The Cowboy's Family Christmas Page 8

  “I know the lay of the land so that helps. And Chad did well, all things considered.” He wanted to be positive, but the reality was Chad’s main contribution to the roundup was to park his horse in a gully to prevent the cows from turning that way. Reuben could see it would take a while before Chad felt comfortable on a horse, let alone become an asset to herding and cutting cows.

  Once again he felt a niggle of despair. How did Leanne even think she could carry the weight of all the work this ranch created on her own?

  Leanne sighed, shifting in the saddle. “I’m glad this is the last of them. We’ll just have to process them and then we can put them in the winter corrals.”

  “That’s still a lot of cows to feed over the winter.”

  Leanne nodded and Reuben struggled to keep his comments to himself. It didn’t matter what he thought of her trying to run a ranch with George and Chad—depending on how long he lasted—right now he had a job to do, so he might as well get it done.

  “Did you get enough hay put up to feed them all?” he asked. He knew when he was working on the ranch, hay production was hit or miss. In a good year they had hay to sell. In a bad year, they’d have to buy.

  This elicited another sigh. “Not really. I need to phone around. We’ll need at least another hundred bales to get us through the winter. I’m thankful we could keep the cows on pasture as long as we could, otherwise that number would be higher.”

  He heard the faint note of tension in her voice and even though it wasn’t his problem, panic flickered through him.

  “Have you found a supplier?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If you don’t, you might have to sell some cows.”

  Leanne bit her lip in frustration. “Is that your solution to everything? Sell?”

  “Just being realistic. You don’t have dependable help and you’re looking at a lot of work if you winter all the animals you have now.” He stopped himself, wondering why he was even getting involved. He would only be around long enough to help, then he was gone.

  “Did you ever like being on the ranch?” she asked, tilting her head as if challenging him. “Dirk always said you could never wait to leave, that that’s why you spent so much time rodeoing.”

  “That’s not true,” he countered, nudging his horse to get closer to the cows at the back. “I loved working cattle, riding fences, training horses. I think I liked it more than Dirk ever did.” He couldn’t stop the defensive tone in his voice. It bothered him that she was quoting Dirk to him. Dirk, who had told him over and over again that he didn’t want the ranch their father kept promising him.

  She was quiet a moment, as if absorbing this information. “When Dirk and I got married, he talked about living here. Settling down.”

  Her calm discussion of plans she and Dirk had made when they got married dug like a hook into his heart. He and Leanne had made plans too. Though she had been angling for the two of them to live on the ranch, he knew he could never have let that happen because of his father. But he had hoped their love was strong enough that she would be willing to go with him wherever he wanted to go.

  “Is that why you married him?” he asked suddenly, struck by an idea. “Because he wanted to live on the ranch and I didn’t?”

  She turned away from him, looking ahead, as if she couldn’t face him. “I told you why I married him. I was pregnant and on my own.”

  The set of her jaw told him that until they resolved the issue of the mystery texts, they would always hang between them. And right at that moment, he was tired of the distance. He wanted to find a way to make things better before he left.

  “It must have been difficult for you,” he said. “To be in that position.”

  He looked ahead, his eyes on the cows as they moved along, but most of his attention was on the woman beside him.

  “It was. Thanks for acknowledging that.”

  “Dirk was a good man,” he said. “I’m glad he helped you out when...when you needed it.”

  “Ironic that he wouldn’t marry me before. And when he finally did, we had only two weeks...” her voice trailed off and he realized that in spite of the history between them and how things had transpired, he should have guessed Leanne would be grieving the loss of the history she and his brother shared.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, moving his horse closer to hers. As he did, their legs touched and awareness flickered through him. Then, in spite of the voice in his head warning him not to not get too involved, to keep his distance, he reached over and put his hand on her arm, squeezing gently. “I miss him too.”

  To his surprise she didn’t pull away, letting their shared grief connect them.

  Then she turned to him. “I wish things could have been different. For us.”

  He held her gaze, shock and another, older emotion flowing up into his soul. Yearning.

  For a moment, he wondered, the possibilities teasing him. He and Leanne and Austin. Together.

  On the ranch? With George?

  “I wish they could be different too,” he said. Their eyes held a moment, and it was as if time wheeled back to a better place. When they were full of plans, focused on the same thing.

  Not like they were now. Alone yet bound together by their son.

  Then her horse turned its head, pinning one ear back, and Reuben recognized the signal Spud was giving his horse, Mickey, to keep its distance. As he moved away, reality doused any sentimental feelings he might have been harboring.

  Stay focused on your plans, he reminded himself. Leanne is a part of your past.

  And Austin?

  Reuben pulled in a steadying breath. He felt as if he, Leanne and Austin were suspended in an uneasy limbo and he wasn’t sure how to resolve it. He knew he couldn’t give up on plans he’d spent the past four years putting together.

  But could he walk away from Leanne again? Or turn his back on his son?

  “So what did you think of what Carmen said. About George?” Leanne asked.

  Reuben looked ahead as he shifted his thoughts to his father, swaying with the easy motion of his horse. The saddle leather creaked, the occasional lowing of the cows broke a silence he never experienced living in the city. “You’ve never caught him smoking?”

  “No. And I’m sure he doesn’t smoke in his room.”

  “You’re in the other wing of the house,” Reuben teased. “You wouldn’t know if he was.”

  Leanne shrugged her reply.

  “I have to tell you, though, that he’s aged a lot since the last time I saw him,” Reuben continued. “He looks tired.”

  “He’s had a lot to deal with the past few years.”

  Reuben acknowledged that with a nod, but to him that didn’t change the fact that his father seemed to have lost his will to keep the ranch afloat.

  “You like working with my dad?” he asked.

  Leanne looked away, hunching her shoulders as if in defense. “He’s a...complicated man. But I also think he’s lonely. Losing Dirk was hard on him.” She looked over at him. “And you haven’t been around much.”

  Reuben released a harsh laugh. “I doubt he’s missed me,” he said.

  “I’ve never dared ask him, but maybe you can tell me, why is he still so upset with you?”

  He paused, weighing his answer, trying to figure out how he was supposed to encapsulate all those years of stress and fighting and disagreement into a conversation that would end as soon as they got to the corrals.

  “I know that part of it had to do with your mother,” Leanne ventured.

  “She was one reason. Dirk was the son of the loving mother and doting wife. I was the son of the woman who made George look like a fool. I was a reminder of the woman who left him.”

  “Could part of his treatment of you have been your behavior? You were quit
e the rebel.”

  “A rebel you were trying to avoid.”

  “Yes. I was, but it was hard at times.”

  Her admission surprised him, as did the flush that heightened the pink of her cheeks. His thoughts drifted back to those two weeks when they could finally admit to the feelings that had always hovered.

  “What made you change your mind? When we were in Costa Rica? What made you think I was worth spending time with then, besides having broken up with Dirk?”

  “I always thought you were worth spending time with, Reuben. And that was my struggle.”

  It took him a few moments to realize what she was saying. They had talked endlessly when they were together in Costa Rica. About how they had always cared for each other. How she had clung to her relationship with Dirk longer than she should have. When he found out she’d married Dirk, however, he had wondered if it was the exotic location and the distance that had made them both so candid about the feelings they both had kept to themselves for so long.

  Now, here on the ranch, where life had always been complicated for both of them, she was saying the same thing she had then.

  He took a chance and once again moved his horse closer, sensing a breaking down of the walls she had put up the moment she first saw him. “It was my struggle too,” he said. “Watching you with Dirk when I felt that he was all wrong for you.”

  “Maybe he was.” Leanne gave him a knowing look. “But I sometimes felt the same about you.”

  He held her gaze. “I knew I wasn’t the best person for you either. Which was why I kept my distance.”

  “You didn’t keep your distance at prom,” she teased again.

  “I couldn’t help myself. Gave in to impulses I had always held back.” He allowed himself a teasing smile, pleased to see her return it. “And you didn’t exactly resist.”

  “I didn’t want to then.”

  “And now?” The question popped out but he wasn’t sad he asked it.

  She turned her eyes forward, looking at the cows plodding ahead of them, her gloved hands clenched on her reins. “We have a child together. That changes a lot of things.”

  Which didn’t tell him much. “We’ve had a child together for almost three years. Something you knew all along and something I just found out about.”

  She said nothing, her lips thinning. He knew she didn’t agree and it annoyed him that she didn’t believe him.

  “Sooner or later we have to figure this out,” Reuben said. “And I prefer it to be sooner.”

  “What’s to figure out?”

  “We’ve never compared stories. I think it might help to talk it through. Let me tell you my side and I’ll listen to yours. They don’t jibe and it bothers me that all these years you’ve thought so badly of me. I’d like you to give me a chance to tell you my experience.”

  She sighed, then nodded. “How about tomorrow night?” she said. “When we’re done processing these cows.”

  “Tomorrow night it is,” he said.

  Then a calf broke away from the herd, heading off into a side gully and he nudged his horse in the flanks to deal with it. A couple of others tried to follow its lead, which kept him and his horse busy for a while. Once he got it all sorted, he and Leanne were on opposite sides of the herd and the open gates of the home pasture lay ahead.

  He glanced at her over the shifting and moving bodies of the cows between them, surprised to see her watching him. Did he imagine the look of sorrow on her face? He gave her a questioning look, but then she looked away and the moment was gone.

  He turned his attention back to the cows now flowing through the open gate ahead.

  He hoped whatever they hashed out tomorrow would clear up the misunderstanding over her pregnancy once and for all. They couldn’t resolve anything between them until they pieced together what she saw as his refusal to take responsibility.

  And then? If they managed to figure out what happened, what would change between them?

  Because no matter what, two things were very clear.

  Leanne didn’t want to leave this place.

  And he would never stay.

  Chapter Six

  “You have a funny face, Uncle Wooben.” Austin ran his hands over Reuben’s chin, his soft, chubby fingers rasping over his whiskers.

  “It’s a prickly face, isn’t it?” Reuben said, grinning down at the little boy.

  He hadn’t had a chance to shave or clean up after he and Leanne were done working with the cows. He felt grubby and dusty, and yet it felt so good to have his son sitting on his lap.

  “I wike you here for supper,” Austin said, returning Reuben’s smile.

  “I wike me here for supper too,” he repeated, avoiding Leanne’s slightly guilty look.

  Yesterday, after bringing the cows in, he’d gone with her to the house to spend some time with Austin. But by the time Shauntelle dropped him off, the little guy was tired and out of sorts, so Reuben had only had about ten minutes with him before Leanne decided he needed a bath.

  It had been a slightly awkward moment. George had escaped to his bedroom, which left Reuben alone in the kitchen unsure of his status or what was expected. So he left too.

  But Leanne had promised they would talk tonight. So this afternoon, when they were done with the cows, he walked directly to the house with her. George had brought Austin home and he’d also brought pizza. Reuben stayed and helped set the table for four and sat down beside Austin as if he belonged there.

  “And you have a dirty face,” he said, rubbing away a smear of tomato sauce from the pizza he had gobbled down.

  Austin just grinned, and as Reuben looked into the little boy’s face, he was surprised at the sudden surge of protectiveness he felt. His boy. His son.

  “I wuv pizza,” he said, nestling into Reuben, tucking his head under Reuben’s chin.

  He held the boy close, enjoying the feel of him in his arms and at the same time fighting down a glimmer of anger that Leanne had kept this from him.

  He caught her looking at them but he couldn’t decipher her expression. It seemed as if she wasn’t sure what to think of Austin sitting on Reuben’s lap.

  He struggled to sort out his own confused emotions. Where were he and Leanne supposed to go now? How were they supposed to deal with this little boy in a way that was best for him?

  Could he truly be a father for him?

  He pushed the troubling questions aside. Right now, the next thing in front of him was sitting down with Leanne and sorting out the confusion of the past.

  Then Austin yawned and Leanne got up. “I think it’s time to put the munchkin to bed,” she said, walking around the table.

  She went to take Austin from Reuben but the little boy burrowed deeper into his arms. “No. Stay with Uncle Wooben,” he cried.

  Reuben had to admit, it did feel good to have Austin reluctant to leave him.

  “You’ll see Uncle Reuben again.”

  “See you tomorrow?” Austin asked Reuben, leaning back and grabbing his face between his hands.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant church. Reuben held the boy’s trusting eyes and then nodded. He could do church. For his son’s sake.

  This seemed to satisfy him, so he crawled off Reuben’s lap, took Leanne’s hand and followed her out of the kitchen.

  This left George and Reuben alone for the first time since he had come here.

  “Thanks for having me over for dinner,” Reuben said in the quiet following Leanne’s departure.

  “It was just pizza” was his father’s gruff response. “And it was Leanne’s idea.”

  As he had on Friday, George had stayed in town, supposedly working at the hardware store. Leanne had been frustrated with his absence, but George’s being gone made things easier for Reuben. The work ha
d gone smoothly and had been surprisingly peaceful. Chad seemed to be catching on and they got finished early.

  Reuben was glad. He had checked the forecast and Sunday afternoon it was supposed to start snowing.

  “Eating pizza here is a lot nicer than sitting by myself at the Brand and Grill listening to Sepp berate the newest waitress,” Reuben said as he got up to clear the table.

  “Sepp should never have let Tabitha go,” George said in another rare moment of supporting a Rennie.

  “She and Morgan sure seem happy.” Reuben closed the boxes of pizza and stacked their plates.

  “Yeah, but it won’t be easy for them once they get married. Especially if Tabitha has to raise Morgan’s kid. Sometimes you’re better off staying single than putting yourself in that mess.”

  Reuben’s hands slowed as what his father said set in. “What are you trying to say?” he asked.

  George glanced past him, listening, but all they could hear was the muted sound of Leanne talking to Austin.

  George turned back to Reuben. “You know, I didn’t like the idea of Leanne helping out on the ranch, but she’s a hard worker. And she loves the ranch. I want to make a place for her here. You need to know, most of the ranch and the store will go to Austin, but I want to give her something of her own. Because of Dirk. You’re leaving soon for some job that sends you all over the place.” George’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. “I know you don’t like it here. You’re leaving and Leanne wants to stay. I want you to keep your distance. You can’t give Leanne and Austin what they need.”

  Reuben held his father’s gaze; the old familiar and unwelcome hurt spiraling up and clenching his soul. He wished he could let it slide off his back, but he was feeling defenseless and vulnerable. Spending the last few days with Leanne, then tonight, sitting at the supper table with Austin, his son, in a house where he’d never felt at home. All this had created a confusion he was tired of battling.

  He had spent most of his adult life trying to prove to himself that he was worthy. All it took was a few words from his father to bring him back down.

  He wanted nothing more than to tell George that the little boy he doted on so much was his. Not his beloved Dirk’s. But he wanted to respect Leanne’s wishes so, much as holding back the words almost choked him, he kept silent about that. But he couldn’t leave the rest alone.