Welcome Home, Cowboy

“Which is why you get to throw them away. Not me.”

With a sigh strong enough to rustle the offending tissues, the child gathered them up, then stood and dumped them into her trash can, decorated with a big-eyed Disney princess. “Is the man gone?”

Apprehension curled in the pit of Emma’s stomach. Not eagerly anticipating the upcoming conversation, nope. “How’d you know about him?”

“Saw him out the window.” Blue eyes, no less sharp for their wateriness, shot to Emma’s. “Who is he?” she croaked, like a baby bullfrog.

“An old friend of your daddy’s. And keep your voice down, he’s right in the kitchen.”

“How come?”

“Because he and I have stuff to talk over. Grown-up stuff.”

Zoey sniffed out a put-upon sigh, a trait she’d perfected by two, before blowing her nose again. “He looks like that guy Daddy used to listen to all the time on the country music station.”

“That’s because he is.”

Eyes popped. “You serious?”

“Yes. And no, you can’t tell anybody.”

“Is he gonna stay?”

“Here? No, of course not. He’s got his own place.” Emma paused, briefly considering the weirdness that was Cash Cochran moving back to Tierra Rosa. “He used to live here. In this house, I mean.”

“No way!”

“Yep.”

Pale eyebrows pushed together. “He doesn’t want it back, does he?”

“I highly doubt it. And even if he did, it’s ours now. Nobody can take it from us.” At least, that was the plan. “You want more juice?”

“No, I’m good,” Zoey said, handing Emma her empty glass before flopping back onto her tummy on the rug, like she didn’t have a care in the world. Considering how attached Zoey’d been to her daddy, the child must’ve inherited Emma’s fake-it-till-you-make-it gene. However, her recent disposition to inviting in every cold virus that passed through town led Emma to suspect she wasn’t over her daddy’s death nearly as much as she let on.

“Hey,” Emma said. Zoey looked up. “Love you.”

That got a holey smile in response. “Love you, too, Mama.”

Releasing a breath, Emma tromped back down the hall to discover Cash—clearly not inclined to stay where he’d been put—standing in her tiny dining room, his fingers curled around a mug, staring at the sixteen-by-twenty J.C. Penney photo special taking up a good chunk of the paneled wall by the window.

“This is real nice,” he said, in the manner of somebody who realized he’d missed out on a thing or two.

Emma forced her eyes to the portrait, even though it made her heart ache. Lee’d gone on Weight Watchers the year before; he’d been so proud of how much he’d slimmed down he’d insisted they get their picture taken. Although slimmed was a relative term. For both of them. Now, though, she was glad she’d shoved her pride where the sun don’t shine and done what Lee’d wanted. Aside from their wedding album, it was the best picture she had of him. If she’d had any part in making him as happy as he seemed in that picture, she supposed she’d done okay.

Sure, she was ticked that Lee’d skirted the truth about what he’d told Cash, but no doubt he had his reasons. He always did. She sighed over the dull pang that became fuzzier around the edges every day. Heaven knew neither of them was perfect, but they’d been good together. Real good. The kind of good a smart woman knew better than to expect more than once in her lifetime—

“Your boy—he okay?”

Wrapped in his father’s arms from behind, Hunter beamed his customary infectious grin at the camera, his glasses crooked as usual. But how could she have forgotten, even for a moment, that the rest of the world saw “normal” through a completely different lens than she did? That to most people her boy’s slanted eyes and thick neck and fine hair defined him in a way that provoked either pity or discomfort, if not both. If Cash was feeling either of those things, though, she couldn’t tell.

Emma smiled. “He’s doing great. Nobody gets a bigger kick out of life than Hunter. A life that’s perfectly normal. For him. Us, too.”

When she turned, Cash’s eyes were fixed on her belly.

“Yeah, there’s another baby in there,” she said, going into the kitchen, where she finally unwound the scarf and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair before scooting across the floor toward the pie. At least, in her head she was scooting. In reality she felt like a hippopotamus slogging through hip-high mud.

“Didn’t know this one was coming until a couple of weeks after Lee died. It’s okay,” she said when Cash’s brows dipped, signaling the doubt demons to swarm, taunting her about all the responsibilities balanced on her not-quite-broad-enough shoulders. Sometimes she truly wondered how she wasn’t curled up in a fetal position herself, sucking her thumb. She flashed him a smile and scooped up the pie. “Everything’s under control. Really.”

And the sooner she did that tidying-up thing with Cash about his father, the sooner he’d be gone and she could get back to figuring out the rest of her life.

She turned, the pie cradled in her hands, catching the barely banked blend of disgust and horror on Cash’s face as he scanned the kitchen. Meaning, most likely, that a few coats of paint weren’t doing a blamed thing to eradicate the bad mojo that had not only sent Cash running but had kept him away for twenty years.

Somehow, she highly doubted the truth would, either.

Don’t remember this being part of the marriage vows, she thought, setting the pie on the table.

Chapter Two

At least the house smelled good. Damn good. Like strong coffee and baking and that flowery stuff women liked to keep around. But man, being here was doing a number on Cash’s head. In fact, as he watched Emma serve up a huge piece of pie, he felt like somebody with ADD was controlling the remote to his brain.

Cats lazed and groomed in the midmorning sunlight splashing across the dull butcherblock counters, the gouged tile floor—old, faded dreams struggling for purchase in a scary sea of color. Orange walls. Turquoise cabinets. Yellow curtains. Hell, even the table was fire-engine red—

“Bright colors help stimulate the brain,” Emma said quietly, setting a plate in front of him and licking her thumb. “We did it mainly for Hunter.”

“Did it help?”

Through the calm, Cash caught a glimpse of the worry that was most likely a constant companion. “I don’t think it hurt,” she said with a slight smile, and his heebie-jeebies about being in the house morphed to apprehension about what she wanted to tell him, which then slid into a skin-prickling, inexplicable awareness of the woman herself—

“Let me get you a refill,” she said, whisking away his mug.

—which in turn stirred up a whole mess of conflicting feelings, most of which he’d pretty much lost touch with over the years … none of which he was the least bit inclined to examine now. If ever. The weird, inexplicable spurt of protectiveness notwithstanding—even more weird since he doubted there was a woman on the face of the earth who needed protecting less than Emma Manning—he wasn’t the protective type.

More than one shrink had told Cash his self-centeredness was a direct outcome of the hell he’d been through, the old survival instinct clawing to the surface of the toxic swamp that had been his childhood. Although how that survival instinct jibed with an equally strong bent toward self-destruction—at least, early on—neither he nor the shrinks could figure out. Other terms got bandied about a lot, too. Trust issues and emotional barriers and such.

A highfalutin way of saying he sucked at relationships.

At least, that was how his last ex had put it, Cash pondered as he watched the dark, rich brew tumble into his mug, in the note she’d left on the custom-made glass-and-iron dining table in their ritzy Nashville condo eight years ago. Yeah, the tabloids had been all over that one.

The self-destructive tendencies, Cash had finally gotten a handle on. Mostly. The putting-himself-first thing, however … not so much.

Which was why it was taking everything he had in him not to bolt. From the house, the woman, whatever she had to tell him. But before he could, she slid into the seat across from him with a glass of milk. He met her frown with one of his own.

“Well?”

“Eat your pie first.” The brutal, midmorning light showcased the fine lines marring otherwise smooth skin, the faintly bruised pouches cushioning those odd-colored eyes. Not gray or blue or green but some combination of the three. “Cleaning up after my husband wasn’t exactly on my chore list this morning. So I’m working up to it. Besides, I don’t know you, Mr. Cochran. I have no idea how you’re going to react to what I’m about to tell you.”

“Sounds ominous.”