For Love of a Cowboy (10 page)

“Is that what you want?” he asked, staring at her intently.

He could see the indecision on her face, see it in her body language as she wrapped her arms around her slender form and held on tight.

“D-do you really want to come back?” she eventually asked, looking up at him.

“I wouldn’t have said I’d be back if I didn’t. Go on up. I’ll get some things for us and we can eat in bed.”

“Is anywhere even open this time of night?”

“Sure.” He reached for her and pulled her into his arms, kissing her hard and fast on the lips before releasing her just as quickly. “Hopefully that’ll hold you until I get back.”

He let himself out the door and jogged to his truck, which was still parked on the sidewalk near Grey’s Saloon. Once he was behind the wheel, he quickly headed to the Get’N’Go just north of the railroad tracks, where he grabbed a few essentials and headed back to Willow. He couldn’t fully understand why she didn’t have any food in her fridge. Ness was a fair employer. So why didn’t Willow have any money?

An unwelcome thought sprang into his mind. Was that why she was poking around and asking questions about his Uncle Kyle? Did she think the man was loaded? Did she think he was easy pickings? He pushed the thought aside before it soured his gut.

Booth stopped his truck out back at Superstitch’n’s and grabbed the sack of groceries off the seat beside him. Maybe it was all just coincidence that she was asking around about his uncle. But even as he tried to accept the idea the rest of him vehemently denied it. All he had to do was ask her, he told himself. But, given the evening they’d just shared, did he really want to know?

Still undecided, Booth let himself in through the back door and put together a couple of sandwiches with the fixings he’d bought, then put away the rest of the supplies in the fridge. He pounded up the stairs, a plated sandwich in each hand, and then went through to the bedroom. Willow was still in her robe and sitting up in bed, reading a book.

“Good book?” he asked, kicking off his boots and settling down on the bed beside her.

Willow accepted the plate he handed her. “It’s a new knitting book Ness is thinking of stocking. She asked me to give her my opinion on it.”

She held up the book but he was none the wiser. If it didn’t relate to spy mysteries or ranching, it wasn’t his kind of thing. Besides, all those little crosshatch patterns that scrawled along the pages in Ness’s books, well, they just made a man’s eyes water.

“Put that down and eat,” he directed, swinging his legs up on the bed beside her.

He chowed down, the soft bread and fillings he’d thrown together disappearing in seconds. He didn’t mind saying it; he could make a fine midnight feast.

“This reminds me of when I was a kid,” he said after a few minutes. “I was always getting into trouble and being sent to bed with no dinner. My aunt would wait until everyone else was asleep and then she’d sneak into my room with a sandwich like this and we’d sit on my bed together while I ate it.”

“Your aunt?” Willow asked. “Not your mother?”

“No, my mom died of breast cancer when I was ten and Ness was thirteen. Aunt Emmie raised us after that.”

He’d heard Willow’s sharp intake of breath when he mentioned his mom but didn’t think anything of it until she put her sandwich down on her plate and didn’t pick it up again.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. What about your dad? Couldn’t he look after you?”

“He killed himself on the road one night with a belly full of beer. Mom only had about a year of peace before the cancer took her.”

Booth fought to keep the bitterness out of his voice. His father had made all their lives a living hell. He should have suffered more. His mother should have had more time. It still angered him that she’d been cheated of the life she’d deserved.

“Oh, Booth, I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to mourn a man you never loved.”

Willow took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I never knew my dad. It’s like there’s always been this hole there, where he should have been. It always makes me wonder how different my life would have been with him in it.”

“What about your mom? Ness told me you lost her recently.”

Willow’s eyes glazed with unshed tears. “I lost my mom to breast cancer, too. Just over six months ago. It was hell. It’s why I’m here, following in her footsteps.”

She pulled open the door on the bedside cabinet and took out a parcel wrapped in colorful cloth. A journal, he realized, when she pulled away the fabric.

“I found this when I was sorting through her things after she’d passed away. She never mentioned this part of her life, of being here in Marietta. I decided that when I’d settled her affairs, I’d come here—follow her journey, so to speak.”

Booth began to feel that twisting sensation deep in his stomach again. Even so, he felt compelled to ask her a question.

“When was she here?”

“About twenty-seven years ago. She met my father here, at the county fair.”

The sandwich Booth had just eaten threatened to come straight back up again. Was she leading to what he thought she was leading to?

“Your father?” he asked, but the words came out rough and raw.

Willow didn’t notice. “Yeah. Apparently they took one look at one another and that was it. Head over heels in love. Mom had a VW bus, very much like Daisy, in which she’d traveled all over the U.S. From what she says in here,” Willow patted the tattered journal, “she and my dad spent all their nights together in there at the fair campground. Then, when the fair was over, he was gone and she was left alone again.”

“He didn’t have a trailer?” Many of the guys on the circuit towed their own home along with them, or shared with another cowboy who did.

“No, he was local.”

And he never took her back to his home. That action spoke louder than any words could have to Booth. It meant that it was more than likely that Willow’s father had another woman, his wife in all likelihood, waiting at home for him. He closed his eyes briefly, dread filling him as he reached for the courage to ask his next question.

“Does your mother mention who he was?”

“Yeah, she does. I wrote to him when she died but, as you can see, all the letters came back to me.”

She delved into the drawer again and pulled out a fistful of envelopes. Envelopes that bore an all-too-familiar name on the front of them.

Kyle Donovan.

A
nger filled him
as if his mind was a large black cauldron bubbling over a range fire. He bit back the denial he wanted to shout at her and dug deep for the calm he needed right now.

“Are you sure you got the right man?”

“It’s right here, in her journal. Of course I’m sure. She mentions him every single day she was here, right up until she left again.”

As much as he tried to fight it, the anger kept rolling in. Darker and meaner in each successive wave. Anger at Willow’s mom, at Willow and most of all at his uncle for being the kind of dirty dog who cheated on his wife.

Willow carefully wrapped the journal again and tucked it and the envelopes back in the drawer.

“Have you heard of him?” she asked. “I’ve asked a few people, but you’re all a pretty close-mouthed bunch around here, aren’t you?”

He bit back an ironic laugh. Close-mouthed until you asked the right person, he thought. All it would take was for Willow to ask the right kind of person, someone like Carol Bingley for example, and she’d know everything about his uncle Kyle, all the way down to his shoe size.

“We protect what’s ours,” he bit out.

Willow gave a laugh that lacked the right note of humor. “Are you saying he needs protecting from
me
?”

Uncle Kyle might not, but Aunt Emmie damn sure did. Finding out about Willow would kill her. She’d had her first heart attack five years ago, hard on the heels of that last fight he’d had at the Wolf Den. He’d vowed he’d never put her through that kind of anxiety again. The doctors had warned her to avoid undue stress and the kind of stress Willow would bring to her life was at the top of the scale as far as Booth was concerned.

“Look, are you sure you want to do this? Meet your father? He might not be what you want him to be.”

Booth knew full well that Kyle Donovan was not father-of-the-year material. He was hard and demanding and extracted his pound of flesh on a daily basis. Discovering he was father to a woman like Willow, someone who’d obviously grown up without structure or responsibility and who even now followed a path purely on a whim, wouldn’t sit well with him. No wonder he’d returned those letters unopened when they’d arrived at the post office.

“Of course I want to meet him. All my life I’ve looked forward to this, to having even just one day to spend with him. To ask him all the questions I’ve always wanted answers to.”

“That’s not the point. This thing with your mom and him, it happened a long time ago. Life has moved on. Hell,” he shoved a hand through his hair, “even your mother moved on. Pretty quickly I might add.”

Willow looked hurt. “Please don’t bring her into this. He left her and she was forced to return home without speaking to him again.”

“Don’t do it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Incredulity threaded through her voice.

“Don’t do it. People will end up getting hurt.”

Willow narrowed her eyes. “You talk as if you know something you’re not telling me. Do you know my father?”

Booth ignored her. “What do you want from him anyway?”

“His support. That’s all.”

His support? No doubt she thought since he was a rancher that he was rolling in money. Truth was most of a rancher’s wealth lay in the land he owned and his reputation for farming it. That was certainly the case for his uncle. As hard as the man was, he was respected for his hard work and dependability. Did she think she could tap into that? Have a bite at her share of what she obviously thought he owed her?

“We don’t take too kindly to folk being fleeced for their money around here,” he warned.

“Who said anything about money?”

He snorted. “You did, although you fudged around it by calling it ‘support.’ Let’s face it. You don’t have any money—you don’t even have enough to put food in your refrigerator. Of course you’re after some!”

“That’s none of your business,” she insisted, pulling her wrap tightly about her body as if she could make herself smaller somehow, less the object of his anger.

It made no difference. What she wanted was not good for any of his family and he’d be damned if he’d see her hurt his aunt.

“I want you out of here. I’ll settle your debt at Tanner’s Garage in the morning. You can get back in that jalopy and get gone by lunchtime.”

*

Willow looked at
him in shock. Only a few short hours ago they’d been lovers and now he wanted her to quit town? Leave before the fair? Before she could meet her father?

“I don’t want your money.”

“But you want your father’s?” he demanded. “The support you believe he owes you? What’s that going to work out to be? Twenty-six years at God knows how much a year?”

He had it all wrong. It wasn’t about the money—it had never been about money. Ever. She and her mom had never had much, but they’d always gotten by. With what she still had to face in her future, money would make little to no difference at all. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. She couldn’t decide if she was more hurt or angry about his accusations and she sure as heck wasn’t about to dignify them with an acknowledgement.

“Get out,” she said quietly. “Go on, leave.”

He stood and jammed his hat on his head and stared down at her on the bed. The bed that even now carried the scent of their lovemaking. The pillow that still bore the indentation of his head.

“This isn’t over,” he snarled.

“
We
definitely are,” she snapped right back. “Lock the door behind you.”

He turned and stalked through the apartment and she shivered as she heard his booted feet thunder down the stairs and the door slam behind him as he let himself out, then heard the angry roar of his truck as he left the alley.

Willow sank back into her pillows, feeling all the fight ooze right out of her, leaving exhaustion in its place. She gathered their plates, hers still bearing half her sandwich, and took them downstairs. After tipping her leftovers into the trash—even though it went against her grain to waste food—she washed the plates, then dried and put them away.

What now?

Would Booth go to her father and tell him that she was looking for him? Would he put his own twisted spin on things and make it all about money, as he had tonight? Tears burned at the back of her eyes but she tilted her face up to stare at the ceiling and steadfastly refused to let them fall.

She thought about the packet of returned letters. Every single one of them unopened. Over the last few months, receiving the letters back had only served to harden her determination to find her father. To meet the man who’d swept her mother’s heart into his hands and held it there forever more, whether he knew it or not. The man who’d contributed half of Willow’s DNA. Didn’t she have that right? Of course she did.