The Cowboy's Courtship (3 page)

“I know what it is.” She shrugged, hoping to look smart, like she really did know what the sport entailed. She’d seen pictures. She had seen it on TV.

She slid pizza onto the plate and handed it to him. “Are you going to eat?”

“No.” But he took the plate. “Sure, why not.”

She followed him to the table. “So, what happened when you were riding the bull?”

“I got stepped on.” He sat down across from her. His hand went to the back of his head. “Let’s pray.”

He took off his hat and sat it on the chair next to him.

“Pray?” She looked at the hand he’d reached out for hers. She met the intent gaze, brown eyes with flecks of green.

“Bless our food.” His hand grasped hers and he bowed his head. And she stared, not meaning to stare. She’d met so many people in her life. She’d never met the type of man that held her hand and bowed his head to pray over frozen pizza.

Until today.

His head was bowed. She followed, bowing hers. His strong, warm hands held her hands and soft words thanked God for their food. For frozen pizza. At his “Amen,” she pulled her hands back.

“The bull stepped on you.” Back to something easy to talk about. For her.

It probably wasn’t easy for him.

“The bull. Yes. I was unconscious for…” He looked up and then shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t find it.”

“It?”

He looked at her. “I lose words. It’s like having a bucket with a hole in it. I keep trying to fill it up, but it keeps leaking out. Twelve hours. I was out for twelve hours.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “No need. I’m alive. It upset my plans a little, but, since I can’t remember most of them, I’ll survive.”

His smile said it was a joke, as if it didn’t matter. But it had to matter.

“Aren’t you angry?”

Her plans had fallen apart in April. Her wedding would have been two weeks ago. She should have been in Europe on her honeymoon.

She had a note with the scrawled handwriting of her sister, begging forgiveness. Alyson looked at it every day, trying to figure out why she’d been tossed aside, and how her sister could have done this to her.

Dan had called to tell her that Laura knew how to enjoy life. As if Alyson didn’t. It wasn’t about not knowing how, it was about never getting the chance.

“No, I’m not angry.” He reached for his hat, but he didn’t put it back on. “That isn’t true. Sometimes I am mad. Isn’t that what happens when things don’t go the way we expected?”

Alyson had never thought of herself as an angry person. Lately she’d been angry. Or maybe bitter. She stood, picking up the paper plate and empty mug.

“Will your memory improve?” She tossed the paper plates in the trash and opened the door of the dishwasher to stick the forks in the basket.

“It’s getting better. They don’t have answers about
how far I’ll progress, when or how. Physical therapy helped the physical problems, or is helping, but the other…” He shrugged.

“When did this happen?”

“Five weeks.”

“April?”

He nodded.

April had been a bad month. April Fool. That was what she’d called herself when she got the note. She walked to the door and looked out, at the backyard, at the barn and the fields. She turned back to face him and he was watching her.

“There are horses in the field,” she said, but of course he knew that.

“Yeah, the horses. I’m here to check them.” He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. “And your name is…”

She smiled this time because he glanced up at her, a little lost, unsure. “Alyson Anderson.”

He wrote it down in his notebook and whispered it a few times. “I won’t forget.”

She was forgettable, so she thought he might.

Jason walked down the hall and flipped off the attic fan. The rush of air through the house stilled immediately. He glanced into the sitting room where Etta spent most of her time, usually knitting or quilting, and sometimes painting. Photo albums were scattered across the sofa.

The woman next to him turned a little pink. “I found them.”

“I’m sure it’s okay if you look at them.” He rubbed his
cheek, feeling the raspy growth of whiskers he’d forgotten to shave that morning.

“I don’t know the people in those pictures.” She didn’t look at him.

“How did that happen?”

She shrugged. “I’m not really sure. I’m still trying to put it all together, why they’re here, and I’m not.”

“I can look at the album with you, if you like.” Sit next to her on the sofa, with her soft, floral scent floating around him, reminding him of something, someone.

He nearly laughed, because he was sure that the memory was of her. It was her perfume that brought it back.

“The horses,” she reminded him.

“You can help me feed. I’ll help you with the pictures.”

She nodded and he followed her to the sofa. She picked up the three albums and stacked them on the coffee table. When he sat down next to her, she picked up the first one and opened it to a page with Andie’s baby pictures.

“Is this Andie?” She touched a picture of a toddler and her hands trembled, so did her voice.

“I think.” He glanced at her. “Or it could be you.”

She ignored the comment that pointed out the obvious.

“What’s she like?”

It was a little ironic that he had no short-term memory, and the woman sitting next to him knew nothing about her life. Or at least about her family.

He flipped through the album and found several pages of Andie at different rodeo events.

“She’s wild.” He grinned, drawing up memories of a girl who had outrun the cops and hid her truck in his barn. “She’s a little rebellious.”

“What does she like to do?” Alyson pulled out a picture of Andie on her barrel horse. “Other than rodeos.”

“That’s about it. She fishes and hunts. I’ve seen her ride a bull. She’s a little crazy.”

She’d broken hearts all over the county. Not his.

He’d steered clear of Etta’s granddaughter. If he were in his right mind, he’d steer clear of the one sitting next to him.

She put her hand on the page and stopped him from turning. Her finger dropped on the photo of James For ester, Andie’s dad.

“Who is that?”

“I think that must be James. It’s an older picture, probably before you were born. And the woman next to him is Alana, your aunt.”

“Oh.” She looked out the window and he didn’t know what to do. She was a stranger. She had stiff shoulders and her chin was up, like she was holding it together as best as she could. He didn’t know how to make her smile. He didn’t know her well enough to make her laugh.

He definitely didn’t know her well enough to put his arms around her and tell her that she could cry if she needed to cry. As he waited, her hand went up, flicking at her cheek, at tears he couldn’t see.

“I’m not sure why I’m here,” she whispered, still look ing away from him, out the window. He wasn’t sure if the words were for him. She turned and smiled. “I’m sorry, you didn’t come here for this.”

Jason stood, not sure, really not sure. He hadn’t had a lot of experience with that feeling, not until last month.

Lately it seemed as if his whole life was about being unsure.

In this case, he took a step back, knowing it was better to leave well enough alone. He’d always heard that saying. He could honestly say that this was the first time in his life that he really got what it meant.

He’d rather face a charging bull than this woman and her well of emotions.

“I’ll go on out and feed the horses. If you need anything…”

“Thank you.” She turned and there were tears sliding down her cheeks. What should he say? She’d found her family, and lost a dad, all in a span of a twenty-four hours.

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded. And he left her there alone, sitting on Etta’s satin sofa, the photo album in her lap.

A
lyson didn’t want to need a cowboy. She didn’t want to need anyone. Not now, when she was determined to find out who she was without her family planning her life, without a publicist or the media telling her who they thought she was. She was twenty-eight. She was going to figure out what she liked, what she wanted.

She would find out what it meant to be Alyson Forester, from Dawson, Oklahoma and not Alyson Anderson, child prodigy.

She didn’t want to need anyone, but she also didn’t want to be alone, not with her heart aching and her throat still constricted tight and painful with grief over losing a father she’d never had the chance to know.

But if she closed her eyes and breathed deep in this house, was it his scent that she remembered? Did she remember a moment when her father had held her tight and told her he loved her and he was sorry? It was a vague memory, or maybe wishful thinking.

Being here made it all real, unlike at home when she’d
searched for his name on the Internet, tracing him here through articles about his rodeo life, and his death in a car accident.

He’d been a stranger she’d read about. Now, being here, he was real. Her memories, fuzzy and unfocused, were becoming clear.

And she had a sister, a sister who was probably more like their father. Andie had spirit. She looked like someone who knew how to fight for what she wanted. Alyson wondered if there was any of that within her, that fighting spirit that grabbed at life, at dreams.

Of course she had that in her. She was here. She had finally walked away from her life. She had contacted the lawyer friend who had helped her for the last ten years, secretly guiding her in how to keep her money safe, how to keep her schedule her own. He had encouraged her, and told her it was time to go.

And she’d walked away, taking her clothes and her only other rebellion, the iPod downloaded with Martina McBride and Miranda Lambert songs. Now that she thought about it, it was funny how she’d always loved country music. Maybe that had been a clue about her life, and who she really was.

She walked to the back door of her grandmother’s house. On the wall was another needlepoint verse. This one said: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding.

Trust in a God she had never really understood. He was a cathedral, aging artwork in museums and a name people muttered when they were angry.

Her grandmother trusted. Obviously trusted.

Alyson didn’t know how to trust a God she didn’t know. Not when she barely knew herself.

Four days ago she had left Boston. She wasn’t going to call it running away, like the message her mother had left on her phone, that she had run away and she had responsibilities. Children ran away—not grown women.

Alyson wouldn’t let them call this running away, or a breakdown. This was finding herself. She was doing what she wanted to do, maybe for the first time in her life.

She had a feeling that twenty-five years ago she had wanted to stay here.

Outside was a world she knew so little about. It was hard to know real life when her childhood, her teen years, had been spent with a piano, or on a stage. She’d always lived in a bubble.

She hadn’t even wanted to marry Dan. He had just seemed like the right choice. He had been the next step. He was a composer. He loved music. He loved to travel.

He loved her sister.

It wasn’t a broken heart that ached inside her when she thought of that. It was something deeper. It was betrayal.

It might be bitterness.

If she stayed in Dawson, she could buy a little house on a quiet corner, get some cats and be the crazy cat lady people in town talked about fifty years from now. She could bake cookies for neighbor children who were afraid to come in her yard, and talk to herself at the store.

She’d give everyone something to talk about.

Crazy people probably didn’t plan going crazy. So maybe she was still sane.

Through the window on the back door she watched the
barn and saw the cowboy, Jason, as he walked out of a shed and across the lawn to a corral. She had walked out there that morning, taking her cup of coffee to watch as wispy fog covered the valley and horses grazed, tails switching at flies. The sun had touched it all with a golden hue. It had been something, to sit on a bench in the yard and watch the sun rise and the fog dissipate.

She pushed the door open now and walked out, knowing it was a mistake, to go out there, to follow that man around the barn, wanting to be around him, around someone.

As she walked across the lawn a dog joined her. He was tall, leggy and had wiry black hair. She stepped back, unsure. The animal wagged its tail and she took a few careful steps. It followed.

Her chest did a familiar squeeze, a painful clench that didn’t belong here, not in Oklahoma in this peaceful setting. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, the dog was still there. Her breath still felt caught in her lungs.

“Okay, dog, I’m not sure if you’re friendly or not, so back off. Go on.”

A whistle called the dog away from her. She turned toward the barn and he was there, standing in the opening. He was a little bowlegged, in the cowboy way, and it was appealing, cute. He held a hand out to the dog, sliding fingers through the hair at the back of the animal’s neck.

He was Robert Redford rugged, standing in the doorway of a barn, petting a dog, but smiling at her. And she had never experienced life like this.

“That’s a look.” The cowboy with the Oklahoma drawl spoke when she got closer. “The dog isn’t mean.”

“Is he yours?” Could he be Etta’s dog?

“He doesn’t belong to anyone, but everyone feeds him. They toss him scraps at the Mad Cow. The convenience store gives him leftovers. Everyone in town looks out for Mutt.”

“Why?”

His head tilted to one side. “Because he doesn’t have anyone. He got dumped a year or so ago. People started feeding him and the vet gives him medical care, keeps him updated on his shots. He’s just a good dog and he’s refused to stay at any one house.”

“Oh. So I can feed him?”

“You can. I’m sure Etta does.”

She reached to pet the dog and its tail wagged hard enough to shake its back end. “Can I help with the horses? I can feed them so you don’t have to drive over here.”

“Come on, I’ll show you what to do.” He glanced back. “It’s probably a good idea. You never know when I’ll forget.”

She followed him back into the barn. She had been in stables, but this barn was different. It was old. It was tall, with a hayloft in the top. Dust swirled in the light that shined through the front door. It smelled of animals, hay and the past.

The dog ran around the barn, sniffing in empty stalls and then barking a shrill bark when he found something. Alyson glanced at Jason and he shrugged.

“Probably a mouse or a cat.” He walked into the corner stall where the dog had something cornered. “Kitten.”

Alyson peeked inside as Jason picked up the yellow tabby by the scruff of the neck. The kitten yowled and
hissed, spitting and angry. Alyson reached for it and it slashed little claws at her hand.

“Did it get you?” Jason kept hold of the spitting little feline.

“No. What do we do with it?”

“Grab a towel out of the feed room and we’ll wrap him up and see if we can calm him down.”

He nodded toward an open door. She stepped into the feed room and glanced around, finally finding a pile of old towels, folded and shoved in a cabinet. She grabbed a couple and walked back outside. He was still holding the kitten out from him, but it wasn’t hissing now, just looking around.

“Won’t that hurt it, holding it that way?”

He shook his head. “This is how the momma cat carried him. He probably got a little big for his britches and ran off. He’s old enough to be on his own.”

He took the towel and wrapped it tight around the kitten.

“Now what?” She touched the kitten’s head. Her first step toward being the neighborhood cat lady.

“Take him. Just keep the towel around him so he can’t scratch you.”

Alyson took the kitten. She’d always loved cats. They were funky and independent. This one struggled a little against her, but the towel around his legs kept him from clawing.

“Should I feed him?”

“Probably a good idea. You’ll have to run to town and get cat food. Or if you have bread and eggs. Sometimes my sister tears up bread and beats an egg into it.”

“I can do that. I’ll get food tomorrow. The lady at the
Mad Cow said I should go to Grove for groceries, not to the convenience store.”

“She’s right. The convenience store doesn’t carry much.” He slipped a knife out of his pocket and cut the string on a bale of hay he must have tossed down from the hayloft.

“My grandmother just leaves her horses here when she goes to Florida? How long is she gone?”

“A few months. I watch them, or Beth, my sister, does. We ride them when the weather is warm. And they get a lot of attention from neighbor kids.”

“What about Andie? Doesn’t she live here?”

“She’s gone a lot. She barrel races, and she has friends around the country. She’s…”

“She’s what?”

“She’s always been a free spirit.”

“I see.” She held the kitten close and heard a soft purr. “I think he’s calming down.”

“Yeah, probably. But if you let him go, he’ll be gone.” He picked up a few flakes of hay and walked out the back door of the barn. Alyson followed.

The horses were there, waiting. There were three of them, one brown, one a light gold and one with spots on his rump. She liked that one. He had gentle eyes and had nuzzled her hand this morning.

“What kind of horses are they?”

He glanced back at her and then he pointed to the brown horse. “That one with the black mane and tail is a bay, that’s her color. She’s an Arabian, though. Etta bought her somewhere outside of Tulsa. She saw this horse, half-starved in a round pen and she pulled into the
drive of the house and told the people to name their price. Goldie here is a Palomino. She’s Andie’s old barrel horse. This Appaloosa, with the white rump is the mare that Etta rides.”

“They’re beautiful. Maybe while I’m here I can ride.”

“How long are you staying?” He glanced back at her as he dumped the hay in piles a good distance apart. “Or have you already told me?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll stay.” She hadn’t thought about it. How long did it take a woman to find herself? How long would her grandmother want her here, in this house, this town?

What if she didn’t want Alyson at all? Maybe there was a reason Alyson’s mother had taken her away and left Andie behind.

Jason pulled out his list, marking off feeding Etta’s horses. He shoved the notebook back into his pocket and watched as Alyson leaned over the fence, trying to pet the Appaloosa while still holding the yowling kitten. The horse moved a little closer and Alyson scratched its neck.

“I need to take a drive out to the youth camp. Do you want to go along?”

“Youth camp?” She turned from the horse and leaned against the fence.

“Camp Hope. A good friend of mine and her husband run it.” He ran a thought through his mind. “You could volunteer if you’re here for a while.”

She held the kitten tight, like a five-year-old with a new pet. That’s what it was about her—she acted as if everything was new. “What could I do there?”

“I don’t know, maybe play the piano.”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “No, I don’t play the piano.”

He closed his eyes, trying to drag the memory back, surprised that it had been there at all. He remembered. She’d been playing a hymn, probably from one of Etta’s songbooks. That’s why the memory had stuck with him. He knew the song. It was one his mother had sung, a long time ago.

“I remember you playing.”

“You didn’t even remember me being here.” She walked past him and he caught up with her.

“I remember you playing the piano.” He followed her through the barn and across the yard to the house, his walk a kind of skip as he tried to keep up. “I can hear the song you were playing. I think it might have been ‘It is Well.’”

“It was.” They reached the house and he opened the back door for her. She slid through, still holding the cat.

“So, you’ll go with me. You might as well get out and see what’s going on in the community. It’ll get old, sitting in this house waiting for Etta to get back.”

“I won’t get bored. I love having nothing to do, nowhere to go. You have no idea.”

No, he didn’t. “So, tell me, why do you want to be here, with nothing to do?”

She glanced back, over her shoulder, her eyes a little narrowed. She looked like the kitten, about to hiss. He laughed a little, because that was Andie, always ready to strike out at someone or something.

“I lived in Boston.” She held the kitten in one arm and
opened the fridge door. “I’ve lived in San Francisco. I’ve lived in Seattle.”

“And now you’re here? That’s a big change.”

“I’ve never lived here, or not since I was little. I want to know what this place is like. This was my father’s world.”

He nodded and somehow he retrieved the memory. His head was starting to pound. “James. He was here when he wasn’t on the road.”

“Where else did he go?” She turned quick, spilling a little of the milk she had opened to pour in a bowl.

“Not too much milk, it’ll make him sick.” Jason opened the loaf of bread she must have bought at the convenience store. It was half-stale and had a price tag on it that was twice what she should have paid. He pulled the piece of bread into pieces and dropped them in with the milk. She had cracked an egg to add to the mixture.

“What about my dad, about James Forester?” She opened a drawer and pulled out a fork.

“Years ago he was a saddle bronc rider. Later he drove a truck. He also worked offshore oil rigs. He was gone a lot.”

“Who took care of my sister?”

“Etta raised her when James was gone. But he came into town and he lived here when he wasn’t working.”

Alyson glanced away. He followed her gaze to the frame with a dozen or so family pictures. And not one of them was of her. That was a shame. There was a picture of Etta and Andie dressed up for the Fourth of July celebration a few years back. They’d won first place in that competition. They’d been a pair, always having fun, and fighting.