Wanna hear it?”
He gave an inward groan. Colt’s stepson told even cornier jokes than C.J. “Sure,” he said. “Lay it on me.”
“Knock knock.”
Great. A knock-knock joke. His favorite. He winced but gave the requisite answer. “Who’s there.”
“Impatient cow.”
“Impatient cow wh—”
“MOOOOO,” C.J. cut him off before he could finish his part of the joke, then started giggling hysterically. “Get it? The cow’s too impatient to wait for you to say ‘who.”’
No matter how many times Annie tried to set him straight, C.J. always insisted on overexplaining his jokes. Joe smiled anyway. “I get it. That’s a good one.”
C.J. giggled again, then with a final wave of a mitten, he trudged through the blowing snow into the house, pausing only long enough to greet Annie’s best cow dog, Dolly.
Joe watched until the boy climbed the steps to the back porch and closed the back door behind him.
He rubbed a fist over his suddenly aching heart. Damn, he would miss the little rascal. And Leah, too, even with this new frosty attitude of hers. He loved both of them as much as if they were his own kids instead of his brother’s.
The future stretched out ahead of him, a bleak and solitary landscape, without Leah’s smart mouth or C.J.’s corny jokes, or that soft, hesitant smile of Annie’s that transformed her from an ordinary woman into someone of rare beauty.
What was he thinking to move hundreds of miles away? He would hate Wyoming without them. He should call Waterson and tell him the deal was off, that he’d changed his mind about the whole damn thing and wasn’t coming after all—
He caught himself. He wouldn’t do anything of the sort. He had to leave, and soon. If he didn’t—if he gave in to the low throb of desire—Annie would run from him faster than a mule deer caught in the crosshairs.
He had already screwed up her life enough by forcing her into his brother’s arms. He refused to screw it up any more.
Chapter 2
“Shut up, you little brat. It’s none of your business whether I do my homework or not.”
“Leah, that’s enough. C.J., stay out of this. It’s between me and your sister.”
Annie stirred the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove with one hand and pinched at the bridge of her nose with the other, futilely trying to squeeze out the killer headache that had formed with Joe’s announcement in the barn two hours earlier and had since swollen to enormous proportions.
Thorny tendrils of pain converged behind her eyes, then snaked out in every direction throughout her head, threatening to crush the life out of any coherent thought she might have.
“Well, he is a little brat,” Leah snapped. “I’m sick and tired of him always butting in where he doesn’t belong.”
“This discussion is about you, young lady. This is the third phone call I’ve received from the school this month. You’re seriously in danger of flunking algebra if we don’t do something about it.”
“What do I care?” Leah studied purple fingernails resting on the kitchen table, her mouth set in heavy, sullen lines. “Mr. Sandoval’s a dork.”
“He’s a concerned teacher who cares enough about you and your grade to call me and inform me you’re still not turning in your assignments.”
“So what?”
“So you lied to me, for starters. You told me you’ve been finishing all your work in study hall.”
“Algebra’s stupid.”
“I like math,” C.J. piped in.
“That’s because you’re stupid, too.”
“Leah, that’s enough,” Annie snapped again, feeling whatever shreds of patience she had been clinging to disappear as the headache began to writhe down her spine. “Apologize to your brother.”
“I’m sorry you’re stupid.” Leah smirked.
With his innate sense of self-preservation, C.J. stuck his tongue out at his sister, grabbed a chocolate-chip cookie out of the boot-shaped jar on the counter, and headed for the family room.
Annie refrained from pointing out they would be eating in just a few minutes—she wasn’t up to another battle, especially when his exit left her alone with the twelve-year-old daughter she barely knew anymore.
She hated this. Absolutely hated it. Leah used to be so sweet and good-natured, always eager to please, with a kind word for everyone. In the months since Charlie left she’d turned into this moody little monster with an attitude to match. She closed herself off in her room every day after school and shunned all of her mother’s attempts to get to the root of the behavioral changes.
This guilt didn’t help matters. Annie pinched at the bridge of her nose again.
She’d like to think this constant defiance was just a natural part of growing up, just Leah testing her boundaries as she prepared for teenagedom in a few months. But she couldn’t help wondering if her daughter was reacting out of latent rage and hurt at her, if somehow she had completely warped her daughter’s psyche by putting up with Charlie for so long.
She couldn’t think that way. Or at least she couldn’t let her guilt over her own weakness affect her treatment of her daughter.
“You’re grounded.” She tried not to grind her teeth at the pain in her head or at the pain in her heart. “For lying to me and for not taking care of your responsibilities. You won’t be able to go to Brittany’s birthday party this weekend or to any other activities with your friends until you’re completely caught up in school—not just in algebra but in language arts and social studies as well.
“And,” she went on, knowing this was a much worse punishment to her daughter than curtailing her social activities, “you’ve lost your riding privileges starting right now. Stardust is now off-limits until you manage to bring your grades up.”
Leah’s mouth dropped open and her eyes narrowed into a killing glare, though her lips quivered like she wanted to cry. “That completely reeks! Stardust is my horse. I raised her. You can’t keep me from riding her!”
“Watch me.” Annie turned back to add spaghetti to the now-boiling water on the stove and to hide the quiver in her own lips.
“This is so not fair! I hate you!” Leah cried, then stomped up the stairs to her bedroom. A few seconds later, her door slammed shut with a resounding crack that echoed through the house, making Annie flinch.
“Uh-oh. Rough day?”
She glanced toward the mudroom to find Joe’s broad shoulders filling the doorway, his hands rubbing the woven band on his Stetson. She had a fierce, powerful urge to fall into his arms, to bury her face in the folds of that soft chamois shirt and weep for the daughter she
