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“Don’t look like you just stole the teacher’s apple.”
“Why would a teacher ever really want an apple?” Was that the only thing she could come back with? “I mean, really, wouldn’t she be glad if someone took it? Wouldn’t she prefer a student give her chocolate?”
“You’re overthinking this.”
She cleared her throat and nodded. “Of course I am. I’m Sophie Cooper, I always overthink.”
“Right, and where has that gotten you?”
For a moment she thought about that question. But then she heard the baby from inside the house, crying. “I think someone wants you.”
“Right. Are you coming in?” He headed toward the house, not waiting for her. “You didn’t answer. Where has overthinking gotten you?”
He glanced back over his shoulder as he walked up the steps of the porch.
“Overthinking has kept me out of trouble.” And kept her heart virtually pain free for sixteen years. Poor atrophied heart. It needed serious physical therapy if she ever planned on using it again.
She followed Keeton through the front door. He had already picked up Lucy and had her cradled against his chest. “She’s pretty warm.”
Sophie kissed the baby’s brow. “Very. Have you given her the medicine?”
“Yeah, when I got back.”
“And a bath?”
“Not yet.” He smiled and there was something different about a cowboy smile when the cowboy was holding a baby. “I haven’t read the book.”
Sophie reached for the baby and he handed Lucy over.
“Run lukewarm water in the sink. We’ll start there. I’ll give you a crash course in baby bathing and you can read your how-to manual later.”
“Thanks, Sophie, I owe you.”
“No, you don’t.” She followed him into the kitchen. He turned on the tap and washed out the sink. “Do you have baby soap?”
“Yeah, let me get the water going and I’ll go get the supplies I bought at the store.”
Regret—Sophie had a lot. And after today, she’d have more. Hip against the counter, she watched as he plugged the sink and then rummaged through the plastic bags on the counter, pulling out the soap, washcloth and towel. He held up a little sleeper, pink with ponies on the front.
“Sweet. You did good.” Sophie spread the towel on the counter and slipped off the dirty sleeper. She dropped it on the floor and waited for it to get up and walk away on its own. It was that dirty.
“Now what?”
“You can throw that sleeper away.”
“Done.” He picked it up and tossed it in the trash. A second later he was at her side again. He smelled good. Spicy with a hint of a pine forest mixed in. It was the kind of scent that made a woman want to lean in close.
If it were any other man. If she was any other woman. She sighed and let go of need, held on to strength.
“In the bath she goes.” Sophie lifted the baby, and before putting her in the water, tested it to make sure it wasn’t too hot or cold. “Perfect. Maybe this will help break that fever. And I’m sure she’ll feel better.”
“Soph, I appreciate this.”
“Of course you do, because you think I’m going to do all of the work. Surprise.” She cradled the baby in the water. Lucy tested the surface of the water with pudgy little fingers, and then she splashed just a little. “Hold her like this and then squirt a little soap on the washcloth. It doesn’t take much to wash a baby, Keeton. Even her hair. There isn’t much of it.”
“Right, of course.” He swallowed loud and she looked up, smiling at the bead of perspiration across his brow.
“Easy-peasy.” She moved a little but still cradled the baby on her left arm. “Your turn.”
“She’s already clean.”
“I know, but I want you to be able to do this on your own.”
“I can.” He cleared his throat. “Seriously, Soph, I can do this.”
“You could hire a nanny.”
“I have skills.”
Yeah, she thought.
He reached for his baby girl and Sophie moved her hands to make room for his. She glanced up and he looked down. It felt suddenly very warm in that little kitchen.
“I can handle it without a nanny.” He repeated her actions and Lucy giggled, happy to be clean and to be cooler. “She hasn’t eaten a lot today.”
“She needs liquids. Especially now, with a fever. If she gets enough formula, give her water.” She placed the towel over his shoulder and he looked a little stricken. “Take her out before she gets chilled.”
“I can’t believe this is my life.” He lifted Lucy out of the bathwater and wrapped the towel around her. Sophie took the child from his arms.
“Believe it, Keeton West, this is your life.” She held Lucy close. “What were you planning, coming back here?”
He grabbed a diaper and the sleeper. Sophie put the baby on the counter and made quick work of putting a diaper and the sleeper on Lucy. A little part of her liked that he looked in awe.
“I thought I’d come back and reclaim what should have been mine.” He held his daughter.
The lighthearted moment of seconds ago dissolved. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” He leaned, brushing a brotherly kiss on the side of her head. She paused midbutton on the sleeper and looked up at him.
“I know it isn’t—wasn’t my fault. I’m sorry, Keeton, for everything. I’m sorry for the years we’ve all lost, being sorry, being guilty, being alone.” She looked away, because it was easier to focus on Lucy. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.”
Did he really? She thought he probably still felt guilty. He’d been a kid, really. Even though at eighteen and nineteen they’d thought they were grown, thought they knew everything.
She handed him the baby girl that had his eyes. And in those eyes she saw a little bit of Kade, the West she’d planned on marrying. In a jewelry box at home she had the ring he’d given her, a promise that someday they’d get engaged, get married.
She also had a rose, taken from one of the flower arrangements on his casket. And in a notebook, hidden away in her dresser, she had a note from Keeton, telling her how sorry he was for what had happened. He blamed himself. He would always blame himself.
And he’d spent his life trying to earn the national bull-riding championship Kade had wanted. He was still chasing Kade’s dreams.
She wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him to let it go and find what he wanted. Maybe this farm was it? But she wouldn’t go back to other memories, of the afternoon of the funeral and finding comfort in Keeton’s arms.
Keeton wasn’t the only one who felt guilty.
Chapter Three
Keeton walked Sophie out the front door. Lucy, bathed and cooler to the touch, slept soundly in her new crib. Sophie had promised to watch his daughter while he rode at a local bull ride that evening. He’d brought it up. She’d offered. For the baby, not for him.
A crash in the field caught his attention as they stood on the porch. He glanced toward the barn, saw a flash of red-gold.
“What’s that?”
Sophie looked in the direction he pointed and she laughed. Okay, so whatever it was, she found it amusing. He watched as the animal tramped through the overgrown brush and scrub trees that he’d be cutting down in a few days. A mule appeared. It saw them, snorted, tossed its big head and then raced off in the other direction. Before Keeton could comment, the mule jumped the fallen tree that leaned against the corral.
“That was Lucky the mule.” She shaded her eyes with her hand and watched. And he watched her.
“You find Lucky on the loose amusing?”
She turned, still smiling. The girl his brother had planned to marry still lurked in her eyes, still smiled up at him. But she was a woman. A beautiful woman. One he would have liked knowing. Would still like to know. That brought up a whole bag of “if only” that he didn’t plan on getting into.
“Lucky belongs to my brother Lucky, but then, Lucky doesn’t belong to anyone. Lucky, my brother, bought him six months ago, as a yearling. He brought him home, put him in the corral. The next day, Lucky was gone. Got that?”
“I think. Lucky your brother has a mule named Lucky, which you named. He’s been running loose for six months?”
“Yep.”
“Unbelievable.” He turned his attention back to the field, looking for the mule. “Why don’t they catch him?”
“They can’t touch him.”
“Gotcha.” He followed her down the steps. “You sure you don’t mind watching Lucy for me?”
“No, I don’t mind. But I’m not going to watch you ride a bull.”
“I won’t get hurt.”
She drew in a breath and turned away from him. Too late. He reached for her arm and she shook her head. “I’m going home, Keeton. I’ll watch the baby.”
“Soph, I’m sorry.” He reached for her hand and drew her back to him. “I’m sorry.”
“Keeton, let’s stop this. We’re both adults now. It was a long time ago. It hurt. But it hadn’t hurt…”
“Until I came back.”
“Yeah, something like that. Stop bringing it up. Stop apologizing. Stop living in the past. God doesn’t want us living in the past. This is today. We have a life today that we need to concentrate on.”
He wondered if she’d really been concentrating on living this life. He held her left hand, the one that had never worn a ring. For someone moving on, living in the present, she was doing a lot of holding on to the past.
But he was the last person who would lecture her on that. He was still riding bulls. He didn’t love the sport. He didn’t really care about the championship or world titles. For years he’d been trying to win the title his brother had wanted.
He’d been trying to put his family back together.
“Okay, no more apologizing.” He smiled like he meant it and she responded, like she meant it. And neither of them did.
Sophie sighed. “I have to go. Please don’t tell my family about the land.”
“Okay.” He wanted to ask why, but he figured he got it. When a person grew up a Cooper, they didn’t have much that was just theirs. Including secrets.
A few minutes later her truck pulled onto the road. Keeton walked back into the house. He stood in the living room, waiting for the past to stop rushing at him. As a little kid he’d spent a lot of time in this house until his grandparents had moved to town. He and Kade had spent summer nights on the front porch, hoping for a little breeze because there hadn’t been air-conditioning in the house.
His grandma used to sit in a flowery chair in front of the window and fan herself with a magazine. He smiled, remembering images that hadn’t been this clear in years. This house. This land. It had been a part of him. This house and the one down the road where he’d grown up. That house now belonged to a family named Matthews.
He’d driven past today and saw that there were bikes in the front yard, a basketball hoop and horses in the corral.
At twenty he’d helped his parents pack it all up and move to Tulsa. They hadn’t been able to move on after losing Kade. They’d tried to get back to what had been their lives, and it hadn’t happened. There’d been too much guilt, too many accusations and way too much pain.
He shook his head as he walked through the empty rooms. Paneled walls. Hardwood floors that sagged in places. It was livable but it needed a lot of work. And that mangy cat had slipped back inside. The thing yowled at him, wanting food. He opened a can of tuna and sat it on the floor.
“Don’t get too comfortable in here, Mangy.”
The cat yowled again. And then the baby cried. Keeton tossed his hat on the counter and walked down the hall to the bedroom. Lucy stopped crying when she saw him. He smiled at that.
He’d had her for two days. He’d known about her for two days. When he thought about how unfair that was, it made him madder than anything. Becka had kept him from the best thing in his life. He didn’t really know what to do with a baby. But she definitely took the title for best thing ever.
The big question at the moment was how to be a bull rider and a single dad. That even put getting his land back from Sophie on hold, or made it less important somehow. He picked up his baby girl and held her close. She smelled a lot better.
“You smell good, little girl. I was afraid that other smell was permanent.”
She smiled a soft baby smile and he held her easy in one arm while he reached for the bottle and the soft blanket. She felt warm again. He’d bought a book on babies and had read warnings about high fevers, but also about not rushing to the doctor for every virus. So how did he know what to do with that advice?
“What in the world are we going to do about this fever?”
She cooed and he knew at that moment that no one had better ever hurt his little girl. They’d have to deal with him.
He was a dad. A single dad in a house without furniture. A single dad without a significant other to give him a helping hand. He’d faced some pretty mean bulls over the years, but he’d never faced anything that frightened him as much as the prospect of raising one tiny little girl.
The thought spun around in his mind. He was now responsible for another person’s future. A little person, yeah, but she wouldn’t always be little.
Someday she’d be a teenager. She’d have boyfriends. He’d have to hurt them.
“Baby, you are never, ever going to date.”
She cooed again and smiled a little. Yeah, in fifteen years she wouldn’t be smiling at him like that. With that thought in his mind he started packing the diaper bag to take Lucy to Sophie.
* * *
Sophie crumpled the note she’d found on her door when she got back from Keeton’s. But on second thought she smoothed it out and dropped it on the kitchen counter. Because, what if something happened?
