The Cowboy's Little Surprise. Barbara White Daille

groceries.

      She hadn’t had the money to rent a truck for the move, either, and wouldn’t let him get one, though he’d told her he could easily afford to pick up the tab.

      In the years he’d been gone from Cowboy Creek, he had worked as a wrangler on one ranch after another.

      On the run, Jed had said.

      He’d rather think of it as staying open to possibilities.

      In any case, he had never tied himself to anything permanent, never owned a home or even paid rent or electricity, and he had always traveled light enough to fit all his belongings into a couple of duffel bags. No sense buying things that would only weigh him down. Cheap, some folks might say, but again he preferred to look at things his way and call it being frugal.

      That frugality had paid off. So had his time on the rodeo circuit. He now had a good-sized nest egg he’d been sitting on, thinking of investing.

      As he’d said to Layne, what better investment could he come up with than spending some of it on his sister and her son?

      He knew the answer to that question, all right. So did Layne. He would do anything for the little sister he’d raised practically single-handed.

      In the years he had been gone from Cowboy Creek, he made sure to send money when she asked to borrow it, and even when she hadn’t.

      Deep down, he knew money could never make up for not being here for her the last few years. True, he hadn’t known how bad things were between her and Terry until the end. But maybe if he’d stayed, he could have helped her out more. Been there to keep an eye on her son once in a while, so she and her now-second ex could have had some time together. Maybe that would have saved the relationship—not that he’d believed it had ever really had a chance. Neither he nor Layne knew what a good marriage looked like.

      But if nothing else, helping her back then might have him feeling less like a stranger with his own sister’s child now.

      In the long run, his offer to get the truck for her move had done no good.

      You’re taking care of enough already, Layne had said.

      So he had loaded his pickup and made one trip after another between her former two-story house and this so-called two-bedroom apartment.

      He thought of the trip he’d made out to Garland Ranch that afternoon.

      Though he and Tina had been a couple of grades ahead of Layne in school, the two knew each other. Suddenly, he felt the urge to tell Layne about running into Tina again. About what a jerk he’d been to her in high school and about how that could come back to bite him. About how he wished he’d done some things...maybe a whole lot of things...in his life differently.

      But he’d never dropped his problems on his sister before and sure wouldn’t start now. Not when she had enough troubles of her own.

      She turned from the closet. “I talked to Sugar about giving me more time at the shop and maybe even letting me back her up when she needs help in the bakery.”

      “Do you really need to take on more hours, especially when it means being on your feet, in your condition? If that bast—”

      “Don’t. Please.” She shot a glance toward the door. “I don’t want to talk about Terry around Scott. And I can’t blame Terry. If he were Scott’s father, things might be different, but I can’t expect the man to give me extra support for a child that’s not his.”

      “Is he still planning to see Scott?”

      “He said he would.” But she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

      Damn. A man didn’t just walk away from a child he’d raised, even if that child wasn’t his own.

      But he didn’t push the issue. This was the first time he and Layne had discussed the subject, and he realized the wisdom of keeping the rest of his feelings about it to himself. For now.

      “What about financial support for the baby?” he asked.

      She touched her stomach, not much rounder than it had been the last time he’d seen her.

      Late December. She had just discovered she was pregnant and hadn’t wanted to be home for the holidays. They had met halfway between Cowboy Creek and the Texas ranch he was working.

      For the first time since he’d left town, they had spent Christmas together. They ate dinner in a nearly empty diner decorated with limp tinsel and faded ornaments. But the waitress wore a pin with a reindeer whose nose flashed like a small red strobe light and had made Scott laugh.

      Layne, expecting a baby but already on the road to divorce, had done her best to smile.

      The effort it took told him he needed to come back to Cowboy Creek.

      Layne shifted one of the boxes he’d set on the bed. “My lawyer’s making sure Terry’s keeping up with the insurance payments to cover the hospital.”

      “He’d damned well better keep up. You have any problems, you let me know and I’ll talk to him.”

      “Always the protective big brother,” she murmured, her eyes misting. She sat beside him and rested her head against his shoulder. “I really appreciate everything you’re doing, Cole. Coming back to town. Helping with the move. Even giving me a hand with the unpacking.” She sat back and looked up at him. “I couldn’t have done all this without you.”

      “I’m not begrudging any of it, you know that. But you also have to know you’re not alone here. You heard what Sugar told you the other day. You’ve got friends in town, plenty of friends who would help out.”

      “Yes, I do.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Maybe I should have said what I was really thinking. I didn’t want to do this without you.”

      To his dismay, her voice broke. “Layne...”

      “Let me go check on Scott.” She hurried from the room.

      Earlier, after giving her son strict instructions to stay on the floor with his trains, she had settled him in the living room. With boxes piled throughout the apartment, it wasn’t safe to let him run loose.

      Cole looked at the boxes piled around him in the small bedroom and had a sudden urge to run loose himself. Or just to run. Maybe Jed hadn’t been wrong, at that.

      He felt the need to get the hell out of Cowboy Creek again. Coming back here had dredged up too many bad memories, too many thoughts of how helpless he’d been to protect Layne against their mama’s indifference and their dad’s vicious tongue.

      Too many reminders of the boy he’d once been.

      On the other hand, his return to help Layne through a bad time had brought with it an unexpected advantage. Taking a job at Garland Ranch again would go a long way toward proving he had changed.

      His talk with Tina should have done the same, but her acceptance of his apology had rung about as true as a forced smile at a sad Christmas dinner.

      He’d have to try harder to convince her they could put their past behind them.

Chapter Three

      “What do you think, Paz?” Jed asked.

      At the table in the hotel kitchen after breakfast, he sat finishing up his coffee. Paz stood at the counter where she was making one of her fancy desserts for tonight’s supper. With Tina and Robbie at the breakfast table, they hadn’t had a moment to themselves till now.

      She cracked an egg into the ceramic bowl in front of her. “I think,” she said, “by asking Cole to return to work here, you have stirred up more than the sugar in your coffee.”

      Frowning, he looked at her. She had sounded tart and a few worry lines creased her forehead, but she gave him a faint smile.

      He