The Cowboy Meets His Match (Fatherhood) Read online

  “It’s Kate,” the woman said, frowning at Erin.

  One of the other women from the table leaned in front of Erin, a confused look on her face. “I’m Trish, Kate’s sister. Trish Rule.”

  He released Kate’s hand to take Trish’s outstretched one. “Sisters, huh?”

  “Better behave, Jake. Her husband is the sheriff,” Erin announced.

  “Is that so? He didn’t mention that he had such a pretty wife when I stopped in at his office the other day.”

  Erin closed her eyes and shook her head, then moved away. Score one for him. They’d battled on a daily basis, all summer long, every summer he spent at his uncle’s ranch. Verbal sparring, he’d called it, and she’d been an expert at it. He learned from her and had gotten pretty good at him himself—until he’d realized she wasn’t a little girl anymore and lost his heart to her.

  He felt a hand on his back and heard, “Good to see you again, Jake.”

  Jake turned his head to see Erin’s youngest brother. “Luke, it’s been a long time. Thanks for returning my dog the other day.”

  They shook hands as Dylan, the older of the Walker brothers, joined them. “We thought it might be yours, and sorry we missed seeing you. We’d been watching all the building going on at your uncle’s place and hoped you had something to do with it.”

  Jake released Luke’s hand to shake his brother’s. “Everything to do with it, you could say.”

  “We were sorry to hear about your uncle,” Luke said. “What’s it been? Two years?”

  Jake nodded. “Close to it. Probate took longer than expected. Seems Uncle Carl owned more than we knew about, most of it on the other side of town. Some in the next county.”

  “Yeah? I didn’t know.”

  “Neither did I.” Jake’s mind flashed back to the day he’d received the news that his uncle had died and left the ranch to him, the only nephew. He’d inherited more than he’d ever thought possible and was excited to own his own spread. After turning his back on what his father had wanted him to do, he’d struck out on his own, working for others and learning the ranching business from the bottom up.

  “I noticed you and Erin have reconnected,” Dylan said, glancing in the direction of his sister, who had taken a seat at the table with Trish and Kate.

  “Reconnected?” Jake asked, and chuckled. “More like she was as surprised to see me as I was to see her. I thought she’d still be barrel racing on the rodeo circuit. Last I knew, she was.”

  Luke shrugged. “We finally talked her into visiting more often, but never for very long. Then this past February, she pulled in with her motor home and horse trailer, saying she needed a rest.”

  “With no warning?” Jake asked.

  “Not a word,” Dylan answered.

  “And she’s driving us crazy,” Luke added. “We’re beginning to wish we hadn’t encouraged her to come home.”

  Shaking his head, he smiled. “Sounds like Erin. She still have her horse? Firewind?”

  “He’s gone. That’s all we know,” Luke answered. “She has a new one, though. She set up barrels in the spare corral and runs them almost every day.”

  “But she isn’t happy,” Dylan said. “She needs something more to do to keep her busy.”

  Jake didn’t doubt he could keep her busy, but not in the way they were thinking. He hoped her brothers had never learned of what happened that Thanksgiving weekend of his first year in college, when he’d come back to visit. They didn’t need to know just how close he and their sister had once been, not to mention how he’d ended it without warning and taken off, never planning to return again.

  He shook his head and smiled. “I don’t see her taking up knitting any day soon.”

  Luke laughed. “No kidding.”

  Dylan glanced at Luke, before saying, “She could use a job.”

  “Job?”

  Luke nodded.

  With a glimmer of an idea that might or might not work, he asked, “What kind of job?”

  Dylan shrugged. “You know her. When it comes to horses and cattle, there’s not much she doesn’t know or can’t do.”

  Jake nodded and hoped they’d never know about the things he knew Erin could do.

  “From what she’s said,” Luke continued, “she’s spent some of her downtime on her friends’ ranches, helping out when needed. She’s even worked with some of the ropers, ‘refining their skills,’ she calls it.”

  Dylan leaned closer. “Why are you asking?”

  It was Jake’s turn to shrug. “I just wondered.”

  “Are you looking for some ranch hands?”

  Jake didn’t want to commit to anything. The chances of Erin accepting a job from him were slim, at best. Then there was the question of whether he wanted her working for him. There’d be battles. She was strong-minded and could be as stubborn as the day was long. But he couldn’t deny that she knew her way around livestock. She would be an asset.

  “Maybe,” he answered. “Not that she’d take a job on my ranch.”

  Luke and Dylan looked at each other, and Dylan said, “She might.”

  Jake was still skeptical.

  Luke shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. We understand what a pain she can be.”

  Jake didn’t even try to curb his smile. “I guess she never grew out of that.” He was glad she still had the spunk she’d had when they were young. And although he suspected she’d never forgiven him for ending what had barely started, it obviously hadn’t kept her down.

  “She has a good heart, though,” Dylan said. “After Pop and Mama died—”

  “We appreciated the check you sent to the memorial fund, Jake,” Luke told him. “Your uncle, too.”

  Jake nodded. “It was the least we could do. I remember when Uncle Carl called to tell me. I—” He swallowed hard at the memory and how he’d wished he could do something to comfort all of them. David and Ann Walker had treated him like one of their own. “I couldn’t imagine what you all were going through. They were great people.”

  Both brothers nodded and were silent for a moment, and a shadow crossed Dylan’s face, before he spoke. “Did you know Erin postponed her rodeo career to stay home with us, until Luke graduated from high school?”

  Jake shook his head but wasn’t surprised. She’d always been fiercely protective of the two of them. “I didn’t know, but that sounds just like her.”

  “There’s nobody like Erin,” Dylan said.

  After another brief pause, Luke put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “It really is good to see you. We all need to get together again.”

  “Soon,” Jake answered.

  “We’ll do that. And if you hear anything about a job for someone with Erin’s qualifications...”

  “I’ll pass it on,” Jake promised.

  As they moved away, he noticed that Erin had left the table where she’d been sitting with the others. After a quick glance around the tavern, he saw her. On the far side of the room, she stood with her hands braced on the old jukebox as she leaned forward to read the list of song titles. He felt a surge of heat shoot through his body but did his best to ignore it. He suspected she wouldn’t accept if he approached her about a job. She had a lot of pride, but she had a lot of talent, too. If he hired her it wouldn’t be because he wanted to try to repeat the past.

  Or did he? He’d never forgotten her. Hardly a day had gone by that he hadn’t thought of her. Would it hurt to see if she would take the job? What did he have to lose? He’d already lost her, but maybe he could change that.

  * * *

  ERIN TOOK HER time at the jukebox. She needed to pull herself together. She’d never expected to see Jake Canfield again and wondered if he’d thought the same about her. When she saw him talking with Dusty McPherson and Morgan Rule, she made her way b
ack to the table where Kate and Trish were sitting. She felt light-headed, weak at the knees. She had to stay as far away from Jake as possible until she could regain her equilibrium. Seeing him again had been a shock, and she hadn’t felt this vulnerable for a long time. She knew she could handle it, but she wished she didn’t have to. She had enough to deal with already.

  “You always pick the best music, Erin,” Trish said, as she approached the table.

  Pulling out the empty chair across from them, Erin settled on it. “There’s not a lot to do when you’re driving around the country from one place to another.”

  “And we’re so glad you’re not doing that anymore and have come home,” Kate said.

  Even though she’d been home for several months, Erin felt overwhelmed by all the things she still needed to catch up on. “I’ve missed so much. I guess that’s one of the drawbacks of having only brothers. They can rattle off every statistic to do with cattle and crops, but anything else must instantly vaporize in their brains.”

  “Typical men, then,” Trish said, laughing.

  “I heard that.”

  Erin turned and looked up to see Jake, whose frown made deep lines between his gray eyes. In an instant, he revealed the matched set of deep dimples she remembered so well that bracketed his smile. It was that smile and the look in his eyes that could turn her inside out.

  She dipped her head to avoid him. She’d known him since she was almost six years old. They’d grown up together. He’d spent summers at his uncle’s ranch, and she and her brothers had become friends with him. He’d been tall and thin, a bit gangly and a little on the quiet side. She’d found a hundred ways to make his life hell because of it, and he’d done the same to her.

  But the Jake Canfield standing by her now was far from a thin, quiet boy. The image of him in the pond had been burned into her memory as permanently as another memory of him. If she’d known it was him she was watching from the tall grass... She shook her head. She should have known, instead of convincing herself she’d dreamed that he’d spoken to her.

  “Right, Erin?”

  Lost in thought, she glanced up at him. “Hmm?”

  “We were just talking about what a scrawny, ornery tomboy you were when we were growing up.”

  “No more scrawny than you,” she said, but her reply lacked the bite it needed. She had to be careful. If she let him, he would tear her heart out. Again.

  But when she saw his steel-colored gaze moving over her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking about, she resolved not to let him break her a second time. Still, it didn’t stop the flip-flopping of her heart.

  Dusty and Morgan joined them, taking the seats on either side of their wives, and Erin decided it was time to escape. “I think I’ll get a snack. Anybody else want something?”

  As she started to push her chair back, she felt Jake’s hands on the back of it. “A snack sounds good. I’ll go with you.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, standing. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll get it.”

  His eyebrows shot up, accompanied by a killer smile. “No, that’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  Not seeing a graceful way out of it, she nodded. But as soon as they were out of earshot of their friends, she stopped and turned to him. “Are you following me?”

  “Could be,” he answered, that devilish smile of his reappearing.

  “Well, don’t.”

  When she started to walk away, he took her arm and stopped her. “If you’d give me a minute—”

  The quick skip of her heart set off warning bells, and her old habits came back. “I think you’ve had more than a minute with me before.” She felt her face grow hot with embarrassment and ducked her head, hoping he didn’t notice.

  “Can we put the past behind us?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  Hesitating for a moment, unsure of how to answer, she nodded, took a deep breath and looked up. Keep it friendly, she told herself. Pretend none of it happened. “How is the ranching business, Jake?”

  “Good. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Yeah?” She gathered her strength and asked, “Why are you here? You said you weren’t coming back. That’s what you told me—”

  His expression revealed nothing. “I didn’t plan to, but Uncle Carl died and left me his ranch.”

  “Lucky you. Not so lucky for me.”

  He frowned. “I should’ve known that’s how you’d feel.”

  The last words he’d said to her, almost eighteen years before, echoed in her mind. “You made your choice.”

  “I didn’t—” He blew out a breath and glanced away. “I had other plans. You knew that.”

  It hurt, and she didn’t want it to. “Not until you told me you were leaving. Not until after we—”

  “Erin, it was a long time ago. We were young.”

  He might as well have stuck a knife in her. “Right. I’d forgotten.” She hadn’t but wished she could. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? Because if it is—”

  “No, it isn’t. I wanted to talk to you about ranch business.” He hesitated and then asked, “How much do you know about cutting horses?”

  Taken off guard, she stared at him. “As much if not more than you do. I can rope with the best cowboys around, too. Why?”

  Clearing his throat, he glanced around the tavern, then back at her. “I’m looking for somebody to fill an opening at the ranch.”

  She peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Like who?”

  He didn’t bother to beat around the bush. “Like you.”

  Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him. “Me?”

  He shrugged. “If you’re as good as I suspect you are, yes. I’d like to hire you.”

  She didn’t want to believe him. Work for Jake? Impossible. “Have you suffered some kind of head injury?”

  He smiled. “Not recently.”

  She laughed. “You must be hard up to be offering me a job. If that’s what you’re doing.”

  “It’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not interested.”

  She moved away but not far enough to keep from hearing his reply. “Maybe you should think about it.”

  “Nothing to think about,” she answered over her shoulder.

  “If you change your mind—”

  That stopped her. She took a deep breath and blew it out. Emotions tumbled through her. She needed a job. Money would allow her to get back to barrel racing, where she belonged. But working for Jake? She couldn’t.

  The last person she wanted to be beholden to—no matter how broke she was, and she was pretty darned broke—was Jake Canfield. Turning to face him, she answered. “Thanks, but—” she broadened her smile and tried for indifference “—I have other plans.”

  Chapter Two

  Jake watched Erin cross the room, a swing in her hips that now had womanly curves. But she was the same Erin. Sassy and headstrong. And she knew horses and cattle. He could use her talents at the ranch, but he’d offered and she’d refused. Why had he even thought she might be interested?

  He returned to the table with the others but kept Erin in sight in spite of knowing he shouldn’t. Taking his seat, he folded his arms on the table, wondering what he should do next. She obviously considered him the enemy. Too bad he couldn’t say the same about her.

  Trish reached over and put her hand on his arm. “Next time, try flowers.”

  “Or dinner at a nice restaurant,” Kate added. “Women like that. It gets them out of the kitchen.” She frowned at her husband.

  Dusty smiled. “You like being in the kitchen. You own a bakery and catering business.”

  “And I like going out—alone with you—once in a while.”

  �
�I’ll keep that in mind,” Dusty said with a grin, then turned to Jake. “Try a rope. It worked for me.”

  Everyone laughed, causing Jake to wonder what they were talking about. “A rope? Surely you didn’t rope this nice lady.”

  Dusty shrugged one shoulder. “It was the only way to keep her from running away from me.”

  Jake looked from one to the other. “I have to hear this story.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Dusty put his arm around his wife. “Let’s just say she was resistant to my charm...for too long.”

  When Kate gave a soft snort, Morgan pointed at Dusty. “He roped her on Main Street on the Fourth of July, in front of the whole town.”

  “Did you arrest him?” Jake asked the sheriff.

  “What for? He wasn’t breaking the law.”

  “I’m telling you,” Dusty said, “when you’re dealing with a stubborn woman, you do whatever it takes.”

  Jake smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind if I should ever need it. In the meantime, I’ll just use simple torture.”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed and the corners of her mouth lifted in a smile. “So it’s like that, is it?”

  “Nope. Not a bit. But if I didn’t give her a hard time, she’d be disappointed and make it tougher on me.”

  Across the table, Dusty chuckled. “You sure don’t want that to happen.”

  “I was just saying earlier that I was sorry to hear you’d retired from riding,” Jake said.

  Dusty leaned over to nuzzle his wife’s neck. “She didn’t give me a choice. Don’t tell her how glad I am that she didn’t, though,” he added with a wink.

  Kate’s smug smile pulled a laugh from Jake, but it was clear that the two of them were happy together. He wished he’d had the same luck, but life hadn’t worked out that way for him.

  He turned to Trish’s husband. “How did you manage to end up here in Desperation?”

  Morgan chuckled. “I came here from Florida ten years ago to visit my uncle Ernie, and the crazy people in town elected me as their sheriff.”