The Cowboy SEAL. Laura Marie Altom

the walls of grief standing between them could be broken with a mere apology.

      Another growl rose above the stove’s crackling fire and wind rattling the shutters.

      “Cooper...” His sister-in-law’s condemning stare made him feel all of twelve. He’d felt more comfortable staring down a shark. Her intense stare conveyed more than a day’s worth of words. It told him loud and clear that until he at least spoke with his father, she wouldn’t grant him a moment’s peace.

      “Aw, hell...” He brushed past her, hating the cramped space forcing them together. His arm didn’t stop tingling from where they’d touched till he reached the end of the hall.

      Cooper forced a deep breath then knocked on the closed door of his mom’s old sewing room—the only possible downstairs place where Millie and his sister could have stashed his ailing father.

      Rather than wait for an answer, his pulse taking the cadence of a rapid-fire machine gun, Cooper thrust open the door. He’d literally dreaded this moment for the past twelve years. “You still got a problem with me, old man?”

      Clint launched a new series of growls then pitiful, racking coughs.

      “You’ve got to calm down,” Millie said, already tidying the mess her patient had made by toppling his rolling metal tray. “I meant to tell you earlier that Cooper had come for a visit, but it must’ve slipped my mind.”

      The cantankerous old man thrashed as best he could then settled when Millie took a plastic water cup from the nightstand and held the straw to his dried and cracked lips.

      Cooper had readied himself for a fight with the man he used to know. The barrel-chested, ham-fisted, mean-as-a-cornered-rattler father who’d sent him packing. What he faced was a pathetic shadow of Cooper’s memories. Make no mistake, judging by his scowl and dark glare, Clint still wasn’t a teddy bear. But he had lost a good fifty pounds, and his complexion was as pale as the threadbare sheets and quilts covering his bed.

      Clint’s current condition left Cooper’s eyes stinging.

      He’d steeled himself for battle with a lion, not a lamb.

      “There you go,” Millie soothed. “It’s medicine time, and I’ll bet you thought I forgot you.” After kissing the old man’s forehead, she fished three tablets from three different prescription bottles, patiently helping Clint one at a time down them all with more water. When he signaled that he had drunk his fill, she covered his lips with ointment. “Feel better?”

      The old man had his dry-erase board slung around his neck. With his good hand he wrote O-U-T then underlined it twice before pointing in Cooper’s general direction.

      Instantaneously, Cooper’s anger was replaced by profound sadness. And a jolt of something he never in a million years would’ve expected—a fierce longing to make things right with this man he’d once so deeply loved. His mind’s eye no longer replayed their last night together, but flashes of Clint patiently teaching him to change his truck’s oil or beaming with pride when Cooper won his first rodeo. Then came a myriad of shared holidays and ordinary Tuesday-night suppers and racing his brother, Jim, off the school bus, both of them running as fast as they could to find out what their father had been up to in the barn. His dad had taught Cooper how to shoot a rifle, smoke cigars and treat women. What Clint hadn’t done was prepare his son for how to let him go.

      Which meant that in addition to saving this ragtag old ranch, Cooper now felt responsible for saving his dad.

      He felt obligated to say as much, but instead, clung to the room’s shadows. Gratitude for Millie knotted his throat while she fussed with his father’s pillows and blankets. Cooper should’ve helped her. After all, the patient was his dad. But his boots felt nailed to the wood floor.

      Millie asked, “What did you do with the remote to your TV?”

      Cooper had only just noticed the ancient model set atop the dresser. The volume had been turned all the way down on The Weather Channel’s forecaster. Another pleasant memory accosted him when he thought back to the time he and Jim had helped Clint with their first satellite dish. Exciting didn’t begin to cover how awesome it’d been to have hundreds of channels—not that their mom ever let them and Peg watch as much TV as they’d have liked.

      “What’re you smiling about?” Millie asked, on her knees, using a towel to sop water from his father’s spilled plastic pitcher.

      Cooper knelt to help, taking the towel from her. “Remember when we got MTV?”

      She sat back on her haunches and frowned. “How could I forget? That was around the same time you asked why my boobs were smaller than everyone else’s.”

      Cooper winced. “Wasn’t it enough retribution for you that because of that comment, Mom made me scrub baseboards for a week?”

      “No.”

      By the time they finished cleaning, Clint had drifted off to sleep and softly snored.

      “Looks like his meds finally kicked in.” Millie fished the TV remote from where it had fallen under the bed.

      “Yeah...” Cooper stood there like a dope, holding the damp towel they’d used for the floor, watching Millie as she finished cleaning the last of his old man’s mess.

      The past bore down on Cooper’s shoulders, making every inch of him ache—not just his body, but soul. He’d lost so much. His mom. Jim. And now, for all practical purposes, his dad.

      That sting was back behind his eyes.

      Cooper couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken down—maybe not since that long ago awful night. “I—I’ve gotta get out of here.”

      Planning an escape to the barn, he pitched the towel on the kitchen table before making a beeline for the back door. But before he could get it open, Millie was there, wrapping her arms around him, holding strong through his emotional fall.

      His tears were ugly and all-consuming, making his muscles seize. Though he had no right, Cooper clung to Millie, breathing her in. She smelled good and familiar. Of everything he’d left and tried so hard to forget, but clearly had not yet succeeded.

      “I—I’m sorry,” he managed after finally getting ahold of himself. “Shit...” He released her to rake his fingers through his hair. “I’m not even sure what just happened.”

      “Something that probably needed to happen back when your mom died? And again, for your brother?” She rubbed her hand along his upper arm. “Plus, it can’t have been easy—finding your dad in that condition.”

      “Stop making excuses.” Not wanting her to see him, he turned to the wall, planting his palms flat against the cool plaster, then his forehead.

      She stepped behind him. He knew, because he sensed her. Felt her heat. When she kneaded his shoulders, he closed his eyes and groaned. “Lord, that feels good.”

      “I’m glad.”

      “You should stop.”

      “Why?” She worked her thumbs between his shoulder blades.

      “Because I don’t deserve your comfort any more than you’ve deserved to be stuck here on your own with this mess.”

      “This mess you refer to happens to be your father. The man who taught me to cook a mean elk steak and nursed me through losing my husband.” She stopped giving Cooper pleasure to instead urge him around. Her pained expression, the unshed tears shining in her eyes, made the whiskey lingering in his gut catch fire.

      He winced from the sudden pang.

      Something in her expression darkened to the point he hardly recognized her. She took a step back and crossed her arms. “Mess, huh? You honestly think of your own dad having had a stroke so callously?”

      “Come on, Mill, it was just an expression. I didn’t—”

      “Hush.”