In a Cowboy's Arms

Ty scooped up some salsa with a chip. “Nope, especially not after a hard day working outside.” He lifted a thick shoulder, then popped the chip into his mouth. When he was done chewing, he said, “But I wouldn’t dream of telling my dad that. He works too hard at providing healthy meals to hurt his feelings with complaints.” His eyes softened and he kicked one side of his mouth up. “I just eat what he prepares and then fill in later.”

Jenny’s heart turned over. “You’re very considerate,” she murmured, toying with a piece of cantaloupe with her fork, wishing he wasn’t so darn appealing in every way, wishing it was easier to keep him in the “employer” box she’d made for him.

Swallowing heavily, she deliberately kept her attention off of him, focusing her gaze instead on her half-empty plate.

After a long silence, Ty asked, “So, how are things going with the girls?”

“Just fine,” she said, happy to talk business. “They get along great, and both are used to the same kind of nap routine.” She’d been a little surprised that Morgan was on a set schedule, and had mentally given Ty kudos for doing such a good job as a single father trying to raise a child while working more than full-time hours.

“Good. They both seem happy.” He paused, then cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I ask you a kind of…personal question?”

She looked at him, pulling in her chin. Of course she minded; she wanted to keep things strictly employee/employer between them. But she was taking care of his most precious possession—his child. He had a right to ask personal questions. To a point. “No, not at all,” she said, her voice higher than normal. “What would you like to know?”

He propped his forearms on the table, then gave her an inquisitive stare. “Why did a young, beautiful woman like you want to come out here and live in the middle of nowhere?”

Her heart lurched when he called her beautiful, but she quickly crammed the feeling into a little ball and ignored it. “I thought we covered that in the phone interview.”

He inclined his head. “We did, sort of. Something about wanting to support yourself being a nurse without your parents’ help.” He turned and bored into her with his intense, compelling blue gaze. “There’s got to be more. Not many women would willingly come here to stay.”

Jenny focused on how he seemed to be speaking from personal experience rather than on how his blue stare made her shiver. She had to keep his appeal from sucking her into a dangerous place she’d sworn never to go again when Jack had died. “Um, I, well, I needed to get away from Oak Valley,” she said, hoping he’d leave it at that. She wasn’t ready to share her innermost fears.

“Why?” he asked, still staring, dashing her hopes.

She bit her lip and popped a grape into her mouth, stalling. How could she share with him how much she needed to escape the sad memories of Oak Valley, how she was determined to avoid laying her soul bare again to the most intense pain and hurt she’d ever felt?

Given that searing reality, opening up about Jack’s death seemed…well, nearly impossible. And yet, she was trying to move on and make a new life, for Ava’s sake. To do that she needed to get past the pain, or at the very least be able to deal with it in the most basic of ways. She needed to be able to talk about it.

Taking a deep breath, she hesitated. “Did Connor ever tell you about how my husband died?”

Ty stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “No.”

She swallowed, fiddling with the napkin on her lap, working herself to a mental place where she could talk about Jack’s accident. “He, uh, well…” She cleared her tightening throat. “He was a paramedic, and he was rushing to help a car-accident victim.” She closed her eyes, willing herself to deal with the pain and keep talking.

“Go on,” Ty said softly. “It’s okay.”

The strange thing was, it did feel almost okay—or at least acceptable—to tell him about Jack’s death. Why was that? Why did she feel comfortable enough with this man to tell him about the most tragic event in her life? Was it his softly compelling eyes and wide shoulders that looked as if they could handle any burden?

She fidgeted in her chair for a moment, confused. But then a surprising need to unload came over her and she deliberately relaxed her hands, took another deep breath and continued. “It was dark and wet, and in typical Jack fashion, he was driving too fast, putting someone else’s welfare above his own. He hit a curve, the truck slid off the road…” Tears burned her eyelids but she forced herself to continue. “And hit a tree. On his side.” One lone tear slid down her cheek. “He was killed instantly.”

Pain rose up inside of her like a black, choking tide. If only Jack had been more careful.

“It still hurts, doesn’t it?” Ty asked, his voice low and gentle.

She nodded, her throat burning. She bit her lip and looked up at Ty, saw the tender concern in his eyes and almost fell headfirst into his caring gaze….

She looked away. What was wrong with her? Why had she shared her ultimate pain with Ty? He wasn’t her best friend, or a man she would let herself care about. He was her boss, that was all. She had no business sharing such personal feelings with him. She’d already told him too much.

To her surprise, Ty reached out and covered her hand with his large, warm, calloused hand. “Are you angry with him?”

She blinked, trying to ignore how good his hand felt covering hers, how much she wanted to turn her fingers and hold onto him for a very long time. “Of course not—” she blurted, then cut herself off before she said any more, before she let him in on her deepest shame.

He squeezed her hand and cut off her sentence. “It’s natural you would be. He took a risk and left you alone, right?”

Shaking, she stared at him, amazed at his perceptiveness, still ashamed to admit that deep down she resented her dead husband for being an altruistic risk-taker, for putting somebody else’s welfare above his own.

She shifted on the kitchen chair, biting the inside of her lip. She needed to shut up. Right now. “I don’t think that’s any of your—”

Sam’s call from the family room cut her off. Ty put his napkin on the table and rose, holding up a hand. “I’ll be right back.”

Jenny watched him go, admiring his broad shoulders and narrow hips. Realizing what she was doing, she ripped her gaze away from his retreating back, her face flaming, guilt and shame mixing around inside of her like acid.

“What are you thinking?” she muttered to herself. She had no business checking out Ty, just as she had no business opening up to him.

But for some reason, she had confided in him to a degree. And he’d seen inside of her to her true feelings and understood. While her family had been very supportive, nobody seemed to understand how much she resented Jack for taking a risk that had ultimately left her alone to raise their daughter. Heck, she could hardly even acknowledge the feelings, could barely deal with the guilt and shame that tore at her when she analyzed her feelings about what had caused Jack’s death.

To make matters worse, after the short time she’d spent with Ty, she was drawn to him on an emotional level that went beyond how amazingly blue his eyes were or how beguiling his smile was.

And that was far more dangerous than any physical yearning could ever be.

Ty answered his dad’s question about how to operate their new DVD player, then paused outside the entrance to the kitchen, trying to get his thoughts in order before he went back in and sat down next to Jenny.

The truth was, her tears over her husband’s death had landed on him like a snorting, charging bull, bringing out not only his sympathy, but a deeply rooted sense of protectiveness he’d thought long buried. Strangely, he’d wanted to take her in his arms, and soothe her grief and guilt away while wiping away the pain in her beautiful green eyes.

Bad, bad move. The last thing he should be thinking about was letting himself feel even remotely protective of his daughter’s nanny, or attracted to her. On any level. As if to drive that point home, a vision of Andrea popped into his head.

Remember the pain, McCall.

He gave himself a mental slap and reminded himself that women left when the going got tough, period. No way was he going to put himself through that hell again.

So she’d been deeply affected by her husband’s death. So she was vulnerable and more appealing than any woman he’d been around in a long, long time. While he felt bad she’d been hurt, he couldn’t let himself be too affected by her.

He stepped back into the kitchen, his priorities in order, intending to ask her some questions about Morgan’s insulin regimen. Jenny was at the sink, rinsing the dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.

“Hey, you don’t have to do that,” he said.

She turned around, her eyebrows arched high, then lifted one slim shoulder and went back to rinsing and loading. “I don’t mind. Sam’s entertaining the girls and you’ve had a long day.” She glanced at his empty chair. “Why don’t you sit down and relax for a while?”

Her consideration of him warmed a cold, empty place inside of him. Liking the feeling, but wary of it, too, he shook his head. “No way am I going to have you doing all the work. Hand me the sponge and I’ll wipe the table down.” Cleaning up in the same room seemed impersonal enough.

She rinsed out the sponge, then handed it to him along with a spray bottle of antibacterial kitchen cleaner. “Spray it down with this, all right?”

He took the sponge and cleaner from her and went to work. Before he could start the discussion about Morgan’s insulin regimen, Jenny jumped in and said, “So, as long as we’re unloading, why don’t you tell me what happened with Morgan’s mother.”

He froze in mid-spray, yanking his brows together. “What do you mean?” he asked, attacking the Formica table with a vengeance.

“Connor told me you’re divorced.” She swiveled around and pinned him in place with her beautiful greenish-brown gaze. “Why?”

Ty stared at her, surprised by her probing question. He squished the sponge in his hand and resumed wiping. “Things didn’t work out,” he said, his jaw clenched. Talk about a major understatement. His marriage to Andrea had been a disaster from the start.