Cowboy In Charge. Barbara Daille White

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СКАЧАТЬ his forehead with one hand and assured himself he was doing the right thing. Close contact with two kids within two days last week had to mean something.

      Yeah, something like fate deciding to rear up and head-butt him in the face, the way Burning Sage had almost done in that final ride in Cheyenne. The bull had wanted to take him down. Fate most likely just wanted to knock some sense into him.

      Too late for that. He was here.

      He raised his fist again and rapped on the apartment door. The wood sounded hollow, just the way his chest felt—if you didn’t count his heart banging against his ribs.

      Inside the apartment, a television’s volume dipped, then a little boy’s voice cried, “Mommy!” in stunned outrage. A second later, the doorknob rattled. The door swung open, and he stood staring at the girl he’d left behind.

      The wife he’d left behind.

      She looked like hell warmed over twice.

      Her beautiful golden-brown hair had been pulled up and stuck every which way by a couple of plastic combs. Her skin was paler than he remembered, her nose glowed as red as the taillights on his truck, and her sky blue eyes looked as glassy and bloodshot as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

      Those eyes... In this situation, most folks’ eyes would have widened in surprise. Instead, she blinked once and went blank-faced, the way she had always done when confronted with something that shocked or alarmed her. Right now, he imagined she had received a double dose of both.

      “Jason?” Her voice came out in a croak. She reached up to rest her hand against the gaping neckline of her fuzzy blue robe.

      The ragged tissue she held couldn’t hide the sight of creamy skin patterned with a few small freckles. The vision did more for him than a slip-sliding blouse or skintight leather. It also triggered memories and feelings he forced himself to push aside. This conversation would be hard enough. He didn’t need his body following suit. To combat the reaction, he took another deep breath and let it out. “Layne.”

      She covered a rattling cough with her forearm. “What do you want?”

      Though he should have expected it, he was taken aback by the belligerent tone. He hadn’t been ready for the question, either. Despite the long drive from Dallas, Texas, to Cowboy Creek, New Mexico, he hadn’t prepared much for this meeting. Big mistake. He sure couldn’t tell her he’d come back to make certain his son was in good hands. “I know it’s been a while—”

      “A while?” She coughed again, then shook her head, most likely in annoyance at him. “It’s been almost four years since we’ve seen each other, and we’ve had no contact except filing for the divorce—”

      “And—”

      “—which made the split permanent.”

      “I know it did, but—”

      “Legally permanent,” she said heavily, leaning forward as if to emphasize her point.

      He frowned.

      She kept coming. The quick glance he caught of her suddenly greenish pallor clued him in. She was halfway to unconsciousness and ready to drop.

      As he caught her to him, the door behind her swung open. A little boy stood just inside the frame. And somewhere in the apartment behind the kid, a baby let out an earsplitting screech.

      * * *

      LAYNE DID THE best she could with toothbrush and mouthwash and comb, but it wasn’t much. And it was quick.

      The symptoms she had been battling for two days now had gotten worse instead of better, and the short time on her feet showed her just how shaky this flu had left her. She gave thanks that when she had gone to answer the door, she hadn’t been holding the baby.

      The last thing she remembered before passing out was the look of alarm on Jason’s face. When she had come to, she found herself cradled like a baby herself in his arms. She had fainted for only a second, he assured her. Still, ignoring her protests, he carried her into the small living room and deposited her on the couch.

      Moments later, her stomach had heaved and she had bolted and here she was now, hiding in her bathroom the way she and her friends had hidden in the girls’ room at school when they wanted to exchange gossip about the boys.

      The only boy she’d ever had eyes for was Jason.

      She heard her son’s footsteps as he marched down the hall. He came to a stop in the bathroom doorway. As awful as she felt, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him. He and Jill were the lights of her life. Suddenly, he frowned, his eyebrows bunching together. She inhaled sharply, which led to another bout of coughing. Scott had her blue eyes and brown hair, but his frowning expression was pure Jason.

      “Mommy sick?” he asked.

      “Mommy’s better,” she said. She just didn’t know how long that would last.

      “I’m hungry.”

      The thought of food made her stomach quiver. “No problem, honey. How about—”

      “Soup?”

      She nodded. Luckily, she had made chicken soup a few weeks ago. The surplus she had stored in the freezer had gotten her through these past couple of days. She still had a large bowl of the soup in the refrigerator.

      “Yes-s-s. Es-s-s. Soup for Scott for supper,” he chanted in a singsong, laughing. He was learning the alphabet from his babysitter, who ran a day care from her house. To reinforce his lessons, here at home she played sound and word games with him. The sentence game was his favorite, and she had been so proud of him the day he’d created that sentence all by himself.

      “Yes, soup for Scott for supper,” she repeated in a singsong. “That sounds super, sweetie.”

      He laughed again. “That man will have soup, too?”

      She froze. No, that man will be long gone by suppertime. “I’m not sure about that.” She looked at the small clock she kept on the bathroom vanity and realized it was time to wake her daughter from her nap. “Come on, let’s go get the baby and start that soup.”

      “Start soup for Scott for supper,” he chanted, his voice fading as he went back down the hall toward the living room.

      She tightened the long belt of her fuzzy robe and took one last look in the mirror. The teenage girl who had once fallen for Jason cringed and longed to reach for her makeup bag. But the woman she’d become lifted her chin and nodded at the reflection in the mirror.

      Let him deal with her just the way she was now. It served him right for showing up unannounced after all this time.

      She wasn’t about to recall the way her heart had pounded and her head had swum and a tremor had run through her when she had opened the door to find him standing in the hallway. They were all simply reactions to the flu—and anyone could have passed out after getting hit with all those symptoms.

      She also wasn’t about to dwell on the past or worry about the intervening years or feel embarrassed by what had happened just a few minutes ago. She was going to get rid of Jason. Again. And hope СКАЧАТЬ