Accidental Cowgirl (26 page)

“Because I wanted you back, Decker. Because it’s been ten years, and I’m a grown man. I understand what drove you away. I get it. In a small way, I still hate you for it, but I get it. And I don’t want you to go back to L.A. I don’t. This is your land just as much as it is mine and Ma’s. You belong here, Decker, whether you want to be here or not.”

Decker felt his chest aching. All those years, Cole had thought that he’d chosen to put his family in the rearview mirror and head out west to make a life for himself. And yet at the first opportunity, he’d let Decker right back in as if he’d never left. And had let him stay here all summer, never asking the question that had to be foremost on his mind.

“Cole, I didn’t leave by choice.” Decker let the words land between them, heavy. He watched Cole’s face carefully as he processed them.

Cole tipped his head like he couldn’t understand what Decker was saying. “What do you mean?” His words were choked.

“I never wanted to leave. Never pictured myself anywhere but here, for the rest of our lives. Even after Emily.”

“Then why did you go?” Now his words were barely a whisper, and Decker could see glimpses of the fourteen-year-old boy he’d been when Emily’d died.

“Dad bought that shitcan of a car, Cole. Brought it home one day and parked it out front, then spent the next hour clomping up and down the stairs, dumping everything I owned into the trunk. He came down to the barn and said
I got a surprise for you
and led me back up to the house. They were the first words he’d spoken to me in six months. I couldn’t get my head around
why he’d buy me a damn car until I saw it stuffed with all my shit.

“He handed me the keys and two twenties, said
Get some gas on your way outta town, boy. Enough to get you good and far, because I don’t ever, EVER want to see your face again
.”

Cole’s mouth was open, head still tipped like he was trying to hear Decker’s words through water. “Decker. Jesus.
Jesus
.”

Decker shrugged his shoulders slowly and blew out a deep breath. “That’s why I left, Cole. And that’s why I couldn’t come home.”

Cole nodded slowly. “God, Decker. I never knew.” He stood up, pacing back and forth in the small cubicle, shaking his head. Then he stopped and turned to Decker, lips tight, fingers forming a gun shape. “I’ll tell you one thing, and don’t you dare tell Ma I said this. It is a good damn thing he’s dead. A good
damn
thing that slimy excuse for a human is six feet under.” He looked up at Decker. “I’d kill him myself, Decker. I’d shoot him dead. I never knew. I swear to God, I never knew.”

“I know you didn’t. And I feel like shit having you find out like this, here.” Decker looked over at Kyla, still silent and still.

“Right, because there would be so many better places for this conversation to take place?” Cole smiled tepidly. “So what now?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“How long would it take you to pack up your L.A. apartment?”

“It’s not that simple, Cole.”

“Could be if you let it.”

“I have a life out there. A business. A partner. I can’t just pick up and move back to the ranch like nothing ever happened.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you can. I know Ma wouldn’t argue, and I’m the only other one with a vote. I’m not making light of it. You have a life out west. I get it. But a lot’s changed since you left, and more’s changed since Dad died.” Cole let out a big breath. “It’s our ranch now, Decker. We can run it how we see fit. We don’t have to do it the way Dad would have done it. It’s ours.”

“It’s not mine, Cole. It’s yours and Ma’s.”

“That’s bullshit.” Cole thumped his fist on the bed, then looked guiltily at Kyla and lowered his voice. “It’s your ranch as much as it is mine. You’ve worked dawn ’til midnight
every damn day since you’ve been back. You’ve sunk your sweat, tears, and a hell of a lot of money into it in the past three months.

“Can you really tell me this place isn’t in your bones? Can you really tell me you rode up to the lake earlier today and didn’t imagine your house looking down over that view?” He cocked his head toward Kyla, still lying silent and pale. “Didn’t imagine a family in it?”

“Whoa. Slow down.”

“Why? Why slow down? What if that rattler’d knocked
you
off Chance today and that was it? Would you be happy with how you left things in this world? Really? Is there some reason things have to move at some predetermined pace? Do you have some half-assed notion you’re not worthy? Jesus, if you’re in love, you’re in love. Why wait and screw it up because of some asinine notions you’ve got swimming around in your head?”

Decker sighed. “I already did.”

“What did you do?” Cole frowned. “Now are you going to tell me what you two talked about last night?”

Decker pulled his hand free of Kyla’s and sat back in the uncomfortable plastic chair. “Shit, Cole. I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

“Little out of practice?”

“
Out of practice
doesn’t even begin to describe what I am.” Decker leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. “Did you catch that Kyla has an MBA? From Princeton?”

“So? You scared she’s smarter than you?”

“Oh, I
know
she’s smarter than me.”

Cole lifted his eyebrows. “So, lemme guess. She had some ideas for us?”

Decker grimaced, remembering her scrawled drawings and figures. “Oh, she had ideas, all right. Along with a complete map of the property with all of its new buildings, and figures for the next five to ten years.”

“Well, that’s all well and good. Did Miss MBA have a plan for where we’d get the financing?”

Decker sat back up and steepled his fingers under his chin. “Investors, she said.”

“Well, I’m sure those would be coming right out of the woodwork. Great. Problem solved. When do we start construction?”

“She had already lined one up.”

Cole stilled, cocked his head. “She’s been on a horse for four days. How in the hell did she line up an investor?”

Decker took a deep breath and looked Cole square in the eye. “
She
was the investor.”

“So she’s smart
and
rich?” Cole looked over at Kyla’s face, curious. “How’d we miss this on the application?”

“Not funny.”

“Decker, what did you say to her after she offered to invest in the ranch?”

Decker lowered his head. “You don’t want to know.”

“You told her to take her money and head back east where she belongs, didn’t you?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Why? What are you so afraid of?”

“Think about it. I barely know her, and here she is offering to invest in the ranch after being here for less than two friggin’ weeks. One week, Cole. How could I possibly take her money? Hell, I’m leaving in three weeks.”

“Want my take on it?”

“No, Dr. Freud, I do not.”

“I’ll give it to you anyway. I figure you’re falling for her and it scares the hell out of you. You’ve built a wall around your heart for years because you always figured you weren’t worthy, weren’t dependable, weren’t enough for someone like Kyla.

“Well, guess what? You were dead wrong. This woman’s a keeper, Decker, and you know it. And who’s she falling in love with? You. Why’s she offering to help? Because she believes in you, and in Ma, and in the ranch.”

“She can’t possibly know enough in two weeks to make that kind of decision.”

“I’m sure she was smart enough not to be gifting you the money. It was an investment, yes? For which she’d expect a return?”

“Well, there’s no guarantee on that one.”

“She’s a Princeton MBA. I imagine they covered that in the first year of the program.”

“Shit, Cole. I don’t know. It’s too much, too fast. I can’t be making a deal like this with a woman I barely know, especially when I can’t figure out how I even feel about her.”

He pushed his hands through his hair. “What if we went ahead? What if I said
Okay. What the hell? Yeah, we’ll take your money
. And then what if everything blew up between us?
Or what if the ranch failed anyway, despite her investment? You think owing bookies is awkward? We’d look back on
that
as the easy days!”

He looked up at Kyla’s ashen face, which still hadn’t even twitched. “No, Cole. Nothing good can come of this. I’m the one who needs to figure out how the hell to get us out of this goddamn hole Dad left us in. It’s the least I can do, and I should have been doing a lot more all along.”

“Decker, stop punishing yourself. You know you’re falling hard for this girl, and the fact is, she
could
be the answer to some prayers here. So what if she just happens to be rich? Do you think it’d be easier if she lived in a hovel in the slums?”

Decker laughed for the first time since Kyla had fallen. “Christ, maybe. I don’t know.” He thought about the first time he’d seen her. “Y’know, when I first saw her, she had this city-chick suit on, the high heels, the fancy hairdo, and all I could think was—well, here we go. Another Marcy. With brown hair this time.”

“Hate to say it, Deck, but she acts nothing like Marcy. Or like a city chick. And after fielding a whole lot of them this summer, we should know.”

“I know. I honestly think if she had a choice, she’d live somewhere up in the sticks of New England on a farm.”

Cole raised his eyebrows. “How about one in Montana?”

Decker shook his head. “Not a chance. Not after the mess I made last night.”

“There’s still time to fix it, Decker.”

“I don’t know. I’m not proud of the things I said to her. She’d have every right not to forgive me. I sure wouldn’t blame her. And I don’t even know if that’s what I want, anyway. I’m not taking her money. No way.”

“I imagine you might be able to have the woman without the handout, if you grovel appropriately.”

“I don’t know, Cole. I really don’t know. I may have screwed up the best thing that was ever going to happen around here.”

“I guess the ball’s in your court, then.”

Decker looked up. “How do you figure? The ball is most certainly
not
in my court. I bobbled it completely.”

“Then fix it.”

“Easier said than done, buddy.”

Cole leveled him with a fierce look. “Don’t waste time, Decker. Don’t be stupid. If you love her, you love her. Don’t waste another ten years running away. Marry her, build a dream house up by the lake, have babies.”

Decker sighed. “After all I’ve put her through already, who knows if she’d even consider it?”

Kyla heard Cole’s and Decker’s last few lines through what felt like a dense fog. She’d been drifting in and out of sleep for a few minutes, and their voices had been muted and soothing. She heard the door swish open and a matronly voice say, “Sorry, gentlemen, but we’re going to need to ask you to head to the waiting room for a bit. I’ve got a student nurse with me today, so we’ll be a few minutes.”

Kyla heard chairs shuffling and the door opening and closing again as Decker and Cole left. She knew she should open her eyes and let someone know she was awake, but she was just too damn tired. Her eyelids still felt glued shut.

“All right, Maria. Can you do her vitals?” The nurse’s voice was gravelly, like she smoked in the back stairwell on her breaks.

“
Who are they
?” Maria asked as she stuck a thermometer in Kyla’s left ear. In contrast, Maria sounded twelve. Just how old were student nurses these days, anyway?

“They’re the guys who own Whisper Creek Ranch.”

“Wow. Please tell me they’re not married.”

The older woman chuckled as Kyla heard her push some buttons near her head. “One of them isn’t. But the taller one’s about to be.”

What?
Kyla’s chest jumped at her words. Is this what she’d just overheard Decker and Cole talking about?

“Rats.” Maria removed the thermometer after it beeped. “Who’s the lucky woman?”

“Marcy Jenkins.” Kyla’s stomach hollowed as she heard the nurse speak Marcy’s name. No, it couldn’t be. Hadn’t they been through this? Hadn’t he denied any involvement with Marcy? Hadn’t he called their time together a short and not-very-sweet relationship?

“Are you kidding me? No way. I just met her last weekend.”

“Yes way. She set her sights on Decker last winter, and damn if she isn’t going to end up with a big flashy ring from Lerner’s. She designed it herself. I heard Old Man Lerner was more than happy to steer Decker toward it when he came in to pick one out.”

“Lucky girl.”

“I might use a different adjective, but yeah, she’s lucky. She’s got him wrapped right around her skinny little finger. Men have a blind spot when someone flashes blond hair and double-Ds in their faces.” Kyla heard her click a couple more buttons on the machines near her head, then felt her tuck the blanket back up over her shoulders. “You mark my words. Save-the-date cards will be arriving any day now.”

Kyla heard the two of them moving back toward the door as Maria giggled. “But you said the younger one’s still available?”

Well. Things were suddenly very, starkly clear. She’d been trying to make sense of Decker and Cole’s conversation as she woke, and now she had her answer. Apparently there
was
a wedding in the works. Well, no wonder he’d thrown her plans practically in her face. He didn’t want her to solve his problems. He already had a plan, and her name was Marcy.

* * *

“Driscoll.”

At the sound of his last name, Decker snapped out of his daydream and spun his office chair away from the window. So much for heading down the pathway to check on Kyla. Michael Peterson filled the door frame with his six-foot-three NBA-style body.

“Peterson.” He rose to shake his neighbor’s hand as he strode into the office. “Jesus, I haven’t seen you since Christmas. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I heard you were in town. Thought I’d bring over a coffee cake.”

Decker laughed. “The day you come around with a coffee cake is the day I sign you up for AARP, buddy.” He motioned to the chair in front of his desk, then sat back down as Peterson settled and took off his Stetson.