The Come-Back Cowboy. Jodi O'Donnell

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       “God knows I never meant to hurt you, Addie,” Deke said.

      But you did, she thought. And I’m so afraid you’ll do it again.

      She simply couldn’t let it happen! Angrily she swiped away a traitorous tear. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this!”

      “Do what?”

      “That I wouldn’t cry over you ever again! Because I cried rivers over you, till I thought I’d die. Damn it, it took years to stop my heart from pounding at every ring of the phone or trip to the mailbox. You can’t do this to me again, Deke. You can’t come barging back into Bridgewater and m-make me—” She broke off, her heart thundering in her chest.

      “Make you what?” he persisted.

      She scraped at her wet cheeks. “Damn it! Make me love you again!”

      Dear Reader,

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      Happy reading!

      Karen Taylor Richman,

      Senior Editor

      The Come-Back Cowboy

      Jodi O’Donnell

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To my fellow St. Ambrose C&M-ers—thanks for being a big part of why I love my job.

       JODI O’DONNELL

      grew up one of fourteen children in small-town Iowa. As a result, she loves to explore in her writing how family relationships influence who and why we love as we do.

      A USA TODAY bestselling author, Jodi has also been a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA^® Award, and is a past winner of RWA’s Golden Heart Award. She lives in Iowa with her two dogs, Rio and Leia.

      The Journal of Addie Gentry

      June 15

      Our son was born today. Deke’s and mine. Which means it’s been about nine months since he left—left without a word of explanation or even a goodbye. Left before his promise to me had died on his lips: that he’d love me forever, would never leave me….

      Still, he’s beautiful, this tiny baby the two of us created. And when I look into those eyes that are so like his father’s, I know that even with all the tears I’ve cried over Deke’s leaving, the prayers I’ve sent up to heaven begging for his return, the words of hopelessness I’ve written on these pages…even with all these, I could never regret this child we made.

      And so as much as I’ll curse myself for doing it, I’ll keep on praying in my heart of hearts: come back, cowboy. Oh, cowboy, won’t you come back…?

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

       Chapter One

       “J ace! Jace, come back here this instant!”

      The sound of a truck door slamming in the distance tempered the sheer panic in Addie Gentry’s voice as she burst through the same door that seconds before her son had shot out of like a pellet from a BB gun. She’d be blasted, though, if she’d duck her head in embarrassment. She wasn’t about to give her son the notion he could get away with such behavior just because one of the ranch hands happened to be within earshot. Nossir.

      Thank goodness that at her order, Jace stopped short of the weathered gazebo halfway across the yard. She could see he still radiated pent-up emotion, fists nailed to his sides in barely leashed frustration, telling her he was spring-loaded to take off again. And making him look like another who’d up and left.

      It raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

      “You are not running away from here, Jace,” Addie said, sparing not a glance toward whoever it was who’d slammed the truck door and marching toward her son. Her progress was hindered by the heels of her one and only pair of nice pumps suck-plugging in the turf with every step, which escalated her own frustration this morning yet another count. The expensive shoes would be ruined in this mud, which only added insult to injury: they’d already punished the tender tissues of her feet, widened by miles in cowboy boots.

      The hair she’d spent forty minutes coaxing into order in the damp mid-April weather frizzed up around her face like she’d stepped on a live wire. Now, there was a thought. As good a solution as any. Unfortunately, she had barely enough time as it was to get the situation with Jace taken care of, much less find a moment to fix her hair—with Connor due any minute.

      “I will not stand for this sort of behavior,” Addie informed Jace when she reached him. “You got a problem with what’s goin’ on, you stay and work it out. Runnin’ tear for bear out the door is not an option!”

      He at least had the grace to look ashamed, as he scuffed a boot toe against the gazebo’s worn wooden step, making him seem more like the boy she’d raised and not the rebel who’d taken over her son’s six-year-old body ever since her announcement last month. This boy she had some hope of reasoning with.

      “Jace,” she said, gently taking him by the shoulders to turn him toward her, still ignoring the figure at the corner of her vision who had the decency not to intrude on their private business, even if they were conducting it practically in public. “Hon, why won’t you at least give him a chance?”

      “’Cause…he’s a phony, Mama!” He looked up at her, amber-green eyes again turning contrary in his boyish face. “He says he’s a rancher, but he can’t hardly rope a cow or nothin’. All the boys laugh about how he’s the only rancher they’ve seen who gets slicked up before he goes to work every day.”

      It sounded as if she needed to have a talk with the hands, Addie thought severely, perhaps starting with the one who’d set out toward them from across the ranch yard. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out his identity, but the drab light and misty air obscured even the edges of the red barn behind him.

      She bent back to Jace. “Just because a man’s