The Cowboy's Sweetheart (7 page)

“Seafood.”

“You got it.”

That was a lot easier than dealing with the big changes happening in his life, and her body. He shuddered again as he opened the door for her to get into the truck.

As they drove through Tulsa, he glanced at the woman sitting next to him. The mother of his child. He'd never expected her to be that.

“Andie, we're going to have to talk about this.”

“This?”

He sighed. “The baby. Our baby. We have to talk about my part in this.”

Her hand went to her belly and she stared out the window. He didn't know if she even realized that she did that, that she touched her belly. He glanced sideways, catching her reflection in the glass. Blue eyes, staring out at the passing buildings and her bottom lip held between her teeth.

“Yeah, I know that we need to talk.” She said it without looking at him. “But not yet. Let this settle, okay? Let me get it together and then we'll talk.”

“Tomorrow, then, Andie. We'll talk tomorrow.” About the future. About them. And about the ring he was still carrying in the pocket of his jeans.

Not that he was planning on proposing again anytime soon. One rejection a year was probably more than enough.

 

Andie breathed a sigh of relief as she sat down to lunch. It was officially the “tomorrow” that Ryder had talked about yesterday, and he hadn't shown up yet. She'd managed to get a lot of work done at the barn, found her favorite cow just after she'd calved. The new calf had been standing behind her, still a little damp and a little wobbly.

She'd managed to forget, for a few hours, how drastically her life would change next spring.

What Ryder needed to do was go back on the road, rope a few steer, or help Wyatt with the girls. He had to get over thinking she'd let him marry her just because. When she thought about that, about marrying Ryder, her heart didn't know how to react.

She reached for a magazine off the pile sitting on the edge of the table expecting
Quarter Horse Monthly,
and she got lace and froth instead. One of Alyson's bridal magazines. Andie picked it up and flipped through the pages. She shuddered and closed the magazine.

“What's up with you?” Etta walked into the kitchen. She smiled and laughed a little. “Weddings make you nervous.”

“White icing, white dresses, white fluff and white lace.”

“It's a special occasion.” Etta sat down across from her and picked up the magazine. “It's supposed to be white and frilly. It's supposed to be unlike any other day in a woman's life.”

“Right, but couldn't it be white denim and apple pie with vanilla ice cream?”

“I guess it could, if that's what the bride wanted. Are you thinking of getting married?”

“Of course not. Who would I marry? And there definitely isn't any white in my future.”

Andie flipped the magazine open and a strange feeling, something like longing—if she'd been giving it a name—ached inside her heart. In high school her friends had planned their weddings. They'd planned the dresses, the flowers, the reception, even the groom and where they'd go on their honeymoon.

Not Andie. She'd saved up farm money to buy the barrel horse of her dreams and the perfect saddle. She'd planned a National Championship win, and she had the buckle to show how well she'd planned.

Etta patted her hand. “You'll have a white wedding, Andie. My goodness, girl, you know that it isn't about what you've done. It's about what God's doing in your heart. This is about the changes that have taken place in your life.”

“I know.” What else could she say? It wasn't about white. But then again, it was. It was also about dreams she'd never dreamed. “I need to get back to work. What's for dinner tonight? I wouldn't mind taking you out for supper at the Mad Cow.”

“I'd love it. I have an order to ship off this afternoon.” Tie-dye specialties, Etta's custom clothing line. She and Andie worked together when Andie wasn't on the road.

“Do you need help getting the order together?”

“No, you go ahead with what you need to get done.”

Andie took her plate to the sink and walked out the back door. The weather had turned cool and the leaves were rustling in a light breeze. She walked down the path to the barn, whistling for her horses. They were
a short distance away and her whistle brought their heads up. Their ears twitched and then they went back to grazing.

Dusty left the herd and started toward the barn. She would brush him first and work him a little. No need to let him get a grass belly. No reason for her to sit and get lazy, either. She'd never been good at sitting still.

For as long as she could remember she'd ridden horses. When she turned six, her dad bought Bell, a spotted pony. That summer she had started to compete in youth rodeos around Oklahoma and Texas. And she'd been competing ever since. For over twenty years.

But this next year would bring changes. She'd seen the women on the circuit with children. But they usually had husbands, too. And they didn't drag little babies from state to state.

Life's about changing—those words were in a song Etta liked.

She snapped a lead rope on Dusty's halter and led him into the barn where she tied him to a hook on the wall. He rubbed his head on the rough wood of the barn and tried to chew on the rail of the nearest stall while she brushed him and then settled the saddle on his back. She reached under his belly and grabbed the girth strap to pull it tight.

A few minutes later she was standing in the center of the arena with her horse on a long, lunge line. This was what she loved. She loved an autumn day and a horse that was so attentive it took barely a flick of her wrist or a slight whistle to command him.

Ryder pulled up the drive as she was settling into the saddle. Not that long ago she would have rode to the fence, glad to see him. But today wasn't three months ago. She blinked away a few tears and she didn't glance
in his direction, but she knew he was parking, that he was getting out of his truck.

She rode Dusty around the arena, keeping close to the fence. He was restless and wanted his head, kept pulling, wanting her to let him go. She held him in, easing him from an easy canter to a walk and then she rode him into the center of the arena, taking him in tight circles. He obeyed but she knew what he really wanted were barrels to run.

As she headed back to the fence she made brief eye contact with Ryder. He was walking toward the arena looking casual, relaxed, but even from a distance she saw his jaw clench.

“What are you doing?” He opened the gate and stepped inside the arena.

“I'm working my horse.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She reined Dusty in, and he didn't want to be reined in. He pranced, fighting the bit, wanting to run.

When he realized it was time to work, he was always ready to go. She held him back though, as her attention settled on Ryder. The new Ryder.

He still looked like the old Ryder. Her gaze traveled down from his white cowboy hat to his face shadowed and needing a shave, and then to the T-shirt and faded jeans. He'd tanned to a deep brown over the summer and in the last few years his body had changed from that of a tall skinny teen to a man who worked cattle for a living.

He had changed. This Ryder didn't seem to get her. Or maybe he wanted to change her? He shook his head and walked toward her and the horse.

“I don't think you should do this.”

“Why not?” She held the reins tight and patted Dusty's neck, whispering softly to calm the animal.

“You're pregnant.”

“I think I know that.” She glared at him, hoping to pin him down, back him off, or make him turn tail and run. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, like he was the law and she was the errant juvenile. He'd never been one to back down from a fight.

Had she really admired that about him?

“Seriously, Andie, you can't do this. It's dangerous.”

“No, it isn't. The doctor said I could ride. He said I could do what I've been doing, within reason. I've got to exercise my horse. I can't let him get out of shape. And I'm not going to get hurt.”

“Fine, but I'm going to stay here and watch.”

“Like I need you to stay and watch. You have better things to do with your time than be my nanny.”

“Yeah, I have better things to do, but if you insist on doing this, then I'm staying here.”

She pushed her hat back and tried again to stare him down. “This doesn't make you my keeper. We're not boyfriend and girlfriend. We're not going steady.”

“You're right, because we're not sixteen. This is a whole lot more than going steady. This is having a baby.”

“Like I need you to tell me.” She closed her eyes, because they did sound like kids. She didn't want that.

Ryder stepped closer. “I don't want to fight with you.”

She really didn't like change.

“I don't want to fight, either. We've never fought before.”

He looked away, but his hand was still on Dusty's neck. He let out a sigh. “I'm sorry.”

“You have to stop this.” She backed her horse, away from Ryder because she had to take back control, of herself and her horse. “You have to stop treating me this way, like I'm going to break.”

“I'm trying.” His features softened a little and he smiled, a shy smile that was almost as out of place as this new, protective behavior of his.

It was sweet, that smile and her insides warmed a little. She nudged Dusty with her boots and he stepped forward, putting Ryder next to her again.

“Ryder you have to trust that I'm not going to do something dangerous. I won't put—” she stumbled over the words “—I won't put our baby in danger.”

“I know you won't. This is just new territory for me. I've never been anyone's dad. I hadn't planned on it.”

“That makes two of us. I hadn't planned on being anyone's mom, not like this.” She slid off the back of her horse. “So, what are you doing here so early?”

He looked a little blank, as if he didn't have a real answer. Maybe he wasn't sure why he was there. They were both experiencing a lot of that lately.

She was experiencing it at that very moment, because she wanted him to say things, about them, about the future. And she knew that wasn't them, it wasn't who they'd ever been.

And it shouldn't hurt, knowing those weren't the words he was going to say. He was probably there just to check up on her and nothing more.

She wouldn't let it bother her. She knew what to do—turn and walk away, the way she would have a few months earlier. But nope, she stood there waiting for him to suddenly say the right thing.

W
hat was he doing there? Ryder had asked himself that question a few times on the drive over to Andie's. In all the years he'd known her, he'd never had to ask himself that question.

Okay, once, but that's because he'd kissed her the night of her senior prom, a night when she'd decided it would be easier to go with him than to worry about having a date. So he'd headed home from college in Tulsa to be her date.

He laughed a little, thinking back to the two of them in the limo his dad had hired for the night. They'd taken a half dozen of their friends along for the ride and when he'd walked her to the front door at the end of the night, knowing Etta was inside watching, he'd kissed Andie.

The next day they'd made a promise never to complicate their relationship that way again. Their reasons had been good. If a relationship went bad, they knew they wouldn't be able to go back to being just friends. They'd kept that promise until that night when she'd looked vulnerable and he hadn't listened to his good sense and walked away.

He was here now because they were going to have a
baby together and they needed to be able to be parents together. So it seemed as if working on a relationship was the best way to start the process. Especially if she was just going to laugh when he handed her a ring and proposed.

Wyatt had laughed, too. No matter what the situation, a woman wanted more from a proposal than some half-hearted attempt at being romantic. Ryder got a little itchy under the collar when he thought about romance in connection with Andie.

“Ryder, what is it you wanted to do?”

“I thought maybe we could go over to the Coopers' arena tonight. A few people are going to get together, buck out some bulls, rope some steers and maybe run barrels.”

“You'd let me run barrels?” She grinned and he shuffled his feet and looked away, because her running barrels on Dusty was the last thing he wanted.

“I can't stop you.” He stepped back from her horse.

“No, you can't.”

She smiled at him, and he knew she was pushing, messing with him. That smile took him back. It was easy to remember being kids, chasing down some dirt road outside of Dawson, doing stuff kids did in the country because going out on real dates took money and a town other than the one they lived in.

They'd built bonfires and sat in groups. Sometimes they found a parking lot in Dawson and parked in a circle, sitting on the tailgates of pickup trucks. In the summer they'd gone to the lake or skiing.

Sometimes the two had dated, but never each other. Andie had dated Reese Cooper. And today that bothered him.

Life had been a lot simpler twelve years ago. But
they'd been kids, and kids didn't think about what the future held. When Wyatt had met Wendy in college, he'd never dreamed of losing her too soon. He'd dreamed of having her forever. They'd planned to be youth leaders in a church and save the world.

The irony of that twisted in Ryder's gut and he knew Wyatt had to feel a lot more twisted up over losing his wife. What Ryder wouldn't give to go back to sitting in the parking lot of the Mad Cow with a bunch of kids who had nothing more serious to talk about than the rodeo that weekend and what events they would enter.

“You look like a guy that took a bitter pill,” Andie teased as she led her horse through the gate he'd opened.

“Just thinking back.” And thinking ahead.

“Yeah, we had some good times, didn't we?”

“We did.” He walked on the other side of Dusty, but he peeked over the horse's back to look at Andie. He'd give anything to put a smile back on her face, to make her stop worrying.

“It isn't the end of the world, Ryder.”

“I know it isn't.” He even managed to laugh. “I'm not sixteen, Andie. When I looked in the mirror this morning, that fact was pretty evident. Most of the people we went to school with have been married for years and have a few kids.”

“We're not getting married.”

She tied the horse and Ryder slid his hand down the animal's rump, ignoring the tail that switched at flies and a hoof that stomped the dirt floor of the barn. He rounded the horse to the side Andie stood on. She was already untying the girth strap.

“So, do you want to go with me?” He lifted the saddle
off the horse's back and ignored the sharp look she gave him.

He opened the door of the tack room with his foot and walked inside the dark room. The light came on. He glanced over his shoulder at Andie standing in the doorway. She watched as he dropped the saddle on the stand and hung the bridle on the wall. When he turned around, she was still watching.

“Well?” He followed her out of the room, latching the door behind him.

“Yeah, sure, I'll go. I haven't seen the Coopers in a long time.” She untied Dusty's lead rope and led him out the back door of the barn. “When do we leave?”

“I have to run home and get a few things done. I'll pick you up at five.” He was buying more cattle and a quarter horse with blood lines that would ramp up his herd.

“I'll be ready.”

He nodded and for a moment he was tempted, really tempted to kiss her goodbye, to see what it would feel like if they were a couple. Common sense prevailed because he knew how it would feel to get knocked to the ground if he pushed too far too fast.

Instead he touched her arm and walked to the truck that he'd left idling in her driveway thirty minutes earlier. He climbed inside feeling like a crazy fool. When had he ever been the guy who didn't know what to say? He'd been that person a lot lately.

When he first got there, they hadn't been able to carry on a conversation. She had even questioned why they were fighting. He had an answer for that. Couples fought. He didn't want that to be his future with Andie. Their future.

He backed down her driveway, looking into the
rearview mirror at what was behind him. Behind him, that was familiar territory. What was ahead, that was a whole other matter.

Kat and Molly were playing in his yard when he pulled up to the house a few minutes later. Cute kids, still smiling, still able to chase butterflies and blow seed puffs off the dandelions. When he thought about what they'd been through, what Wyatt had been through, he felt like an idiot for crying over his own spilled milk.

Man, life was tough sometimes. Real tough.

Wyatt was leaning against a tree watching the girls, watching Ryder pull up. He waved and stepped away from the tree. As Ryder got out of his truck, Wyatt was there, smiling a little more than he had a few days ago.

How would a guy ever smile again if he'd lost someone like Wendy?

“Some girl named Sheila called.” Wyatt watched the girls, but he managed to shoot Ryder a knowing look. “Told her I'd take a message but she said she'd left messages and you hadn't called her back.”

“Yeah, I'll call her in a few days. You getting settled in okay?”

“Yeah, you getting in trouble with the women? I think there was a call from someone named Anna, too. She left a message on the answering machine.”

“I'll call her, too.”

“Keeping them on a stringer?”

“They aren't fish.”

“No, but you sure know how to haul them in like they are.”

Ryder shoved his hands into his pockets and bit back about a dozen things he'd like to say to his older brother. Wyatt had always made all the right decisions. Wyatt
had stayed in church, because he said it wasn't God's fault that people messed up sometimes.

In Ryder's opinion, people messed up a little more often than sometimes.

“Ryder, if you need to talk?”

Right, lay his problems on Wyatt's shoulders when Wyatt couldn't see through his grief to raise two little girls who were still laughing, still smiling. They were chasing a kitten and giggling, the sound picking up in the wind and carrying like the seeds from the dandelion that they'd picked.

“Why do you think I need to talk?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I don't know, just a hunch. You're ignoring women. And you're buying cattle.”

“Right.”

He was growing up and everyone was surprised. That itched inside him a little. Couldn't he do a mature thing without people getting suspicious? He guessed the answer had to be no.

“Everyone in town still going to the Dawson Community Church?” Wyatt leaned to pick up Kat who had run across the yard to him and was lifting her arms to be held.

“Yeah, I suppose most do.”

“You want to go with us on Sunday?”

“No, not really.” Ryder rubbed his jaw and shot Wyatt a look. He might as well get it together now. “Yeah, I guess.”

Wyatt whistled. “This must be big.”

Big. He knew what Wyatt meant. Something big had to happen for Ryder to be thinking about church. So, that's what people thought about him, that he was only going to have faith if God somehow pushed him into it with a big old crisis.

He pulled at his collar because it was tight and the sun was hitting full force now. It shouldn't be this warm at this time of year, just days away from October.

“So?” Wyatt pushed, his gaze darting beyond Ryder to focus on his daughters. Ryder turned to look at the girls. They'd caught the kitten.

“Yeah, it is something big.” Ryder picked up a walnut and tossed it. “Andie's going to have a baby and I'm the dad.”

It was a long moment and then Wyatt whistled, the way he'd whistled years ago when Ryder was fifteen and had managed to talk a senior girl into taking him to the prom. But it wasn't anything like admiration in his eyes this time. Wyatt shook his head, and he looked kind of disgusted.

“How'd that…?”

“Don't ask. It was a mistake.”

“Or something like it.” Wyatt watched his girls play and he shook his head again. “Man, Ryder, I just don't know what to say.”

Ryder guessed congratulations were out of the question, so he shrugged. “Not much you can say.”

“You going to marry her?”

“That makes us sound like we're sixteen.”

“You're not sixteen by a lot of years, but she's having your baby and you've loved her since she stepped on the bus her first day of kindergarten and pushed you out of her seat.”

“You can't claim a seat on your first day of school, and I had seniority.” He smiled at the memory of a little girl with blond pigtails and big eyes. She'd been madder than an old hen at him. She'd been that mad more than once in the past twenty-five years.

“So, marry her, have a family together.”

“We're best friends. That isn't love. And she said no.”

“She turned you down?”

“Yeah.” He laughed a little. “She turned me down.”

A smart guy would have let it go. Especially a guy who had always been pretty happy being single. Instead of letting it go, he'd invited her to go to the Coopers'. They had always gone together.

Tonight, though, it was a date. Tonight it was step one in him convincing her to say yes to his next proposal. A couple having a baby should get married.

He repeated that to his brother and Wyatt shook his head.

“Really, Ryder, you think that's the best line to use when proposing?”

“What am I supposed to say? She's Andie.”

“Right, she's Andie. But no matter what, she's a woman. Maybe it's time you realized that and started treating her like one, instead of acting like she's one of the guys.”

Andie, a woman? It seemed like a good time to end the conversation. He knew Andie well enough to know she didn't want him to start treating her like a girl. She definitely wouldn't want romance and flowery words.

She was Andie. He thought he knew a little something about what she liked and didn't like.

 

Andie walked into the kitchen and glanced at the clock. That was the last thing she wanted to do, check the time again. She'd been doing that all afternoon, almost as if she had a date.

Ryder wasn't a date.

She walked to the back door and leaned against the
wall to shove her foot into one boot, and then the other. She didn't bother to untuck her jeans.

“I think this is a good idea.” Etta stood at the kitchen sink. She dried a plate, put it in the cabinet and turned to face Andie.

Andie couldn't agree on the “good idea” part. How could it be a good idea, for her to show up with Ryder, making the two of them look like a couple?

“What?” Etta poured herself a cup of coffee and held it between her hands, watching Andie.

Okay, she must have made a face of some kind or Etta wouldn't be asking “What?”

Andie met her grandmother's serious gaze, felt the warmth of a smile that had been encouraging her for as long as she could remember.

“Everyone is going to know.” Okay, it sounded ridiculous when she said it like that. “That sounds crazy, doesn't it?”

Etta shrugged, her big silver hoop earrings jangling a little. “Oh, maybe it sounds a little ridiculous. I was going to say that you're not fifteen, but I don't think it matters. You're having a baby. You're going to have to face that and face people. I promise you aren't going to be able to hide the fact.”

“I know that.”

“So, go with Ryder and make the best of things. Make the best of your relationship because that baby deserves for the two of you to act like grown-ups.”

“We're working on it.”

“I know you are. And Andie, I know you're working on having faith. I want you to remember that even if folks talk a little, even if they gossip, things will work out and your friends are going to stick by your side.” Etta
smiled. “And I would imagine even the ones gossiping will stick by you, once they get it out of their system.”

“Thanks, Gran.” She hugged Etta tight and then Ryder was knocking on the door. “Time to go.”

“Have fun,” Etta called out as Andie went out the back door.