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“We’ve both noticed a change in him since that bull trampled him last winter.” Once broad shoulders shrugged. “People change.”
Bailey couldn’t agree more. She had changed. At twenty-two she had gone to Wyoming for a summer work program, starry-eyed and thinking that all cowboys were heroes. She had come home four months later, pregnant and brokenhearted.
It had taken her more than a year to forgive herself and move on. She had struggled with the truth, that God’s grace was sufficient. She had grown and learned how to stand on her own two feet without dreams of a man rescuing her.
Now she had a dad and a little girl who needed her. She had a farm with a second mortgage, back taxes seriously in arrears and medical bills piling up in a basket on the coffee table. She had horses that needed to be fed.
“Dad, I have to get to work. You have to let me be an adult and take care of this myself.”
Moisture shimmered in her dad’s brown eyes. “I know you can take care of things, Bailey. I only wish I could help you more.”
She hugged him tightly, her heart breaking because of his continued weight loss.
“Don’t worry, Dad. We have peace, remember?”
“Peace.” He nodded as he whispered the word.
Bailey walked to the back door. “I need to walk to the back pasture to check on that cow that didn’t come up this afternoon. Can you keep an eye on Meg?”
“I’ll watch her.” He swallowed his pills before continuing. “He has a right to know his daughter.”
“I know.”
She knew, but she didn’t quite know how to deal with it, not yet. Cody now knew about Meg. It had to happen sooner or later. She wouldn’t have been able to remain out of the rodeo circuit forever. Avoiding Cody had meant avoiding people who could send horses her way for training.
Maybe God had meant for it to happen this way, with Cody driving into her life when she had the least amount of energy to fight? And maybe, just maybe, he would meet Meg and then leave town.
Chapter Two
Bulls bellowed and snorted, the sound combining with the steady hum of the crowd and the banter of cowboys, medical staff and stock contractors. Cody leaned against the wall in a corner of the area that was almost quiet.
“What’s up with you?”
“Bradshaw, I didn’t know you were here.” Cody smiled at the guy who had been a friend for years. Rivalry had come between them a few times. And for a while Jason Bradshaw’s faith had driven a huge wedge between them.
Cody hadn’t known what to do when his friend “found religion” two years earlier. They had gone from being drinking buddies to strangers, both wanting different things out of life.
The rift had grown until the day seven months earlier when Cody had woken up in a hospital, unsure of who he was or where he was. Later he had watched tapes of the fall. The wreck of the season, they called it. He had been twisted in the bull rope, dangling from the side of a fifteen-hundred-pound animal. When Cody came loose, the bull twisted and the two butted heads with a force that had given him a huge concussion and some loss of memory.
Jason said it must have knocked some sense into him, because the Sunday after his release from the hospital Cody gave in to the urge to attend the church service the bull riders held each week. He had stood next to his friend, hearing a message his grandfather had tried to tell him when he had been too young to understand. Later on in life he had thought he didn’t need it.
That Sunday he knew he needed it. He knew that he needed to be forgiven. He needed the promise contained in those words, and he needed a fresh start.
He had never dreamed his second chance would lead him to Gibson, Missouri, and a little girl named Meg.
“You look like you got hit by a semitruck.” Jason nudged Cody’s side, gaining his attention.
“Something like that.”
“Did you see Bailey?”
Cody moved to the side to see why the crowd was roaring. He watched a young rider make it to eight seconds and then some. The kids on tour were going great guns with enthusiasm and bodies that weren’t being kept mobile with cortisone injections, Ace bandages and a diet of ibuprofen.
“Remember what that felt like?” Jason laughed and watched as the kid on the bull jumped off, landing on his feet and running out of the arena without a limp.
“Vaguely.” He remembered what yesterday felt like, when he knew who he was and that his life was all about winning the bull-riding championship and walking away with a seven-figure check. Now his goals were as scrambled as his insides.
“I found out today that I’m a dad. I have a five-year-old daughter named Meg.”
Jason took off his hat and ran a hand through short red hair, his eyes widening as he leaned back against the wall. His being speechless didn’t happen often. Cody was sort of glad his friend reacted with stunned silence. His surprise validated Cody’s own feelings of disbelief.
“Wow.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
Jason laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “Congratulations?”
“Thanks. I think.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, if Bailey was seventeen and madly in love with me, I’d do the right thing and marry her. Right now she’s about twenty-eight, and I’m pretty sure she hates me. So that leaves the little girl. I might have a chance with her, but I’m not sure.”
His daughter, a sprite with her mother’s perky nose, heart-shaped face and flaxen hair. Cowgirls were hard to beat. They were tough as nails and soft as down. Until you made them mad. Bailey was definitely mad. She had a right to be, but that didn’t help Cody.
He had a daughter. It was still sinking in. Thinking back, he remembered the luminous look in Bailey’s eyes when she said she loved him, and then the tears when he teased her about cowgirls always thinking they were in love. Finally there were the frantic phone calls that lasted five or six months after she left Wyoming. It all made sense now.
He looked down, shaking his head at the tumble of thoughts rolling through his mind. He had missed out on five years. Without knowing it, he had become his own dad.
“Cody, don’t beat yourself up for something you didn’t know about.”
“If I had called her back, I would have known. Instead I went on my merry way, thinking she just wanted to cry and try to drag me back into her life.” He fastened the Kevlar vest that bull riders wore for protection and tried to concentrate on the ride about to take place. “I should have known Bailey better than to think that about her.”
“You know, I think you only ran because you were so stinking in love with her.” Jason laughed as he said the words, his loud outburst drawing the quick glances of a dozen men in the area.
“Do you think you could announce it to the whole world?”
“Sorry, but I think they’re going to find out sooner or later.”
Cody pulled off his hat and ran shaking fingers through his hair. “I could use a…”
“Friend to pray with?” Jason smiled as he replaced the word with something that wouldn’t undo six months of sobriety.
“Yes, prayer.” His new way of dealing with stress. “I have a daughter, Jason. What in the world am I going to do with her?”
“Buy her a pony?”
“My dad bought me a pony.”
Jason slapped him on the back. “Go back to Gibson, Missouri, and get to know your daughter. You’ve got enough money in the bank to last more than a few years, and a good herd of cattle down in Oklahoma. Maybe it’s time to start using your nest egg to build a nest? You could even use that business degree of yours for something other than balancing a feed bill and tallying your earnings.”
“What if I can’t be a dad?” He didn’t know how to be something he’d never had. That’s why he’d run from girls looking for “forever.”
“No one really knows how. I think you just learn as you go. It’s probably a lot like bull riding, the more you work at it, the better you get.”
Someone shouted Cody’s name. He was up soon. He tipped his hat to Jason and told him he probably would lay off the tour after this event, at least for a few weeks, at least until he settled things with Bailey.
And he would give up ever being a world champion. His goal and his dream for more years than he could remember had been within his grasp, but one afternoon in Gibson, Missouri, had changed everything.
Five minutes later he was slipping onto the back of a bull named Outta Control. He hated that bull. It was part Mexican fighting bull and part insane. As he pulled his bull rope tight, wrapping it around his gloved hand, the bull jerked and snorted. The crazy animal obviously thought the eight seconds started before the gate opened.
Cody squeezed his knees against the animal’s heaving sides and hunched forward, preparing for the moment that the gate would open. Foam and slobber slung around his face as the bull bellowed and shook his mammoth head.
“This is crazy.” He muttered the words to no one in particular as he nodded his head and the gate flew open.
If he survived this ride, he was going back to Gibson, to his daughter and to Bailey. He would find a way to be a dad.
The fact that Cody’s RV was still in the drive the next morning meant nothing to Bailey. The problem was, his truck was there to. That meant he’d survived his ride and returned.
She didn’t know how to feel about Cody Jacobs keeping promises. Six years ago they’d been sitting around a campfire when he leaned over and whispered that he loved her. She had believed him. She had really thought they might have forever.
She wouldn’t be so quick to believe, not this time. This time she would protect her heart, and she would protect her daughter. Changed or not, Cody was a bull rider, and the lure of the world title would drag him back to the circuit, probably sooner than later.
“He got in at around midnight. He was walking straight but a little stooped.” Her dad had followed her to the porch. He pressed a cup of coffee into her hand.
“What were you doing up?”
“Praying, thinking and waiting to see if he’d come back.” Jerry Cross smiled.
“Nice, Dad. It sort of makes me feel like you’re plotting against me.”
“Not at all, cupcake.” He scooted past her and back to the kitchen. “Want me to feed this morning?”
“Nope, I’ll do it. I have to face him sooner or later.” She glanced over the rim of her cup and watched the dark RV. “You mind listening for Meg?”
“Honey, you know I don’t. And you know I don’t mind feeding.”
“It’s too hot. The humidity would…” Her heart ached with a word that used to be so easy.
“Don’t cry on me, pumpkin. And the humidity isn’t going to kill me.” He winked before he walked away.
Bailey prayed again, the silent prayer that had become constant. Please God, don’t take my dad. She knew what the doctors said, and she knew with her own eyes that he was failing fast. She didn’t know what she’d do without him in her life.
She drained her cup of coffee and walked out the back door. The RV in the drive was still dark and silent. The barn wasn’t. As she walked through the door, she heard music on the office radio and noises from the corral.
Cody turned and smiled when she walked out the open double doors on the far side of the barn. Her favorite mare was standing next to him, and he was running his hand over the animal’s bulging side.
That mare and the foal growing inside of her were the future hope of Bailey’s training and breeding program. If that little baby had half the class and durability of his daddy, the Rocking C would have a chance of surviving.
“Any day now.” Cody spoke softly, either to her or to the mare. She and the mare both knew that it would be any day.
“What are you doing here?”
He glanced up, his hat shading his eyes. “I told you I’d be back. I’m in it for the long haul, Bailey.”
“In what for the long haul?”
He shot her a disgusted look and sighed. “I’m a father. I might be coming into this a little late, but I want to be a part of Meg’s life.”
“So, you’ve gone from the guy who didn’t want to be tied down to the guy who is in fatherhood for the long haul?”
“When confronted with his mistakes, a guy can make a lot of changes.” He slid his hand down the mare’s misty-gray neck, but his gaze connected with Bailey’s. “I’m alive, and God gave me a second chance. I don’t take that lightly.”
“I see.” But she didn’t, not really.
Bailey walked back into the barn, knowing he followed. When she turned, she noticed that he wasn’t following at a very fast pace. The limp and slightly stooped posture said a lot.
“Take a fall last night?”
He grinned and shrugged muscular shoulders. “Not so much of a fall as a brush-off. This is what one might call ‘cowboy, meet gate—gate, meet cowboy.’ The bull did the introductions.”
“Anything broken?” Not that she cared.
“Just bruised.”
“Good, then you should be able to hitch that RV back to your truck and leave today.”
“Actually, no, I can’t. Funny, I’ve never really had a reason to stick before, but I like Missouri and so this isn’t such a bad thing. And the folks at the Hash-It-Out Diner all think you’re real pretty and a good catch.”
Bailey searched for something to throw at him, just about anything would work. She wanted to wipe that smug smile off his face. Especially when smug was accompanied by a wink and a dimpled smile.
“Cody, I don’t need this. You don’t understand what it’s like here and how long it took me to rebuild my reputation after that summer in Wyoming.”
He didn’t understand about going to church six months pregnant, knowing God forgave, but people weren’t as likely to let go of her mistake.
“I didn’t tell them who I am, or that I’m Meg’s dad.” He turned on the water hose as he spoke. “I think most of them have gotten over it, Bailey. Except maybe Hazel. Hazel has a daughter in Springfield who is a schoolteacher and a real good girl.”
Bailey groaned as she scooped out feed and emptied it into a bucket. Cody dragged the hose to the water trough just outside the back door. He left it and walked back inside.
“Yes, Maria is a good girl. I’ll introduce the two of you.” She managed a smile.
“Bailey, I was teasing.” Smelling like soap and coffee, he walked next to her. “This isn’t about us, or a relationship. This is about a child I didn’t know that I had. I’m not proposing marriage, and I’m not trying to move in. I want the chance to know my daughter.”
Bailey glanced in his direction before walking off with the bucket of grain and the scoop. She remembered that he had shown up for a purpose other than his daughter.
“Why did you come to apologize?”
“It’s a long story.”
