The Cowboy SEAL. Laura Marie Altom

her room, she tossed herself across the foot of the bed she and Jim had shared. Never had she needed him more. His quiet strength and logic and calm in the face of any storm.

      She wanted—needed—so badly to cry, but tears wouldn’t come.

      Frustration for her situation balled in her stomach, punching with pain. If she had a lick of sense, she’d do the adult thing—pull herself together and join her children downstairs. She needed to play a game with them and clean the kitchen. Do research on how to build a science-fair volcano. Play mix and match with which bills she could afford to pay. Check on Clint to see if he needed anything.

      While she needed to do all of that, what she wanted was an indulgent soak in the hall bathroom’s claw-foot tub.

      * * *

      COOPER SAUNTERED INTO the smoky bar, taking a seat on a counter stool. In all the years he’d lived in the one-horse town, he’d never been in the old place. Not much to look at with twenty or so country-type patrons, dim lighting, honky-tonk-blaring jukebox, a few ratty pool tables and neon beer signs decorating the walls. But as long as the liquor bit, that’d get the job of escaping—even for a moment—done. After a few drinks, he probably wouldn’t even mind the yeast scent of a quarter-century’s worth of stale beer that’d sloshed onto the red industrial-style carpet.

      He said to the guy behind the bar, “Shot of Jim Beam, please.”

      “I’ll be damned... Cooper?”

      “Mr. Walker?” Seriously? Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The grizzled cowboy not only happened to be one of his father’s best friends, but owned the land adjoining the Hansen ranch.

      He extended his hand for Cooper to shake. “Please, call me Mack. Figure if you’re old enough to drink and serve our country, you’re old enough for us to be on a first-name basis.” He poured Cooper’s shot then one for himself. Raising it, he said, “About time you came home.”

      “Only temporarily...” Cooper downed the fiery elixir. “I’ll head back to my base just as soon as things get settled.”

      “By things, I assume you’re talking about your father? Damn shame. Everyone’s just sick about the run of bad luck your family’s been having.”

      In no mood to hash over the past or present, Cooper wagged his glass. “Another.”

      Mack obligingly poured. “Things that bad out there, huh?”

      Cooper winced from the liquor’s bite.

      “I told your father he was a damned fool for running you off. What happened with your momma... Straight-up accident that could’ve happened to any one of us. I know deep in his heart Clint agrees, but he’s too damned stubborn to tell anyone—let alone his firstborn—any different.”

      The tears stinging Cooper’s eyes hurt worse than the liquor burning his throat.

      “He needs you. Millie needs you. Hell, even those ragtag kids of hers need you. Yep...” He smacked the wood counter. “’Bout damned time you came home.”

      Nice sentiment, but for his own sanity, Cooper knew he was only passing through. A long time ago he’d lost his home, his way, and for a messed-up guy like him, there was no such thing as second chances.

      * * *

      “WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?” Millie warmed her hands in front of the living room’s woodstove, wishing she hadn’t been on edge ever since Cooper had run off, vowing she wouldn’t lower herself to even turn around and look at him. She thought her lazy, twenty-minute soak would make her feel better, but all it had done was given her the privacy needed to think—not good for a woman in her condition. Hot water, plus loneliness, plus closing her eyes to envision the first handsome face she’d seen in years had proven anything but relaxing. Especially when that face belonged to her dead husband’s brother!

      “Where do you think?”

      She knew exactly where he’d been. She shouldn’t have wasted the breath needed to ask. “It was a serious dick move for you to walk out like that. You owe your niece and nephew an explanation.”

      “Dick move? Talk to your momma with that mouth?”

      She spun around to face him, only to find him unnervingly close. “You know better than most anyone I don’t even have a mom, so you can put that sass back in your pocket.”

      “Sorry.” He held up his hands in surrender, and her stupid, confused heart skipped a beat. The only reason she even found him attractive was the endearing similarities he’d shared with his brother. Mossy-green eyes and the faint rise in the bridge of his nose. The way his lips looked pouty when he said his m’s. The way he made her wistful and achy and irrationally mad about how perfect her life had once been and no longer was. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have taken off, but honestly?” He shook his head, and his crooked smile further lessened her anger’s hold. “I was scared.” He removed his battered straw cowboy hat, crossing the room to hang it on the rack by the door. Even with his buzz cut, he sported a wicked case of hat hair and damn if it didn’t look good. “Those kids of yours asked tough questions. I don’t even know the answers for myself.”

      “I get that, but they’re kids. They weren’t even born when your mom died, and they take it personally when their only uncle never even had the decency to send them a birthday card. They’re smart, Coop. Their little ears pick up more than I’d like, and as much as Peg loves you, she’s also that exasperated by your disappearing act.”

      “I didn’t just—”

      “Shh!” she admonished when he’d gotten too loud. “Do you want to wake J.J. and LeeAnn? Even worse—your dad?”

      “Sorry,” he said in a softer tone. He sat hard on the sofa, cradling his forehead in his hands. “But you know damn well I didn’t just disappear. When you run down your mother with a truck, then your father tells you to, and I quote—Get the hell out of my house and don’t ever come back—it tends to linger on a man’s soul.” When he looked up, even by the light of the room’s only lamp, she could tell his eyes had welled. She hated to see him hurting, but she’d hurt, too. They all had. They all were, still. He didn’t own the rights to pain.

      “Look...” With every part of her being, she wanted to go to him. Sit beside him and slip her arm around his shoulders, but she physically couldn’t. Her feet literally wouldn’t move. Outside, sleet pelted century-old windows. The weatherman out of Denver said they could have six inches of snow by morning. “I smoothed things over with the kids by giving them an abridged version of what happened with their grandmother. But for your own well-being, you have to once and for all get it through your thick head that the only one who blames you for the accident is your father—well, aside from yourself. Why did your mom even go out there? She knew better.”

      A laugh as cold as the wind rattling the shutters escaped him. “Her dying words were that she’d run outside to give me a piece of her mind for drinking and staying out so late. She then told me if she’d had a lick of sense, she’d have gone to bed early in case she needed to bail me out of the county jail come morning.”

      “There you go. So see? She admitted she was partially to blame. Do you honestly think that just because of your cantankerous father she’d have expected you to carry this ache inside you for all these—”

      A crash of metal erupted from the back bedroom where Clint was supposed to be sleeping. Then came a gut-wrenching growl.

      “What was that?” Cooper asked, already on his feet, heading in that direction.

      Her stomach knotted. “I would imagine, that was your father....”

Chapter Four

      “Go see him,” Millie said. “You can’t avoid Clint forever.”

      Cooper