Page 17 of Heart Like a Cowboy

“A heads-up,” Alana went on. “Maybell and your grandmother told me your dad doesn’t have a lot of willpower when it comes to snacks, and they asked me to get rid of the worst of his temptations. I might have to clean out any goodies stashed in the fridge and pantry. So, if you’ve got something in there, you might want to move it elsewhere.”

“I’m stash-less at the moment, but there’ll be my dad’s cookies and caramel popcorn in the pantry. His ice cream in the freezer, of course.” And that brought Egan to something he’d been meaning to bring up with her. “My dad isn’t overweight, and I don’t think his eating habits are terrible, so I don’t understand why he had a heart attack.”

“His eating habits aren’t terrible,” Alana readily agreed. “In fact, plenty of people eat the way he does and never have a problem. But in your dad’s case, he had a serious blockage along with coronary artery disease. Surgery gave him a temporary fix, but changing his diet could prevent future problems. Could,” she repeated for emphasis. “Right now, Dr. Abrams just wants him to eat as healthy a diet as possible to see if it makes a difference.”

Egan was all for anything that would do that—make a difference. And he immediately felt the pangs of selfishness. The sooner his dad got back to normal, the sooner he could, too, but Egan wasn’t just wishing and hoping for that.

“I want that frail look off his face,” Egan muttered, surprised that he’d said it aloud.

Alana’s nod was quick. So was the sound of agreement that followed. “He’s scared, Egan. Really scared. It’s a normal reaction, but knowing it’s normal to feel that way doesn’t lessen the fear.”

Because his thoughts were a mess right now, with Alana part of that messy mix, he wondered if that applied to him. He didn’t like to think of himself as afraid. Nobody did. Especially not a fighter pilot. But there was certainly some deep scary emotion from noticing that Alana was, well, a woman.

And there was the heat.

The timing for it totally sucked, but the wind shifted, carrying her scent straight to his nose, which in turn went straight to every other part of him. Hell’s bells. This had to stop.

“Look, I’m just going to say this. Not for your benefit but for mine,” he insisted. “It’s Jack, not me, who’s the town’s real hero, and it would be disrespectful of me to think of you in any way other than his wife.”

There. He’d spelled it out, but Alana didn’t jump in with any nods or sounds of agreement. Just the opposite. Something went through her eyes. A fire. But unless he was totally misreading the signals, that fire had nothing to do with any thoughts whatsoever of how Egan felt about her.

“Disrespectful,” she snarled. And yeah, it was definitely a snarl. “Real hero. His wife.” She snarled those repeated phases, too.

Alana closed her mouth, opened it, pointed her index finger at him and then turned and marched away. After only a few seconds, she marched right back, and the finger aimed his way again.

“Let me tell you something about disrespect, heroism and being Jack Davidson’s wife.” Alana’s voice had moved from a snarl to a snap that she spoke through clenched teeth. “Jack cheated on me.”

It was as if Alana was speaking a foreign language. The words just didn’t make sense, and that’s why it took a while for them to sink in. Egan managed to shake his head, ready to launch into a denial, but Alana cut him off.

“That’s not conjecture or a wild accusation,” she insisted. “He cheated on me, and when I confronted him about it during a phone conversation, he admitted it was true.”

Well, hell. Egan was wishing for that “foreign language” effect again, but it wasn’t there. That came through loud and clear, and he couldn’t think of a single reason why Alana, or Jack, would have lied about something like that.

Alana did more marching away, returning just as quickly, and he could see the struggle she was having to rein in her temper. He also saw the exact moment the temper burned itself out, leaving the pain, sadness and grief to wash over her.

It was washing over him, too.

“Did you know he’d cheated?” Alana came out and asked. “And don’t you dare lie for him.”

Egan shook his head. “I didn’t know.”

He held back on asking,Who was she?He didn’t want to know, but he did rifle back through his memory to try to recall if Jack had ever mentioned anything about another woman. He hadn’t.

Egan fully intended to respond to that with...something. He just didn’t know what.

“I saw some unusual charges on his credit card bill,” Alana continued a moment later. “I wasn’t snooping,” she added, “but I noticed that his automatic payment on it had expired so I logged into his account and looked at the bill, intending to pay it and then let him know about it.” She paused, swallowed hard. “I saw charges for a hotel in London. Restaurants and taxis. All out of the ordinary expenses for him especially since I didn’t even know he’d been in London.”

Alana stopped, put her arms on the top of the corral fence and looked out at the horses. She stayed that way for a long time.

“I called him, figuring he could explain the charges,” she finally went on. “But instead he made a full confession that he had, indeed, been with another woman. He gave me the spiel that he hadn’t meant for it to happen, that it was just someone he knew and that they’d both been going through a hard time. I hit the roof. Full-scale yelling and ranting. Calling him every name in the book. Lots of f-bombs.”

She turned, looking at him, and he saw the tears in her eyes. Shit, shit, shit. He’d spent three years building up a barricade between Alana and his emotions, and those tears sent that barricade crashing down.

Part of him wanted to pull her into his arms to try to comfort her. Another part of him wanted to defend Jack. And curse him at the same time. But Egan didn’t do any of that. Instead, he came out with a response that could best be described as underwhelming and shitty.

“All Jack ever talked about was you,” Egan managed. “He loved you,” he added, hoping that would help.

It didn’t. The fire in her eyes didn’t ignite again, but more of that pain and grief did.

---