Wendy Warren – Cowboy Comes Back / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride: Cowboy Comes Back / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride (страница 4)

“Lib—”

She almost had a heart attack when Kade spoke from behind her. She whirled around, angry at her reaction and ready to take it out on him, fair or not. But she hadn’t counted on the impact of seeing him standing there, tall and lean. The same, yet different. And still as sexy as hell, if one went by appearances alone.

He had a bad case of bed head, his wheat-colored hair sticking out in several directions, and a thick growth of stubble on his chin and jaw—which seemed even more chiseled than before. Standing barefoot on the gravel, he rubbed one hand self-consciously over his head as he apparently waited for her to say something.

When she didn’t speak, mainly because she was fighting back memories triggered by his disheveled appearance, he asked, “What are you doing here?”

She looked him up and down, collecting herself, taking refuge in anger once again. Much safer there. “Where’d you come from?”

He pointed at his horse trailer. “I don’t sleep in the house.” He was more muscular than he’d been ten years ago, and there was a new scar on the side of his face, curving close to his left eyebrow. Probably the result of that bronc stomping him just before he’d won his second world title. Libby had read about it in the papers and had been bitter enough at the time to have rooted for the horse.

“Daddy?”

Libby’s eyes jerked toward the trailer in time to see a girl with a mop of tousled blond hair poke her head out the door.

“It’s just a friend, Maddie. I’ll be back in a minute.”

But the girl had already jumped to the ground and was heading toward them, the silvery shapes on her pink pajamas glinting in the early sun.

This is the child. Kade’s child. The reason Libby had discovered that he’d been sleeping with someone else while she’d been hundreds of miles away, working on her degree. The girl came closer and hugged Kade’s waist, staring at Libby as she leaned against her father.

Reality sucked. It really did. Libby liked it better when the kid was just some faceless entity, not a flesh-and-blood little girl with Kade’s hazel eyes.

“This is Madison,” Kade said, and it was easy to see that he did not want Libby to do anything to upset his daughter. As if she would—it wasn’t the kid’s fault that Kade couldn’t keep his fly zipped. Libby forced the corners of her mouth up when all she really wanted to do was escape. “Hi, Madison.”

“Hi,” the girl said, obviously as curious as Libby was uncomfortable. “You can call me Maddie. All Dad’s friends do.”

Libby didn’t know how to deal with this. None of her combative strategies applied here, and this was obviously not the time to do battle.

“I’ve got to go,” she said, brushing past Kade and his daughter, not caring what either of them thought. She needed to regroup.

Libby couldn’t remember the last time she’d turned tail and run. Even when Kade had come to her to confess that he’d gotten a woman pregnant and had to do the right thing, she’d held her ground—mainly out of shock, but she’d held it. Kade had been the one to leave.

She was startled when Kade caught up with her as she reached the bumper of her truck.

“Why’d you come, Lib?”

She glanced over his shoulder to see his daughter mounting the steps to the trailer, shooting one last curious glance their way before disappearing inside.

I came because I wanted to get this reunion over with and move on. I wanted to prove to myself that I’ve been losing sleep over nothing.

But the words wouldn’t come. So she hedged.

“They’re taking bets about us at the bar.”

“Of course they are. You must have known that would happen.”

“Listen, Kade. I live a quiet life now. I don’t like to be stared at or gossiped about.” She managed to hold his gaze as she spoke.

“Since when? You’ve never cared what anyone thought.”

So much for hedging. “I cared what you thought, for all the good it did me.”

“I wanted to get married,” he said in a voice so low it was almost a growl. “You were the one who demanded more time. You were the one who said we should make sure before we took the big step.”

“I didn’t think you’d be sleeping with other women, or raising families with them.”

“It happened. I wasn’t going to walk out on her.”

Her. Libby was surprised that she felt a stab of jealousy. She tilted her head back. “You did the right thing. For her.”

“I had no choice.”

“No,” she admitted, “you didn’t.” He couldn’t have come back to her when he was having a baby with someone else. She wouldn’t have had him back.

“I still don’t know why you’re here,” he said.

“You want to know why I’m here? Because, regardless of what you think, I don’t appreciate being bet on and talked about. I’d prefer not to have people watching us to see what’s going to happen next, like we’re some kind of reality show.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked with a perplexed scowl.

“You told Jason you’d do as you damned well pleased where I’m concerned.”

Kade hooked his thumb in his belt and regarded her for another long moment. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounds.”

“Well, it’s what someone heard and it’s affecting the odds.”

“Libby …”

The way he said her name sent a small tingle through her body. And it pissed her off. “Just keep your distance and I’ll keep mine. I think you owe me that much, Kade.” She opened the truck door, putting a barrier between them. “It was nice to meet your daughter.”

Libby got in and turned the key, throwing the truck into Reverse almost as soon as the engine fired and leaving Kade standing in the driveway.

Talk about plans being derailed. She’d come on the offensive and had left on the retreat. That wasn’t the way she normally did things, but it was the way she’d done them today.

And she didn’t know why.

Libby slowed as she approached a corner. No, she did know why, and it was more than the kid being there. Seeing Kade had thrown her completely off-kilter. No matter how many times she’d told herself that she’d moved on over the past few years, it was obvious now that she’d been wrong.

She was still pissed off at Kade. And she still hated him for what he’d done.

“WHO’S THAT LADY, DAD?” Maddie asked as soon as Kade opened the trailer door.

Try as he might, Kade couldn’t say “no one.”

“We grew up together,” he said as he shut the door behind him. He glanced into the mirror that was visible through the door of the small bathroom and he grimaced. He looked like a derelict. He didn’t usually sleep this late, but Maddie had been wound up the night before and she’d talked well into the small hours before he convinced her to slide her folding door shut and get some sleep.

“Why’s she mad at you?”

“Because I hurt her feelings once.” He headed for the coffeepot.

“A long time ago?”

“Yep.”

“And she’s still mad?” Maddie blinked as she asked the question.

Kade poured coffee into a mug, took a sip. Then another. “Some people stay mad a long time, sweetie.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re lucky. Come on,” he said, jerking his head toward the stove. “I’ll make breakfast. You set the table.”

“Pancakes?”

“You bet.”

Maddie set the tiny fold-out table while Kade whipped up pancakes from a mix and started cooking dollar-size cakes in a cast-iron frying pan. Maddie loved the trailer because everything was small. She thought it was like living in a dollhouse, whereas Kade was getting a bona fide case of cabin fever after only a week. But he wouldn’t sleep in the house. He hated the feel of the place, could still feel his father’s malevolent presence.

“I want to see the blue horse before I go.”

“He’s not really blue, Maddie,” Kade replied as he flipped pancakes. His nerves were still humming from his encounter with Libby. She hadn’t changed much. She was still full of fire. Still beautiful with all that long curly hair and those flashing blue eyes. And she had obviously been unnerved by meeting Maddie.

Not that there was a chance in hell that her feelings toward his child would matter one way or the other. Libby was not, by nature, the trusting kind, and he’d done more than break her trust. He’d decimated it. But she’d also done a number on him, too, when she’d told him she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married.

“I know he’s not really blue,” Maddie replied airily, bringing his attention back to her. “He’s a blue roan. He has black and white and gray hairs mixed, and it looks like he’s blue.”

Maddie had had blue roans on the brain ever since Kade had told her about Blue, the stud his grandfather had given him when he was fifteen. He hadn’t told her about setting the horse free, since that was both illegal and frowned upon, instead letting her think that Blue had escaped on his own and joined a band of mustangs.