Teaching the Cowboy (31 page)

“Yes,” Ronnie said. She unbuckled her seatbelt and had her door open right as they both arrived at the passenger side, bypassing John completely.

“Hey, honey,” Phil said, drawing her into a rocking hug. “Where’s my little dumpling?”

Ronnie bobbed her head toward the vehicle. “Middle.”

“Phil, you act like you ain’t got good manners,” Momma said.

He laughed. “Sorry, Auntie Brenda. Hi. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“See? I figured as much. That’s why I didn’t ask.” He reached in and grabbed the handle of Joey’s carrier. “Hey there,
bebeh
. You remember me? Your handsome Uncle Phil? I bought you a present. It’s sparkly.”

Ronnie rolled her eyes as her friend made off with her offspring with her mother clucking at his heels.

Landon picked up Liss and gave her a toss into the air. “Have you been a good helper?”

She giggled as he let her down. “Yes.”

“Of course she is,” Ronnie said as the tall, broad man pulled her into a hug. “Peter, too. I’m proud of them both. Of all of you.”

Landon grinned as he let her go. “Let me get a trolley so we can get all the luggage up the ramp. Ferry’s due in about ten minutes.”

“All right. Where’s your granddad?” she asked his retreating back.

John walked around the vehicle then, posture stiff and hands held in fists at his side.

“Already on the island. He had to get here early enough to get the keys,” Landon called back.

Ronnie looked up at John. From his body language she expected anger to be written on his face. Instead, there was marked conflict. She gave his forearm a squeeze, and he met her gaze.

“Every time I see him, I’m stunned at the man he’s becoming. I had very little to do with it, but he really is an impressive young man.”

He tweaked the end of her pink cashmere scarf idly and shifted his weight. “Yeah.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

J
ohn had expected the commingling of so many personalities to create a category five storm, but instead, everyone fell into a relaxed camaraderie, hanging around the house, beach, and small, quiet island as if they’d done it countless times before.

Liss took a particular shine to Brenda, and he worried she was bothering the woman, but when he stated as much, Brenda had pushed her glasses down her nose and looked at John over the top of them. “You took my baby. I can’t take yours for twenty minutes? That don’t seem fair.”

John had put his hands up and walked away.

Everyone formed their own little clumps. Dad rented a boat and went fishing out in the cold wind with Ronnie’s father, Robert. Sid was being entertained by Phil, whom she had an unusual amount in common with. Landon caught up with Pete and Kitty, listening to the kids talk a mile a minute about nothing in particular.

Every time John went off in search of Ronnie, he hated to pull her away. Whether she was leaning against the kitchen counter with a big grin on her face, watching the kids interact or talking to Sid or Phil, he understood she was in her element. She was where she belonged, and he hated himself for it.

On Christmas Eve, they were all pooped from a long day of exploring Bald Head and the neighboring barrier islands, and they sprawled on the sectionals watching black and white holiday movies. John, who’d been on the phone with Eddie for more than an hour, arrived late to the party. He stared at the group, Phil at one end with Landon’s head on his lap and Landon’s feet on Kitty’s lap. Sid leaning her head onto Dad’s shoulder and Dad squeezing her hand as she sniffled at the screen. Liss happily wedged between Robert and Brenda. Peter sprawled spread-eagle on the floor with Joey sitting up, chewing her fist beside him.

John picked up Joey and carried her to where Ronnie sat with her back against the coffee table. He joined her down there and put Joey on his lap.

“I expected this to be a little more chaotic,” he whispered.

She yawned and covered her mouth. “I did, too.”

“Tired?”

“Yeah, I can’t hang tonight.”

“Too much eggnog?”

“I haven’t had any. I’m just toast. Had a long conversation with the folks at the school and they just wouldn’t give up. They want to hire me to consult.”

“Is that a legitimate thing?”

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Doubt it. Sounded more like distance learning to me. I’d end up teaching a couple of classes via webcam.”

“Slick.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking about it. Wouldn’t have to leave the kids.” She yawned.

He liked the idea of her at home with their kids.

“Weirdest thing, though, is Celia recommended me for the job. I thought she hated me.”

“Celia’s a hard-ass. Hated being sent to her office back in school, but she’s smart, Ronnie.” He bobbed his head toward the stairs. “You ready to head up?”

“Yeah.”

He followed Ronnie up the stairs, appreciating the sway of her hips as he climbed in front of her and tried to calm himself. There wasn’t much fun to be had with Joey in the room, and yeah, that’s where he’d ended up. The first few nights he and Ronnie had started out in a separate rooms, but it seemed silly. They had a baby together, were vacationing together. They may not have technically been a couple, but they could certainly share a bed. He figured it’d be a good segue for the kids anyway. Maybe they’d go home and Ronnie and Joey would move into the main house, slick as butter. Besides, it was hard for him to lie in the neighboring room and hear her out on the downstairs patio with Phil, chuckling quietly and chatting when she thought everyone else was asleep.

Just listening to her laugh did something to him. Made him want to capture all that happiness, bottle it up, and save it for himself to enjoy later.

He’d just slipped into her room with no prelude and crawled under the covers. She’d tossed a leg over his, and that’d been that, until the next night when he kissed her. He really didn’t want anything else, especially not with Joey in the room, but the way she looked at him in the near-dark after he’d pecked her lips so lightly told him something. She’d been thinking he’d only wanted one thing, that she was just a vessel. A body. But to just want a kiss, that meant he cared about her thoughts, too.

From there, she seemed to melt into him, a bit more each night, letting down her guard and pulling him in more and more.

“I love you,” he whispered in the dark.

She didn’t hear. She was already asleep.

He adjusted the covers over them and turned so his chin was atop her head.

Around six a.m., he woke to find hair in his face, and judging by the bubble gum scent, it wasn’t Ronnie’s. He swatted it away from his eyes and turned slightly to find an extra body in the bed. At some point in the night, Liss had crawled in between them, which was quite a feat given there wasn’t much of a gap there. She lay half on Ronnie and half on the bed.

John tried to shift her. Liss mumbled, “No,” in her sleep, so he left them be.

He could have probably tried to go back to sleep, especially since his body was telling him it was only four a.m. back in Wyoming, but coffee sounded like a more productive venture. He yawned and fixed the covers over the sleeping beauties before padding downstairs.

He was surprised to see the television on, volume low, and the red light of the coffee maker already glowing.

Robert sat up and turned on the sofa to identify the newcomer. “Oh.” He nodded and turned back around. “Morning, John.”

“Morning.” John grabbed a mug out of the drying rack and poured himself some coffee, leaving it black. “You always get up this early when you’re on vacation?” He navigated to one of the armchairs at the short ends of the coffee table and sat.

Robert watched him sip and then said, “Can’t help it. Body clock is screwed up. Consequence of being on the go so much for so many years.” He bobbed his head at John. “What about you? Couldn’t sleep?”

“Extra body in the bed. Couldn’t sleep through it, I guess.”

“Yeah, I never really got used to that, either. I remember when Ronnie and her brother were really young, we were living in this little two bedroom house on base. Kids shared a room, but they’d only stay in it if both did. If either would wake up to find the other missing, me and Bren would end up with two little bodies in our bed. I never turned them out, though, even if the sleep was bad. Saw so little of them I didn’t want the memory of me shooing them to be what they thought of when I next got deployed. Ronnie used to have nightmares as a kid. Would never tell us what they were about, but they made her afraid to sleep alone.”

“Hmm.” John sipped and stared at the news.

“John?”

“Hmm?”

“That boy of yours, Landon. He’s a good man.”

John ground his teeth. “That seems out of the blue.”

“Nope. Not at all. I’ve been watching you. Watching him, so I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.”

“Lay it on me.”

“I will.” Robert put his feet up on the coffee table and crossed them at the ankles. “Phil annoys the shit out of me.”

“Pardon?”

“He does. Drives me nuts. I want to shake him every time he walks past.”

Oh, yes. This was why cowboys didn’t have conversations before coffee. John shifted his mug to his other hand and stared into it. “And yet he’s Ronnie’s best friend.”

Robert laughed. “And I wouldn’t change that.”

“Now you’re confusing me.”

John looked up to see Robert lift his shoulders in a shrug. “Phil’s a menace, I swear he is, but he’s been taking care of Ronnie so damned long, I don’t have a choice but to tolerate him.”

“What do you mean, taking care of her?”

“Not what you’d think. Ronnie wasn’t very confident as a kid. That’s why Brenda put her into pageants. She wanted to pull her out of her shell.”

“Ronnie not confident? I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. What she has now is hard won. Phil didn’t let people pick on her when they were little, and as they got older he was her listening ear. Talked her out of making a lot of bad decisions. I was glad they were roommates all those years, because I knew he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

“So, he’s a nice guy for a gay. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

John shrugged. Why hash words?

“I wouldn’t say he’s nice, but he’s good people. His momma made sure of that. He was raised right, and the boy’s always been aware of what he is. Thing is, Phil isn’t my son. My opinion means jack shit in the scheme of things, but I’m going to tell you the same thing my mother told me when we all found out Ronnie was pregnant.”

“And what’s that?”

“She said to find a blessing in it.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugged. “She had a point. What’s the use getting upset over what is and what will be? Can’t change it. I’m sure you’d prefer things be easy for Landon, that he’d find some nice girl to settle down with in a few years instead of him having to be what he is, but he is what he is and he picked Phil. At least for now. You’re going to have to suck it up.”

John shook his head, disbelieving. “Just like that?”

“You know how I didn’t kick your ass upon sight when we met, for you blackmailing my daughter?” He sipped his coffee and crossed his legs in the other direction.

John sighed. “Yeah.”

“Just like that. Sometimes, fathers have to get the hell over things. Especially the ones we have no control over in the first place. You’ve got four kids. This won’t be the last time you won’t agree with a major decision one makes. Trust me on that.” He stood and shuffled into the kitchen to top off his coffee. When he returned to the sofa, he said, “But let me tell you this. This will set the pace for next time. You want your kids to consider how you’d react, but you don’t want them so scared of your response that they lie. And John?”

“Yeah?”

“Ronnie lied to me for months about being in Wyoming. I’m not lecturing you on something I have no experience in. Consider that.”

Damn.

“Think everyone’ll want waffles?” Robert asked and he pulled open the cabinets and collected ingredients.

“Yeah. Probably.”

The last thing John wanted was a waffle. Not unless it was drenched in rotgut syrup and sprinkled with Valium.

Without having the ranch to run, John seemed out of sorts to Ronnie. He was prone to wandering off, and when in the midst of conversation, he often tuned out and stared off at nothing as if he had more pressing considerations on his mind. It was as if he didn’t know what to do with himself when he wasn’t occupied by eating or sleeping. And now she was preoccupied by his preoccupation.

Sid gave her a nudge with her elbow where Ronnie was leaning against the kitchen island, nursing a bowl of oatmeal while she ruminated.

Liss, in the attached living room, pulled a ball across the floor. Joey, not quite adept at the whole belly-crawling mode of transport, flailed and laughed at her sister.

“You wanna take the ferry into Southport and do some shopping?” Sid asked.

Ronnie set down her spoon and grinned. “You know, the airlines do charge for overweight baggage. You sure you want to pile more stuff into your suitcase?”

“I’ll get Landon to mail it to me next week. Come on,” she said, making a praying gesture with her hands pressed together. “There’s this big fabric store I’m itching to get inside of, and I thought I’d find some things to put together for a quilt for Joey.” She batted her eyelashes. She obviously didn’t get out much.

“Sid, you’re terrible.”

Sid shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Of course it did. “I’ll rally the troops. I doubt any of the boys will want to tag along.”

“Woot!”

Ronnie climbed to the second floor and found Peter, Landon, and Phil piled onto the bottom of the bunk bed in Peter and Liss’s room, playing a video game. “We’re going into Southport to shop. Wanna come?”

All three shook their heads.

“Figures.”

She found her mother on the third floor in the loft bedroom, curled up in an armchair and squinting at a crossword puzzle. “Sid wants to trawl for fabric. Wanna come?”

“Okay. Maybe we can have lunch, just us girls. I’ll go brush Liss’s hair.”

“Good luck, Momma.”

Ronnie found John in the garage with Daddy. They stood with their arms crossed over their chests, staring up at the ceiling and grunting.

“What are y’all doing?” she asked, shifting a bundled-up Joey to her other hip.

John brought his gaze down to hers. “Just checking out the architecture. Not used to a house being framed like this. We don’t plan for flooding and hurricanes in my part of the world. The whole crawlspace thing is a weird concept for me, so having a house partially on stilts is even more befuddling.”

“I guess I’ve gotten used to having a basement, but I missed being off the ground. Listen, we’re taking the ferry into Southport. Sid wants to shop. Wanna tag along?”

“Who all’s going?”

“Me, Momma, Sid, the girls.”

Daddy shook his head. “Y’all have fun.”

John raised a brow at him. “What am I missing?”

“Brenda could make a fifteen minute errand take three hours. Never send her into a store to get milk and eggs. She’ll come out with the fixings for a dinner party and chips I don’t like.”

Ronnie grinned. “John?”

John shifted his weight and looked from Ronnie to Daddy and then back to Ronnie again.

She let him off the hook. “We’ll be back by dinner.”

“I think we’ll rent one of those boats and go fishin’,” Daddy said, slapping John on the back.

“With the wind chill being what it is?”

Daddy puffed up his chest. “I’m no punk. Are you a punk, John?”

John laughed. “Not at the moment. Ask me later, though, if I’ve changed my mind.”

Ronnie walked off with Joey, chuckling to herself as she met Sid, Momma, Kitty, and Liss, already waiting in the six-seater golf cart with one plastic side unzipped for her entry.

“Let’s go, it’s cold, Ronnie,” Momma griped. “Sooner we get into the truck, the better. Need something to warm me up. Are you too Lutheran to drink, Sid?”

Sid snorted. “What do you think has been in that Tervis tumbler I’ve been carrying around all week? Apple juice?”

A gasp from the back of the cart. “Mom, I’ve never seen you drink before,” Kitty balked.

“Exactly, but you’re a big girl now, and I’m on vacation. I’m letting my hair down.”

“I never stopped you from letting your hair down.”

Sid put her foot to the pedal and didn’t respond.

Ronnie understood. She really did, and she wouldn’t have just a year before. Women had to wear so many faces, and the ones they wore when their children were around sometimes made them unrecognizable.