Accidental Hero. Loralee Lillibridge

well as inquiries from interested out-of-town parents. Her determination to ease the load on Pop’s shoulders was the motivation behind her drive to succeed. Bo Ramsey and her past were no longer important.

      “Don’t worry about me, Pop. I’ll be fine. I’m sure Bo won’t try to see me. Why should he?” Her voice was soft and husky, its quiver hinting at the panic hovering just beneath the surface of her self-control.

      “Abby, I wish….”

      “Don’t, Pop. Don’t even start, okay? That was a long time ago and best forgotten.” She pulled away and started for the back door, grabbing her hat from the wall hook on her way out. “Let’s get the chores done before I go to town. I don’t have any students today, but I promised IdaJoy I would help during the lunch rush. Saturdays are the café’s busiest days.”

      Abby was halfway to the barn before Buck caught up with her.

      “Bo Ramsey’s back.”

      For the second time that day, the impact of those words slammed Abby’s heart against her ribs. With a calmness that was a total sham, she concentrated on making her legs carry her across the room to the nearest stool at the lunch counter.

      The Blue Moon Café was empty except for IdaJoy Sparks, sole owner of the local diner and main information center for the entire community of Sweet River, Texas, population not quite a thousand people on a good day. IdaJoy’s announcement, made the minute Abby walked in the door, came as no surprise. Still, Abby was grateful there were no others around to witness her moment of weakness.

      She thought she’d prepared herself for this. Knew IdaJoy would confront her with the juicy gossip. Didn’t need the questions that were bound to be asked.

      “I know,” Abby said, as soon as she could breathe normally.

      “You do?” IdaJoy’s voice screeched up a whole octave at the end of her sentence. She had a unique way of sounding like an angry blue jay when she got excited—which was most of the time.

      Abby put a death grip on the cup of coffee the waitress shoved in front of her. Her hands were shaking so hard, she didn’t dare try to lift it to her lips yet.

      IdaJoy snapped her gum between her back molars loud enough to rattle windows and arched her penciled eyebrows at Abby.

      Abby nodded. “Pop told me this morning, but there’s no reason for me to—”

      “Land sakes, hon,” the woman interrupted. She reached across the counter to pat Abby’s arm. “Of course, there’s reason. Why, everybody in town figured you two as practically married before he up and ran off with that—that Marla person.”

      She popped her chewing gum again and smoothed her lacquered beehive hairdo. “By the way, how do you like my new color?” She swiveled around to present Abby with the full view. “It’s called Bustin’ Out Blond. Thought it was time for a change. Life’s gettin’ way too boring.” Without waiting for Abby to comment, IdaJoy grabbed a cup of coffee for herself and came around to sit on the stool next to Abby.

      Eager to get on with the gossip session, the woman’s chatter never slowed down long enough for Abby to change the subject. IdaJoy could jump from one thought to another without batting a mascaraed eyelash. Sometimes it was hard to keep up.

      “I declare, I never thought Bo would do such a thing,” she said, her blond beehive wobbling precariously with each shake of her head. “Men! Fickle, fickle, fickle. What that cowboy ever saw in her is beyond me. She was always a troublemaker for her Uncle Shorty, you know, ever since he took her in. Remember…” IdaJoy stopped midsentence and eyed Abby sharply. “You all right, honey? You look a teensy bit peaked. Want some water?”

      “I’m fine,” Abby assured her with a weak smile.

      “You sure you feel like waitin’ tables today, hon? You skipped breakfast, didn’t you? Now, you stay right where you are and I’ll go fix you some toast. Back in a jiffy.”

      With another motherly pat to Abby’s shoulder, the woman sailed away in a swirl of heavy musk perfume, leaving Abby sitting there, staring at the cup still clutched in her hands, too numb to answer. Too weak to stop the flood of memories.

      The first time she’d ever seen Bo Ramsey, he was a newly hired hand for the spring roundup on Shorty Packer’s ranch and the best-looking cowboy ever to stroll down the streets of Sweet River. His skill with horses and expert riding ability soon gained him the respect of the other Packer ranch hands, but the female population of Sweet River, Texas, admired him for very different reasons. His smoke-black eyes and X-rated smile put fantasies in the minds of every woman in town over the age of sixteen, and Abby was no exception.

      Shorty’s niece, Marla, lived on the Packer ranch and had wanted Bo right from the beginning, so it was no surprise to see her work her wiles on the good-looking cowboy. Marla always wanted to be first, no matter what the prize. She collected men like most women in Sweet River collected recipes.

      The big shocker came several weeks later, when Bo delivered a young steer to Buck Houston’s ranch and met Abby face-to-face. Intense didn’t begin to describe the immediate attraction that caught them both by surprise. Faster than the speed of small-town gossip, their relationship catapulted beyond anything either one had ever imagined or hoped for. By early summer, the entire town, including Abby herself, expected wedding bells to ring in the near future, even though no promises had been spoken. Then Bo had announced he was leaving to make a career in the rodeo circuit. Riding, especially the challenge of bull-riding, had always been in his blood. He knew he was good and had wanted Abby to share in his success. Abby had tried to make Bo understand that her father needed her on the ranch. She couldn’t leave. Not with the ranch’s finances finally beginning to climb out of the red. She didn’t dare leave the bookkeeping to her father’s hard-to-follow system. His simple belief that everything would eventually take care of itself was the very thing that got the ranch in trouble in the first place. Buck Houston knew ranching, but was too easy-going to worry about crunching numbers. Besides, she considered rodeo life too risky. She wanted stability in a marriage. And a family. They argued, fought, made love and argued some more. In the end, neither one surrendered. And in the blink of an eye, Abby’s whole life changed.

      Even now, there was no way to describe the crushing pain Abby felt at Bo’s betrayal. He left in late August without saying goodbye, but Marla made sure the whole town knew what a wonderful father Bo was going to make. That bit of information was the final blow that had shattered Abby’s heart. Never again would she believe in ever after.

      She looked at her shaking hands, dismayed that those bittersweet memories still posed a threat to her carefully monitored emotions. Anger at herself for allowing such a thing to happen burned deep inside her chest.

      “Now, eat up, hon.” IdaJoy pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen with well-curved, swaying hips, a plate of wheat toast and homemade strawberry jam in one hand, coffeepot in the other. She placed both in front of Abby, then frowned. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

      She leaned across the counter and lowered her voice. “I guess maybe that’d be the case, if you saw Bo again, huh? I hear he looks a whole lot different now. That’s what Louie LittleBear told me, and he should know.”

      Abby forced her thoughts back to the present. “Different? Oh, well, it’s been two years, after all. We all look…”

      “I’m talking real different, like Louie almost didn’t recognize him at first. Saw him when he took some feed out to Shorty’s place. Bo was in the barn, but hurried off without so much as a howdy when Louie said ‘Hey.’ Shorty was the one who told him Bo was staying there. Didn’t say why, though.” Her eyes widened. “You reckon Marla’s there, too…with their kid? Louie said he didn’t see ’em. What else did Buck tell you?”

      IdaJoy’s penchant for gossip was tempered by her honest concern for the people she loved, and Abby knew the older woman cared about her. It was just so awkward, being the object of sympathetic looks and whispers in a town the size of Sweet River. Everybody knew everything