Page 7 of Cowboy Don't Go

“Later.” Cooper watched him go and caught sight of Shay watching him out the window. She ducked behind the window frame when he saw her. Date her. That kid’s fourteen going on twenty. But it wasn’t as if he’d never considered doing just that.

It felt like those days were long gone though, and Shay really seemed to want nothing to do with him. Fair enough. He would try not to take it personally.

*

“Is that Cooper Lane you’re watching out that window?” Shay’s mother, Sarah asked, casually rinsing a cup in the sink.

“What? No. I mean . . . Ryan was out there with him, is all.” Her mother had eyes in the back of her head apparently.

“Uh-huh. A good-looking man, that Cooper Lane.”

“Mom.”

“I’m just saying. He reminds me of his father, if I’m honest.”

“You knew Ray Lane?”

Sarah moved to the window to look out at Cooper. “Oh, yes. I knew him. Once upon a time, I knew him.” At Shay’s curious expression, she said, “In passing, of course. He always kind of reminded me of Sam Shepherd. The actor? If memory serves.”

“He’s a convict, Mom. And Cooper was also implica—”

“Yes, dear. I think I hear the washing machine beeping.” And with that, she excused herself, leaving Shay alone in the kitchen.

Why was no one listening to her about Cooper?

She peeked out the window again to spot him walking toward his beat-up pickup truck, with long-limbed strides and a confidence she couldn’t remember from their days as classmates in high school. Or definitely after. So, maybe he had grown into his looks a little. A lot. But while she had sort of crushed on him for a while, way back when, nothing ever came of it because Shay had stupidly set her sights on the absolute wrong person—Ethan Bradley, an older, college boy visiting for the summer. A reality she’d acknowledged only after he’d left her eighteen, pregnant, and alone to face the consequences of what they’d done that summer.

Ryan’s father had never been in the picture for him. In fact, Shay had no idea where he was now. Oh, she’d told him about the pregnancy, but he denied it was his, advised her to get rid of it. Then he disappeared. Of course, Ryan was his. He looked just like him, with his light brown hair and blue eyes and that smile that said he was routinely cooking up mischief. Ethan’s parents had eventually tried to throw money at her to get rid of the problem for good, but she sent it back after getting their son to sign away any claim to Ryan. She was happy with that decision, but for a long, long time, resented him for so quickly washing his hands of the child they’d made together. But she’d come to realize that Ryan was better off with only her rather than a father who couldn’t love him. Ryan only knew what it was to have a single mother and it was only in the last few years that he’d begun feeling that hole in his life where a father should have been. But for her, it wasn’t Ethan’s abandonment that scarred her. It was that she’d actually believed his lie when he’d told her he loved her that summer. She’d been a fool to trust him and that had been the hardest part to let go. She’d be the first to admit she didn’t trust easily. Or well.

It also didn’t escape her that once she herself had been the focus of some judgment here in town when she’d become a single mother at eighteen. Her own father could hardly accept it. Tom Hardesty had taken his sweet time accepting his grandson, but eventually he had, mostly. But that was her father. Hard. The polar opposite of her mother.

Raising her son alone, aside from the help of her family, had been hard and lonely. But at least she had family. Cooper was alone in the world. Eight years ago, his father’s trial for cattle rustling had been the biggest crime Marietta had seen in years. Everyone talked about it and more than a few ranchers were affected by what he’d done. Hard feelings still lingered hereabouts and likely would forever. Cooper’s flight from Marietta years ago had been, perhaps, equally unfair, and she supposed she shouldn’t hold what his father had done against him. If there wasn’t so much at stake with the ranch, with her son’s future . . .

She sighed. She supposed she should try to be more generous. Besides, it seemed there was no getting around Liam anyway, so she’d just have to make the best of things.

Ryan came through the kitchen door smiling. “Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, Ry. You . . . were talking to Mr. Lane?”

“Coop? Yeah. He’s nice.”

Coop? “Oh?”

“Yeah. We were talking about names for the filly.”

That seemed doubtful, but Shay went along. “Do you have some names in mind?”

“Just one. Coop said names matter and horses try to live up to the name you give them. Even if they’re bad names.”

Cooper, Cooper, Cooper.

Her son looked out the window, considering the filly prancing around the pen near the others. She desperately needed a bath and a good brushing and that would have to happen soon. Baby steps. That was what this contest was all about, after all. Teaching patience and fortitude. And the kind of skills—working with sensitive creatures like these horses—that would translate in ways none of the kids training them could even imagine into their ordinary lives.

“I was thinking about Kholá.”

“As in Coca-Cola?”

He laughed. “No. K-h-o-l-á. You know my friend Jacob Whitetree from school?”

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