jumped out of their skin.

“Jenna!” It was Carson’s bellowing voice.

Rachel straightened, her eyes wide. “Is that Carson?” Jenna’s gut twisted. Oh, God. She’d known this was coming tonight as much as she’d known Matt was going to break up with her, but she wasn’t ready for this. She should be on the road to Santa Fe with Tommy, safely out of Carson’s reach, instead of sitting at her kitchen table waiting for his wrath to strike. “Yes. That’s him.”

“Sounds like he figured it out about Tommy. I guess that means he’s not as dumb as he looks.”

“Carson’s definitely not dumb.”

Rachel stood, grabbed the fudge bar, and dropped it in the trash can. Her shock and disappointment of a few moments earlier was gone, replaced by iron-clad strength. “How do you want to play this?”

What an outrageous question. She didn’t have any plays left. She and Rachel were two women alone in an old, run-down cottage with a sleeping child in the next room. If Carson wanted to, he could probably bust through the side of the weather-beaten, termite-riddled wall or break the door down, dead bolt be damned.

The door rattled with three more loud poundings. “Get out here and face me, Jenna. And you better not shoot at me this time.”

“Shoot him?” Rachel asked.

“Another long story.” Jenna pressed her palms on the table and stood, drawing a slow inhale as she rose. She couldn’t let go of the table, she was so off-balance with fear. “I don’t know what to do, Rachel. I’m so scared right now.”

Rachel strode around the table and pulled Jenna into a hug. “Everything’s going to be okay. You and me, we’ve been through harder times than this. We’re cowgirl tough, through and through, even if you don’t feel like it now.”

Everything’s going to be okay
. Rachel’s same words of consolation and solidarity from when Jenna had told her she was pregnant. It was like Jenna couldn’t stop screwing things up and needing her big sister to save her. She rested her chin on Rachel’s shoulder.

“You know Carson a lot better than I do,” Rachel said. “Is he going to get violent with us?”

Jenna pictured him the week before, hulking over her on the side of her house. She saw the shadowed, hard lines of his face, the fury in his eyes, the way his mouth had sneered when he’d called her a lying bitch. And all that before he’d figured out she’d hid the truth about Tommy from him. She shivered.

Even if she was ninety-nine percent sure she and Rachel could handle a confrontation with Carson on their own, she couldn’t afford to be cavalier about Tommy’s safety. “I think we should call Vaughn.”

Rachel was already fishing her phone out, or so Jenna thought until a shiny silver revolver appeared in her hand.

“Jesus, Rachel. Is that loaded?”

She set it on the kitchen table, then plunged her hand back in her jacket. “Of course it’s loaded.” This time, when her hand came out, she was holding her phone.

Jenna’s eyes shot to the back door, visible through the mudroom on the side of the kitchen. The door was locked, the dead bolt secure. Her eyes flitted next to the kitchen cabinet on which her rifle was stowed. Rachel wasn’t the only badass in the family. There was no one tougher on the planet than a mom protecting her young. That was the way it was in nature and it certainly held true for cowgirls in the backcountry.

The rifle had misfired the last time she’d handled it, but Carson wasn’t going to surprise her again. She pulled a chair over to the cabinet and stood on it to retrieve her gun, listening to Rachel on the phone.

“Hey, hon. I’m with Jenna at her house. Carson Parrish followed us here and he’s in a right state. How fast can you get here?”

After the tedium of prepping the rifle with ammo the week before, Jenna had relocated the ammo to a coffee can in the pantry cupboard. While she was still standing on the chair, she grabbed the can and loaded two rounds in.

Carson pounded on the door some more. Both Rachel and Jenna flinched, but Jenna held steady to her rifle as she stepped to the floor.

“Yeah, that was him knocking,” Rachel said into the phone. “No, he hasn’t threatened us out-and-out and the doors are locked.” She paused, her eyebrows flickering. “At least a half an hour? Okay, then. I’ll keep my phone close and my Colt closer. See you in a bit.”

“Goddamn it, Jenna! If you don’t open this door in two seconds, I’m breaking it down.”

Rachel shoved the phone into her pocket and took up her revolver, cocking it. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him set a foot inside this house now.”

Jenna pumped her rifle, cocking it. “He’d have to get through both of us first.”

Matt had needed to swerve off the single-lane dirt road leading from the Sorentinos’ homestead to the main highway so as not to hit Rachel’s truck as they crossed each other’s paths. He hadn’t even had the guts to look her in the eye. He couldn’t. He’d never been more furious in his life. Betrayed. His breath came in fits and starts, as sporadic as his thoughts.

How could she?
he kept repeating to himself as he navigated the last of the Sorentinos’ road and bumped onto the main road leading to the highway. Jenna had stolen a man’s opportunity for fatherhood without remorse. She’d played God. He could never love someone with such a lack of conscience.

This was what it’d felt like when he’d been in the accident—impaled by his bike frame, run over and dragged by a truck. When he’d discovered he could never father children. It felt like you could never trust again, because it didn’t matter how good a person you were, how decent a man, how righteously you practiced your faith or tikkun olam, there were no guarantees that some random, sinister force wasn’t going to take you down when you least expected it.

Karma was bullshit. Maybe Carson was right. There wasn’t anything in this world a man could count on except himself. Jenna had taken his heart in her hand and crushed it. She’d crushed him. He would never be the same. He would never trust again like he trusted her.

Rage and adrenaline crowded his vision. His hands were shaking, and after one particularly harsh jerk of the wheel to keep his car in his lane, he pulled onto the shoulder and turned the engine off.

Breathing hard, and with sweat or tears or both streaming over his face, he shook the steering wheel and screamed.

He loved her. He loved Tommy. He loved the way the three of them were together. But all that time, there had been another man who deserved to be in his place. Were Carson and Jenna high school sweethearts? Had he been her first love? Carson had been with her last Sunday night, might’ve even been in the house while Matt was outside dancing with Jenna. Would they rekindle the flame now that Matt was out of the picture?

Stephy and Jordy’s mom had left Matt to reunite with the children’s father. To be a family again, like they always should have been, she’d explained. Matt got it. It had damn near killed him, but he’d seen where she was coming from. People naturally wanted to be part of a whole, nuclear family.

He would never have that. It was the one thing he wanted that he could never have. Every time he thought his grief over the loss had dulled, something like this came along—someone like Jenna—to remind him that grief never really did disappear. It only morphed into bigger, badder, more insidious forms.

He smeared the back of his hand over his cheek, dragging tears and sweat along with it. This was going to hurt like hell, this breakup. He was going to need to do some serious grieving to get over losing Jenna—or at least the woman he’d thought she was. But he’d survived other heartbreaks, and so he’d survive this. He’d never, ever date single moms again.

He opened the SUV door and stepped into the warm evening. The spot where the sun had disappeared on the horizon glowed pink and orange. He stared out over the magnificent stretch of countryside, scrub trees and cacti, buttes and ravines. Rust and olive green and brown. The palette of his world.

He’d go hunting at the first light of dawn, and he’d go for as many days as it took for the pain of grief and betrayal to ease. He’d already planned to take some days off work to help Jenna move, so being absent from his job wasn’t an issue. More than anything, he needed time on a horse and silence and the beautiful world around him.

He sucked in a deep, steady inhale, then released a loud whoosh of an exhale. Lacing his fingers together against the back of his head, he walked the edge between the blacktop of the road and gravelly sand that demarcated the high country wilderness.

Tommy looked just like his dad. How had nobody in Catcher Creek noticed before tonight? How had Jenna gotten away with such a flagrant deception? Not his problem now. Tommy would be taken care of, and that empty place in his heart that Matt had sensed when he and Tommy talked on their horseback ride last Wednesday would be filled by his biological father. That Matt could take a measure of bittersweet solace in.

After another long perusal of the sweeping expanse of land and sky before him, he opened the backseat door in search of one of the water bottles or energy drinks he’d stashed there, whatever his hand hit on first—a distraction to knock the last bit of outrage out of his system.

The first object his hand hit was Jenna’s purse. He swore.

Now what?

He wasn’t returning to Jenna’s house, that was for sure. He could drop it off at Rachel’s place, but Jenna would see his car coming down the grade. Vaughn’s office in town? What if Carson was still on Main Street? Matt couldn’t face him right now any more than he wanted to face Jenna again.

What a coward.

He looked down the highway in the direction he’d come. He could mail it.

Then it hit him. Jake was at Kellan’s place. He could leave it on the porch with a note. Even if Jake heard his car and came out to see what was going on, he didn’t seem the type of man who’d ask prying, personal questions.

Jake’s slick, black sports car was parked out front of Kellan’s house. Tara’s minivan sat next to it. Damn it. What the hell was she doing there?

Before he could second-guess the logic of his hasty plan, he rang the doorbell. After a long delay, Jake answered, clad in unbuttoned jeans with a gray T-shirt wadded in his hand. “Hey. Didn’t know you were coming over.”

He didn’t mention Tara’s van or ask about her because he wasn’t all that keen on seeing the pity in her eyes when she put it all together about why Matt was handing off Jenna’s purse for Jake to return. “I need a favor and I’m not in the mood to talk about why.” He held Jenna’s purse out.

“Uh, okay. What’s with this?”

“It’s Jenna’s. She left it in my car. Can you make sure it gets back to her?”

Jake slung the shirt over his shoulder like a towel and folded his arms over his chest. “Why can’t you do it?”

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t want to talk about what?” a female voice called. Sure enough, Tara, dressed in jean shorts peeking out from beneath a voluminous black ribbed tank top that looked suspiciously like it belonged to Jake, poked her head around Jake’s arm. Her hair was damp and her skin looked freshly scrubbed like she’d recently taken a shower.

“Tara, please don’t tell me you made a three-hour drive to hook up with Kellan’s brother again.”

Jake had the audacity to look amused by the insult. “What, you don’t think I’m worth making a three-hour drive for?” He craned his neck to grin at Tara. “I think he just insulted my prowess.”

“You want me to set him straight about it?” she asked.

Jake pretended to contemplate it.

Matt didn’t mean to groan aloud, but he couldn’t help it. Man, he hated being privy to the intimate details of his siblings’ private lives. “Enough. Sorry I brought it up.” He piled Jenna’s purse on top of Jake’s still-crossed arms. “Get this to Jenna, will you? I’ve got to get going.”

Jake gripped the purse by its handles. “Let me get this straight. You want me to give your girlfriend her purse back?”

Matt backed down the porch stairs. In any other circumstance, he would’ve appreciated the disparity of macho Jake clutching a bright pink purse, but he was in no mood for joking around. “Just shut up and do me this solid, okay?”

“Did she dump you?”

God, he didn’t want to answer that question. Luckily, he was spared by a sudden flurry of enthusiastic barking. A dog’s nails clicked over the floor and Max appeared at Jake’s side.

“I think a better question is why Tara’s cooped up in a house with a dog. On a ranch, surrounded by animals.” He shot Tara a glare. “Didn’t you learn your lesson growing up on our ranch? Pets make you feel miserable. Why would you do that to yourself?” He shifted his focus to Jake. “If you cared anything about her, why would you put her through that?”

“I’m a grown woman, Matt. Stop being judgmental.”

“Take a breath, dude. You sound like an uptight prick and I don’t think you want to go there.”

Jake was right. Matt didn’t want to go there, even if his points were valid. Tara needed to take better care of herself before her immune system got too weak to fight back and Jake, as the man sleeping with her, should’ve cared enough to do right by her. But they were adults and even though Matt loved his sister, he had no right to harp on her. God knew he hated it when she harped on him. “No. Sorry. I’m having a bad day.”

Jake squatted to ruffle Max behind the ears. “Yeah, I picked up on that. I was right about her breaking up with you, wasn’t I?”

Matt’s gut did a clench. “Not exactly, but she and I aren’t going to work out.”

“Well, shit.”

“Tell me about it.” Despair roiled through him, tightening his throat. He couldn’t talk about it anymore, and definitely not with another guy while his sister looked on.

Tara squeezed past Jake and gave Matt a hug he was nowhere near equipped to deal with at the moment. He endured it until her grip eased and he could slip back without offending her.

“Come on in. I’ll get you a beer,” she said.

After everything that’d happened, to have his sister invite him in to Kellan’s house like a gracious hostess while she was on a booty call was too much. “No, thanks. I’ve got to get home and pack.”

“I bet you’re going hunting,” Tara said.

“You know me well.”

Jake set Jenna’s purse on the table just inside the door, then put his shirt on. “Hunting like we went hunting?”

“Yeah, but I’m drawing it out for the week. I already have the time off work, so I’m going to make an extended camping trip out of it.”

“If I didn’t have to get to Cheyenne by Wednesday, I’d join you.”

Matt waved off the offer. “It’s all good. I need time alone.”

“Take it easy, okay? Maybe things will work out with you and Jenna. You never know. I’m sure whatever you did, she’ll forgive you eventually.”

Matt bristled. “What makes you think I was the one at fault?”

Jake and Tara looked at him like he was a moron. “We’re guys,” Jake said. “We’re always the ones screwing stuff up.”

“Amen,” Tara said under her breath.

Matt opened the driver side door and looked at them over the SUV’s roof. “Not this time.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. Not Jenna,” Jake said.

“Like you know her so well?”

Jake shrugged. “I’m pretty good at reading people. What’d she do?”

If Jake was so curious, he might as well know the truth. Tara, too. “It turns out that she never told Tommy’s father he has a kid. We were getting ice cream at the Catcher Creek Café and this guy, Carson, who she went out with in high school, or whatever, saw Tommy, recognized the resemblance, and called her on it. Can you imagine that? Tommy’s five. Carson can never get those years of fatherhood back that he missed because of her. That’s an unforgiveable sin in my book.”

Tara gave a quiet gasp. She knew what fatherhood meant to Matt. If anyone would understand his choice to end his relationship with Jenna over this, it’d be his family, who’d been his rock throughout his accident recovery and relationship heartbreaks.

Jake rubbed his chin, not looking nearly outraged enough to suit Matt. “She must’ve had a damn good reason for doing that.”

“What? You’re telling me there’s an excusable explanation why a woman would keep a man in the dark that he’s a father? It’s inhumane. She cheated Carson and lied to his family, and to her family, to me, and to Tommy. There’s no reason on the planet that would excuse that level of deception. I can’t be with someone like that.”

Tara crept closer, like she might want to hug him again. “Tara, please. I can’t.”

She looked stricken. “I know. I just . . . I’m so sorry.”

All he could do was nod and look away.

“Did you ask her why she did it?” Jake said.

Matt drilled Jake with a scowl. “No, I didn’t ask her because it doesn’t matter. What I did was get the hell out of the way so Carson can get to know his son without me in the middle confusing Tommy and mucking things up even more than Jenna already has, all right? I’m sure Rachel’s pissed, Carson’s pissed, I’m pissed. Jenna made her choices and now she’s got to deal with the consequences.”

“But nobody knows why it went down like that?”

Matt ground his molars together. “Are you listening to me? The
why
doesn’t matter. Here’s a better question, what makes you care so much?”

Jake shrugged. “She and I are family now, like she told me the other day. And I think it sucks that nobody’s listening to her side of the story. My whole life, nobody’s ever listened to me, so I know what that’s like.”

Nobody in Matt’s family paid much attention to what he had to say either. Call it youngest-sibling syndrome. He rallied against the compassion creeping into his consciousness. He didn’t want to see Jenna’s point of view. He wanted to keep being so mad at her that he didn’t feel any pain. He opened his car door.

“When are you leaving on this hunting trip?” Jake said.

“At first light.”

Jake shook his head and rubbed his jaw. “There’s got to be a reason Jenna didn’t tell anybody. Chicks don’t want to raise kids on their own. I mean, kids are hard work and you always hear about guys paying child support through the nose.” He gestured to Tara. “You get child support, right?”

Tara nodded.

“Yeah, so why wouldn’t Jenna want child support? It doesn’t make sense. What do you know about this Carson guy?”

Matt dug for a fault in Jake’s logic but couldn’t find any. “His family owns a store in Catcher Creek. He’s a Marine . . .”

Jake’s brows shot up. “A soldier, huh? I’m probably paranoid because with my job I’m around bad people a lot. Really shitty, violent offenders, day in and day out, but in my experience, sometimes soldiers go bad, like they can’t adjust to the civilian world. Especially if they’ve seen battle. What if Carson the Marine isn’t a good guy? What if he’s bad news and that’s why she didn’t tell him? But now everybody’s pissed and not talking to her. Who would keep her safe from this bad dude she didn’t want around her or her kid if everybody threw up their hands and abandoned her?”