“Dammit Emma, you’re driving me crazy, you know that?”

Cash swiveled to meet her gaze, only to get so hung up in it he had no idea how to find his way out again. The words shimmered in the space between them for a moment before fading into the cushiony silence. Finally, Emma smiled, a whatchagonnado? curve to her lips that shoved Cash right over the line between then and now.

“Yeah. Same here.” She hesitated, then glided the back of her hand down his cheek, and Cash’s breath curled into a hot, dry knot in the center of his chest. “Crazier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Emma saw Cash swallow, wanted to press her lips to those clenching muscles in his throat, to pull this man inside her—in more ways than one—so bad her own throat went dry.

“Should that be a bad thing?” he finally said.

“Don’t know. Don’t care …”

Dear Reader,

When Cash Cochran offers to help the widowed Emma Manning pull her neglected farm back from the brink of disaster, she might have thought Cash was the answer to her prayers. But now that I’ve finished their story, I’m thinking Emma was far more the answer to Cash’s … even if he didn’t know he was asking.

It’s probably pretty evident to anyone who’s read my books how often they explore themes of self-worth, redemption and forgiveness, based on my own deep-seated conviction that good ultimately always triumphs over bad. Welcome Home, Cowboy goes down those roads, and then some, with Cash being probably the most tortured hero I’ve ever written (Emma definitely had her work cut out for her!). But, oh, what a joy and privilege—for both of us!—it was to accompany him on his journey.

I hope you think so, too.

Karen Templeton

About the Author

Since 1998, RITA® award winner and Waldenbooks bestseller KAREN TEMPLETON had written more than thirty books A transplanted Easterner, she now lives in New Mexico with her husband and whichever of their five sons happens to be in residence.

Welcome Home Cowboy

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Gail, for grace and understanding and patience. My gratitude knows no bounds.

Chapter One

Cash Cochran hadn’t known what to expect, but for damn sure goats in coats hadn’t made the list.

His breath clouding his face, he frowned at the half-dozen or so beasts in the wire-fenced pen adjacent to the barn, bright-colored balloons on spindly legs. They squinted back with bemused smiles, droopy ears flicking. One gave him a questioning bleat.

I’m not sure, either, Cash thought, his gaze sweeping what had once been a sizable mamas-and-calves operation, sold off in bits and pieces until nothing remained except the house and the ten or so acres his father’d willed to Lee Manning a few years ago … a discovery that’d nearly knocked Cash right off the wagon. Except that was one level of hell he had no wish to revisit, thank you.

Not that he’d needed, or wanted, the property, nestled between two mountain ranges in northern New Mexico. Lee and his wife had been welcome to it. But the why behind the bequest had tainted the lapsed friendship with a bitter stink, one time had barely begun to dissipate.

The sun popped out from behind a doughy cloud, bringing changes into sharp relief—the fair-size, utilitarian greenhouse, the unplowed fields, a young orchard not yet in bloom. Tattered, heavy-duty plastic clinging to one side of the house—an abandoned home-improvement project would be his guess. The goats. Even so, the endless sky and pure, weightless air, the wind’s contented sigh through the pinon windbreak—those were exactly as he’d remembered.

What he’d missed.

Unlike the house itself—a ranch-style built high enough for a porch but too low for a basement, the exterior a conglomeration of stucco and fake brick and bad siding—which he hadn’t missed at all. Putrid memories punched through the paneled wood door and fake-shuttered windows, trampling the riot of egg-yolk-yellow daffodils crowding the foundation, the cutesy Welcome sign beside the recently repainted porch—

Barking its head off, an avalanche on four enormous, filthy feet roared around the side of the house and straight toward Cash.

“Bumble! Heel!”

Cash’s head jerked up, his gaze colliding with blue-green eyes as steady as they were curious. The called-off polar bear of a dog swerved at once, trotting over to plant his butt beside the red-sweatered goat his mistress held on to. A jumble of coppery hair, the bright plaid scarf hanging down her front, both glowed in contrast to the blah-colored, too-large barn coat, faded jeans, muddied boots.

“Can I help you?”

“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to cause a ruckus. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” the woman said with a bite to her West Texas drawl that made Cash wonder if she kept the dog around just for show. At least she’d been smiling in her wedding photo.

“I take it you’re …” He scoured his brain for her name. “Emma?”

“That’s me.”

Cash couldn’t remember the last time a woman didn’t go all swoony and tongue-tied in his presence. Longer still since such things had stoked his ego, made a lonesome young cowboy with a fair talent for guitar picking and songwriting feel like hot stuff. It’d surprised him, how fast all the attention got old. Especially when it finally penetrated that the gals were far more interested in Cash’s so-called fame than they were in him. Still, Emma Manning’s obliviousness to his so-called charms unnerved him. His attention swerved again to the goats, still watching him with squinched-up little faces.

“Why’re they dressed?”

“Had to shear ‘em before they kidded. Then the temperature dropped. Mr. Cochran … I’m sorry, but why are you here? Since I somehow doubt you dropped by to chitchat about my goats.”

He glanced back, caught the frown, the fine lines feathering the corners of those cool, calm eyes. “Guess you’d call that a loaded question. Lee around?”

Something flickered across her face—irritation, maybe—before she wordlessly led the goat back to the pen. Hot shame licked up Cash’s neck, that if he hadn’t found that letter a few months ago—a letter he hadn’t realized he’d kept—he might not even be here now. But he was, which was the important thing.

Wasn’t it?

Emma gently kneed the goat’s rump, encouraging her to rejoin her friends. Her silence, however, was anything but gentle. Even her hair—scattered across her back, nearly to her waist—seemed to crackle with anger. Anger he wasn’t totally sure he understood, truth be told.

“I know I should’ve called first,” he said, “but this morning … I just found myself heading out this way. And by that point I figured I’d better see it through before I lost my nerve. If Lee’s not here, no problem, I could come back.” From inside the pen, puzzled eyes cut to his. “I bought a house a few months ago, on the other side of town. Haven’t been there long, though. Couple, three days—”

“You moved back to Tierra Rosa?”

“For the time being, yeah. I guess …” He lowered his eyes, wrestling with this newfangled thing called honesty. Meeting her gaze again, he said, “I guess sometimes you gotta go back to the beginning before you can move forward. And part of that’s patching things up with Lee—”

“That’s not possible, Mr. Cochran,” Emma said quietly, latching the gate before facing him again. “Since Lee died last fall.”

If she’d had more than thirty seconds’ notice, Emma might’ve finessed the news a little more instead of blurting it out. Then again, she wasn’t exactly feeling too steady on her pins herself, since she’d no more expected to see Cash Cochran standing in her yard that morning than she would’ve the Lord Jesus.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “Haven’t been in touch with anybody from around here for years. I …” Giving his head a sharp shake, Cash pressed one palm against the SUV’s roof, softly swearing as he stared over it. “What happened?”

“His heart,” Emma said, refusing to indulge the lingering grief razoring the words. “Apparently it was a substandard model. Like putting a rusty, used-up four-cylinder engine in a semi.” She brushed off her hands, rammed them in the pockets of Lee’s old barn coat. Willed the fine tremor racking her body to subside. “There was some talk about a transplant, but turns out that wasn’t really an option.”

“I’m so sorry,” Cash repeated on a rough breath, the wind toying with the ragged ends of the hay-colored, shoulder-length hair visible beneath his cowboy hat. “More than I can say.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

His jaw pulsing, he yanked open his car door. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I—” His fist slammed onto the roof. “Damn.”

A couple of the goats bleated, concerned. At Emma’s knees, Bumble let out a low growl.

“There’s coffee on,” she heard herself say, even as she thought, Please, God. No. “And pie. Peach. From the tree.”

Cash’s eyes swung to the lone peach tree down by the front fence. Between the altitude, the crazy northern New Mexico winter and Dwight Cochran’s neglect, it was a wonder the thing’d survived at all. Like the man in front of her, she thought on a slight intake of breath. Although the tree looked to be in far better shape than he was.

“Mr. Cochran?”

After a moment, he faced her, his famous silver eyes slightly unfocused. “Come on into the house. Until things settle a bit in your head.”

Bumble growled at him, louder this time, all Great Pyrenees machismo. Cash almost smiled. “You don’t want me here.”

“Wouldn’t be at the top of my list, no. But if you’re feeling a tenth of what I did when I suddenly found myself a widow a few months back, you’re in no fit condition to be driving back down that mountain.”

“I can manage—”

“Thank you, but I’m not up for taking that chance. And since my chores aren’t going away while we’re standing here, I suggest we move this conversation inside.”

* * *

Inside.

Cash glanced at the house. The memories leered. Then again, what had he expected?

Lee to be here, for starters. To buffer the pain of coming home, ease Cash through the worst of it. Like he’d always done. A stupid-ass assumption to begin with, considering how shredded things had become between them. How shredded Cash had let them get.

Now it was too late. For apologies, explanations, any of it.

“What’s to talk about?”

“Whatever led you here after all this time, I suppose.” At Cash’s hesitation, Emma said, almost sharply, “I promise you, there’s nothing in there that can hurt you anymore.” When his eyes snapped to hers, her mouth pulled tight. “Lee told me why you ran off. What your father did to you. Husbands share with their wives, Mr. Cochran,” she said to his glare. “Especially husbands trying to make sense out of why their best friend cut them off.”

“We were kids. We grew apart. I didn’t cut him off—”

“Oh, no? When Lee wrote to tell you about us getting the house, you never wrote back, never returned his calls, nothing. If that’s not cuttin’ somebody off, I don’t know what is.”

“And if you know about my father, I think it’d be perfectly obvious why I wasn’t exactly overcome with joy when I discovered Lee’d gotten buddy-buddy with the man who’d made my life a living hell—”

“Exactly what did my husband tell you? About why Dwight left us the house?”

Acid surged in Cash’s gut. “Only that some time after I left, he started working for the bastard. Helping out around the place, stuff like that.”

“And?”

“And, what? That was it.”

“Oh, Lord,” she muttered, then added, “We need to talk,” in a tone of voice that said there was more to the story. Half of him wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what that was, except.

Except if he’d come for answers, what difference did it make who he got them from?

His eyes touched hers. “How strong you make your coffee?”

“You won’t be disappointed,” Emma said, then set off toward the house. The dog gave him a Mess with her and you’re dead look, then plodded behind, only to collapse on the porch, completely ignoring Cash when he passed by.

Cash could only hope his father’s ghost would extend him the same courtesy.

“Who’s that?” Granny Annie barked at them from her “studio,” carved out of one corner of the cramped, perpetually cluttered living room. Cats, coffee cups, painting supplies, art magazines and haphazardly stacked vinyl LPs littered a conglomeration of tables and shelves; from a fifty-year-old hi-fi system, Ol’ Blue Eyes crooned loud enough to be heard in Wyoming.

“An old friend of Lee’s,” Emma yelled back, willing her pulse to settle down as she slapped her coat on the rack, then sloughed off Lee’s boots. A cat—The Red One, Emma couldn’t be bothered learning all their names, especially since half the time Annie couldn’t remember them, either—batted at the end of the scarf, dangling by Emma’s knees.

“Who?” Annie bellowed, clearly not wearing her hearing aids. Emma did not have the energy for that particular battle right now. Instead, she crossed to the record player and turned down the volume, surprised to find her hand still attached to her arm like normal, considering the recent, major hit to her entire molecular structure.

Man took intense to a whole new level. Like radioactive.

“You look familiar.” All bones and gumption, the old woman crept closer to their visitor, like a buzzard contemplating fresh carrion. A paint-spattered buzzard with dandelion-fluff hair in sore need of a perm. “Do I know you?”

“You used to, Granny Annie,” Cash said, taking her skeletal hand in his. “A long time ago. When Lee and I were kids. I’m Cash.”

Annie fiddled with her glasses, large-framed holdovers from the Reagan era. “Cash Cochran? Dwight’s youngest boy?”

“That’s right,” he said, pain flashing briefly in his eyes. “I was so sorry to hear about his passing—”

Annie snatched back her hand, looking like she might smack Cash with the brush. Deaf she might be, but Emma’d put her money on the old gal in a back-alley brawl any day. “He’s been gone how long now? And you’re only now showing up?” Her thin, wrinkled lips smashed flat, she inched back to the canvas to jab “leaves” on “trees.” “Everybody loved that boy. Everybody. Seems to me a friend would’ve at least come to his funeral—”

“He didn’t know, Annie. Really.” At Annie’s if-you-say-so shrug, Emma said to Cash, “Why don’t you help yourself to that coffee while I check on my daughter? She’s home from school with a cold, nothing serious. I’ll be right there.”

Then she hightailed it down the hall, stealing a few seconds to deal with the blow of discovering her husband had lied to her. Not to mention escape Cash’s eyes. Big, hurting eyes that made a woman want to get inside and tinker. Fix things.

Like she didn’t have enough to fix already.

Too bad she couldn’t lock up her nurturing instincts as easily as she had her libido. Between widowhood and being pregnant and the farm and everything else, all thoughts of hanky-panky had been shoved into a locked file drawer marked “Expired.” But her chronic attraction to the brokenhearted? To the grave, baby. To the grave.

She’d long since given up trying to figure out her penchant for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to break free of whatever put expressions like that on their faces. Lee had razzed her about it all the time, even as he said that was why he loved her, because her heart was even bigger than her butt.

A comment only Lee could have gotten away with, she mused, pausing outside Zoey’s door. Lee, who’d also always wanted to make everybody happy. Even if that meant—in his case—keeping one or more parties in the dark.

Leaving Emma with the tidying up.

Thinking, So what else is new? she finally peeked through Zoey’s partially open door into an explosion of sour-apple green and bubble-gum pink. A conglomeration of skinny appendages, freckles and wayward hair, her daughter was drawing, sprawled on the rag rug Annie’d made for her when she was a baby, in the same colors that had inspired the prissy color scheme. Beside her towered a mountain of used pink tissues, like blobs of cotton candy.

“How’re you doing, baby? And throw those tissues in the garbage.”

“They’re yucky.”

“Which is why you get to throw them away. Not me.”

With a sigh strong enough to rustle the offending tissues, the child gathered them up, then stood and dumped them into her trash can, decorated with a big-eyed Disney princess. “Is the man gone?”

Apprehension curled in the pit of Emma’s stomach. Not eagerly anticipating the upcoming conversation, nope. “How’d you know about him?”

“Saw him out the window.” Blue eyes, no less sharp for their wateriness, shot to Emma’s. “Who is he?” she croaked, like a baby bullfrog.

“An old friend of your daddy’s. And keep your voice down, he’s right in the kitchen.”

“How come?”

“Because he and I have stuff to talk over. Grown-up stuff.”

Zoey sniffed out a put-upon sigh, a trait she’d perfected by two, before blowing her nose again. “He looks like that guy Daddy used to listen to all the time on the country music station.”

“That’s because he is.”

Eyes popped. “You serious?”

“Yes. And no, you can’t tell anybody.”

“Is he gonna stay?”

“Here? No, of course not. He’s got his own place.” Emma paused, briefly considering the weirdness that was Cash Cochran moving back to Tierra Rosa. “He used to live here. In this house, I mean.”

“No way!”

“Yep.”

Pale eyebrows pushed together. “He doesn’t want it back, does he?”

“I highly doubt it. And even if he did, it’s ours now. Nobody can take it from us.” At least, that was the plan. “You want more juice?”

“No, I’m good,” Zoey said, handing Emma her empty glass before flopping back onto her tummy on the rug, like she didn’t have a care in the world. Considering how attached Zoey’d been to her daddy, the child must’ve inherited Emma’s fake-it-till-you-make-it gene. However, her recent disposition to inviting in every cold virus that passed through town led Emma to suspect she wasn’t over her daddy’s death nearly as much as she let on.

“Hey,” Emma said. Zoey looked up. “Love you.”

That got a holey smile in response. “Love you, too, Mama.”

Releasing a breath, Emma tromped back down the hall to discover Cash—clearly not inclined to stay where he’d been put—standing in her tiny dining room, his fingers curled around a mug, staring at the sixteen-by-twenty J.C. Penney photo special taking up a good chunk of the paneled wall by the window.

“This is real nice,” he said, in the manner of somebody who realized he’d missed out on a thing or two.

Emma forced her eyes to the portrait, even though it made her heart ache. Lee’d gone on Weight Watchers the year before; he’d been so proud of how much he’d slimmed down he’d insisted they get their picture taken. Although slimmed was a relative term. For both of them. Now, though, she was glad she’d shoved her pride where the sun don’t shine and done what Lee’d wanted. Aside from their wedding album, it was the best picture she had of him. If she’d had any part in making him as happy as he seemed in that picture, she supposed she’d done okay.

Sure, she was ticked that Lee’d skirted the truth about what he’d told Cash, but no doubt he had his reasons. He always did. She sighed over the dull pang that became fuzzier around the edges every day. Heaven knew neither of them was perfect, but they’d been good together. Real good. The kind of good a smart woman knew better than to expect more than once in her lifetime—

“Your boy—he okay?”

Wrapped in his father’s arms from behind, Hunter beamed his customary infectious grin at the camera, his glasses crooked as usual. But how could she have forgotten, even for a moment, that the rest of the world saw “normal” through a completely different lens than she did? That to most people her boy’s slanted eyes and thick neck and fine hair defined him in a way that provoked either pity or discomfort, if not both. If Cash was feeling either of those things, though, she couldn’t tell.

Emma smiled. “He’s doing great. Nobody gets a bigger kick out of life than Hunter. A life that’s perfectly normal. For him. Us, too.”

When she turned, Cash’s eyes were fixed on her belly.

“Yeah, there’s another baby in there,” she said, going into the kitchen, where she finally unwound the scarf and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair before scooting across the floor toward the pie. At least, in her head she was scooting. In reality she felt like a hippopotamus slogging through hip-high mud.

“Didn’t know this one was coming until a couple of weeks after Lee died. It’s okay,” she said when Cash’s brows dipped, signaling the doubt demons to swarm, taunting her about all the responsibilities balanced on her not-quite-broad-enough shoulders. Sometimes she truly wondered how she wasn’t curled up in a fetal position herself, sucking her thumb. She flashed him a smile and scooped up the pie. “Everything’s under control. Really.”

And the sooner she did that tidying-up thing with Cash about his father, the sooner he’d be gone and she could get back to figuring out the rest of her life.

She turned, the pie cradled in her hands, catching the barely banked blend of disgust and horror on Cash’s face as he scanned the kitchen. Meaning, most likely, that a few coats of paint weren’t doing a blamed thing to eradicate the bad mojo that had not only sent Cash running but had kept him away for twenty years.

Somehow, she highly doubted the truth would, either.

Don’t remember this being part of the marriage vows, she thought, setting the pie on the table.

Chapter Two

At least the house smelled good. Damn good. Like strong coffee and baking and that flowery stuff women liked to keep around. But man, being here was doing a number on Cash’s head. In fact, as he watched Emma serve up a huge piece of pie, he felt like somebody with ADD was controlling the remote to his brain.

Cats lazed and groomed in the midmorning sunlight splashing across the dull butcherblock counters, the gouged tile floor—old, faded dreams struggling for purchase in a scary sea of color. Orange walls. Turquoise cabinets. Yellow curtains. Hell, even the table was fire-engine red—

“Bright colors help stimulate the brain,” Emma said quietly, setting a plate in front of him and licking her thumb. “We did it mainly for Hunter.”

“Did it help?”

Through the calm, Cash caught a glimpse of the worry that was most likely a constant companion. “I don’t think it hurt,” she said with a slight smile, and his heebie-jeebies about being in the house morphed to apprehension about what she wanted to tell him, which then slid into a skin-prickling, inexplicable awareness of the woman herself—

“Let me get you a refill,” she said, whisking away his mug.

—which in turn stirred up a whole mess of conflicting feelings, most of which he’d pretty much lost touch with over the years … none of which he was the least bit inclined to examine now. If ever. The weird, inexplicable spurt of protectiveness notwithstanding—even more weird since he doubted there was a woman on the face of the earth who needed protecting less than Emma Manning—he wasn’t the protective type.

More than one shrink had told Cash his self-centeredness was a direct outcome of the hell he’d been through, the old survival instinct clawing to the surface of the toxic swamp that had been his childhood. Although how that survival instinct jibed with an equally strong bent toward self-destruction—at least, early on—neither he nor the shrinks could figure out. Other terms got bandied about a lot, too. Trust issues and emotional barriers and such.

A highfalutin way of saying he sucked at relationships.

At least, that was how his last ex had put it, Cash pondered as he watched the dark, rich brew tumble into his mug, in the note she’d left on the custom-made glass-and-iron dining table in their ritzy Nashville condo eight years ago. Yeah, the tabloids had been all over that one.

The self-destructive tendencies, Cash had finally gotten a handle on. Mostly. The putting-himself-first thing, however … not so much.

Which was why it was taking everything he had in him not to bolt. From the house, the woman, whatever she had to tell him. But before he could, she slid into the seat across from him with a glass of milk. He met her frown with one of his own.

“Well?”

“Eat your pie first.” The brutal, midmorning light showcased the fine lines marring otherwise smooth skin, the faintly bruised pouches cushioning those odd-colored eyes. Not gray or blue or green but some combination of the three. “Cleaning up after my husband wasn’t exactly on my chore list this morning. So I’m working up to it. Besides, I don’t know you, Mr. Cochran. I have no idea how you’re going to react to what I’m about to tell you.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“It’s not that, it’s …” She sighed. “Eat. Please.”

So he took a bite of the still-warm pie, letting the smooth, tangy-sweet fruit and buttery crust melt in his mouth. “Damn, this is good.”

“Thanks.” After watching him for a second, she said, “It really doesn’t feel any different? Being here, I mean.”

“Looks different, sure,” Cash said, reaching for his coffee. “Feels different?” He shook his head. “My brain knows my father’s not here. That it’s been twenty years. But it’s like no time’s passed at all.”

“You still have some serious issues, then?” When he looked over, she shrugged and swept a strand of hair off her face. “I’m not judging. Just trying to get a feel for where you’re coming from.”

Cash set down his mug. “How much did Lee tell you?”

“That your daddy got religion when you were little. The kind that gets hung up on the hellfire-and-brimstone stuff and kinda misses the memo about loving one another. That he took the ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ thing a little too literally.”

Despite being oddly grateful for her directness, Cash had some trouble swallowing the last bite of pie. “He also mention how my father made sure I felt like a worthless piece of garbage?”

When Emma didn’t answer, he glanced up, seeing something in her eyes that could suck him right in. If he let it. “That, too.”

Sitting back, Cash released a breath. “God knows I’ve tried long and hard to let go of the bad feelings. But apparently the roots run too deep to dig ‘em out completely. Like that old yellow rosebush alongside the fence out front.”

Emma curved her hands around her glass, smiling slightly. A farmer’s hands, blunt-nailed and rough. Strong. An indentation marked where her wedding ring had been.

“Lord, I hate that thing. A thousand thorns to every bloom. Every year, I’m digging up runners, cussing it the entire time. But I swear nothing short of napalm’s gonna kill it.”

From the living room, Annie got after one of the cats. Her lips still curved, Emma shook her head, then sighed. “When you’re a kid, you assume everybody’s life is like yours. That since your parents are loving, everyone’s are—”

“Trust me, the opposite doesn’t hold true. I knew other kids didn’t have fathers whupping the ‘sin’ out of ‘em. Knew, because it hadn’t always been that way.” Cash paused, letting the wave of nausea play on through. “Worse though …” He swallowed, then met her eyes again. “Worse, was that I couldn’t understand why my mother never did anything to stop it. Eventually—when I got older, I mean—I realized she was scared to death of him. Of what he might do.”

Emma’s brow creased. “He abused her, too?”

“Enough.” As many times as he’d vomited the story to assorted therapists, you’d think it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Wrong. “I never told Lee that part, and he had no reason to guess since he never came over here. I had cause to hate my father, Emma. He was … obsessed, is the only way to put it. That everybody was a sinner and he was the instrument of God’s wrath.”

“So you ran away.”

“I stayed as long as I could, for Mama’s sake. But once she died, it was either leave or lose what little self-respect I had left. Not to mention my sanity. This house … it’s like you said. It was infected with his craziness. His meanness. I couldn’t … I couldn’t be good enough for him.”

Or for anybody, it turned out. Including himself.

Cash stood, carrying the plate and mug to the sink, noticing the full dish rack despite the dishwasher right under it. Taking his cue, he bumped up the faucet handle, squirted dish soap on the plate, into the mug. His throat clogged. “I’d loved him,” he said over the thrum of running water, “before the craziness started. And for a long time, all I wanted was for him to love me again. Until I realized that wasn’t ever gonna happen. Lee …”

The stab was quick, but for different reasons this time. Apparently regret hurt every bit as bad as self-righteousness. The dish and mug rinsed and in the rack, he faced Emma again.

“Lee was the only person who kept me going back then. Hell, Emma … leaving him and our friendship behind nearly killed me. I doubt …” He almost smiled. “I doubt he had any idea how much I worried about him those first few months. Then to find out—” His nostrils flaring, he shook his head. “I felt like I’d been sliced open with a dull knife. Especially since I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Why Lee’d do that to me.”

“Then why didn’t you ask him?”

Beneath the calm, Cash heard the vexation bubble to the surface. The loyal wife defending her husband. Envy flashed, receded, replaced by anger of his own.

“Maybe I ran away, but the crap my father left in my head came right with me. That I was worthless, that I’d never amount to anything. I’d already been through hell and back by then, more times than I wanted to admit. How I even got a career going …” He punched out a breath. “Frankly, it was a damn miracle I didn’t end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Not sure anyone would’ve cared if I had. Except my manager, maybe.”

“You don’t mean that—”

“I’d barely begun to get my head screwed on straight when I heard the old man’d died, that Lee’d inherited this place. What he’d done for that to happen. Guess I took it a little hard.”

Emma leaned back, rubbing her belly, and Cash thought with a start about that “And?” earlier, when she’d asked him if there was anything else in the letter. There was, but if she didn’t know he wasn’t about to tell her. Not yet, anyway. Not until he figured out what to do about it.

Obviously, though, she’d meant something else. Something Lee hadn’t seen fit to mention, would be his guess. Not that anything would change how he felt. Yeah, he’d come in search of explanations as part of some lamebrained attempt to make sense of his past. Hell, of his present, for that matter. But that was it. Some hatchets were too big to bury.

Emma had gotten up to cover the pie before a big gray tiger cat got to it. She stood still for a moment, then turned, her arms crossed over her bulging belly.

“Mr. Cochran, your father … he really was crazy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“No, I mean, he was sick. Mentally ill. Some kind of chemical imbalance that made him act the way he did. Only nobody knew about his illness until a couple of years after you left.”

For the second time that day, Cash reeled, Emma’s words sparking off the wall of hurt and hate he’d kept in perfect repair for most of his life. “What are you talking about?”

“I wasn’t here yet—this was before I’d even met Lee—but apparently one Sunday Dwight came to town and kinda crashed the Baptists’ church service, ranting and raving and whatnot. I gather it got pretty ugly.”

Cash softly swore. “He hurt anybody?”

“No. Scared the bejeebers out of a lot of folks, though, if the way some still talk about it is any indication. Anyway, long story short, he ended up in a state facility. Lee said they tried to find you or your brothers, but it was like all three of you had vanished.”

“That was the idea,” he muttered. They were both gone now, but even before their deaths they hadn’t been close. Not when they’d saved their own butts but couldn’t see their way clear to save their baby brother’s. If he’d talked to either of ‘em more than a handful of times after they’d split, that was saying a lot.

“Once they got Dwight on the right meds,” Emma was saying, “he started acting as normal as you or me or anybody.” She paused. “When he did all those things to you, said all that stuff … that wasn’t your daddy talking. That was the sickness.”

“So, what?” he flung at her. “I’m supposed to just say, ‘I see,’ and forget it ever happened?”

“I’m only telling you what I know. What you do with it is your business.”

The rebuke hit its mark. Breathing hard, Cash turned away, grinding his fingers into the back of his neck.

“Anyway,” Emma continued, clearly unperturbed, “Lee and his folks were in the congregation that Sunday. In fact, Lee and his daddy helped the sheriff subdue Dwight, and Lee’s folks felt compelled to take responsibility. Because if they didn’t, who would?”

Yeah, Lee’s parents had definitely had a handle on the whole “Love thy neighbor” thing. Even neighbors nobody else wanted anything to do with.

“Lee’d started down at New Mexico State by that point,” Emma said. “And it was some months before the doctors felt Dwight was stable enough—and could be counted on to take his meds—to release him. So he came back here, even if there wasn’t a whole lot left to come home to by that point. Still, he needed looking after. Lee’s folks did it at first, but after they died, Lee and I took over. At least until Dwight went into a home a year or so later. Place down in Albuquerque. Nothing fancy, but Dwight seemed to like it well enough.”

Smoothing the wrinkled flannel shirt over her stomach, she said, “I assume your father left the house to us because we were the closest thing he had to family. But I had no idea Lee’d never told you what was going on.”

“Like I said, we weren’t in touch—”

“He could’ve gotten a message to you, if he’d wanted. Somehow. But it wasn’t until after Dwight’d left us the place that Lee finally admitted you didn’t know. We had words about that, believe you me.

“So, knowing the cat would be out of the bag once the lawyer contacted you, Lee asked him if he’d send along a note of explanation. Again, I assumed Lee had been forthcoming at that point. Clearly I was wrong.”

“Why?” Cash lashed out, not even fully understanding the pandemonium threatening to break loose inside him. “Why didn’t he just tell me the truth?”

“I don’t know,” Emma said as a dryer buzzer sounded from the closed-in porch behind them. “At least, not for sure. Um … do you mind? I’ve got at least four more loads, and if I lose my momentum I’ll be doing laundry at midnight.”

Bile rising in his throat, Cash watched her disappear into the add-on his father had built before everything went haywire. The splintered plank floor probably bore the imprints of Cash’s knees from when he’d been made to kneel for hours, reflecting on his sins. He drew a deep breath and followed her, standing in the doorway.

The warm, cluttered room smelled clean. Sweet. Dozens of Ball canning jars lined the pantry shelves, lined up by their contents’ color like a child’s crayon box—yellow to red to orange to green—glistening against the bright, white walls … and white tiled floor.

“What do you mean, you don’t know for sure?” he asked at last.

The dryer open, Emma pulled out a peach-colored towel, efficiently folding it into fourths. “Like I said, I thought Lee had told you. Although I know your father didn’t want you to know about his illness.”

“Why not? After all, it gave him the perfect out.” At her sharp glance, he sighed. “You may as well know, I’m not a nice person. Not saying I go around kicking puppies or taking people’s heads off because I’m having a bad day or anything. I’m not a total SOB. But my milk of human kindness has always run several quarts low. Finding out about my father. it doesn’t change anything. Certainly it doesn’t make me feel, I don’t know … whatever you think I should be feeling.”

Another towel clutched to her chest, Emma considered how little the man in front of her lined up with the image she’d carried of him all these years. Of course, nearly twenty years was bound to change a person. She wasn’t the same she’d been at sixteen—why would Cash be?

But whereas marriage and motherhood had softened her, made her more malleable, clearly Cash’s experiences had produced the opposite effect. She could practically see the accumulated layers of caution hardened around his soul, like emotional polyurethane. And yet, as impenetrable as he thought they were, their translucence still allowed a glimpse of the aching heart beating inside.

“I don’t think anything, Mr. Cochran.” At his snort, she dumped the folded towel into a nearby plastic basket, then shooed away The Black One before he settled in for a snooze. “Who am I to say what you should be feeling? I didn’t go through what you did. Anyway …”

She hauled out the rest of the towels, heaping them on top of the washer. “As I was saying, your father didn’t want you to know. According to Lee, once he was in his right mind again and started piecing together what he’d done to you and your mom and your brothers, he was horrified. Ashamed. Didn’t matter to him, either, that he hadn’t been responsible for his actions back then. I guess he figured what was done, was done. That some things, you couldn’t fix.”

The towels folded and in the basket, she clanged up the washer lid, transferred the wet clothes to the dryer, slammed the dryer closed, then dumped the next load in the washer. When she went to pick up the heavy basket, however, Cash grabbed it from her.

“Oh! You don’t have to do that—”

“Where’s it go?”

“Our—my—bedroom.”

A shadow flickered across his eyes before he carted the basket to the master bedroom, the soft pastels and thick comforter on the king-size bed a far cry from the cold white walls, brown spread and worn hooked rug from when Dwight still lived here.

“Looks nothing like I remember.”

“That was the idea.”

Several beats passed before he said, “Lee still should’ve told me. No matter what my father wanted.”

“I agree. But …” Separating the towels and bathroom rugs into three piles on the bed, she spared Cash a quick glance, then returned to her task. “Lee and I, we had similar childhoods in many ways. Loving parents, stable home life, all of that. But we were both also teased a lot when we were kids. For being fat—”

“You’re not—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said on a light laugh, “I’m big as a house. Especially right now. No sense in pretending otherwise. And as a kid I was downright roly-poly. Just like Lee.” She looked up, swiping a hunk of hair out of her face. “But he said you were the only kid who never made fun of him. How you stuck up for him when the other kids did.” She carted clean towels and rugs into the phone-booth-size master bath, then returned. “That you gave him the confidence to get his first girlfriend. In other words, Lee felt he owed you.”

Cash’s brows pushed together. “You think Lee saw taking care of the old man as a way to pay me back for being friends with him? That’s nuts. Especially since it kinda worked both ways. Lee stuck by me, even though I was the kid other kids’ parents told them to stay away from. Like what my father had was contagious.”

“Okay, then maybe Lee figured there wasn’t any point in telling you. Because he didn’t think the damage could be undone, either. To ask you to come back, when the wounds were still so fresh …” She paused. “Would you have? If you’d known?”

Not surprisingly, he didn’t answer right away. Instead he hefted The Big Fat Gray One, who’d been twining around his ankles, into his arms, scratching her under the chin until her purring seemed to swallow the room. Emma took pity on him. “It’s okay, you don’t have to answer that—”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t much like that somebody else got burdened with looking after him. But back then …” He blew out a breath. “By the time I left, I doubt I would’ve been much good to anybody. Let alone the man who’d left me in that condition. Which still doesn’t answer why Lee didn’t tell me the truth after my father died.”

“I know,” Emma said, sighing. “Especially since he knew how much it would’ve ticked me off to find out he hadn’t.”

Cash almost smiled. “I take it you’re not one for keeping secrets.”

“No, I’m not. Although I suppose I understand Lee’s loyalty conflicts. The Christian duty he felt he had to take care of your father versus his high esteem of you. For overcoming everything you did, for making a name for yourself … if you’d been blood kin, he couldn’t have been any prouder of you.” Other words bunched at the back of her throat; if she’d been as good as her husband, she’d swallow them. But she wasn’t, and if she didn’t let them out she’d choke. “Although frankly it got a little tiresome, hearing him talk about you all the time like you were some kind of god.”

Only the merest flicker of Cash’s eyelids indicated her words had hit home. But her husband’s constant adulation of his old friend had irritated Emma far more than she’d let on in the name of matrimonial harmony. Yes, Cash had suffered as a kid—what it must’ve been like for him growing up, she couldn’t imagine. But he wasn’t a god, he was just a man—a man who’d made, from everything she could tell, some really poor choices along the way.

At some point a person has to stop using the past as an excuse for his bad behavior. Whether Cash had done that by now, she could hardly tell from a single conversation. But he sure as heck hadn’t during all those years of her listening to Lee’s ballyhooing about how great he was—

The baby walloped her a good one, a little foot trying to poke right through her belly button. Grabbing the bedpost, Emma stilled, slowly breathing through the Braxton-Hicks contractions that inevitably followed.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said when it ended, straightening. “Getting crowded in there, is all.”

She gathered the rest of the towels to stuff in the tiny linen closet in the hall; Cash stepped aside, but the space was too cramped for them not to invade each other’s personal spaces. Especially as between them they took up enough space for at least four average-size people. Cash was all hard and lean where Lee had been more on the marshmallow side, but still, there was a lot of man there.

A lot.

The towels crammed into the closet, Emma started back toward the living room. Silently, Cash followed her, ducking into the kitchen to retrieve his jacket, his face creased into a scowl when he came back out.

“I didn’t ask Lee to put me up on some kind of pedestal, Emma. God knows I didn’t deserve to be on one. But if listening to him talk about me got up your nose, then maybe you should’ve said something instead of staying silent for so long. Or does your thing about the truth only work one way?”

As Emma stood with her mouth open, Cash hunched into his jacket and said his goodbyes to Annie, whose only reply was a waved paintbrush over her shoulder. Then he faced Emma again, his eyes all sharp. “That it?”

“I think so, yes. No, wait,” she said the second he got through the door. “There’s one more thing.”

“And what’s that?” he said, still scowling.

“After Dwight went into the home, Lee took him a copy of your first CD.”

Cash actually flinched. “Now why on earth would he have done that? Considering Dwight destroyed my first guitar.”

Emma laid a hand on her belly as old memories, old hurts, darkened his eyes. “I know, Lee told me—”

“Millie Scott gave it to me,” he said to no one in particular, palming the porch post. “I was eleven, twelve, something like that. It’d been her son’s before he moved away. Gave me all his how-to-play books, too. Took the better part of the summer to get the hang of it.”

With a short, dry laugh, he looked back at Emma. “I was so bad when I started, I’d play in the barn so nobody’d hear me. Except one day Dad did.” The glimpse of humor vanished. “God knows I’d seen him mad plenty by then, but that was nothing compared with that time. You’d thought he found me …” His face reddened. “Well, I suppose you can fill in the blanks on that one.

“Anyway, he grabbed the guitar, told me to git. Later I found it smashed to pieces in one of the garbage cans. Took another two years before I could buy another one—Mama’d slip me a couple of dollars every week from the grocery money. Bought it one of the rare times she and I went to Santa Fe by ourselves.” His mouth stretched. “My first Fender.”

“That the one you hid at Lee’s?”

“Yep. I think the old man knew. Or at least suspected. Because whenever he felt the need to get in a dig? He brought up how bad I was. That who’d ever want to listen to me, anyway? Cows and horses, maybe, but that was it.” His gaze narrowed. “So why on earth would Lee give him my album?”

“Because that wasn’t the same man who destroyed your first guitar! Or got off on belittling you. Mr. Cochran,” she said when he turned away, shaking his head, “you’re not listening—the drugs, the treatment … they banished the monster who’d lived inside your father all those years! Or at least subdued it. And the man left behind, the real man who’d been there along … he listened to the whole album straight through, tears running down his face.”

Her arms crossed against the chill, Emma stepped closer, half tempted to smooth a hand across those hard, tense shoulders, half tempted to cuff the back of Cash’s head. “Believe me or not, it’s no skin off my nose … but your father died a humbled man. And as proud of you as he could have possibly been. I heard him say it myself more times than I can count. He never expected you to love him again, but at the end of his life he loved you more than he could say.”

Silence shrilled between them for a long moment before Cash said, “Just not enough to let me know.”

“Hey. You wanted answers? These are the only ones I’ve got.”

Another second or two of that hard, unrelenting gaze preceded his stalking to his SUV. After much door-yanking and slamming, he gunned the car out of the drive, mud spraying in a roostertail of epic proportions.

Zoey came onto the porch, snuggling up against Emma’s hip. “What was that all about?”

Good question, Emma thought on a sigh, fingering her daughter’s soft, tangled hair. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

Although what was there to figure out? she mused as they went back inside. Wasn’t like she’d ever see Cash Cochran again. And thank God for small favors.

Because some aggravations, a body does not need.

Chapter Three

Still breathing hard fifteen minutes later, Cash stomped through the front door to the secluded adobe on the other side of Tierra Rosa he’d impulsively bought a few months before, when coming home had—for whatever reason—seemed like a good idea. When, despite how screwed up his past had been, at least it’d been simple.

Or so he’d thought.

Stacks of still-unpacked boxes silently jeered as he strode toward the recently remodeled, no-frills kitchen and a cold Coke; seconds later he stood on the deck off the dining room, overlooking the village tucked up in the valley below.

He took a swig of the soda, forcing air in and out of his lungs until the brisk spring breeze siphoned off at least enough of the tension so he could think. Sort through the hundred thoughts and images ping-ponging inside his head, some real, others imagined: of Lee, the last time he’d seen him, his brown eyes shiny when he clapped Cash on the shoulder and wished him well; of his father, crying—crying?!—as he listened to the CD; of the contradiction of compassion and intolerance, of patient reserve and brutal honesty, that was Emma Manning, her steady, funny-colored eyes seared into his brain.

Cash gave his head a hard shake, trying to dislodge the image. Images.

Had he really been looking for answers, or justification for the resentment he’d been hauling around like a worn-out suitcase for the past twenty years? And now that he had those answers … what, exactly, did he intend to do with them?

About them?

About Lee’s request?

Gritting his teeth, Cash parked his butt on the deck railing to lean against a support post, one booted foot on the railing. Now the breeze skimmed his heated face like a mother’s touch. Except instead of soothing, it only further stoked his anger, that by making it impossible for Cash to stay, his father had stolen from him the skies and forests and mountains he’d loved so much.

His home.

His identity, when you got right down to it.

Not that it mattered, really, once his career took off, and Cash had figured he’d be tethered to Nashville for the rest of his days, anyway. Well, except during those years where he was on the road more than he wasn’t. “Home” became whatever stage he was on in whatever city, his “family” his band, the crew. His fans, to a certain extent.

A turn of events he’d been okay with, for a long time. Especially since focusing all that energy on Cash Cochran, The Star, let him basically ignore the messed-up dude behind the name. Until Cash eventually realized that he and his music were becoming obsolete, save for those few diehard fans still clinging to country’s grittier roots.

What came next, careerwise or lifewise, he had no idea. But a few months ago—about the time he’d stumbled across that letter from Lee—it occurred to him returning to his roots might give him breathing space to figure it out. Coming to terms with why he’d left, what’d happened between him and Lee, was supposed to have been an added benefit. Who knew that instead of a quick get-in, get-out, get-on-with-your-life scenario he’d be facing a dilemma he never in a million years thought would even be an issue.

There’d been no excuse for what his father had done to him … except maybe there was. Just like Cash had been more than justified in holding a grudge against his best friend, in using the hurts done to him as an excuse for being a lousy human being … except maybe he wasn’t. Justified, that was.

He finished off his Coke and crushed the can, banging the mangled aluminum shell against the deck railing as it dawned on him that, in this case, getting answers wasn’t the end of the journey, but only the beginning.

“Emma! Emma!”

Moving as fast as the balled-up human being inside her would let her, Emma hauled herself out of the kitchen, drying her hands on the tail of one of Lee’s old denim shirts. A blur of excitement or anxiety, Emma couldn’t quite tell which, Annie stood at the living-room window, her quilted robe buttoned wrong. Outside, Bumble was doing the guard-dog thing. Inside, cats perched on the window sill and backs of chairs and sofas, ears perked and eyes huge.

“For heaven’s sake, Annie, what—”

“You got company.”

Frowning, Emma joined her grandmother-in-law at the window.

Oh, for pity’s sake.

She tromped to the front door and hauled it open, thinking only an idiot would pay a woman an unexpected visit before 8:00 a.m. Not that she was particularly surprised that Cash’d returned. Well, once the dust—or in this case, mud—had settled and she’d had a chance to mull things over. Something about the way he’d torn out of here yesterday, leaving all those loose ends dangling. But would it have killed him to have held off until she’d at least had a chance to comb her hair?

Then again, why should he care what she looked like? Or more to the point, why should she?

It was a mite warmer than when she’d fed and checked on the goats a half hour earlier, although that wasn’t saying much. Huddled inside the soft, worn shirt, Emma stepped outside, just far enough onto the porch to see Cash give last year’s flower beds the once-over.

“It’s okay, Bumble,” she yelled at the dog, who was circling and whining, worried. The dog shot her a “You sure?” look, but trotted a few feet away to lie in the dirt, keeping watch over the man surveying what even Emma had to admit was a sorry state of affairs. Shame and frustration washed over her as she saw Cash take in the pile of wood for the new raised beds she had no way of making, the greenhouse in sore need of repair, the three still-unplowed fields that by rights should at least be under cold frames by now, before his gaze swung back toward the spot on the roof where wind had ripped off a patch of loose shingles a few weeks back.

At last he looked at her, eyes narrowed in a face that was all unshaved cragginess underneath a cowboy hat, the shadow like his own personal cloud that tagged along wherever he went. The morning sun glanced off a belt buckle that on anybody else would’ve looked ridiculous.

“Who’s gonna help you fix all this? Get your fields planted?” He nodded toward the goats. “Stay up all night when these gals start having their babies?”

I’ll manage, she nearly said, because that was how women were programmed, as if a double dose of X chromosomes somehow endowed them with magical powers to make everything right. To make the pieces fit, no matter how jagged the edges might be.

Except as the sun climbed relentlessly over the horizon, rudely highlighting all the undone stuff blowing raspberries at her, it hit her upside her uncombed head that sometimes the pieces didn’t fit. Like when your husband suddenly dies and leaves you with all his work to do, besides yours, except you were already going full tilt before he died and now you’re pregnant and the economy sucks and your choice is somehow make it work or give up. But this is your home and, dammit, you don’t want to give up. You want to be strong and invincible—

“How bad is it?” Cash said.

—and here’s this man standing in your yard who in less than ten minutes has figured out what’s taken you months to realize:

That, basically, you’re screwed.

Emma sucked in a deep breath, shoving aside the panic that always hovered, looking for the weak spot. “Bad,” she said, feeling Zoey’s arms slip around her thick waist. “I think this is what you call one of those catch-22 situations. I’ve got seedlings and all started in the greenhouse, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. If I don’t get things hardened off and in the ground fairly soon, there won’t be enough to make good for my shareholders who’ll be expecting returns on their investments come summer. Then again, I couldn’t sell enough to hire on sufficient help to make up for … for Lee not being here.”

Munching on a piece of toast, Hunter wandered out of the house to stand beside her, his backpack slung over one shoulder. “Who’s that?” he said, blessed—or cursed—with the ingenuous curiosity of a much younger child. Her mama-radar on full alert, Emma slipped an arm around her son’s shoulders, watching Cash for signs of discomfort or awkwardness. Far as she could tell, there weren’t any.

“Name’s Cash, son. Your daddy and I were friends when we were kids—”

“Cash Coch-ran?” Hunter sucked in a deep breath. “The … sing-er?”

“That’s right. Except I’m kinda taking a break right now. So I thought it might be nice to come back home for a while. Think over a few things. And while I’m doing that—” those silver eyes skidded back to hers “—I could lend a hand here.”

Now it was Emma doing the breath-sucking, as both kids’ gazes locked on the sides of her face. “Excuse me?”

“Not forever, but until you’re through the worst of it. At least until the baby comes. I reckon I still know how to fix a fence and make a raised bed. Fix that roof,” he added with a nod. “And you tell me what needs planting where, I can do that, too. Don’t know much about goats, it’s true, but I’m pretty sure I remember how to navigate the back end of a cow. Don’t suppose it’s all that much different.”

Too stunned to cobble together a coherent sentence, all Emma could manage was a strangled, “Why?”

“I have my reasons,” Cash said, coming closer. Close enough to see there was a lot more going on behind those eyes than Emma could even begin to sort out. “And I’m guessing you’d probably be more likely to accept my labor than my check.” When she started, his mouth pulled into a tight smile. “Although if you’d rather do it that way, so you could hire whoever you wanted … well, I suppose that’d work, too.”

“Ma-ma?”

Emma tore her gaze away from Cash’s to look into her son’s soft brown eyes, his beaming smile. “What, honey?”

“You were right, huh? You said … God wouldn’t let us down, that He … al-ways gives us what we need, as … long as we don’t tell Him how to do that.” Her son’s grin broadening, he pointed to Cash. “And look!”

Biting her lip, Emma looked, thinking it would take a whole lot of humility to see Cash Cochran as the answer to her prayers. Because while she had cause to feel bad for the man, she had even more cause to be wary. For her children’s sake, if not for her own.

Although she knew better than to trust what you read in the tabloids, it’d broken Lee’s heart when he’d seen Cash’s photo alongside some sensational headline slapped across the cover of this or that rag in the Walmart checkout, about the stints in rehab, the failed marriages. True, it’d been a while since she’d read or heard anything untoward. But for all she knew, his “people” had simply gotten better at keeping that stuff from getting out. Or, more likely, that Cash had slipped off the paparazzi’s radar.

Still, she thought as Cash stood with his arms crossed over his chest, the picture of patience, if she truly believed everything happened for a reason, maybe now wasn’t the time to start picking and choosing. A realization that provoked a deep sigh.

“Guess there’s no point in pretending I’m not in a bind,” she said. “Normally I’d have more help, but this was the spring everybody picked to move or retire or find other work or join the army … It would’ve been a trick to get everything done, even if Lee was still here. The kids do what they can, but … they’re kids. And the midwife more or less ordered me to take it easy for the next couple of weeks. But you don’t owe us anything, not your labor and certainly not your money—”

“And maybe I think I do,” Cash said, his eyes locked in hers. Then he glanced away, blowing out a half laugh. “God knows, nothing’s happening here the way I expected, but … it’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to be of any real use to anybody. And maybe for old times’ sake …”

He looked back at her. “It nearly killed me, watching this place die under my father’s hand. And I can see what you and Lee started here. How you salvaged whatever was left. I don’t know why, but I can’t stand the idea of it going under a second time. Any more than you can, I’m sure.”

She blinked back the sudden scald of tears. But when they cleared, she caught a glimpse of at least part of what was going on inside his head. Not in any detail, certainly, but enough to sweep aside what few shreds of useless pride she had left.

“You two need to go on,” she said to the kids, “or you’ll miss the bus. Zoey, no, get your coat, it’s still cold. I know, it’ll warm up, but I don’t want the nurse calling me to come get you in an hour ‘cause your nose starts running again. So go on.”

While Zoey fetched her jacket, Hunter solemnly marched down the porch steps toward Cash. He extended his hand; Cash took it, the wordless handshake apparently cementing something Emma couldn’t begin to understand. Then, grinning, her son trooped back to the porch to pick up his backpack; a second later Zoey streaked from the house and slipped her hand into Hunter’s to walk to the bus.

Not until the kids were out of sight, however, did Emma face Cash again. “Why do I get the feeling you want to do this as some sort of penance or something?”

The muscles around his eyes twitched before he crunched across the dead grass to the sagging wire fence edging the neglected flower garden. “I think what I’m aiming to do,” he said quietly, skimming one palm over the top, “is erase the bad memories. Or at least exchange some of them for new ones. I don’t want the land back, don’t even give that a second thought. But I want …”

Turning, he pushed out a sigh. “For twenty years I’ve been running, from this place, from all the bad stuff in my head. Didn’t do me a lick of good. For twenty years I’ve thought about nobody but myself. That hasn’t done me any good, either. Apparently. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a real human being, Emma.” Another dry laugh. “If I ever knew. So helping you … it would kill a couple of birds with one stone. You need the help, and I need to get back to basics. To somehow return to that time before everything went wrong. To maybe find the kid I once was. Because deep down, I think that kid wasn’t so bad, you know?”

His honesty shot straight to her heart. But the hard set to his mouth, the challenge in his eyes, made it more than clear her sympathy would be unwelcome. After a moment, she nodded.

“So what, exactly, are you proposing?”

“My services for …” He rubbed his chin. “Let’s say six weeks. Or until you’re on your feet again after the baby comes. Sunup to sundown, if you need it.”

If history was anything to go by, she’d be on her feet within twenty-four hours of the birth. She’d often imagined herself as one of those pioneer women who pushed out a baby a year with no sweat. “What about your career?”

He let out a little hunh. “I imagine the music world will get along just fine without me for a few weeks.”

The baby shifted; Emma rubbed his spine. “If you’re sure …”

“I am.”

“Then, all right. I can at least offer you three meals a day—”

“No! I mean, thanks, but this isn’t about …” Cash looked away. “This isn’t about getting close. Nothing personal, but that’s part of the deal. You tell me what needs doing, and I’ll do it. But that’s it.”

Emma was tempted to point out that if part of his goal was to rejoin the human race, staying aloof from the family might not be the best way to go about that. Then again, maybe it was just as well, for many reasons. Like, oh, for instance, the kids getting too close. Especially Hunter, who glommed onto everyone he met. Who’d cried for a week solid after his father’s death.

“One thing, though,” Emma said. “First time you show up drunk or high, you’re gone. I absolutely will not tolerate any of that tomfoolery around my children. Understood?”

Cash’s jaw dropped for a second before he let out a laugh. “Emma … I swear I’ve been squeaky clean for more than seven years. Ever since I wrapped my car around a tree on a back road in North Carolina and realized how bad off I was. You’ve got nothing to worry about on that score, I swear. So … I was thinking you probably want some of these fences repaired first so the critters can’t get at the plantings. Or maybe get those fruit trees pruned?”

“You know how to prune fruit trees?”

“Yes, ma’am. First winter after I left, I ended up at a ranch in east Texas. Small operation, everybody did everything. Aside from the cattle, they also had a decent-size orchard. Peaches and pecans, mostly. So I know my way around a pair of loppers.” He grinned, and Emma’s chest clutched. Seeing that smile on video was nothing compared with seeing it in person. “You can watch me do the first tree, how’s that?”

Finally she laughed. She couldn’t help it. There were a quadrillion reasons why his being here was a bad idea, but none of them trumped her relief that the cavalry had apparently arrived.

“When can you start?” she asked, and the grin brightened to the point where it nearly sparkled. Oh, dear.

“I take it there’s tools around here somewhere?”

“In the shed behind the greenhouse. Mr. Cochran—”

“And you can forget that ‘Mr. Cochran’ stuff,” he said softly. “Name’s Cash.”

“Cash, then,” Emma said, having no idea why she was blushing. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said with a short salute, then strode off, leaving Emma to wonder what she’d gotten herself into. Not to mention what on earth had gotten into Cash. She went back inside to find Annie, dressed now, feeding cats in the kitchen. The old woman looked up from the writhing, furry mass meowing at her feet as she dumped something stinky into a large, flat bowl.

“I take it we’ve got us some help?”

“How do you know that?”

“Turned my ears on high,” Annie said, tapping one hearing aid as Emma lowered herself onto a kitchen chair. “Heard everything clear as a bell. Especially through that pathetic excuse for a window. Wind leaked through my bedroom window so bad last night I thought I’d freeze.” Carefully she bent over to set the plate on the floor, dodging the feline swarm attacking it. Much hissing and swatting ensued. That, Annie ignored. Emma’s conflicted expression, however, she didn’t. “You havin’ second thoughts?”

“Heh. God knows we need the help, but I don’t need the complications. And trust me, Cash Cochran is the definition of complicated.”

Annie poured herself a cup of coffee, poured in a hefty helping of cream and three spoonfuls of sugar, then shuffled over to sit across from her. The Red One immediately jumped up into her lap, giving Emma a smug kitty grin.

“Honey,” Annie said, over the cat’s slit-eyed, Ohmigodyes! purring when she started scratching his head, “God made humans complicated to keep himself amused.” At Emma’s groan, the old woman leaned over to grasp her hand, her expression earnest. “That young man needs us, Emmaline. Probably a lot more than we need him.”

Yeah, Emma thought on a sigh. Exactly what she was afraid of.

Another few days, Cash thought, squinting at the fruit trees as he yanked on a pair of heavy-duty work gloves, and it would’ve been too late to prune them. Waiting until April was pushing it as it was; any farther south, they would’ve already bloomed by now. But the stubborn winter had actually worked in Emma’s favor, keeping the trees dormant.

Almost like they’d been waiting for him.

Oh, hell, no, Cash thought as he hefted the pole saw and trudged across the muddy field to the first tree. Destiny, fate, divine intervention, whatever you wanted to call it … nothing but people’s ways of trying to find purpose in coincidence.

“I could die a happy man,” he said to the giant dog, who’d tagged along—out of boredom, Cash supposed, “if I never heard ‘It was meant to be’ ever again.”

The dog seemed to shrug, then plunked down in the dirt where he could keep one eye on the goats. Or ear, maybe, since his eyes closed almost immediately.

The high, bright sun quickly burned off the morning’s chill; by ten Cash had shucked both his jacket and long-sleeved shirt. By noon sweat plastered his T-shirt to his back and chest, even though it was probably barely above sixty degrees. But at seven thousand feet there was a lot less atmosphere to buffer the sun’s rays.

And absolutely nothing to buffer his thoughts as he cut out the dead wood, opening up the trees to coax a better yield. It’d been ages since he’d worked this hard. No doubt he’d be paying for it tomorrow, he thought as he took a break for another swallow of now-warm water from a liter-size bottle, in time to see Emma headed his way with a towel-covered plate and a thermos.

“What’s that?”

“Food.” She stripped the towel from the plate to reveal a couple of sandwiches, an apple, another piece of pie. “One’s leftover ham from Sunday’s dinner, the other’s peanut-butter-and-jelly. Since I didn’t know what you liked.”

“I thought I said—”

“You said you didn’t want to eat with the family. Not that I couldn’t feed you. Oh, and that’s sweet tea. Annie insisted I bring you some.”

Cash’s stomach growled. He’d figured on going back into town to get something, but refusing her offering would be rude. Not to mention dumb.

“Thanks,” he said, removing the gloves to take the plate. “Appreciate it.”

“I used mustard on the ham, I hope that’s okay—”

“It’s fine. Picky, I’m not.”

One side of her mouth lifted. “You want me to leave?”

And, oh, he wrestled with that one for a good long while. Because God knew he really was in no position to be forming attachments. Especially with his best friend’s widow. But, damn, it’d been forever since he’d simply enjoyed the company of another human being. At least, not without there being a million strings attached.

“No, it’s okay, you can stay. I guess.”

Cash realized his mistake the instant humor sparkled in Emma’s eyes. She tried to wrap up more tightly in a long sweater that didn’t come anywhere near to covering her belly. “Should I feel honored?”

“Doubt it,” he said, and she laughed. A rich, from-the-belly laugh that took him by surprise. Still chuckling, she surveyed his work, nodding in what he took for approval. She’d combed her hair—it’d been a tangled mess before, probably because he’d shown up earlier than was socially acceptable—but instead of leaving it down she’d bunched it all up at the back of her head in a sloppy bun. If it hadn’t been for the freckles, or her eyebrows being nearly the same color, he wouldn’t’ve believed that color red really existed in nature. But somehow he didn’t see Emma as somebody who faked anything, least of all her hair color. He found it hard not to stare at it.

To stare at her.

He lowered himself onto a dry patch in the dirt underneath one of the bigger apple trees, chomping off a huge bite of ham sandwich. Even through the tart burst of mustard, he could taste the sweet-smoky, thickly sliced ham. Damned if that didn’t take him back, too. But not to the bad times, to a place before that. A place he’d missed.

Emma twisted around, a soft smile on her lips. A piece of hair had worked loose, curling lazily around her cheek. She shoved it behind her ear. “Looks good.”

“Thanks. Should be finished by the end of the day. Figured I’d get to those fences tomorrow, then start on the raised beds the day after, if that’s okay.”

“That’ll be fine. I’ve already started hardening off the greenhouse plants, so they’ll be ready to go in the ground in a few days.”

“What all you planting?”

“Bit of everything. Broccoli, beans, several kinds of squash. Melons. A lot of lettuces. Those sell really well, especially to a couple of local restaurants that buy from us. Our CSA clients really like ‘em, too.”

“CSA?”

“Community Supported Agriculture. Otherwise known as farmers’ angels.”

Emma moved to a small stone bench nearby, slowly easing herself onto it with a soft groan. The dog roused himself and trotted over, nudging her hand until she shoved her fingers into his thick fur.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, fine. But … as much as I love being a mama, the last month of pregnancy is the pits. Cramps my style. And this one clearly thinks he’s in a lap pool.” She hesitated, then said, “I think this is what you call irony. Lee and I wanted a batch of kids. But we’d figured, when only two showed up in nearly thirteen years of marriage … I honestly thought we were done.” She shrugged. “Surprise.”

“You regret the timing?”

“That Lee won’t get to see this one? That my baby won’t ever know his daddy? Of course I do,” she said, shifting. “Every single day. Lee’s dying was definitely not part of the plan. But having this little guy to look forward to …” He saw her eyes glitter before she lowered them to the dog, now prone on the ground beside her. “It’s definitely taken some of the sting out for Hunter and Zoey. For me, too. Silver linings and all that.”

“You know it’s a boy?”

“Yeah. The kids and Annie and I argued about a name for months.” She smiled. “Finally settled on Skye.”

“Skye Manning. Good name.” Cash lowered his eyes to the half-eaten sandwich, waiting for the unidentified feeling to pass. “Bet Lee was a great father.”

Emma laughed again. “Oh, he stumbled around in the dark about parenthood like any other human being. Loving your kids doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. But yeah. He was. The kids were crazy about him. Hunter, especially … he simply couldn’t make sense of Lee’s death. And he’s pretty philosophical about most stuff. But he was so angry . . .” Biting her lip, she averted her gaze.

“Like his mama,” Cash ventured, and a tight smile curved her mouth. She heaved herself around to get up, startling the dog to his feet, too.

She regarded the orchard for a moment before asking, “Did you know about Lee’s heart condition?”

“No,” he said around the rest of the ham sandwich, then scooped up the piece of pie. “I remember him being out of school a lot, always having doctors’ appointments. But that was when we were still pretty little. Elementary school. I don’t recall any problems past that point. Other than the usual, I mean. Colds, the flu, stuff like that. So you’re saying this wasn’t sudden?”

“For me, it was,” she said, then sighed. “I’ll spare you the medical terminology—which I could never pronounce right, anyway—but something about his heart made proteins slowly build up in his organs. The upshot was, by the time he had his little ‘episode,’ his kidneys were basically gone, which meant he wasn’t even a candidate for a heart transplant. I think he knew his days were numbered. He just didn’t know what that number was. And for some reason he didn’t feel I was on the need-to-know list.”

“It wasn’t right, him not telling you.”

Cash wasn’t sure which one of them his vehemence startled more. But it all seemed so stupid. And wrong, and unfair. Lee’s misguided belief that hiding the truth was somehow kinder than being honest, his dying so young, all of it.

“At the time,” Emma said, “I would’ve agreed with you. And I’ll admit it still rankles, sometimes. Then I think … what if I had known? Would I have still married him? Absolutely. But would I have said okay to having kids? To taking on this farm?”

A few more pieces of hair escaped when she slowly shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m pretty good about taking things as they come, but I’m also practical. Not a big fan of starting things I can’t finish. Then again, I can’t imagine life without my kids. Without this place,” she said, sweeping out one hand. “Any more than I can imagine what my life would’ve been like without Lee in it.”

The pie gone, Cash wiped his hand on his jeans. “Even though—”

“Yes, even though he kept secrets from me. Even though he never cleaned off his boots when he came inside the house, or put the top back on the peanut butter, or that he played a certain country singer’s CDs over and over to the point I thought I’d lose my mind,” she added with a devilish glint in her eyes. “Human beings drive each other nuts sometimes. So what? Lee loved me, and his kids, and the life we’d made together. And he was a good man, the kind of man a woman’s proud to have by her side. So no real regrets. Except for the selfish part of me that wishes he’d stuck around a little longer.”

A flush of something akin to envy washed over Cash as he picked up the PB&J. Envy, and a dull, reawakened sense of hopelessness he hadn’t indulged in a long time. Not about Emma, but for what she and Lee had obviously had. Although to be truthful, considering how badly he’d botched his own relationships, it all sounded like far too much work, if you asked him.

Besides, women like Emma—the kind of woman who saw her man’s imperfections but still loved him anyway—were pretty damn rare, in his experience. Then it hit him, how his mother had stuck by his father, no matter what, and look how that had turned out.

He bit into the sandwich; a burst of sweet fireworks went off in his mouth. Chewing, he peeled up the top layer of bread to see generous chunks of fruit embedded in ruby-red goo.

“This homemade?”

“Yep. Strawberry preserves. Annie’s specialty. We sell a lot of those, too. Especially to a couple of the local B and Bs. Peach, raspberry, blueberry. Cherry. Hot-pepper jelly, too.”

“Lord, I haven’t had that in years.”

“Doesn’t work real well with peanut butter, though,” she said, and Cash felt a grin shove at his cheeks. Then he frowned again. “How the hell are you so calm? I know how hard it is to work a farm,” he said, dodging the inevitable platitude. “Even with help. And you’ve got two other kids, and Annie—”

“I’m well aware of my obligations without you listing them for me,” she said in that maddeningly even tone. “I’m not in denial. Never have been. But like I said, I’m good at taking things as they come—”

“And what would’ve happened if I hadn’t shown up?”

“But you did.”

Keeping the apple for later, Cash got to his feet and handed her the empty plate. “Okay, then what about when I leave? What then?”

The plate clutched in one hand, Emma crossed her arms over her belly. “If you walked away right now and we never saw you again, I’d still be ahead of where I was yesterday. You pruned my fruit trees,” she said, nodding toward the orchard. “One less thing for me to worry about. Look, I’m grateful for any help I can get. Whatever your motives, I’m not proud. Well, I am, but not too proud to accept assistance—”

“And you still haven’t answered my question. How are you going to manage?”

“I have no idea. But I will. Somehow.” She shrugged. “It’s called trusting that things will work out. Like they always have.”

The obvious spiritual undertone grated. Not that Cash cared one way or the other what, or who, people chose to believe in, but far as he could tell the only thing a person could count on was himself.

“You don’t have doubts?”

A short laugh erupted from her mouth. “Oh, honey, I’ve given them names, they hang around so much. I didn’t say it was easy, trusting that hard. I also didn’t exactly shrug and think, Whatever, when Lee died, believe me. But wrestling with the doubts is what keeps me from getting too big for my britches.” She almost smiled. “Although I guess it’s been too late for that for some time.”

Then she walked away, her hair blazing in the sun no match for her radiant dignity. Of course, all that stuff about trusting was a crock. Far as he could tell life was more or less about making sure you were smarter and faster than the other guy.

But he had to hand it to Emma—she sure talked a good talk. In fact, for a second or two there, she almost had him listening. Nowhere near believing—hell, no—but listening was the crucial first step, wasn’t it?

Yeah. The first step, Cash thought as he went after a branch like it’d personally offended him, down a road that led to nothing but disappointment and heartache.

A road he had no intention of ever going down again. Not in this lifetime, or any other.

Amen.

Chapter Four

“Mama!” Zoey yelled, stomping through the front door, soooo glad this totally, completely stinky day was over. She’d forgotten her spelling homework, lunch had been some disgusting sandwich she couldn’t even eat, and jerkface Jaxon Trujillo would not stop bugging her. And then she tripped getting off the school bus so she landed on her hands and knees in the dirt, and all the kids still on the bus laughed at her. Not even Bumble’s sloppy kisses when she hugged him made her feel better. “I’m home!”

“Shh, child, your mama’s taking a nap,” Granny Annie said as Zoey wriggled out of her backpack and let it thud to the floor. Except Granny gave her one of her looks, so she picked it back up and hung it on the peg by the door as she was supposed to. “Tryin’ to, anyway. Where’s your brother?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.