The Cowboy's Surprise Baby Page 5

  So she’s been keeping track of me, he thought, feeling a little smug for just a moment, until he realized he wasn’t exactly being fair. He knew he would need to tell her his own little secret.

  “I read your articles, you know,” he said. “Every one. I have for years. I even learned how to set up a filter so anything with your byline goes straight to my email.”

  He knew she was staring at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn his eyes from the road in front of him. He didn’t want her to know everything he was sure his eyes would say.

  Luckily, they soon pulled up in front of Tony’s Steak House at exactly the right moment. “I hope you’re not a vegetarian or anything,” he said as he parked the truck.

  “No matter how much I’ve traveled, I’m still from Texas,” she answered, as if that obviously settled the question.

  Jack went around and opened Amy’s door for her, but decided not to try to take her hand. Even after their giggles and confessions, she still seemed ill-at-ease. But that was fine—there would be plenty of time for that later. He hoped.

  For now, it was enough to be walking with her into the “fancy” restaurant that a teenage version of himself had taken Amy to for her eighteenth birthday after scrimping and saving for months in order to be able to afford it.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said, as if he’d mentioned that romantic dinner they’d had so long ago.

  “It’s not going to break the bank for us to eat here this time,” he answered, though that might not be entirely true if he couldn’t find a new roping partner soon.

  “I remember I was too nervous to order anything on the menu because I thought it would bankrupt you. You had to finally order for me just so I wouldn’t have a meal of table bread and water.” Amy smiled at the memory.

  Jack could remember every moment of that evening they’d had together, and the images it brought to mind sent zings of pleasure through him. If he wanted to go slow with Amy, start from zero, a walk down memory lane certainly wasn’t going to help.

  “I really wanted to impress the beautiful stranger tonight, so I thought this would be the best place to take her. It may not be the Ritz, but it has great steaks and happens to be the nicest restaurant within a fifty-mile radius.”

  “I bet you take all your dates here,” Amy commented, playing along.

  “Only the most interesting ones. And never on a first date. I’m not made of money.”

  She chuckled. “I guess neither of us are pulling in the big bucks, huh? Weekly dates here are still just a dream.”

  He remembered the “one day” conversation they’d had shortly after the birthday dinner, talking about when they’d have enough money to eat there all the time, after he’d become a star on the rodeo circuit. Teenagers with big hopes and very little real-world experience.

  For Amy, though, he’d gladly take her to Tony’s for every meal until he went broke, if it made her happy.

  They stepped inside the dim, romantic atmosphere of the restaurant and were quickly seated in a small corner booth. He took off his cowboy hat and slipped it onto a hat peg before holding her chair out for her. They settled in at their table, the candlelight flickering on the table.

  After they looked at their menus for a few moments, Jack asked one of the many questions he’d been wondering about since he’d heard she was in town. “So, what made you decide to come to Spring Valley for a month-long visit when you haven’t been home for that long in a decade?”

  He tried to say it in a conversational tone, but he doubted it hid how curious he was in the answer.

  “I thought we were doing the ‘beautiful stranger’ thing,” Amy told him.

  She sounded almost nervous, but Jack had to know. “How about we each get one nonstranger question?”

  Amy sighed and looked at her water glass as if she suddenly found condensation to be very interesting. She was quiet for a moment, like she was gathering her thoughts. He waited, eager to hear what had changed.

  “I was robbed at gunpoint about a month ago,” she said.

  “Someone pulled a gun on you?” he responded, shocked.

  “Shh,” she whispered urgently, ducking her head a little at his outburst.

  It took Jack a second to realize how loud he’d been. Of everything he’d expected her to say, that hadn’t been it.

  “Someone pulled a gun on you?” he repeated, much quieter this time.

  Amy shrugged. “I was walking around the Medina in Morocco at night and got pulled into an abandoned alley. It’s fine,” she added, placing a calming hand on his arm. “I wasn’t hurt or anything, and all they got was a little bit of cash and my phone. Still, it was unnerving. I was in a bad place mentally for a while.”

  She paused, and Jack waited. It seemed like she was making some sort of decision, though what it could be, he had no idea. “Eventually I realized I needed to come home, see my family. And settle some unfinished business,” she finished, her face grim.

  He pointed to himself to check that she meant he was the unfinished business.

  “Yes, you. And—you know, this is going way deeper than first-date conversations usually do,” she said.

  He was leaning forward with interest. What else could she possibly have left undone that would be changed by a near-death experience?

  “And?” he prompted.

  “And I figured I should meet my half sister. She emailed me a few months back, but I hadn’t responded. I didn’t know what to say. It took that gun pressed to my head to get me to realize I wanted to meet her. We’re going to see each other next week.”

  Jack let out a low whistle and sat back. He’d always known Amy was adopted, but she’d never seemed curious about her biological family. The McNeals were enough, she used to say.

  Before either of them could say anything else, their server arrived, and the moment she’d left with the orders—two steaks, of course—Amy turned to him. “Okay, I answered your one non-first-date question. Now it’s my turn.”

  “Fire away,” he said, wondering what on earth she might want to ask.

  Chapter Four

  Amy looked into Jack’s eyes as he waited for whatever question she might throw at him, an open book. Guilt rushed through her.

  She should have told him about what else had happened after the robbery, about Armand and the last push that finally sent her home to him, to this date. She just hadn’t been able to make herself say it. Telling Cassie was one thing, but this was Jack. For the time being, Amy couldn’t say the words aloud, see his reaction, feel the shame all over again.

  “You okay?” Jack asked, putting his hand over hers. “You can ask me anything, Ames,” he said, trying to reassure her.

  Amy looked at Jack and resolved to tell him about Armand another time. For now, she wanted to have an enjoyable date with a man who was sweet and honest.

  There was one question she could ask that might assuage her guilt a little, though, and she grasped at that straw. “What’s your dating life been like since I left?” she asked, hoping to get answers to her real questions.

  Did you forget about me? Have you loved others, even for a short time, since I’ve been gone?

  She wouldn’t have been able to say what answer she wanted to hear, but she had to know.

  Jack gave her a little smile she couldn’t interpret. “I’ve dated a few women here and there,” he said.

  Amy wasn’t sure what to do with that, but before she could say anything he continued. “Nobody ever quite met the bar you set, so none of them lasted long. I think they knew as well as I did that there was always someone’s shadow between us.”

  His blue eyes gazed into hers, and Amy felt gratitude and pain rush through her. She grasped his hand tightly, assuring herself that he was real, not just some wistful daydream. He squeezed back.

  After a short silence,
Amy let go and cleared her throat. This was getting too intimate for her comfort, and she decided it was best to change topics. “Do you have any prospects for your next roping partner?” she asked.

  This set off a lively conversation of prospective candidates, and since Amy was, as she had confessed in the truck, up-to-date on the current competitors in Jack’s field, they were able to both contribute to the discussion. They talked about it through dinner, between ordering food and being served their meals.

  When the waiter cleared the dishes and they wrapped up rodeo talk, Jack asked, “Tell me more about what you’ve been up to, Ames. Is hotfooting it around the world as wonderful as you make it out to be in your articles? It always seems like even the disasters are once-in-a-lifetime adventures.”

  Amy ran a finger through the condensation on her water glass as she thought about what to share. Armand’s face popped up once more, but she shoved it back down. Still not the right time. “It’s not always as glamorous and fun as my writing suggests, no. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. when you’re still jet-lagged because you need to move on to the next thing, even though you’ve hardly seen any of the cool new city you landed in two days ago, or typing on a laptop while sitting next to a toilet in a sketchy alburgue because you have a deadline and it doesn’t care that you have food poisoning, or discovering that you were a few hundred yards away from a bombing in Istanbul. Having a strange man hold a gun to my head and shout in a language I don’t understand.”

  A smooth talker getting what he wants from you, making you care for him, and then treating you like trash, she added silently. Amy cleared her throat, refusing to allow the tears stinging her eyes to fall. “Situations like that have made me wonder why the hell I’m not curled up in my bed with a book while Ma makes me a delicious meal,” she finished.

  Jack looked at her curiously, and she waited for the question she knew would come next. “Then why are you still doing it?”

  She shook her head, knowing her answer wasn’t going to do her experiences justice. “For every terrifying or awful moment I have, I get dozens of nuggets of perfection. The sun rising over Mount Fuji, or a stranger insisting they help you find your hotel and refusing any payment. A pickup soccer game with kids in South Africa.”

  It was a little disheartening, though not at all unexpected, for her to see that Jack didn’t really understand what she meant. He had never felt wanderlust. Heck, up until she moved away to college, she hadn’t, either. They had planned to honeymoon in Vegas to see the National Finals Rodeo and counted that an exotic trip to a far-off land.

  Amy smiled at the memory, even though it made her a little sad. She had changed so much since she was a teenager. The past few weeks had made that clear.

  Perhaps she’d changed too much to even be here, on this date with Jack. She didn’t want to let herself think that through.

  Luckily, Jack saved the conversation by picking up the dessert menu. “So, what do you want? The lava cake?”

  Amy put a hand over her stomach and groaned. “I ate way too much to be tempted by dessert, and you have to bring up my biggest weakness? That’s not fair.”

  He smiled at her. “How about I share it with you? Half a lava cake isn’t too much for anybody.”

  She readily agreed, and soon they were dipping their spoons into the molten chocolate. Amy closed her eyes as the hot dessert melted on her tongue. “I’ve tried a million desserts in more countries than I can count, but this beats them all hands down.”

  “Maybe Texas deserves to be a regular stop for you from now on, huh? You know, since there’s delicious lava cake to be had.”

  Amy wasn’t fooled one bit into thinking Jack wanted her to come home more often because of a dessert, but she looked at the cake anyway. “Maybe I’ll need to start making longer visits home a regular thing. For chocolate’s sake,” she said, glancing up into his eyes.

  He gave her a smile that curled her insides and made her wish they were somewhere much more private.

  Whatever else was true of the past decade, Amy knew that she had never quite gotten over her high school sweetheart, and here she was so close to him she could feel the heat coming off his skin. She knew she would be a fool to throw that away, no matter what ghosts tailed her.

  Soon they were walking out into the brisk autumn air, and Amy only wished the date could have been longer. In fact, she didn’t want it to end, to be left alone in her room with her worst thoughts and doubts. With Jack she felt safe, protected.

  “I’d like to take you one last place before I drive you home,” Jack told her as they settled into his truck.

  Amy let out a silent sigh of relief. “Where?” she asked, curious.

  “You’ll see,” he said mysteriously before turning his eyes to the windshield and the road before them.

  Jack was always trying to surprise her when they were teens, so it seemed only fitting he would have another trick up his sleeve. Amy settled back and waited, knowing any attempt to learn more about his plan would be futile.

  It only took a few minutes for her to realize where they were going, anyway, and a thrill went through her that she forcibly tamped down. He might be driving her to his house, but that probably didn’t mean what her body wished it might mean. Even if it did, she knew it was too soon for her to get on that horse again, as much as Jack’s presence sent her into overdrive.

  “Taking me home to meet your mother? That’s a pretty big step for a first date,” she said, reminding herself to keep things light and slow.

  Jack cocked a smile in her direction. “It’s past eight, which means she’s already in bed reading one of her mystery novels. A visit with her will need to wait.”

  Then what was his plan? She couldn’t begin to guess, so she sat back and waited as Jack parked his truck in front of Stuart Ranch.

  “Come on,” Jack said as he opened Amy’s door and took her hand, pulling her toward the barn. Amy followed without thinking, her mind focused on their hands. They hadn’t made much physical contact throughout the date, and each time was purposely cut short, as if they’d both been avoiding something they knew to be dangerous. But now her hand was wrapped in his, and it felt as if it had never belonged anywhere else. Her heart thumped hard in her chest.

  Then they were in the dark barn and Amy was distracted by the familiar sight and smells. She had spent countless hours in that barn with Jack doing all manner of things. Some innocent, but many less so, and those thoughts thrilled her.

  Jack pulled her along until they were among the rows of horses, and then he reached up and pulled a cord to a bare bulb, illuminating a small circle around them. Amy looked at Jack, waiting for him to explain what exactly he was thinking, but he said nothing. He just pointed to a nearby stall.

  Amy walked over, curious, and what she saw took her breath away. It was Bandit, her horse, the one that had died almost ten years ago. The same markings, the same shake of the head. Everything.

  “How...” she began, but was unable to formulate her amazement into words.

  “This is Maverick, sired by Bandit just after you—Just after we graduated,” Jack answered.

  She knew what he’d been about to say: just after you left. It stung, but she ignored it. The animal walked up to her and pressed his head against her just the way Bandit always had.

  Amy could feel tears in her eyes yet again, for joy this time.

  * * *

  JACK WATCHED AMY hug Maverick’s neck and knew she was hiding her face so he wouldn’t see her cry. Ever since the foal was born, Jack knew Amy would be shocked to see the likeness to Bandit, but for a long while he’d thought she would never have the chance. As soon as she’d agreed to go on a date with him, he knew that this would be an important part of the evening.

  Amy leaned back from Maverick’s neck and smiled, though her eyes were red. She patted the horse’s neck gently. “It looks just like him,” s
he said.

  Jack smiled. “I know. Acts like him, too. I’ve always thought he has his father’s spirit.”

  He didn’t say that seeing Maverick every once in a while had helped when he missed her too much. Caring for the animal was, in a way, like caring for a little piece of Amy.

  As they stood in silence together beside the horse’s stall, a light pitter-patter on the roof told them it had begun to rain.

  “Can I come back and see him again?” Amy asked, her voice so quiet Jack almost didn’t hear her.

  “Of course,” Jack told her. “You’re always welcome here, no matter what.”

  With that, she said goodbye to Maverick and they walked to the barn door. For a long minute, they stood watching the rain fall, glittering in the light from his childhood home. It was getting late, and those lights would go out soon.

  His mind drifted back to long-ago hidden moments spent in this same barn with this same woman, and the urge to kiss her overwhelmed him. He turned to Amy, and as if she had been anticipating this exact moment, she fell into his arms with an almost desperate urgency.

  With their lips together, Jack knew what heaven must be like. The lifting, soaring feeling inside him overshadowed any possible worries about falling in love with Amy all over again. If this kiss was any indication, he’d never managed to recover from the first time, whatever he’d told himself.

  After what seemed like several lifetimes, their lips broke apart, though neither of them moved from their embrace. Jack rested his forehead against Amy’s and tried to gather all his control for what he knew he should say. “My truck doesn’t handle rain well, so I should probably get you home before the rain gets too bad and we’re stuck out here,” he told her.

  “Would that be so bad?” she asked, still breathless from the kiss.

  Jack groaned quietly. “If you’re not suggesting we sleep together, you need to tell me now. I’ve only got so much self-control, and most of it is being used to have this conversation instead of kiss you again.”