Three Kids And A Cowboy

“Well, you don’t have to believe it, lady,” the boy said, his chin set in confident defiance. “You can see it for yourself, on account of here he comes.”

Miranda scarcely had time to pivot on her heel before the door swept open to crash again against the coatrack.

“Brodie.” The name tingled on her lips, even as her body went numb.

He stepped up to fill the doorway with his broad shoulders and black hat. The bright sunlight behind him put his face in shadow, so that Miranda could not see what emotion showed in his eyes.

For a heartbeat, she wondered if he saw her standing there. Then the paper of the grocery sacks he carried crackled, like a jolt of tension suddenly filling the dry air around them. He had seen her.

She tried to swallow. Tried to blink. Tried to think of what to say after all this time. Her mind went blank, her ability to speak as shrouded as the figure looming in the doorway. It was Brodie’s move.

Randi. Brodie felt his lips move, heard the once affectionate nickname rip through his entire body, yet knew he hadn’t said a thing. He couldn’t say a thing. He just stood in the doorway, the Texas sun warming his back, the sight of his wife standing before him searing his soul. Still, he had to fight off the urge to shudder as if chilled to the core of his being.

Miranda had come home. To him? Could he hope for such a miracle? Could time have healed the wounds he’d inflicted on the woman he loved—the woman whose love he had so battered that she felt she had to run away from him, instead of trusting him enough to work it out?

If Brodie thought for one moment that Miranda had actually come home to him, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have fallen down on his knees and beg her forgiveness. Then, after he thanked God, all the angels and whatever mode of transportation brought her back to him, he’d have stood, scooped her up in his arms, and headed for the nearest bedroom. There, they’d have made love until they could hardly breathe anymore, until they’d loved away all the cold lonely nights of this past year, until they both knew they could never sleep alone ever again.

If she had come home to him. But the look in Miranda’s eyes made it clear that she had come here thinking to find her parents, not her husband. After a year away, the first contact she wanted to make had been with her family—and that no longer included him.

That realization, wrenched loose the past year’s full measure of pain, anger and loneliness from the depths of his soul. It welled up in his chest, almost stifling him. He inhaled the hint of Miranda’s perfume that lingered in the still air, and with it the memory of her betrayal, which sliced through his body like bits of jagged glass.

How could he love someone so much he thought her leaving would near about kill him and yet, seeing her again, want nothing more than to push right past her as though she didn’t even exist for him anymore? By instinct, his hand went to his hat brim, tipping it downward, not in greeting, but to keep her from seeing the potent mix of love and heartache in his face.

If she did see his pain, she did not react. Instead, she just stood there, her face paled by the surprise of his entrance, her breathing shallow, her whole body tensed, as though she might bolt at the slightest provocation.

He narrowed his eyes and studied her for a moment. Though only a year had passed since he last laid eyes on her, he could see a definite change, but he was hardpressed to pinpoint it. She seemed softer somehow, more womanly, but with a confidence tested by fire.

Hellfire, he mused. That was certainly where he felt he’d spent most of this past year—in hell. And it had changed him, too. But would Miranda give him a chance to prove that? Would she even believe it? And why should he give a damn whether she believed it or not, after what she’d put him through…after what they’d put each other through?

A year ago, he’d run her off by proclaiming he couldn’t care for someone else’s children. Now Miranda had come back to find that his house was teeming with them. Brodie felt his lips tug into a sad smile. His gaze flicked over Bubba and Grace, whose faces were filled with excitement and wonder at the situation.

He didn’t know how the children would affect Miranda’s opinion of him, didn’t know if there was any chance that they could work things out or if they should try. He only knew that the first time he and Miranda spoke again, they did not need an audience.

Slowly, he slid the filled grocery sacks to the floor beside his feet. With his eyes always on the three people in front of him, he only heard the paper crunch as the sacks settled on the wooden floor. Too late, he realized he’d set one on the toe of his boot, and it toppled, spilling apples and sending several cans rolling across the entryway. Ignoring them, he stepped forward.

“Bubba, Grace, where’s Crispy?” he asked

“He’s chasing Katie,” Grace said matter-of-factly as she smoothed one small hand over the faded fabric lumped over her arm. “She got out of her bath and ran off when he accidentally got soap in her eyes.”

“Then maybe you two should help him get her and get her hair rinsed off.” Brodie was surprised at the even, natural tone of his voice, given the white-hot emotional brew roiling in his belly. Hoping he could maintain that facade of control, he raised his gaze from the two children to meet Miranda’s shock-filled eyes.

He swallowed hard and clamped his hands on his hips. The fabric of his freshly laundered jeans rasped against his damp palms as he lowered his voice and spoke to his wife for the first time in a year. “Randi…I mean, Mrs. Sykes and I…need a few moments alone.”

Chapter Two (#ulink_1ac9aeda-bb6f-57e1-8eae-7056425f1065)

“What is going on here? Where are my parents? And why are you living in their house?” Miranda hadn’t thought herself capable of speaking. However, once she had dutifully followed Brodie into what had been her father’s den, the questions began to tumble out of her mouth.

She supposed they were a defense against the waves of emotion crashing down on her at the sight of Brodie, big as life, before her. She hadn’t thought seeing him again would be so…confusing.

Stabbing heartache fought with buoyant joy inside her. To complicate things further, as she watched him walking away from her now—a sight that could buckle the knees of any healthy woman—that old thrill rippled through her again.

She brushed her fingertips over the crisp cotton of her shirt, feeling her heart pounding through the summer-weight fabric. She wondered what was going through Brodie’s mind. Was he glad to see her, or angry that she’d dare to reappear as suddenly as she’d left a year ago?

Despite a flutter in her stomach, she gritted her teeth and told herself that Brodie’s reaction didn’t really matter. How he felt about seeing her wouldn’t change reality. For both their sakes, she had to put aside her questions and never let Brodie see any weakness he inspired in her. If he sensed her turmoil, he’d try to fix it.

In her present confused state, she just might be tempted to let him try. And what would that get her but a new crack in an already crumbling heart?

She tossed back her hair and angled her chin up. She’d come here to confront Brodie, and that was what she was going to do, as soon as he explained the strange set of circumstances in which she found him and her family home. Standing by the open door, her back pressed against the cool wall, she crossed her arms over her chest and waited for that explanation.

Brodie moved slowly, like a man recovering from a body blow, around the big desk dominating a room whose focal point had once been a wall of her photos. The photos remained, but they seemed overshadowed by the unfamiliar trappings of a ranch office now in place.

Behind the desk, he seemed to notice neither her nor the gaudy memorial her parents had made to her. His leather chair squeaked as he dropped into it. It squeaked again when he swiveled it frontward, then moved to take his Stetson from his head and place the bad-boy-black hat on the desktop.

The moments dragged by, forcing Miranda to make a study of Brodie, rather than get her answers and get gone, as she would have liked.

The last time she saw Brodie, he’d been fast asleep in their bed, naked except for a tangled sheet and that stealyour-heart grin on his face. She could still see his bare chest, well-muscled arms and long legs. He’d always been built like something out of a western fantasy, lean and clean-cut, with broad shoulders and a behind made to be caressed by faded denim. If anything, this past year had amplified those qualities.

Miranda shifted against the wall, well aware of the changes she’d gone though—inwardly and outwardly—since she last kissed her husband goodbye. She tugged at the front of her shirt, hoping to make it blouse over the top of her jeans enough to disguise the ten pounds she’d gained trying to assuage her misery with chocolate candy and pasta Alfredo.

He ran one of his big hands through the sun-streaked waves of his blond hair, which had grown considerably. He always did that when he took his hat off. Now he had a heck of a lot more hair to rake through.

He’d let his hair get shaggy before, but it had never been this long. To her surprise, it worked for him. Worked too damn well, she thought, trying to quell the stirrings in the pit of her stomach.

Miranda swallowed hard and touched her own soft hair. She wondered if he hadn’t bothered with a haircut because she wasn’t around to remind him to do it. Or could he possibly know how truly sexy and powerful the golden mane made him look? Could it be a calculated thing to attract women? Had he moved on that much?

Not that it mattered, she told herself. In fact, that was exactly what she hoped would happened. She’d left Brodie so that he could find another woman, and if he’d actually started to make himself more attractive for just that reason, well…

It stank. After all, he was still married to her. A tightening in her chest made her pull her shoulders square and tilt her head back. Only a jerk would go out looking for another relationship with so much unresolved.

That wasn’t Brodie’s style. Like a dog with a bone, he would have held on. He had held on. That was why she had come back—because one of them had to let go. And a year’s worth of silence told her it wasn’t going to be Brodie.

“This can’t go on, Brodie, and you know it,” she said aloud, to her own surprise.

He jerked his head up, and for the first time, his gaze penetrated her facade.

Miranda gasped quietly at the sheer power in his piercing blue eyes.

His thin lips went pale as he spoke through a tight smile. “It’s nice to see you again, too, Randi.”

“Don’t…” She glanced down at the tips of her favorite red cowboy boots and jiggled her foot. Telling herself she couldn’t afford to sound so distraught, she drew in a deep breath and went on softly, “Please don’t call me that, Brodie.”

He tipped his head to one side and flattened his hands on the desk in front of him. Sunlight from the nearby window made the wedding band on his left hand glint as he whispered, “You used to like it when I called you that.”

“Things change.”

“Tell me about it,” he muttered, his gaze still fixed on hers.

Miranda pressed her tight shoulders to the wall and swallowed hard. “No, you tell me about it. Tell me what’s going on…and I mean right now.”