The Cowboy's Sweetheart Read online

  “Did you feed the girls?” Ryder asked again when Wyatt hadn’t answered.

  “Molly made sandwiches.”

  “And you think that’s good?” A three-year-old making sandwiches. Ryder screwed the lid on the peanut butter because he had to do something to keep from pushing his brother into a wall to knock sense into him. “Girls, are you hungry?”

  Kat grinned and Molly looked at her dad. Ryder exhaled a lot of anger. He didn’t have a clue what little kids ate. Wyatt should have a clue. If Wyatt couldn’t do this, how in the world was Ryder going to manage?

  “Tell you what, I’ll make eggs and toast. Do you like eggs?” Ryder opened the fridge door.

  “I can do it.” Wyatt took the carton of eggs from his hands.

  “You girls go play.” Ryder smiled at his nieces. “I think there’s a box of toys in the living room. Mostly horses and cowboys.”

  His and Wyatt’s toys that Ryder had dug out of a back closet the night before.

  When the girls were gone, he turned back to his brother. Wyatt cracked eggs into a bowl and he didn’t look up. “I’ve taken care of them for a year.”

  “Yeah, I know you have.”

  The dog scratched at the back door. Ryder pushed it open and let the animal in, because there was one thing Bear was good at, and that was cleaning up stuff that dropped on the floor. Stuff like peanut butter sandwiches.

  Bear sniffed his way into the kitchen and licked the floor clean, except he left the mud. Not that Ryder blamed him for that.

  The dog was the best floor sweeper in the country.

  “I’m taking care of my girls.” Wyatt poured eggs into the pan. “And I don’t want tips from a guy who hasn’t had kids, or hasn’t had a relationship in his life that lasted more than a month.”

  “That’s about to change.” Ryder muttered and he sure hadn’t meant to open that can of worms. He’d meant to butter toast.

  “What’s that mean?” Wyatt turned the stove off.

  “Remember what it was like, growing up in this house?”

  “Sure, I remember.” Wyatt scooped eggs onto four plates. “Always laughter, mostly the drunken kind that ended in a big fight by the end of the night. And then there were the phone calls.”

  Phone calls their mother received from the other women. Ryder shook his head, because memories were hard to shake. His dad’s temper had been hard to hide from.

  “Right. That’s not the kind of life our kids should have.” Ryder let out a sigh, because he had been holding on to those memories for a long time.

  “Well, as far as I know, the only kids in this house are mine, and they’re not going to have that life, not in this house. If you’re insinuating…”

  “I’m not insinuating anything about you or how you’re raising those girls.” Ryder tossed a slice of buttered toast to his blue heeler. “Wyatt, there isn’t a person around who blames you for having a hard time right now.”

  “I guess this isn’t about me, is it?”

  No, but it would have been nice to pretend it was. Ryder shrugged and poured himself a cup of that morning’s coffee. He ignored his brother and slid the coffee into the microwave.

  “No, it isn’t about you.” He took his cup of day old coffee out of the microwave. “I’m going outside.”

  Because it was still his life. For now.

  “Not again.” Andie rolled out of bed and ran for the bathroom. She leaned, eyes closed and taking deep breaths until the moment passed. When it was just a rolling hint of nausea, she sat back, leaning against the cool tile walls of her bathroom.

  “I have gingersnaps.”

  She turned and Etta was standing in the doorway, already dressed for her day. Andie looked down at her own wrinkled pajamas that she honestly didn’t want to change out of, not today.

  “I’m not sure what good cookies and milk will do now.”

  Etta laughed. “Ginger for nausea. Although the milk might not be the best thing right now. Maybe ginger tea. Come downstairs and we’ll see what I have.”

  The thought of ginger in tea made it worse. Andie closed the bathroom door with her foot and resumed position next to the commode. Her grandmother knocked, insistent. It wasn’t a good thing, Etta’s insistence, not this morning.

  “Give me a minute, Gran.”

  “It’s your mother.”

  Oh, that didn’t make it better. Mother. Andie leaned again, perspiration beaded her brow and her skin felt clammy. She stood and leaned over the sink, turning on cold water to splash her face.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I can’t. Etta said you’re sick. Can I help?”

  “No, you can’t help.” No one could help.

  But there was a clear feeling that someone could. She closed her eyes and prayed for answers, because she’d never needed answers more. She felt like she was on a traffic circle in the middle of a foreign city and she didn’t know which road to take, so she kept driving around the circle, looking for the right direction, the right path.

  Her own analogy and it made her dizzy. She opened her eyes and the swaying stopped.

  “Andie?”

  “I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The door moved a little, like someone leaned against it from the other side. “I know you’re angry with me.”

  The woman wouldn’t give up.

  And the term angry with her mother didn’t begin to describe the hurt, rejection and fury, all rolled into one giant ball and lodged in her heart. Andie slid her hand over her stomach, wondering at the idea of a baby growing inside her, and wondering how a mother could leave a child behind.

  People did things even they didn’t understand, things they regretted. She tried not to think about Phoenix, but it wouldn’t go away. Ryder’s face, his smile swimming in her vision, couldn’t be blinked away.

  She had always cared about his rotten hide.

  Hormones. All of this emotion was caused by raging hormones. She had to stop, to get her act together. She dried her face off and pulled the door open.

  Her mother nearly fell on top of her.

  “I forgive you.” Andie walked past her mother and kept going, down the stairs, out the front door. Alyson’s cat greeted her on the front porch. She scooped the kitten up and held it close. Not that she liked cats. But she had to do something.

  The screen door creaked open.

  “Are you pregnant?” Caroline asked as she stepped onto the porch. She looked so pinched and worried, Andie nearly smiled.

  “I probably am.” She glanced away from her mom. “I guess this is how you expected I’d end up.”

  “I never thought you’d be less than wonderful. I didn’t take Alyson because I thought she’d be better.” Caroline swept her hand over her face, her fingers glittering with gold and gems. “I took her because she was easier. You had so much energy. You pushed me.”

  “Pushed you?”

  “I knew I couldn’t be a good mother to you. I was worried I’d be a horrible mother. That would have been worse for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “You could have called.”

  “It seemed better this way. I can’t go back, Andie. But I do want you to know that I’m here if you need me.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  “Of course you’ll be fine. If you’d like, I could go to the doctor with you before I leave in the morning.”

  The kitten hissed and clawed, wanting down. Andie let him go, watched him scamper with his scrawny tail in the air and then she turned to meet her mother’s cautious gaze. “I get that you want to be forgiven, but we can’t undo twenty-five years of silence with a doctor’s appointment and you standing outside the bathroom door offering words of support.”

  “I know that.” Caroline hugged herself, her arms thin. “Will you call if you need anything before I come back next month to help Alyson finish the wedding plans?”

  “I’ll call.” Andie sighed. “If it helps, I don’t hate you. I wanted to, but I don’t.”r />
  Caroline nodded and tears flooded her eyes. “I’m glad.”

  “Yeah, so am I.” Andie sat down on the steps, her mother stood, leaning against the post. “I guess what you have to realize is that I’m not ready for you to play the part of my mother.”

  “Right. Of course.” Caroline nodded and stepped away from the post. “Thank you for giving me a chance.”

  “You’re welcome.” The kitten crawled into Andie’s lap, twitching its tail in her face.

  Andie watched her mother walk back into the house, and then a truck was barreling down the paved road and turning into their driveway. She groaned and wondered how a day could turn this bad this fast.

  Instead of sitting on the porch, waiting for him to get to her, she got up and walked inside. From the front hallway she could smell the spicy aroma of the ginger tea that Etta had promised. And now it seemed like a good idea.

  Etta turned to look at her when she walked into the kitchen. Her grandmother pointed to the cup on the counter and Andie picked it up, holding it up to inhale the aroma of ginger and cinnamon.

  “Sip it and see if that doesn’t help settle your stomach.”

  Etta flipped pancakes onto a plate.

  “If it does, I want a few of those pancakes.” Andie sat down with the tea and watched her grandmother. It was just the two of them, the way it had been for a long time. Even when Andie’s dad had been alive, it had been Etta and Andie most of the time.

  “The first plate is yours.” Etta glanced out the kitchen window. “You know that Ryder is here, right?”

  “I know.” She sipped the tea and waited, listening for the familiar sound of his steps on the porch, the song he whistled that wasn’t a song and the mew of the kitten when she had someone cornered for attention.

  Chapter Five

  Ryder walked up the back steps to Etta’s, whistling, pretending it was any other fall day in Oklahoma. It was easy to whistle. Not so easy to put out of his mind other thoughts, more complicated thoughts.

  He rapped on the back door and Etta called out for him to come in, that he didn’t have to knock. He’d never knocked before, but he thought that today might be a little different. Things had definitely changed.

  Andie sat on a stool just inside the door. She turned to look at him, and then shifted her attention back to the cup in her hand, and the plate of pancakes in front of her. She looked a little pale, a little green. Her hair was in a short ponytail with thin wisps hanging loose to frame her face.

  How many times had he seen her in the morning? They’d taken predawn rides together, worked cattle together and hauled hay together. But today she was maybe the mother of his child. Stuff shifted inside him, trying to make room for that idea. It wasn’t easy to have that space when he’d never thought about his life in terms of fatherhood.

  He felt nearly as sick as she must feel.

  “You’re up and around early.” She kept her focus on the plate of pancakes.

  “Yeah, well, I have a lot to do today.”

  “Like?”

  “First of all, I want to talk to you.”

  “Talk away.” She took another bite of pancake.

  Okay, she wasn’t going to make this easy. He leaned against the wall next to the door and watched her eat. He had just finished breakfast at the Mad Cow, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about Etta’s pancakes. No one made them like Etta.

  “Want some?” Andie offered, smiling a little. Looking a little like her old self.

  “Nah, I just ate. Andie, we need to talk.”

  “I’d rather not. I mean, really, what do you need to say? We’ve covered it. We made a mistake. We were both there. So we move on, we find a way to keep being friends.”

  “I think I should give you kids some privacy?” Etta turned off the stove and slipped the apron over her head, hanging it on the hook as she walked out the door.

  “We don’t need privacy.” Andie stood, picking up her empty plate. She carried it to the sink and ran water over it, staring out the window.

  Ryder walked up behind her, wanting to hold her. And that surprised him. She’d never been that person to him, the person he dated, the person he held. She’d been the person who helped him keep his act together, and the friend he turned to when he needed to talk something out. He’d been that person for her, too.

  “We need privacy.” He stepped next to her, leaning shoulder to shoulder for a second. And she leaned back, resting her head against him.

  “Okay, we’re alone.” She glanced up, turning to face him.

  Yeah, they were alone. He took a few deep breaths and told himself this was the right thing to do. Andie was staring up at him, blue eyes locking with his. His emotions tangled inside him like two barn cats were going at it, fighting to the death inside his stomach.

  “I never thought I’d do this.” He’d ridden two-thousand-pound bulls, fought fires with the volunteer fire department, and he’d never been this afraid of anything.

  “Do what?”

  He reached into his pocket and held out his hand. “Andie, I think we should get married.”

  And she laughed at him. He stepped back, not sure how to react to laughter. He had kind of expected her to be mad, or something. She could have cried. But he hadn’t expected laughter.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Well, no, I wasn’t.” But maybe he should pretend it had been a joke. They could laugh it off and move on like it hadn’t happened. Maybe she’d even tell him this was a late April Fools’ joke, and she wasn’t going to have a baby.

  “Well, you should be kidding. You know you don’t want to marry me. You don’t want to marry anyone, and especially not like this.”

  “I’d marry you. Seriously, who better to marry than your best friend?”

  She didn’t make a sarcastic remark or roll her eyes, and those would have been the typical Andie reactions to his comment. Instead she smiled and he couldn’t believe two months of hormones could change a woman that much, that fast.

  “I’m not going to marry you, Ryder. We won’t even know for sure if I’m pregnant until I go to the doctor tomorrow.”

  “We could get a, well, one of those tests.”

  She turned a little pink and looked down at the floor. Her feet were bare and she wore sweats cut off at the knees and a T-shirt. She looked young.

  And he felt older than dirt.

  “Andie?”

  “I took a test.” She turned away from him, running dishwater like nothing was different, as if this was a normal day and he hadn’t just had his proposal, his very first proposal, rejected. As if she hadn’t just admitted to taking a pregnancy test.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and waited a few seconds before pushing further into the conversation.

  “Okay, you took a test. I guess you didn’t think I had a right to know?”

  “Yes, I was going to let you know.” She kept washing dishes without looking at him. “I took the test last night and it was positive.”

  So, this was how it felt to learn you were going to be a dad. Not that he hadn’t already been pretty sure, but this made it official. She reached for the ring where he’d left it on the counter. It had been his grandmother’s. She looked at it for a long moment and then she smiled and put it back in his hand.

  “Save your ring for someone you love. I’m going to have this baby, and I’m not going to force you into its life, or my life. I’m not going to accept a proposal you probably planned while you were feeding cattle this morning.”

  She knew him that well.

  “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot to do today. Rob’s coming over to shoe my horses and Caroline is going back to Boston tomorrow.”

  Andie was trying like crazy not to be hurt or mad. She’d never wanted a proposal like this, one that a guy felt as if he had to make. She hadn’t spent too much of her life thinking about marriage, but she knew the one thing she wanted. She wanted love. She didn’t want to start a ma
rriage based on “have to.”

  That night two months ago was one she couldn’t undo. She couldn’t undo the consequences. She closed her eyes and her hand went to her stomach. As much as she had never thought about babies in connection with her life, she couldn’t think of this baby as a punishment.

  It was her baby. She opened her eyes and Ryder was watching her. It was his baby, too. Having a baby changed everything, for both of them. It changed who they were and who they were going to be. It changed their friendship.

  If she had to do it over again, she would have walked away from Ryder that night in Phoenix. She would have stopped things. Because a baby’s life shouldn’t start like this, with parents who could barely look at one another.

  A baby should be planned, shouldn’t it? A baby should know that it was being born into a home with two parents prepared to love it and raise it.

  So what did a person do when the perfect plan hadn’t happened? Andie figured they made the best of things. They counted from this day forward and promised to do their best after this.

  “When are you going to the doctor?”

  “Tomorrow.” She washed a plate and he took it from her to run under rinse water.

  “I meant, what time?”

  “I’m going to leave early, probably by nine.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  Andie stopped washing and took a deep breath. “I don’t need you to take me.”

  “Why in the world are you pushing me away?” Ryder’s voice was low, calm. But she knew better. She knew him better. “If you’re pregnant, I’m the father. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, I’m going with you. My baby, Andie. That has to give me some rights. Maybe you don’t want to marry me, but I don’t think you’ll stop me from being a part of this kid’s life.”

  “I’m not trying to stop you. I’m trying to tell you that I’m not expecting this from you.”

  Her insides shook and she felt cold and clammy as a wave of nausea swept through her again. Ryder touched her arm, his hand warm on her bare skin.