Nevada Cowboy Dad

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Coming fully awake, she glanced around. Neon digital numbers on the bedside clock read 12:03. Midnight. It always happened at midnight. For some reason that was the hour when Kenneth really got going. She shuddered.

“It’s all right,” Rusty crooned, beginning to rock her against his chest. His arms were welcoming, protective. She clutched his warm skin, taut with muscle. “The bogeyman’s gone.”

Bogeyman. A child’s name for a frightening nighttime specter. Only she was an adult, and her personal bogeyman had been so very real.

A pain that came from within clamped around her throat. She realized she was shaking, every part of her body trembling as if with a sick fever.

She wept then, tucked her face into the juncture of Rusty’s neck where his stubble gave way to the softer skin of his collarbone. Choking back sobs, she clung to the man who offered comfort. When would she ever get over it? she wondered in despair. When would the bogeyman ever really go away?

Chapter Three

“It was Kenneth,” Rusty said in a low voice. “Kenneth did this to you.”

Still upset, Lucy shook her head, her hair falling into her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about—”

“He hit you, didn’t he?” Rusty demanded. Though his voice was quiet, she could hear outrage rumbling beneath his words like insurrectionists about to revolt.

“He—he didn’t hit me. The things he said...they hurt worse than that.”

He tilted his head, confused. “Your husband said mean things to you? That gave you a bad dream?”

In an effort to stop crying, she drew ragged breaths. “I know it’s hard to understand. It’s hard to explain.” How she disliked sounding like a too-sensitive baby, spoiled and self-centered. She hadn’t spoken about it with anyone except the therapist, and that had been difficult enough. She wasn’t about to throw open the door to her soul’s deepest secret. Not to Rusty; he wouldn’t understand. No one would. No one could comprehend her reasons for staying with Kenneth during those bleak years of their marriage.

“Lucy—”

“Rusty, no, please. I...I can’t.” Moonlight, streaming in her window, carved shadows over the masculine lines of Rusty’s face. In the darkness his brown eyes appeared black, penetrating.

His shoulders were big, his chest full, his abdomen ribbed. No man had held her for so long. She hadn’t allowed it—or even wanted it—and certainly no half-dressed man. Lucy shut her eyes, overwhelmed.

With his big hands he stroked her arms from her shoulders to her wrists. As his palms glided over her skin, bared by her sleeveless gown, she could feel his work-hardened calluses, formed by honest labor. He was caressing her, she realized with a new shock. Rusty...caressing her?

He studied her, and she could almost feel him mentally probing for answers, answers she knew she couldn’t give, didn’t know if she had them to give. With her back to the window she hoped he couldn’t see her well.

“You’re not gonna talk about this with me, are you? Well, what happened to him, anyway? How did he die?” Before she could reply, his grip on her arms tightened, his voice roughened. “I wouldn’t blame you if you had something to do with it.”

Lucy gasped. “My God, no. It was his heart. He...he had a congenital defect. Both his brother and father did, too.”

Rusty shrugged, brutally uncaring. “At least the creep left you well-off.”

She bowed her head. “I guess I should thank you for coming in. Did...did I make a noise?”

“If you call an agonizing moan that could wake the next ranch ten miles over a ‘noise,’ then, yeah, you did.”

“I apologize for waking you. I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t you?” He grimaced at his own sarcasm. “You didn’t mean to have a horrible nightmare and wake up sweating, shaking and sobbing? I’d have never guessed.”

She could think of nothing to say.

He stood, and she wondered if it was only in her imagination that he did so reluctantly. “I’ll go now. You’ll be all right.”

She nodded.

“But we’re not finished with this. I won’t push now, but soon...” He left the rest unsaid, stared at her meaningfully, strode out the door and shut it with a quiet click.

Hugging herself, Lucy felt an errant thought begin to bloom, unfurling like the petals of a flower. While she found Rusty gruff and uncompromising, he had rushed to her when she’d cried out, when she’d needed him.

Rusty had come to comfort her.

As if the night before had never happened, as if Lucy had never cried out in fear and Rusty had never consoled her with his voice and his touch, the next morning he barely spared her a glance when he entered the kitchen.

After pouring himself a mug of steaming coffee, he downed it in four gulps and turned to leave. Ribbons of sunlight fought with morning gloom to lance through the nook’s high windows and fall on Rusty’s hair. Streaks of russet Lucy hadn’t seen before appeared in the thick waves.

At the stove Fritzy mixed thick batter.

“Good morning,” Lucy said, trying to catch his eye. Before her sat orange juice and toasted waffles sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Grunting something unintelligible, he collected his hat from a wall hook.

“Um, what are you going to do today?”

“Work.” He moved toward the door.

She wished she knew how to stop him. “Well, what should I do?”

His boots making staccato thuds on the hardwood floor, he was already out of the kitchen when his voice came back over his shoulder. “Whatever you want.”

Lucy blinked, gazing sightlessly at the waffles. Well, what did she expect? The fact that he had come to her last night obviously meant little. Just as he would unemotionally soothe a frightened horse until it was composed, he’d soothed her until she was calm—all part of his duties.

“Another waffle, Lucy?” Fritzy asked.

“Thank you, Fritzy, but no. I’m really full.” She didn’t think she could get another bite past her suddenly constricted throat.

With Fritzy washing the breakfast dishes, Lucy agreed to carry the baby outside for air, “Just for a few minutes,” Lucy clarified sternly. “Then you’ll take the baby.”

“Oh, of course, dear,” Fritzy assured her, tightening her apron.

So, the blanket-wrapped child in her arms. Lucy stepped into the morning’s crisp sunshine and glanced at the overgrown lawn. If Fritzy wouldn’t allow her to help inside the house, she would begin outside.

A profound need to sculpt a place for herself, to be a valuable entity on the ranch burned inside her; she would do all in her power to make her dream come true.

Lucy wanted to be needed. She wanted to have a place where others counted on her. She wanted family... even if that family was comprised of only Fritzy, Baby...and Rusty.

Badly in need of a good mowing, the lawn would be a fine place to start making herself useful. With the men so busy branding, she guessed no one had time for this chore. Rusty’s truck was gone, but down at the corrals she could see ropes whirling and the wispy trail of the branding fire. Faint bawling came to her over the breeze.

Fallen leaves made a colorful but messy canopy over the overgrown grass, and those would have to be raked first. Placing the child on the quilt safely out of harm’s way, she spied a dented aluminum gardening shed shoved against the house’s side wall and hunted through for tools. Sunlight warmed her back and sparkled on the last drops of dewy grass. Lucy hummed a country time.

Hands on hips, she surveyed the tools she’d brought out—cotton canvas gloves, a rake and two plastic trash barrels. The mower she left in the shed for now. Good. As a young girl she’d performed yard work for spending money; she could do this. And she’d do it well. A person had to start somewhere, and although starting had never been her problem, this time she’d complete the job.

She’d make herself indispensable here. Essential. An intrinsic cog in the Lazy S wheel. Hope filling her heart, she bent to collect the rake, when from the corner of her eye, she noticed the baby about to thrust something into her mouth.

Somehow she’d wriggled to the edge of the quilt and tugged out a tuft of grass. Lucy flew to her, put a halt to the grass lunch and lifted the child into her arms.

“Silly girl,” Lucy scolded gently, cradling her, “grass is for cows, not humans. Now, you just lie quietly while I rake, all right?”

Settling the little imp down again on her stomach, she began to turn when the baby giggled, pulled her knees to her chest, and gave a rocking sort of scoot forward. Her face mashed into the blanketed ground but she only pushed herself up, grinning. Again, she pulled her knees under, swayed back and forth, and gave another hopping scoot.