The Cowboy's Sweetheart. Brenda Minton

kids do.” They liked the crafts, the stories. He got that. He had liked it, too. “I need to feed the horses and then I’ll get cleaned up and run to the store.”

      He brushed a hand through his hair and for the first time, Wyatt smiled. “Yeah, you might want to get a haircut.”

      “Probably.” He slid his feet into boots and finished buttoning his shirt. “I guess just help yourself to anything you can find. The coffee’s ready.”

      A brother and two kids, living in his house. Now that just about beat all. It was really going to put a kink in his life.

      But then, hadn’t Andie already done that? No, not Andie, not really.

      When he walked out the back door, his dog, Bear, was waiting for him.

      “Bear, this is not our life.” But it was. He could look around, at the ranch his dad had built. He could smell rain in the air and hear geese on a nearby pond.

      It was his life. But something had shaken it all up, leaving it nearly unrecognizable. Like a snow globe, shaken by some unseen hand. He looked up, because it was Sunday and a good day for thinking about God, about faith. He didn’t go to church, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten faith.

      So now he had questions. How did he do this? His brother was home—with two kids, no less. His best friend was now his one-night stand. He had more guilt rolling around in his stomach than a bottle of antacid could ever cure.

      Did this have something to do with his crazy prayers before he got on the back of a bull a month or so earlier. Did the words God help me count as a prayer? Or maybe it was payback for the bad things he’d done in his life?

      Whatever had happened, he had to fix it—because he didn’t like having his life turned upside down. But first he had to go to town and get groceries, something to feed two little girls.

      Church had ended ten minutes ago and Andie had seen Ryder’s truck driving past on his way to the farm. But they’d been stalled by people wanting to talk with she and her grandmother. Caroline had managed to smile and hang at the periphery of the crowds.

      “We need to check on Ryder and Wyatt.” Etta started her old Caddy, smiling with a certain pride that Andie recognized. Her granny loved that car. She’d loved it for more than twenty years, refusing to part with it for something new.

      What could be more dependable, Etta always said, than a car that she’d taken care of since the day she drove it off the lot?

      Dependable wasn’t a word Andie really wanted to dwell on, not at that moment. Not when her grandmother was talking about Ryder.

      “I think Ryder and Wyatt are able to take care of themselves.” After her mother climbed into the front seat beside Etta, Andie slid into the back and buckled her seat belt. Etta eased through the church parking lot.

      It hadn’t been such a bad first Sunday back in church. The members of Dawson Community Church were friends, neighbors and sometimes a distant relative. They all knew her. Most of them knew that she’d gone on strike from church when Ryder stopped going. Because they’d been best friends, and a girl had to do something when her best friend cried angry tears over what his father had done, and over a moment in church that changed their lives. A girl had to take a stand when her best friend threw rocks into the creek with a fury she couldn’t understand because life had never been that cruel to her.

      Her strike had been more imaginary than real. Most of the time Etta managed to drag her along. But Andie had let her feelings be known. At ten she’d been pretty outspoken.

      “How long have you known Ryder and Wyatt?” Caroline asked, and Andie wanted to tell her that she should know that. A mother should know the answer to that question.

      “Forever.” Andie leaned back in the seat and looked out the window, remembering being a kid in this very car, this very backseat. Her dad had driven and Etta had sat in the passenger side. The car had been new then. She’d been more innocent.

      She’d heard them whispering about what Ryder’s dad had done. She’d been too young to really get it. When she got home from church that day she’d run down the road and Ryder had met her in the field.

      “Forever?” Caroline asked, glancing back over her shoulder.

      “We’ve known each other since Ryder was five, and I was three. That’s when they moved to Dawson. I guess about the time you left.”

      Silence hung over the car, crackling with tension and recrimination. Okay, maybe she’d gone too far. Andie sighed. “I’m sorry.”

      Etta cleared her throat and turned the old radio on low. “We’ll stop by the Mad Cow and get takeout chicken. Knowing Ryder, he doesn’t have a thing in that house for Wyatt and the girls to eat.”

      “What happened to Wyatt’s wife?” Caroline asked.

      Stop asking questions. Andie closed her eyes and leaned back into the leather seat. She wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t say something that would hurt. She was working on forgiving. God had to know that wasn’t easy. Shouldn’t God cut her a little slack?

      Etta answered Caroline’s question. “She committed suicide last year. Postpartum depression.”

      It still hurt. Andie hadn’t really known Wendy, but it hurt, because it was about Ryder, Wyatt and two little girls.

      “I’m so sorry.” Caroline glanced out the window. “It isn’t easy to deal with depression.”

      Clues to who her mother was. In a sense, Andie thought these might also be clues to who she was. She waited, wanting her mother to say more. She didn’t. Etta didn’t push. Instead she turned the Caddy into the parking lot of the Mad Cow. And Ryder was already there. He was getting out of his truck and a little girl with dark hair was clinging to his neck. He looked like a guy wearing new boots. Not too comfortable in the shoes he’d been forced to wear.

      He saw them and he stopped. Etta parked next to his truck.

      As they got out, Wyatt came around the side of the truck. The older of the two girls was in his arms. She didn’t smile the way the other child smiled.

      “We didn’t beat the church crowd.” Ryder tossed the observation to Wyatt but he smiled as he said it.

      “No, you didn’t, but you can eat lunch with us.” Etta slipped an arm around Wyatt, even as she addressed the response at Ryder. “And you’ll behave yourself, Ryder Johnson.”

      “I always do.” He winked at the little girl in his arms and she giggled. And she wasn’t even old enough to know what that wink could do to a girl, how it could make her feel like her toes were melting in her high heels.

      Andie wished she didn’t know what that wink could do to a girl. Or a woman. She didn’t want to care that he looked cuter than ever with a two-year-old in his arms. He looked like someone who should have kids.

      But he didn’t want kids. He had never wanted children of his own. He said the only thing his childhood had prepared him for was being single and no one to mess up but himself.

      “You look nice.” He stepped closer, switching his niece to the opposite arm as he leaned close to Andie. “You smell good, too.”

      Andie smiled, because every answer seemed wrong. Sarcasm, anger, the words “Is this the first time you’ve noticed how I look?” and so on.

      She didn’t feel like fighting with him. She felt like going home to a cup of ginger tea and a good romance novel. She felt like hitching the trailer back to her truck and hitting the road with Dusty, because she could always count on her horse and the next rodeo to cheer her up. She could head down to Texas.

      “You look a little pale.” Caroline stood next to her, another problem that Andie didn’t want to deal with. She felt like a tiny ant and people were shoveling stuff over the top of her, without caring that she was getting buried beneath it all.

      “I’m