Cowboy Comes Home. Carrie Alexander

clear.” Her eyes darkened despite what she’d said.

      “Clear enough for now.”

      “I mean it, Rio. I’m done with men.”

      He followed her out the door. She’d always been a man’s woman. Never interested in girlie things when there were horses to ride, fast cars to drive, dares to take.

      But someone had hurt her badly.

      He hoped it wasn’t him.

      CHAPTER TWO

      AS SOON AS the rattle of Rio’s retreating truck had died, Meg slammed into the house. Tears welled in her eyes. She dashed them away impatiently. She didn’t cry.

      But, oh, sometimes she really wanted to.

      She pressed her knuckles into her abdomen. If only she could have had every organ removed after the last miscarriage, instead of just getting her uterus scraped. Maybe then she’d feel nothing except emptiness.

      “For God’s sake,” she sneered after catching sight of herself in the cloudy mirror near the front door. “What a load of melodrama.”

      Her mother had been a fine melodramatist, according to her dad. Meg remembered her as being sweet, fanciful and loving. But also weak. Emotional. Needy.

      “Not fit for ranch life” had been the common diagnosis after Richard Lennox’s wife, Jolene, had slid from the occasional bleak mood into a deep depression. The townspeople had clucked over the way their daughter had been allowed to run wild.

      They hadn’t known the worst of it. Not until, at age eleven, Meg had found her mother cold and lifeless in her bed, bottles of pills scattered across the blankets. In the community, there’d been whispers of suicide. Her father had refused to accept the possibility. The autopsy had come back as an unintentional overdose.

      Meg didn’t remember much from that time, except that she’d made up her mind never to be weak like her mother. She’d been too young to realize how difficult her mother’s life had been.

      Lately, she’d begun to understand.

      Meg went into the kitchen, took a look at the clock, then inside the refrigerator. Nothing seemed appetizing. Still, she had to eat. Keep up her strength.

      She rubbed at one of her wrist tattoos. Weakness was insidious. It had grown inside her mother until she’d rarely left the bedroom. During Meg’s own bad times, she’d battled against the same urge to retreat. And given in far too often.

      Not this time. She had nowhere left to run.

      She took out the platter of leftover roast beef, added an overripe tomato, a stick of butter. The last of the lettuce had gone to brown slime. A plain sandwich would do, if the bread wasn’t moldy.

      Room and board. Good Lord. She’d have to cook halfway-decent meals for Rio. Sit with him, eat with him, converse with him.

      Incredible.

      She reached beneath her sweatshirt, laid her hand against her flat stomach. Her hip bones were prominent. The waistband of her jeans gapped.

      Rio, she thought again. Still stunned. Rio.

      She shouldn’t have agreed to give him the job, no matter how much she owed him.

      Too uneasy to sit, she carried the sandwich around the house, nibbling at it as she went from space to space. The little-used dining room. The study she avoided whenever possible. The front room, with a river-rock fireplace, her father’s dumpy chair and a carpet worn to the nub.

      The entry hall was ill lit and gloomy. On her mother’s good days, she’d kept it swept and tidy. She’d send Meg out to pick wildflowers for the pitcher on the side table. Now the space was strictly utilitarian. There remained a heap of her father’s boots, a tangle of his outdoor clothing. Fishing rods and garden tools leaned haphazardly against the wall. Clods of dried mud had collected where she’d kicked off her own dirty boots.

      The sight was dismaying. She’d have to do better. Tomorrow, she’d clean it all away. She’d open the doors and windows.

      Meg took a voracious bite of her sandwich. Everything would be better.

      The thought came unbidden: now that Rio’s home.

      THE NEXT MORNING, at a window booth in Edna’s Eatery, long Treetop’s busiest diner, Virginia Carefoot made an unusual fuss over her son. Rio was self-conscious about the curious glances thrown their way, but he put up with the motherly concern. Virginia claimed she had ten years of separation to make up for.

      She’d already coaxed him into ordering fruit and granola on the side of his Belgian waffle. She’d stolen a sausage off his plate, since the nitrates weren’t good for him. Now that they’d finished their meal and ordered refills on the coffee, she’d moved on to his appearance.

      “I can’t get used to you with short hair,” Virginia said with her head cocked to one side. Her gaze was intense, as if she was memorizing his features. He supposed, like her, he looked older. “You’ll let it grow, won’t you?”

      “I’ve had short hair for ten years, Ma.”

      “But now you’re home. The army has no more say.” For someone who had kowtowed to a boss for as long as Rio could remember, Virginia was a proud woman with definite opinions. Although she tended to be as cautious with words as she was with actions. “You’re yourself again.”

      “Maybe I want short hair.”

      She shook her head. Most Crow men wore their hair long.

      Rio couldn’t resist teasing her. “I thought I was myself. Making my own decisions.”

      “Of course.” With a decisive click, she set her cup on the saucer. “But you’re also my son, and one of the Carefoots.”

      Because it was easiest, Rio agreed. As a full Crow, she’d never really got his sense of estrangement. To her, he was a Crow first and a Carefoot second, and that was what was important. Having an Anglo father was merely a detail, best forgotten. Try as he had, Rio couldn’t compartmentalize his life the way Virginia did with her own. For as long as he’d known what was what, Rio’s parentage had remained an unspoken rift between them.

      “When are you going to retire?” he asked abruptly.

      Virginia drew back. “Why should I retire?”

      “You’ve been working for the Stones for thirty years. Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t know how she’d lasted so long.

      “Still, I’m only fifty-six.” She remained a good-looking woman, rounded but vigorous and tough from years of physical labor. Her hair was as much gray as black now, typically pulled back in a low ponytail or wrapped in a bandanna or scarf of some sort. There were a few more lines in her face than he remembered, but Rio didn’t really see them unless he looked. She was his mother—the rock-steady cornerstone that had kept him straight, growing up.

      He’d shaken her only once, when he’d been arrested for arson that terrible night. Ten years later, after he’d been honorably discharged and had come home for good, she’d hugged him fiercely at the airport, and told him she was finally at peace.

      He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that his days of lobbing grenades weren’t over yet.

      “Is it money?” he asked. “Soon, if this book deal works out for me, you’ll finally be able to retire. I’ll help you out with expenses.”

      He had to make the offer, even though he knew that money wasn’t what kept her at the Stone ranch. Every month of his time in the service, he’d sent her a portion of his paycheck, hoping she would use the extra cushion to gain her independence. But she hadn’t wanted that for herself. He had.

      Virginia set her mouth so that deep lines carved brackets at either side. “I live very well, thank you. I have what I need.”

      “You