Karen Templeton - Welcome Home, Cowboy

“Dammit Emma, you’re driving me crazy, you know that?”

Cash swiveled to meet her gaze, only to get so hung up in it he had no idea how to find his way out again. The words shimmered in the space between them for a moment before fading into the cushiony silence. Finally, Emma smiled, a whatchagonnado ? curve to her lips that shoved Cash right over the line between then and now.

“Yeah. Same here.” She hesitated, then glided the back of her hand down his cheek, and Cash’s breath curled into a hot, dry knot in the center of his chest. “Crazier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Emma saw Cash swallow, wanted to press her lips to those clenching muscles in his throat, to pull this man inside her—in more ways than one—so bad her own throat went dry.

“Should that be a bad thing?” he finally said.

“Don’t know. Don’t care …”

Dear Reader,

When Cash Cochran offers to help the widowed Emma Manning pull her neglected farm back from the brink of disaster, she might have thought Cash was the answer to her prayers. But now that I’ve finished their story, I’m thinking Emma was far more the answer to Cash’s … even if he didn’t know he was asking.

It’s probably pretty evident to anyone who’s read my books how often they explore themes of self-worth, redemption and forgiveness, based on my own deep-seated conviction that good ultimately always triumphs over bad. Welcome Home, Cowboy goes down those roads, and then some, with Cash being probably the most tortured hero I’ve ever written (Emma definitely had her work cut out for her!). But, oh, what a joy and privilege—for both of us!—it was to accompany him on his journey.

I hope you think so, too.

Karen Templeton

Since 1998, RITA ®award winner and Waldenbooks bestseller KAREN TEMPLETONhad written more than thirty books A transplanted Easterner, she now lives in New Mexico with her husband and whichever of their five sons happens to be in residence.

Welcome Home Cowboy

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Gail, for grace and understanding and patience. My gratitude knows no bounds.

Cash Cochran hadn’t known what to expect, but for damn sure goats in coats hadn’t made the list.

His breath clouding his face, he frowned at the half-dozen or so beasts in the wire-fenced pen adjacent to the barn, bright-colored balloons on spindly legs. They squinted back with bemused smiles, droopy ears flicking. One gave him a questioning bleat.

I’m not sure, either, Cash thought, his gaze sweeping what had once been a sizable mamas-and-calves operation, sold off in bits and pieces until nothing remained except the house and the ten or so acres his father’d willed to Lee Manning a few years ago … a discovery that’d nearly knocked Cash right off the wagon. Except that was one level of hell he had no wish to revisit, thank you.

Not that he’d needed, or wanted, the property, nestled between two mountain ranges in northern New Mexico. Lee and his wife had been welcome to it. But the why behind the bequest had tainted the lapsed friendship with a bitter stink, one time had barely begun to dissipate.

The sun popped out from behind a doughy cloud, bringing changes into sharp relief—the fair-size, utilitarian greenhouse, the unplowed fields, a young orchard not yet in bloom. Tattered, heavy-duty plastic clinging to one side of the house—an abandoned home-improvement project would be his guess. The goats. Even so, the endless sky and pure, weightless air, the wind’s contented sigh through the pinon windbreak—those were exactly as he’d remembered.

What he’d missed.

Unlike the house itself—a ranch-style built high enough for a porch but too low for a basement, the exterior a conglomeration of stucco and fake brick and bad siding—which he hadn’t missed at all. Putrid memories punched through the paneled wood door and fake-shuttered windows, trampling the riot of egg-yolk-yellow daffodils crowding the foundation, the cutesy Welcome sign beside the recently repainted porch—

Barking its head off, an avalanche on four enormous, filthy feet roared around the side of the house and straight toward Cash.

“Bumble! Heel!”

Cash’s head jerked up, his gaze colliding with blue-green eyes as steady as they were curious. The called-off polar bear of a dog swerved at once, trotting over to plant his butt beside the red-sweatered goat his mistress held on to. A jumble of coppery hair, the bright plaid scarf hanging down her front, both glowed in contrast to the blah-colored, too-large barn coat, faded jeans, muddied boots.

“Can I help you?”

“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to cause a ruckus. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” the woman said with a bite to her West Texas drawl that made Cash wonder if she kept the dog around just for show. At least she’d been smiling in her wedding photo.

“I take it you’re …” He scoured his brain for her name. “Emma?”

“That’s me.”

Cash couldn’t remember the last time a woman didn’t go all swoony and tongue-tied in his presence. Longer still since such things had stoked his ego, made a lonesome young cowboy with a fair talent for guitar picking and songwriting feel like hot stuff. It’d surprised him, how fast all the attention got old. Especially when it finally penetrated that the gals were far more interested in Cash’s so-called fame than they were in him. Still, Emma Manning’s obliviousness to his so-called charms unnerved him. His attention swerved again to the goats, still watching him with squinched-up little faces.

“Why’re they dressed?”

“Had to shear ‘em before they kidded. Then the temperature dropped. Mr. Cochran … I’m sorry, but why are you here? Since I somehow doubt you dropped by to chitchat about my goats.”

He glanced back, caught the frown, the fine lines feathering the corners of those cool, calm eyes. “Guess you’d call that a loaded question. Lee around?”

Something flickered across her face—irritation, maybe—before she wordlessly led the goat back to the pen. Hot shame licked up Cash’s neck, that if he hadn’t found that letter a few months ago—a letter he hadn’t realized he’d kept—he might not even be here now. But he was, which was the important thing.

Wasn’t it?

Emma gently kneed the goat’s rump, encouraging her to rejoin her friends. Her silence, however, was anything but gentle. Even her hair—scattered across her back, nearly to her waist—seemed to crackle with anger. Anger he wasn’t totally sure he understood, truth be told.

“I know I should’ve called first,” he said, “but this morning … I just found myself heading out this way. And by that point I figured I’d better see it through before I lost my nerve. If Lee’s not here, no problem, I could come back.” From inside the pen, puzzled eyes cut to his. “I bought a house a few months ago, on the other side of town. Haven’t been there long, though. Couple, three days—”

“You moved back to Tierra Rosa?”

“For the time being, yeah. I guess …” He lowered his eyes, wrestling with this newfangled thing called honesty. Meeting her gaze again, he said, “I guess sometimes you gotta go back to the beginning before you can move forward. And part of that’s patching things up with Lee—”

“That’s not possible, Mr. Cochran,” Emma said quietly, latching the gate before facing him again. “Since Lee died last fall.”