Come Home, Cowboy

“When did you acquire the sanctuary and move it here?”

Leave it to Josh to ask the hardest question. “Three years ago. The Powells were running out of room and busy with—” She hesitated, not wanting to say “having babies and raising their children.” That had been an activity Cara and the Powell wives once had in common. “With work,” she finally said. “I started with a few mustangs. Then more. Eventually, they all came.”

That was after her son died. Without the sanctuary, Cara was convinced she’d have gone quietly crazy.

A loud clattering made them turn around. They were met by twenty or so mustangs, their heads hanging over the gate and their tails swishing.

“Looks like the natives are getting restless.” Josh smiled at the horses ready to storm the feeding station and chow down.

Cara would have replied except she couldn’t. Josh’s smile, and the laughter lighting his eyes, literally captivated her. He was so handsome, more rugged than movie-star pretty despite his classic blond hair and blue eyes. Not that she hadn’t noticed his looks before now. But their effects on her were new.

She and Josh didn’t usually stand this close. That must have been the reason. If she moved her hand a mere inch, it would graze his shoulder. She wasn’t tempted. More like curious. It had been a long time since she’d touched a man with anything other than innocent casualness.

Wait. Wait. Wait! This was seven kinds of wrong. Josh Dempsey was the last man about whom she should be entertaining romantic notions. Correction: she should not be entertaining such notions about any man. Her son had died two years ago in an entirely preventable accident. She wasn’t entitled to feel anything but grief and guilt. She might never be entitled.

“Ready?” Josh’s bright smile hadn’t dimmed one small watt.

“Sure.” Cara hesitated, worried her wobbly knees would buckle. “Can, um, you get the gate?”

He spared her the briefest of odd glances before doing as she’d asked. “Stand back,” he called. “Here they come.”

She had only enough time to duck behind the nearest feeder before the horses clambered through the gate and headed straight for the hay, pushing and shoving and nipping at one another in their haste.

The sight was a comical one, and Cara almost laughed. She didn’t, though. Like romantic attraction, happiness wasn’t possible. The mechanism inside her responsible for manufacturing it had broken.

Josh did laugh. The sound, loud and rich and full, caused a pleasant ripple to course through her. She tried to tamp it down and failed.

Suddenly afraid and not sure of what, Cara cut a zigzag path through the horses toward her pickup truck.

“Wait,” Josh called.

She reluctantly stopped. The next instant, he was beside her, and her awareness of him intensified.

“I want to talk to you about one of the horses.” He waited until she met his gaze, which was hard to resist.

She steeled herself. “Which one?”

“The small, homely gelding. What did you call him?”

“Hurry Up.”

“He’d make a great horse for my kids.”

She knew Josh had recently won custody of his children and would soon be bringing them to Mustang Valley. It was something she tried not to think about.

“Please,” he continued. “I haven’t been the best dad before now. It’s a situation I’m determined to change.”

“Kids need more than a pet.”

“I get that. But a love of horses is something I can share with them, teach them about, and I’m not above bribing them.” He added the last part with a guilty grin.

Cara nodded. Speaking was difficult because of the large, painful lump lodged in her throat.

“You mentioned an adoption process. Can we start it? I fly out tomorrow to pick up the kids from their grandparents’ in San Jose.”

Young children. Underfoot. In the way. She wouldn’t be able to escape them and the constant reminder of what might have been if not for that terrible day.

“Look,” he said. “If you won’t let me adopt Hurry Up, maybe I can sponsor him. I’ll pay for his food and care. In exchange, you let me use him for my kids. He can stay in the sanctuary. I won’t move him to the horse stable.”

He was being more than reasonable. To refuse him simply out of spite was unfair to him, his children and the sanctuary, which was always in need of extra money.

“All right, you win,” she said, but it sounded like someone else talking.

Chapter Three (#ulink_d939b3c5-4ca7-59f7-84dc-8bb4e6269c66)

Josh had no idea how much room was needed for two little kids. Eight hundred square feet? Two thousand? The apartment above the horse stable seemed small to him, what with its one bedroom, living room/dining room, kitchen and bath.

Raquel had been kind, offering him use of the apartment and helping him move in. Okay, technically the apartment, along with all of Dos Estrellas, was one-third his. But she had been the matriarch of the ranch for over twenty years, and he didn’t want to appear rude or ungrateful.

“If you ask me...” Raquel let the sentence drop.

“I am.” Josh carried a crib mattress under one arm and a merry-go-round lamp under the other.

The remainder of his kids’ furniture was in the stock trailer parked below, including a youth bed, dresser, changing table and toy chest. There was also a mobile, playpen, stroller, linens, nursery monitor and several dozen boxes yet to be unloaded. After six weeks in storage, everything was dusty and dirty.

“I’d put the crib and youth bed in the bedroom.” Raquel pointed down the short hall. “You could sleep in the living room. The couch converts to a bed.”

Josh expelled a long sigh. This, more than unpacking and cleaning, was exactly the help he needed. “Good idea.”

He’d been spoiled. Living half of the last fourteen years on the road, he’d relied first on his mother, then his ex-wife, then his mother again to keep his home in order.

Maybe Cole was right to doubt his parenting abilities. Josh had a lot of growing up to do, and quickly.

After carrying the crib mattress and lamp to the bedroom, he returned to find Gabe lifting two large boxes. For every load Josh had carried up from the trailer, Gabe had carried one down. In recent years, the apartment had become a dumping place for odds and ends. Raquel was overseeing the clearing out.

“Take this, too.” She added a shoe box to her son’s load, though, from the bulging sides, the box didn’t look to contain shoes.

Gabe peered around the stack in his arms. “Where do I put all this stuff?”

“The spare bedroom for now. I’ll figure out what to do with it later.”

As Josh watched Gabe and Raquel conversing, he was struck with a strange sense of surrealism. He’d often imagined having sole custody of his children, but never living with them in an apartment on his late father’s ranch. Nor had he imagined his half brother and his father’s longtime companion being the ones to help him clean and ready the apartment.

He blinked, but nothing changed. Raquel and Gabe continued to chat in the living room.

“What’s in these, anyway?” Gabe pretended to buckle, as if the boxes were heavy.

His mother smiled. “Old clothes, mostly. From the hall closet.”