Page 20 of Heart Like a Cowboy

“You didn’t catch me at my best moment,” she muttered.

“No problem.” He seemed to perk up at the thought that somewhere underneath her sad face, there would indeed be a beautiful Scarlett. “I’ll just call back in at seven, and we can go from there.”

Alana was about to spell out there’d not be any going from anywhere and she didn’t want a call back or another virtual date ever, but the knock at her door stopped her.

“Excuse me a second,” she told Lucky, and she got up and crept—yes, crept—to the door to look out and see who dared to intrude on her pity party.

It was Egan.

Specifically, Egan the cowboy, in his jeans and black Stetson. He wasn’t the absolute last person she’d expected to show up, but he wasn’t anywhere in the top five hundred possibilities, either. It wasn’t hard to figure out, though, why he was there on her porch. Not with his expression practically screaming that he didn’t want to be there but was too much of a good guy to leave things as they had.

Alana considered ignoring him, but she scratched that option when Lucky seemed to shout, “You still there? You’re sure you’re okay?”

No way could Egan have missed that what with the thin door of her house, and if she didn’t respond, he might think she was harming herself or something. She didn’t want to see him but didn’t want him calling 911 on her, either.

Cradling the ice cream in the crook of her arm, Alana opened the door, ready to give him a spiel about her being just fine and dandy. Egan started his own spiel first, though.

“I won’t keep you. I just wanted to check on you,” he said in a way that made her think he’d rehearsed it. He looked at the tub of ice cream and what was likely smears of rocky road on her mouth. “I won’t ask you if you’re okay.”

“Who is that?” Lucky wanted to know.

It wasn’t an easy question because it required her to think of what label to put on Egan. Friend didn’t seem right. Dead husband’s best friend wasn’t the way to go, either. Since it was causing her even more mental overload, Alana went with the easy solution. She ended the call and turned off her phone so that he wouldn’t be able to call her right back.

“Did I interrupt something?” Egan asked, tipping his head to the phone.

“No.” And once again, she fell short with possible answers since she didn’t especially want to get into anything about Lucky, the lying gamer. “Nothing important, just an ill-timed virtual date,” she added in a mutter.

Of course, ending that call now freed her up to talk to Egan, something else that would stretch her bandwidth, but she thought Egan might be the lesser of the two evils right now.

Egan made a sound that could have meant anything, and energy was practically radiating off him. Apparently, he’d done some “lesser of two evils” kind of thinking and had opted for a visit rather than trying to put their last encounter out of his mind.

“You’ve been crying,” he grumbled. Then, he groaned. “I’m sorry.”

It was such a “good guy” sort of thing to say. “It’s not your fault,” she grumbled right back.

His mouth tightened, and he slid off his Stetson and shook his head. “That’s what I came here to tell you. It’s not your fault that Jack died. It’s mine.”

Again, a “good guy” sort of thing to say, and it caused her to sigh and step back. The heat pouring in from the open door would soon cause the ice cream to melt, but she didn’t think heat stroke should play into his “good guy” actions. Besides, she also didn’t want any of her neighbors to get a peek at her because that in turn would generate “poor, pitiful widow” looks and murmurs for heaven knew how long.

She motioned for Egan to come in, shut the door and set the ice cream down on the coffee table. He glanced around as if seeing the place for the first time, and she realized that was exactly what he was doing since he’d never been here. This wasn’t the place she’d shared with Jack. Alana had moved from there shortly after his funeral and bought this small cottage on the far edge of town.

Egan’s attention landed on the TV where the dinosaurs and humans were finishing up the big finale scene with lots of CGI teeth, chomping jaws and muted sounds of terror. His attention shifted to the massive pile of tissues on the end table and sofa. Then, he looked at her again, no doubt piecing together what had gone on in her life for the past seven hours.

“I just took a little time for myself,” she settled for saying. “And while I appreciate you checking on me, it really wasn’t necessary.”

He gave her a serious “I beg to differ”look. “I was worried about you. I swear, I didn’t know about Jack having an affair. And I didn’t know about the argument you had with him.” He paused. “Have you talked to a grief counselor about all of this?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “Have you?”

“Yeah,” he verified.

When he didn’t add more other than a long weary breath, Alana contributed what had been the counselor’s mantra for their dozen or so visits. “She told me it wasn’t my fault, that my screaming rant probably hadn’t contributed to Jack being killed. That was BS, of course. What about you? What did your counselor tell you?”

The weariness and the length of the breathing fired up a notch. “That it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could have done to stop that IED. But in my case, that was real bullshit. I could have done something by not asking Jack to drop by to see me. If I hadn’t asked, he would have been twenty miles away and safe.”

Twenty miles. She hadn’t known that. In fact, other than the location, Alana didn’t know a lot of the details about Jack’s last moments on earth. Only what the colonel doing the notification had told her, and that had been just the basics. Jack’s date, time, location and cause of death along with an estimation of when his body would be returned to the States. She hadn’t pressed for more, hadn’t been able to do that because any and everything only reminded her of the blasted argument.

She hadn’t missed Egan’sreal bullshitand knew what it meant. That he was minimizing any part she might have had in Jack’s death while putting the blame squarely on his shoulders. Which were toned and wide.

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