The Triplets' Rodeo Man. Tina Leonard

had a woman leave him without saying goodbye. He had always been the one who’d left. There was something final about a woman who departed of her own accord; it left the other player no moves on the chessboard.

      At least the electricity had come back on this morning. Jack grabbed the blanket off the floor, where they’d made love in front of the cheery—and romantic, if he did say so himself—fire he’d built in the fireplace. A strange spot on the blanket caught his eye; dumbly he stared at the stain. And that’s when he realized that Cricket Jasper had been keeping secrets. She hadn’t offered him the slightest clue that she’d been a virgin, which felt somehow as if she’d cheated.

      She wasn’t a virgin anymore. Now it stung like crazy that she hadn’t hung around for a goodbye kiss. Jack felt worse than at any time in his life, even when he’d been thrown flat on his backside—and maybe even stomped—by an assorted collection of ill-tempered bulls, as he tossed the blanket into the washing machine.

      Cricket’s desertion served as a reminder of the other people in his life who seemed to move on without saying goodbye. He didn’t have to put up with this crap. After he’d tidied up the place so that no one would ever know he’d been there, Jack grabbed his stuff and headed back to the one place he knew was a safe harbor—the rodeo circuit.

       Chapter Five

      “Marry me,” Josiah Morgan said to Sara Corkindale, the kind social worker who’d helped his son Pete and his daughter-in-law Priscilla adopt quadruplets last month. “Marry me and put me out of my misery.”

      Sara laughed. “I’m not willing to be a secret bride, Josiah. And if you are at death’s door—as you’ve claimed you are, I suspect, to get sympathy from your family—why should I make myself a widow again? I’ve already done that once, and it’s very hard to say goodbye to a good friend and husband. Why would I marry you knowing you’re ready to hang up your spurs?”

      He shook his head. “I like you,” he said simply.

      “And I like you.”

      She patted his arm affectionately in a way that was not at all condescending. Josiah hated everybody tiptoeing around him and treating him like an invalid. Sara made him feel as if he still had something to offer a woman.

      “You’d like being my wife even better.” She didn’t seem inclined to bend to his way of thinking, so Josiah considered his other options. As he had moved himself into her house, where he knew none of his sons or their wives would think to look for him, he didn’t have many options. He was rather at his hostess’s mercy.

      “You’re going to have to tell your children where you are eventually.” Sara looked at him with a gentle smile as she put a fresh-baked pound cake on the table, and then picked up her knitting. “If I marry you, they’ll say I took advantage of you.”

      “No one has ever taken advantage of Josiah Morgan!” This was a fact; his sons wouldn’t dare suggest it because it would be ludicrous. “I’ll marry when and who I want.”

      “You can’t hide behind my skirts, Josiah,” Sara said, and his jaw went slack.

      “Sara Corkindale, I should take you over my knee and spank you for suggesting I’m a coward.” He thought about doing it and decided he didn’t dare. Hide behind her skirts, indeed! No one had ever suggested he might be a bit thin-skinned and he rather admired her spunk.

      She held up her work. “This is a baby blanket. It’s going to be blue and white, and warm enough for winter’s chill.”

      “It better not be for me,” he said darkly. “Sara, I’m a man, not beholden to anyone.”

      “This blanket is for one of the babies at the orphanage. There are never enough warm things. And I know you’re a man, Josiah, but you know you’re hiding here when you should just express your opinion to your sons. If you don’t want to have the kidney operation, then say so.” She went on with her knitting serenely. “In the meantime, you can’t stay here forever.”

      “I can’t?” Josiah had gotten used to the comfort and peace of Sara’s home in the past few days. He’d gotten used to the calm way she went about her business. In his mind, he’d envisioned himself living here until the end of his days.

      She shook her head. “No, you can’t. Not until you straighten your life out with your children.”

      She was still worried someone would think he’d been coerced into marrying her. She didn’t understand that no one had ever made him do a thing he didn’t want to. When Gisella had left him, there hadn’t been a durn thing he could do about that, but still, that had been Gisella’s choice. He’d always respected her decision, knowing he’d been at fault. But that hadn’t been coercion; he’d become a single father because he’d been a bit of a ham-handed dunce. “Are you saying that once I tell everyone I don’t want the surgery, that what I want is to get married, you’ll marry me?”

      She stopped knitting and looked at him. “Josiah, I would marry you if you were going to be around a while.”

      “Nothing’s certain in life.”

      “I know that. But you seem determined to have an expiration date stamped on you, and it’s hard for me to want to get married knowing that.” She swallowed, chose her words carefully. “Don’t ask me to care about you and then say goodbye to you in less than a year.”

      She had a point. Suddenly, he didn’t want that, either. It would be horrible, holding her at night, watching the stars with her, seeing the sun come up in the morning with Sara, and knowing each sunrise might be his last.

      “I still don’t want to do it,” he said quietly. “My son is reckless. He’ll always be a hell-raiser. Sara, you don’t know my boy, but Jack…Jack deserves the chance at the kind of full life I’ve had. And nothing’s ever going to stop him from rodeoing, not even being minus a kidney.”

      “You’ll have to stop trying to live everyone’s lives for them, Josiah,” she said, pulling her chair close to him. She put her head on his shoulder. “Our children have to make their own choices.”

      “So you’re saying I should accept one of his body parts and then just sit around and wait for the phone call that he…he’s gone to the great rodeo in the sky?” He didn’t think he could do that. Some things were too awful to contemplate.

      “Or you could accept his gift, and then go watch him ride as often as you can,” she said.

      “Watch him ride!” Josiah exclaimed. “Not durn likely!”

      “Have you ever seen him ride?”

      “No, and I ain’t gonna start now!” Josiah felt an urge to yell, but knew he better keep his voice down. This was a lady’s home, and he respected Sara too much to yell. But for pity’s sake, the woman asked a lot of a man.

      “I’ll go with you,” she said softly, and he melted like a pile of snow in August. “And I’ll take you back to the hospital, too, so that they can finish looking you over. I think you’d want to do that. I’m sure you’ve scared your kids half to death.”

      “All right,” he said, surrendering. “That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been sweet-talked into anything, you know.”

      She kissed his cheek. “Didn’t it feel good?”

      He felt like warm dough under her benevolent, cheerful gaze. “Yes,” he said, “it felt mighty good.”

      I N THE LAST TWO MONTHS Jack had been to South Dakota, North Dakota and a few other states, chasing buckles and trying to forget Cricket. He hadn’t heard from her, not that he’d expected to. It was crazy how he couldn’t get the deacon off his mind.

      He hadn’t heard from stubborn old Pop, either. He had a new cell-phone number, so his brothers hadn’t been able to reach him. Now that it was May and he’d ridden off a lot of angst, he’d had time to think