Teaching the Cowboy (23 page)

“Dad, I think I can manage to pick out a one bedroom apartment on my own, especially with what you’re going to pay in rent. I’m an adult, by the way. You keep forgetting that.”

John blew out a breath and held the door open and nodded as the guest passed through into the living room. “Adult or not, I can certainly back that figure down if you think it’ll enrich your college experience.”

“No, but thank you. If I’m going to be without a car for a year, I want to at least be close and comfortable.”

“Yeah.” He could just barely make out Ronnie’s car from where he stood. After they all figured out she wasn’t coming back, he’d towed it over to his property and parked it near the guesthouse. Becka had bawled the entire time it’d taken for him to chain the axle to his truck’s tow hitch. Fortunately, Ronnie had left her door unlocked so shifting into neutral was no major feat.

“I don’t understand, John,” Becka had cried. “What did I do wrong?”

John had been in fairly shitty mood and had wanted to tell her that maybe Ronnie feared death by drowning in her tears, but instead he’d just shrugged and went into the little house to clean out Ronnie’s belongings. They were all in his guesthouse now.

He didn’t really understand the rhyme or reason to what she took and what she left. Her dresser and closet were cleared out, but she’d left some of her toiletries in the bathroom. Her computer was still there, which John was tempted to turn on and examine for clues of her whereabouts, but in the end he felt like that would be an unforgivable breach of confidence. The teaching materials were neatly arranged on the counters and tables, still tabbed and highlighted and pages opened to the next lessons as if she had planned on being there for them. Her hat, the taupe hat he’d given her that day he took her riding, dangled from one of the bedposts. It looked as new as it did the day he’d given it to her, and that made him angry. It wasn’t her lack of appreciation of the gift, but more so that she wasn’t there to wear it.

“Landon, just let me know what you decide, okay? Have them fax me the application forms, and I’ll get ’em back and send them the deposit check the same day.”

“Great. Thanks, Dad. I gotta run. There’s a bus I need to catch to downtown.”

“All right. Wait. Did that intercom just say ‘code blue’?”

“I don’t think so. I think it might be the connection. Bye.” And he clicked off.

John blew out a breath and stuffed the phone into his back pocket. “Kids.”

Chapter Nineteen

S
id heard pounding up her stairs and then a knock at the door.
Shit. Must have left the street door unlocked
.

“Sid?” The visitor’s voice was deep, throaty. Distinctive.

She rolled her eyes and unlocked the door. “Eddie. What are you doing here?” She hadn’t seen the man in months.

“I got the job. He gave me the job.”

She put up her hands and shook her head. “Backtrack. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t talk to John?”

“John? No. Ever since Ronnie left, I sure don’t if I can help it. He’s cranky.” Now Ronnie, that was another person she had a bone to pick with. She wanted her friend back. Hell, was she even Ronnie’s friend? Friends didn’t just up and leave friends with no warning. The signs had been there, though. She knew in her gut. She was angry with herself for not acting when she had the chance. But what could she have done if Ronnie was really so unhappy?

“You don’t?” He took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well, I went away for a while after Christmas. I heard about a gig in Kansas that would have been a little more stable, you know what I mean? It’d give me a chance to move up in the ranks. Worked right under the ranch manager.”

“So what happened?”

“I stayed in touch with some of the folks at the Erickson place and they told me Rufus had left.”

“Yeah. His wife insisted. She was frustrated about the school situation and the new tutor. They moved to her folks’ place in Colorado.”

“That’s what I heard. With the gig being open, I called John to see if maybe he’d consider me for it.”

Her jaw dropped. “Ballsy.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t have anything to lose by trying. He agreed to try me out for a couple of weeks, and here I am. I’m still in training, but I think he actually took off this afternoon to leave the ranch.”

“
John
did?”

“Yep.”

“Whoa.” She braced her hands against the walls, waiting for the Earth to shake. When it didn’t, she shook herself like a duck. “You must really know your stuff for him to just leave you to it without watching over your shoulder. Either that, or there’s some crazy shit going on in Lundstrom Land.”

She figured the latter. Nothing had been right since Ronnie bounced. People couldn’t seem to get themselves together.

He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “So, now that I’m back, you want to go out?”

“Are you kidding me? I haven’t heard a peep from you since Christmas and you just want to pick up where you left off?”

“Yup.” He tossed his hat onto the floor and before Sid knew what hit her, his hands were cupping her bottom and picking her up to wrap her legs around his waist. He carried her without a struggle toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

“This isn’t how dating works.” She started loosening the buttons of his flannel shirt.

He opened one door and then closed it upon realizing it was Kitty’s room. “You all right with that? If you want, I can go outside and call you from the street and ask you nicely if I can come up. Maybe go pick you some wildflowers and bring you chocolate?” He opened the next door. Success. “If you want, we can go get some Mexican food and I can take you to a movie you’ve probably already seen. Any of that sound good?” He climbed onto her bed with her still wrapped around his waist, and laid her down.

She shook her head. “No, not really. I had Mexican last night.”

“Me too. How ’bout a little Indian tonight?”

“Huh?”

He kissed her.

Landon swirled his fingers over Johanna’s silky head and rocked her gently on his lap. “She looks like Dad. Sorry, Ronnie. Your genes lost.”

Ronnie sighed and draped a spit cloth over his shoulder. “Joey’s four months old. She doesn’t look like
anyone
.”

He chuckled and pushed his glasses up. “Make you feel better to think that?”

“Little bit,” she said, voice soft.

“Ronnie, you could always go back.”

“I can’t. Don’t you see? You’re here now. You see this is my life. I don’t belong in Wyoming. There’s nothing there for me.”

“I’ll try not to feel hurt by that.”

“You know what I mean. I love John. I do. I love you all. But that’s not enough.”

“Love’s not enough? Really?”

“Think about it. Would you choose to spend your life being unhappy with where you are?”

“If it meant I were around people who loved me, yes. You can adapt. Just like I’m adapting to getting around in a city without a car. Just like I’m adapting to people assuming I’m some kind of bigot because I grew up on a ranch.” He let Johanna gum his index finger. “Ronnie, I wanna tell you something that’s kind of, well, I don’t know if you’ll think it’s surprising, but—”

His cell phone rang. He read the display, cringed, and accepted the call. “Hey, Dad.”

Ronnie reached to take the baby, but Landon shook his head.

“You did? That’s great. Listen, I’m at the library…”

Ronnie watched as his face went pale. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.

He swallowed hard. “You are?”

Now he handed the baby over. She whimpered at the displacement, but was quickly pacified by Ronnie’s breast.

“Yeah, I’ll leave the library now and meet you at the apartment. All right. Bye.” He swiped the
off
button. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What happened?”

“Dad flew in to surprise me and see the place. He’s at my apartment.”

“Go, go.” She waved him away.

“Yeah.” He shoved his feet into his sneakers and started knotting them. “I’ll call you when he’s gone.”

“Okay. Just be cool.” Cool was far from the way she felt. John was in Raleigh? So close? She wanted to see him, but reality slammed into her. She couldn’t.

“See you,” Landon called back with one hand on the door. He opened it. John stood on the other side scowling, his arms crossed over his chest and the phone still clenched in one hand.

“Nice library. Followed your bus. You jumped on as I was pulling in.”

Oh, my God.

John finally swiveled his head toward where Ronnie sat on the sofa. His eyes widened and then narrowed. He sidled past Landon and walked right over to Ronnie, crouching at her feet and peering down into Johanna’s face. When he finally pulled his gaze away from her and darted it up to her mother, his expression was dark.

“Give her to me,” he said.

Ronnie held Joey tighter, an odd sense of uncertainty she was wholly unfamiliar with riding her. This was the man she thought she loved, that she had even missed all those months she’d been away. But, looking at him, she remembered how he represented things she wanted no part of. Yes, there were the good things. There were the kids and Sid back in Wyoming, but the rest? If offered the choice to take it or leave it, she’d
leave
it. And she had. He was the reason she was in this mess in the first place. The reason her world was upside down, why she was sleep deprived, frazzled, cranky, and impossibly in love with a little person she never expected to want so much. Still, in her estimation, she had the final say on where she and Joey belonged. She knew best.

“Dad.”

John tossed his firstborn an icy look and pointed at him. “I don’t want to hear from you right now.”

Landon shifted his weight, studied John, then Ronnie, and blew out a breath. Shitty situation to be in, having to choose sides, or at least pretend to be neutral. He wrapped his fingers around the knob and quietly shut the door, shutting them all in with John.

“Veronica.” John’s voice was soft, but held an edge she didn’t appreciate. “Give her to me.”

She put a hand over the baby’s ear and stroked her cheek with the other. Joey couldn’t care less about anything beyond the contents of Ronnie’s breast, but Ronnie didn’t want to startle her. She was probably wondering whose deep voice that was that didn’t belong to Phil or her brother.

“Presumptuous much? You assume she’s yours?”

“Why wouldn’t she be? Unless?” His head swiveled toward Landon, who lingered near the door as if he was waiting to be cast out.

Landon stared at his father a moment and then his eyes widened behind his glasses as the connotation became clear. He gave his head an emphatic shake. “No.”

John turned back to her, his annoyance having escalated from teeth grinding to flaring nostrils.

Ronnie was unmoved. She’d faced worse,
angrier
men, and for lesser reasons. Reason had always won out then, and with her calm words, they’d come away from the ledge, too. But she wasn’t feeling so calm at the moment.

“She’s mine. Give her to me.”

Ronnie chuckled. “Yeah. Hi, Daddy. You got something you want to tell me? Perhaps a word about proper contraception use.”

A creak had them both looking at the door where Landon was about to slip out. “Stay,” they both said.

Landon groaned but stepped back in and closed the door.

John set his angry glower back on Ronnie. “I’m sure you’ve already guessed. Why hash it out?”

“Usually, it’s the man accusing the woman of poking holes in condom to trap him. Seems like we’ve got a reverse situation here.”

“If I had thought that trick would have worked, I might have done it, but obviously it didn’t. It was an old condom. Sue me.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

His face flushed an unhealthy shade of purple, and Ronnie resisted the urge to kick him in the nuts to get him breathing again. It was a slight that would hit home hard for him, but she was feeling somewhat combative at the moment, given his not-so-remorseful pronouncement.

“I don’t get you, woman. You should have stayed put.”

“Let’s not get into
should haves
. You kept your secret. I kept mine.”

“It’s hardly the same thing.”

“You need to calm down.”

He growled through clenched teeth and stood, pacing in front of the sofa while rolling his shoulders back. “Calm, she says.”

The quip that formed on her tongue didn’t seem worth it. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and watched the man pace.

“Come on, Ronnie. Give her to me. I’m not going to fly off with her as if I were a buzzard and she were carrion.”

“All right. Meet your daughter.” She unlatched the baby from her breast, and tucked herself in before handing the squirming infant to her father.

His expression softened as he took her, cradling her against his chest and staring down into her big, gray eyes. “What’s her name? I should know her name.”

“Johanna.”

“Johanna Lundstrom. Has a nice ring to it.”

“No, John. Silver.”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

Landon took a few steps closer to the sofa. “Dad, it made sense at the time for her to have Ronnie’s last name. Besides, she couldn’t list you on the birth certificate because you weren’t present at birth.”

John turned toward the encroacher and rubbed Joey’s back as she swatted at the stubble on his chin. “You’re in deep shit, kid.”

Landon sighed. “Probably.”

“You were there at the birth, weren’t you? When you were supposed to be looking at apartments?”

Landon nodded.

John made his way to the recliner and sat. “I don’t want to deal with either of you right now. I need to catch up on, what, how many months have I missed out of my daughter’s life?”

Ronnie shoved a swath of curly hair out her face and mumbled, “Four.”

“Well, that’s just hunky dory.” He propped Johanna into the crook of his left arm while dialing his phone with his right thumb. He put it to his ear, and while it rang on the other end he shot blue daggers with his gaze to Ronnie and Landon alternately.

Ronnie and Landon huddled near the TV’s armoire, more or less propping each other up. Ronnie had suspected this confrontation, whenever it happened, would be spiritually draining, but she didn’t expect it to make her legs noodley and heart race, too.

Maybe Momma was right and Ronnie was wrong. But there were varying degrees of wrong, weren’t there? Certainly Ronnie’s wrong was just a little one. She’d done what she’d had to do at the time. John wouldn’t have understood. Wouldn’t have accommodated her. That seemed especially evident now.

John cleared his throat and shifted his phone to his other ear. “Hey, Dad. How’re are things with Eddie at the ranch?”

Landon cut his gaze to Ronnie.

She shrugged.

“Thanks for hanging around while I’m gone. Hey, listen. I picked up a little surprise after meeting Landon.”

Surprise. That’s putting it mildly
. Ronnie straightened her shirt and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling rather exposed,
vulnerable
even, without Joey in her arms.

“No, no. Not a souvenir. Nothing that disposable. It’s a baby. You’ve got a fifth grandkid. Might not be five for too long, though, because I might kill number one.”

Landon slung an arm around her shoulder. “Been nice knowing you. I had hoped to live to see twenty-one.”

Ronnie leaned her head against his chest and sighed. “Twenty-one is overrated, anyway.”

“Oh, no, Dad. Far as I know, Sid hasn’t been pregnant recently. This one’s mine. Looks just like newborn me down to the fluffy cheeks. Little girl named Johanna Silver. Get that?”

“What do you think your granddad’s saying?” Ronnie asked Landon.

“Hard to speculate,” he responded.

John ranted on. “So, tell Eddie I’ll be a couple days late, will you? Keep an eye on him? Meanwhile, Landon’s gonna help me pack Ronnie’s shit. You know, his last chore before I kill him.”

“I don’t think so.” Ronnie took a step toward John, but Landon grabbed her by the back of her T-shirt.

“Give him space.”

“Dad, do me a favor and call my lawyer. Fill him in. See what he suggests. Find out if he can dig a six foot long shallow grave for me. I’d do it myself, but I have a baby to cuddle. She’s a cute little thing. I’ll send you a picture from my phone. You can show Liss and Peter their sister. What do you mean, don’t do anything rash? What do you suggest I do? Leave her here? Not happening. Her mother can tag along or not, but it’d be a damn shame to take a nursling away from her momma, don’t you think? We wouldn’t even do that a heifer.”

Ronnie growled.

Landon hugged her shoulders. “He’s just blowing off steam. He wants you to be as hurt as he is.”

“Yep. I’ll call you later. Need to go get my kid a new fucking birth certificate.” He stuffed the phone into his pants pocket and turned his attention to the baby, outright ignoring Ronnie and Landon completely.

They left him be.

About four hours later, John found Ronnie in her bedroom, perched on the edge of her queen sized bed folding laundry. The room was cramped. It would have been cramped with a
twin
sized bed with the co-sleeping unit pushed between it and the wall. There was hardly room for her dresser, small desk, and the piles upon piles of laundry that lay in wait.