The Come-Back Cowboy (Bridgewater Bachelors)

by Jodi O'Donnell

• ISBN13: 9780373244942
• ISBN10: 0373244940
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Silhouette

Excerpts

Jace! Jace, come back here this instant!"

The sound of a truck door slamming in the distance tempered the sheer panic in Addie Gentry's voice as she burst through the same door that seconds before her son had shot out of like a pellet from a BB gun. She'd be blasted, though, if she'd duck her head in embarrassment. She wasn't about to give her son the notion he could get away with such behavior just because one of the ranch hands happened to be within earshot. Nossir.

Thank goodness that at her order, Jace stopped short of the weathered gazebo halfway across the yard. She could see he still radiated pent-up emotion, fists nailed to his sides in barely leashed frustration, telling her he was spring-loaded to take off again. And making him look like another who'd up and left.

It raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

"You are not running away from here, Jace," Addie said, sparing not a glance toward whoever it was who'd slammed the truck door and marching toward her son. Her progress was hindered by the heels of her one and only pair of nice pumps suck-plugging in the turf with every step, which escalated her own frustration this morning yet another count. The expensive shoes would be ruined in this mud, which only added insult to injury: they'd already punished the tender tissues of her feet, widened by miles in cowboy boots.

The hair she'd spent forty minutes coaxing into order in the damp mid-April weather frizzed up around her face like she'd stepped on a live wire. Now, there was a thought. As good a solution as any. Unfortunately, she had barely enough time as it was to get the situation with Jace taken care of, much less find a moment to fix her hair - with Connor due any minute.

"I will not stand for this sort of behavior," Addie informed Jace when she reached him. "You got a problem with what's goin' on, you stay and work it out. Runnin' tear for bear out the door is not an option!"

He at least had the grace to look ashamed, as he scuffed a boot toe against the gazebo's worn wooden step, making him seem more like the boy she'd raised and not the rebel who'd taken over her son's six-year-old body ever since her announcement last month. This boy she had some hope of reasoning with.

"Jace," she said, gently taking him by the shoulders to turn him toward her, still ignoring the figure at the corner of her vision who had the decency not to intrude on their private business, even if they were conducting it practically in public. "Hon, why won't you at least give him a chance?"

"'Cause ... he's a phony, Mama!" He looked up at her, amber-green eyes again turning contrary in his boyish face. "He says he's a rancher, but he can't hardly rope a cow or nothin'. All the boys laugh about how he's the only rancher they've seen who gets slicked up before he goes to work every day."

It sounded as if she needed to have a talk with the hands, Addie thought severely, perhaps starting with the one who'd set out toward them from across the ranch yard. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out his identity, but the drab light and misty air obscured even the edges of the red barn behind him.

She bent back to Jace. "Just because a man's got some things to learn, that doesn't mean he's a phony, hon."

His small shoulders twitched impatiently under her palms. "But he's always callin' me his pal - and we're not!"

"He's only trying to be friendly! I know for a fact that Connor is one-hundred-percent earnest about being your dad -"

"But I don't want him for my dad!" Jace broke in, getting upset all over again. "I don't wanna go live somewhere else 'sides here!"

His struggle against her hold on him nearly broke her heart. It just wasn't like Jace to be so desperate - which made Addie realize how deeply the feelings in her son went regarding this particular issue, feelings she'd believed long ago resolved.

Well, she sure had been wrong. What was she to do, though? It was time. Time for her to lay the past to rest once and for all and get on with her life - and take definite steps toward putting a father into Jace's.

"Jace, please," Addie said huskily, her fingers tightening on his shoulders. "I know this is a lot of change to take in right now. But I really do think you'll feel differently if you just give Connor a chance." She hesitated, then went on in soft appeal. "Give us all a chance to be a real family."

This sent him into an absolute frenzy. "No, we won't! He can't be my dad!"

"But why not, Jace?" she asked, completely stumped.

"'Cause!" His eyes filled with rare tears, disturbing Addie even more. "I don't want a dad, ever!"

With that, Jace broke free, whirling around and taking off like a locomotive at full speed away from her, head down, jeans-clad legs pumping. Addie could only look achingly after him. She'd never felt more helpless in her life, for she didn't believe for a moment that Jace didn't want a father. That wasn't the problem, but she was confounded as to what really was.

And just as at a loss about how she might find out. Then the boy was suddenly swept from his feet with a deep "Whoa there, Slick," and swung around in a movement as smooth as a dance step, dislodging Jace's cowboy hat from his head. The move surprised him enough that he struggled not at all, but only stared up at the stranger who held him under the arms like an eight-week-old puppy.

For this man, Addie now saw, wasn't one of the Bar G's ranch hands ... although there was something uncommonly familiar about him. She couldn't make out his expression under the shading brim of his black Stetson, but his stance was like stone as he, too, stared down at Jace in surprise.

Leaning a hand against the railing, Addie straightened as she took in the whole of him - lithe and lean and tense as a jungle cat, vigilant. Dangerous.

A steel rod of shock shot through her spine, making every muscle in her body go rigid. It couldn't be!

The sun broke through the clouds, cranking the humidity up another couple of notches and distracting her from the danger swirling around her. It was getting late. She needed to get Jace taken care of, needed to batten down this thicket of hair and scrape the mud off her heels. Needed to remind Opal, the wife of one of the ranch hands who tended the house, to pick up Daddy's prescription at the pharmacy when she was in town for groceries. Needed to do the thousand and one things that signified life going on as usual.

The problem was it couldn't - not when the danger wasn't around her but within her. For in that instant her traitorous heart rose up in her with the force of a hundred-year flood, drowning out every other sound in the world with its jubilant cry: At last! At last, he's come back.

Oh, I knew he'd keep his promise!

Excerpted from The Come-Back Cowboy by Jodi O'Donnell Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.