Her Summer Cowboy (11 page)

He had been the one to get in there and fight with their dad when they were younger, and he’d gotten into fights at school whenever someone had picked on Lane or Trey. It was his way.

But Emma seemed to be making him rethink that. He didn’t have to always have his guard up when she was around. She slipped her hand into his and he looked down at her. He wanted to let the emotions he felt out, but he couldn’t. He’d spent too many years bottling them up.

The last woman he’d loved had been his mom. He’d never stood still for long enough to really fall in love with any woman after that. And he’d been fine with that until now. How had a temporary summer job turned into a woman that he wasn’t sure he could leave behind?

“So this is going to be strange, right?” she asked as he held open the door for her to enter in front of him.

“Nah, Monty will probably bring his wife with him,” Hudson said. “And Annie always works on Wednesdays so you can meet her.”

“That’s Evan’s new mommy, but she and Carson aren’t married?” Emma asked as they walked over to the table where Alec was already seated.

“We aren’t married yet,” Annie said as she came over to them with laminated menus. “Hello, Hudson. I assume this is Emma. I’m Annie.”

Annie was a slim pretty girl. She wasn’t tall but had long legs and dark brown hair that hung to her shoulders and curled slightly at the ends. Her grey eyes sparkled as she held her hand out to Emma.

Emma shook her hand as Hudson pulled out a chair for her. “I am. When are you getting married?”

“Christmas if all goes well,” she said. “Want to come to girls’ night and hear all the gory details?”

Emma smiled at Annie. “When is it? Hudson and I are only in town for a few more days.”

“It’s tonight.”

“Oh, I rode into town with Hudson,” she said.

“I’ll give you a ride home.”

“That’s all right, Annie. I’ll go over to Grey’s until she’s ready to head home,” Hudson said. He wasn’t about to leave town without her. Alan had pulled him aside and made him promise he’d watch over Emma until she was back with him. And Hudson considered himself a man of his word.

“I’ll be fine,” Emma said.

“I wanted to catch up with some of my buddies. Maybe shoot a game of pool. It’s not a problem,” Hudson said.

Dinner was a noisy affair and being there in the heart of his family made him happy. Especially with Emma by his side. Though she’d grown up an only child it was obvious to him that she must have a huge extended family…then he got it. The band, the backup singers and the roadies. They had always been her family.

He’d wondered why she came to the kickoff of the tour every year and now he knew. She’d kept touch with that part of her past even though she wouldn’t allow herself to join them. But this summer Alan had changed all that.

He remembered Emma the way he’d seen her at the beginning of the summer—sort of closed off, a little bit angry. And that woman was gone now. In her place was this woman who definitely was in a better place.

She smiled over at him in the midst of Lane and Carson teasing him. Emotion shook him to his soul. Opening a spate of images in his head of a future with Emma. The man who had never allowed himself to believe in the future suddenly found himself surrounded by it.

But he’d have to open up. Have to take a chance and let her in. More than he had until now. Because the road was one place it was easy to open up. It was transient and didn’t last. This was home.

And inside, home and Emma were becoming synonymous.

“I like her,” Lane said. “Figures you’d fall for a gal with grit. And her smile ain’t half-bad either.”

“Figures,” Hudson said. Had he fallen for her? Was that what this was? Dinner ended when Carson’s former in-laws, his deceased wife’s parents brought Evan back. His nephew went to the counter and drank a glass of milk and ate some chocolate chip cookies and talked with Annie before coming and sitting down on Carson’s lap.

Hudson got up and walked out of the diner. He wanted that. He wanted what his brother had. It had happened before where he’d been jealous of his brothers over things. A baseball glove, a horse, even one year a cabin in the woods.

But this was the first time when he had been envious and realized that he had the power to have exactly what Carson had. He just had to be brave enough to reach out and take Emma.

Billings, Montana

T
he week they’d
spent together in Marietta had brought them closer than she’d have imagined. Hudson and she had rejoined the tour and traveled throughout the Midwest and the Southwest and now they were heading back up to Montana. She dreaded it.

She thought of how their time together was drawing to a close, and he hadn’t said anything about extending it. To be honest neither had she. But Gramps had been keeping her busy singing and learning new songs, and she’d finished up the song she’d been working on all summer. A little ballad about a summer man who’d come to mean a lot more to the narrator.

She wanted to perform it in front of Hudson, but to be honest, she wasn’t sure that the song was any good. She’d been debating for the last two days, when they’d been in Wyoming, about trying to get Gramps’ opinion on it, but she didn’t want to disappoint him again like she had when she’d ruined her development deal ten years ago.

“You okay?” Gramps said sitting down beside her on the padded bench as the bus traveled through the night.

The inky darkness in the windows cocooned them and always made Emma feel like she was a bit separated from the world. She had that old guitar on her lap and had been strumming it, but music wasn’t her gift. Not melody. That little bit of a tune she’d had in her head had been a dead-end.

“I guess.”

“What’s up?” he asked, picking up his old Gibson and strumming along with her. He played that melody she’d been humming for months now and then expanded on it and she followed his lead.

“Summer’s almost over,” she said. “How do you feel about that? This is the last tour.”

“Don’t you worry about me, pumpkin. I’ve got a back-up plan.”

“What’s that?”

“Move to Branson and play till the end of my days,” he said with a grin.

Branson, Missouri was the place where a lot of country music acts went when they retired. It was like Vegas but for clean, family fun. “Are you serious?”

“Sort of. I have to figure out what’s next for me too.”

“We don’t know Missouri,” she said.

“You don’t like Nashville,” he countered.

“It has too many memories for me,” she said.

“Me too. When I knew I’d be home for a few months and then back on the road it was okay, but if I was grounded? I don’t know that I’d be as happy.”

She hadn’t thought of Gramps as dealing with the same stuff as her. “I’m sorry. Why don’t you come to Georgia and live with me?”

He shook his head. “That’s not my scene. Never was. I need to perform.”

“Then why did you agree to stop?” she asked, putting her guitar down. There was a bowl of licorice on the table and Gramps reached over and grabbed a piece and popped it in his mouth.

“It’s time. Plus the label wanted to do it now,” he said.

“Really? Sounds like there is more to it than that,” she said.

“I wanted you to come with me, and I know you wouldn’t unless it was special,” he said.

Her heart sank. She had cautioned Hudson to let go of his stubbornness with his father yet she’d been unable to do that with Gramps and her own past until he’d forced her hand. “I’m sorry. I had been afraid of what this would feel like. But it’s been great. I wish now I hadn’t been so scared.”

He shook his head. “Never you mind. We’ll both figure out what’s next.”

She sat back as he started picking out another tune. He reached for her notebook and looked at the lyrics she’d jotted down. “I don’t think you’re writing about me anymore, are you?”

She chewed her lower lip. “No. I’m not. How do you know if you’re in love?”

“Is this thing with you and Hudson serious?” he asked.

She tried to be cool and play it nonchalant, but she looked back to the bunk where Hudson slept before leaning closer to her grandfather. “It might be. I’m just not sure. Is it real or just something I’ve used to get me through this?”

He nodded and put his guitar on the hook and then put both of his elbows on his knees leaning forward and staring at his hands.

“Love hasn’t been easy for me,” he admitted. “I loved your grandmother but I loved the road more. I guess if I had to say what love feels like, it’s when you wake up in the morning and you can’t wait to get to it.”

“It?”

“Yeah, the road, or a person. Maybe even a job or a place. That’s how you can tell that it’s love,” he said turning his head toward her. “Is that how you feel toward him?”

Every morning when she woke up, if she wasn’t in Hudson’s arms, then she wished she were there. And when they were apart she thought of him all the time and couldn’t wait until they were together again.

“I guess it might be.”

“Then you have your answer,” he said.

He got up and went to the fridge, pouring them both a glass of juice before coming back.

“What happened with my daddy? Why wasn’t love enough?” she asked. It was the question that had plagued her for longer than she wanted to admit.

“He loved two things but couldn’t figure out which one he wanted more. So it drove him a little bit crazy,” Gramps said. He finished his drink and then picked the guitar up again and started playing songs from their past.

She joined in and for the first time that she could recall she just had the sweet memories and none of that lingering pain. She wanted to believe it was this summer and the combination of remembering her past with Gramps and looking forward to a future with Hudson.

*

They arrived in
Marietta early in the evening and were directed to a large grass field to park the buses and their vans. As soon as Hudson got his truck parked and checked the horses he went to find Emma.

As a kid he’d been to the Big Marietta Fair every summer. He remembered his mom entering her peach pie in the baking contest and his oldest brother, Alec, winning the Junior Rodeo for the first time. Lane was working at the recruiting booth for the marines and Hudson wanted to take Emma around as his girl.

The last time they’d been in town things had been too new between them. They’d stayed out on the ranch and rode horses and talked and made love. For Hudson’s part he’d pretended the rest of the world didn’t exist and that summer would never end.

But this was the end of the line for him, and he was going to have to figure out what he was doing with his life. He sort of wanted to ask Emma to stay but he saw something in her that he knew she didn’t see. That she was writing a lot lately. Her lyrics were really good too. He thought that somehow this summer she’d found her voice.

The lyrics she’d written weren’t anything like her grandfather’s songs or even her father’s. They were Emma’s, and he didn’t want to stand in her way. He wanted her to be able to have the dream that she’d once pursued. His mom had given up a lot to marry his dad. Most women of her generation had and they’d never complained—well, his mom didn’t. But this was a new century and women didn’t have to choose anymore.

Well not really, he thought. But if he had a chance of having anything lasting with Emma he knew two things. He had to know what his future held, and he had to give her a chance to at least taste success on her own.

It wasn’t that he was a masochist, but he’d rather she make sure she knew what she wanted before he asked her to stay here with him. And that was what he wanted.

“Hudson!”

He turned to see Lane walking across the field toward him. He wore a pair of camouflage shorts and a US Marine Corps logo tee. Hudson admitted it always took him by surprise when he saw his brother’s prosthetic legs. He just didn’t think of his brother as being injured at all.

“Hey, Lane,” he said, hugging his brother and clapping him on the back. “I was coming to find you.”

“Thought I’d save you the trouble. I’ve got two hours until I’m due back at the booth and thought I’d spend it with you and Emma.”

“Give me a second to go and get her.”

He didn’t have to go far to find Emma walking toward him. She had on that red sundress she’d worn the first time he kissed her. She gave him a little half smile. “Hey.”

“Hey. Lane’s here, do you want to go check out the fair until we have to get back?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she said, slipping her hand into his.

His heart leapt in his chest and he wondered how he was going to be able to let her go and let her do her thing. When all he wanted was to stay with her. And he wondered if he’d have to. He’d spent all those years away from Marietta for no one and no good reason. Finally he had someone calling him. Why was he so determined to stay?

The truth hit him like a two-by-four between the eyes. He was afraid. He’d thought he knew all about fear and had figured out how to keep it from owning him but meeting Emma and falling for her had proven otherwise.