Her Unforgettable Cowboy

He placed a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. “You did good, Sammy.”

“It was scary. I almost got trampled, too.” Sammy’s eyes were huge.

“Aw, come on, kid, it wasn’t that bad,” Joseph called from the back of the room where he was trying out his new desk. “If you stick with us, you’ll learn not to be scared.”

Sammy didn’t look too sure about that.

“I ride,” yelped Tony, a skinny kid around fifteen or so who looked like a young Elvis Presley with his swath of black hair, blue eyes and a crooked smile that made his eyes twinkle. He skidded to a halt in front of Jolie.

This led each boy to reveal he could ride. Jolie caught the flicker of fear in Sammy’s expression as he realized he was the only one who couldn’t ride. She glanced at Morgan to find his guarded eyes staring back at her.

“We’re gonna learn to mug steers tomorrow after church,” Caleb said, his freckles crinkling with his smile. “You can come, too, Jolie.”

Sammy slipped his hand into hers and looked up. “Would you come?”

Jolie melted right there in the middle of the room. Turned right into a pool of liquid. “Sure I will,” she said. She was pretty sure she would have jumped from an airplane if he’d asked her. “I love to calf wrestle, and scramble, too. But muggin’ is my favorite! I used to be one of the best here on the ranch, you know.”

“Seriously?” Joseph jerked to his feet, gaping at her from across the room. He and Wes exchanged disbelieving looks. “You can take down a steer?”

Jolie nearly shook her head. Males.

“Hey, y’all look like you don’t think I can do it!” she teased.

“We just aren’t used to girls—I mean, women—wantin’ to do something like that,” Wes drawled, glancing at Joseph and Tony.

Jolie smiled at the cocky, young cowboys, with their worn jeans tucked into their rugged boots and their T-shirts with the arms cut out of them. It was obvious that they’d been working that morning, most likely hauling hay, an ongoing job she remembered quite well growing up on the ranch. A picture of Morgan in that same getup at that age raced through her head and she glanced his way. He looked about as happy as a grizzly bear that had been awakened in the middle of a really good nap.

“I’m a little insulted here! Girls do this sort of thing all the time.” She laughed when they all swallowed and looked a bit meek. “You’ll find for the most part that I look at life with a bring-it-on attitude.” She looked directly at Morgan before shifting back to the boys. “I haven’t done it in a long time, but it sounds too fun to pass up. I’ll be there.” She looked at Mr. Grizzly Bear again. “May I speak to you outside?”

“Sure,” he growled, swiveling toward the back door. “You boys don’t tear anything up while we’re gone.”

Jolie thought Morgan was teasing even though he seemed far from a teasing mood. Surely he wasn’t thinking the boys were going to destroy all the work they’d just put in. But then again, there was the incident with the desks.

Looking back over her shoulder, she was struck by the group. The picture they made reminded her of an old John Wayne movie, The Cowboys, about a bunch of ragtag boys who’d needed a gruff old cowboy to teach them life lessons. Although Morgan was far from an old cowboy, it was plain to see that these boys respected and admired him. And needed him.

Smiling at them, she winked. “If y’all want to finish turning the desks and lining them up, that would be great.”

They all chorused, “Yes, ma’am.”

Smiling at their politeness, she followed Mr. Grizzly outside and then passed him, leading him out of earshot of the class. There was a large, gnarled oak tree still bent over as it had been all those years ago. She didn’t stop until she reached it, turning his way only after they were beneath the wide expanse of limbs.

Morgan crossed his arms and studied the tree. “I remember having to climb up this tree and talk you down after you scrambled up to the top and froze.”

She hadn’t expected him to bring up old memories—it caught her off guard. “I remember how mad you were at having to rescue the silly little new girl.” Mad? Actually, furious was more accurate.

A hint of a smile teased his lips, fraying Jolie’s nerves at the edges. It had been a long, long time since she’d seen that smile.

“I got used to it, though,” he said, his voice warming.

She laughed, encouraged by his teasing. “You had no other choice! I guess if you hadn’t rescued me I’d never have made it to my teen years.” But she was grateful to Morgan for more than that. She’d grown into a teenager who could handle almost any situation, a girl confident in her own skin. She hadn’t been afraid to try anything because she’d been so crazy adventurous—and free to learn from her mistakes, thanks to Morgan and his brothers, Rowdy and Tucker, who had always been there to help her through. She’d idolized them, but at the same time, wanted them to stop babying her.

Morgan especially.

Of course it was Morgan who’d made her the angriest, and Morgan whom she’d fallen for. Their relationship had never been an easy one. The push and pull of attraction had started when she’d demanded independence, and then changed when she’d found herself desperate for his approval. But it became something incredibly complicated when she’d realized she wanted his love.

And then the pull of competitive kayaking entered the equation when Morgan introduced her to it on a lazy summer afternoon and things grew more complicated. She’d been fifteen, and her instant infatuation with the sport had been too much to ignore. For a young woman who craved the adventure world-class competition offered, Sunrise Ranch suddenly seemed...small. When Morgan made it clear that he had no desire to leave the ranch, Jolie decided she had no choice but to walk away.

Looking at him now, she was overcome by the memory of the internal war she’d lived through when she’d made the decision to leave.

It had been six years, but it felt like twenty.

They were standing beneath the shade of the old oak tree, electricity humming between them. When the smile left Morgan’s eyes, Jolie sucked in a wobbly breath, forcing herself to focus on the job she’d been hired to do. “I’m curious about Sammy. Has he been here long?”

“Just a couple of weeks. He’s our newest rancher. He’s still having trouble emotionally, after his abandonment. It’s a tough situation.”

“He seems fearful.”

“He is, poor kid. He knows his dad has been gone from the picture for a long time. But his mother gave him up to the state and now he thinks his dad will find out and come for him. He’ll stretch the truth from here to Alaska, so you might want to tread lightly with everything he says until you give it a reality check.”

“He lies?” she asked, a little more frankly than she’d intended. But she needed to know the truth if she was going to help him.

Morgan grimaced. “Kinda. More like the boy who cried wolf.”

“The stories don’t ever seem to change, do they, Morgan? I just can’t imagine how these boys handle their families not wanting them. Or not caring enough to make loving homes for them.”

She’d been around kids like Sammy all the time growing up. Some handled the situation with anger, some with denial, but it was all about fear. She understood that on a personal level—three times this week she’d awakened in the middle of the night because of nightmares. She pushed the thoughts away, praying she was up for this job.

“Sammy’s a good example of how bad these kids have been hurt. They need people around them who will care for them and stick with them.” The hardness of Morgan’s tone matched the accusation in his eyes. “What are you doing here, Jolie? Why aren’t you taming rapids in some far-off place?”

“I...I’m—” She stumbled over her words, tongue-tied by his question. “I’m taking a leave from competition for a little while. I had a bad run in Virginia and I— It was bad.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that she’d almost died, that she was lucky to be standing there. “Anyway, your dad was kind enough to offer me this opportunity.”

“I heard about the accident and I’m real sorry about that, Jolie. I really am. I wish you a speedy recovery so you can get back out there doing what you love. But why come here after all this time? We dropped off your radar a long time ago.”

“This is my home. It has never been off my radar.” Jolie saw anger in Morgan’s eyes. Well, he had a right to it, and more than a right to point it straight at her. She’d just thought she was prepared for it.

She was wrong.

“Morgan,” Jolie said, almost as a whisper. “I’d hoped we could forget the past and move forward.”

Heart pounding, she reached across the space between them and placed her hand on his arm. It was just a touch, but the feeling of connecting with Morgan McDermott again after so much time rocked her straight to the core and suddenly she wasn’t so sure coming home had been the right thing to do, after all.

A jolt from a live wire couldn’t have burned Morgan more than the touch of Jolie’s hand. Shock waves coursed through him with a vengeance, his mouth went dry. There had been a time when he’d have done anything for her touch. He gulped hard and hardened his heart against a walk down memory lane.

He wasn’t some kid anymore, holding his heart in his hands. He was a thirty-two-year-old adult male with a good brain between his ears. Or at least he’d thought he had a good brain.

“I did forget the past. A long time ago,” he assured her, his skin burning where her hand still lay. He wondered if she felt the way his pulse had started galloping at her touch. They stared at each other as seconds slipped by.

“Yes, of course you would have,” Jolie said at last, her hand squeezing his arm slightly before it slipped away. “But I was hoping there would be no hard feelings.”