Tanya Michaels - Her Cowboy Hero

He chuckled at that, the sound rusty even to his ears.

Then they were both distracted by Evan joining them on the porch. Hannah explained that the boy was in the middle of lunch and there was plenty of leftover spaghetti in the pot if Henry or Colin wanted some. Colin was always grateful when she brought him food outside, but so far he’d managed to avoid joining her and Evan for meals. Henry, however, had no such reservations about pulling up a chair at the kitchen table.

“I came hungry,” he said. “I know better than to eat before setting foot in your house. God knows I love Kitty, but her cooking can’t hold a candle to yours. Don’t ever tell her I said that,” he added, looking suddenly alarmed.

Hannah mimed crossing her heart. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Evan was bored with the discussion of spaghetti. As he threw his slim arms around Henry’s legs in a welcoming hug, he demanded, “Are we going fishing today?”

“That depends on how good you are and whether Henry feels up to it,” Hannah said sternly. “Don’t pester him about it. And if the two of you do go, you have to exit through the back door. This area will probably be covered with wet paint.”

He’d done a few boards in the garage last night so that they’d be dry and people could have a pathway through the front door, but he didn’t trust the four-year-old to stick to the path. After blowing his mother a kiss goodbye, Evan led Henry inside, talking a mile a minute about the size of the fish he was going to catch.

Hannah watched them go, laughing softly. “Our pond is stocked with trout, but to hear him talk, you’d think we had marlin in there. Henry is good with him—with any luck, you won’t even notice they’re here. But if you need anything, my cell number is on the fridge. So is Kitty’s. She and Henry live just down the road, so she can be here in a matter of minutes. A lot faster than me.”

Especially if Hannah ended up with a flat tire or some other roadside emergency. “You’re taking the truck?” he asked.

“It has a lot more cargo space than Annette’s car and pulls the trailer better. I figured it was best to plan for a big haul. Power of positive thinking and all that.”

He opened his mouth to comment, then thought better, shaking his head.

“What?” Her hazel eyes narrowed. “Were you about to make some snide comment about my truck?”

“About you. Not snide,” he backpedaled. “I was just wondering if this is something you were born with or a learned behavior—your sunny disposition, I mean. Does everyone in your family see the world in such a rose-colored view?”

She jerked her head away abruptly, reaching into her purse and pulling out the sunglasses she’d mentioned. When she turned to face him again, the dark-tinted frames obscured her expression. “I was an orphan, actually.”

They’d both lost their parents? The revelation of more common ground threw him for a loop. He and Hannah Shaw were polar opposites. He wouldn’t have guessed that their backgrounds shared many similarities.

“Your parents are dead?” he heard himself ask.

“I honestly have no idea. Never met them,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was abandoned as a newborn and grew up mostly in foster care. But to answer your question, the ‘sunny disposition’ was self-taught. I suppose I could moan and sulk my way through life, being bitter about anything that went wrong, but what kind of example would that be for my son?”

Her words had an edge to them. Because the topic was upsetting for her, or because she’d taken his question as criticism?

Or was she perhaps criticizing him? Colin may not have been flashing smiles left and right for the past three days, but he sure as hell wasn’t sulking.

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