Brenda Harlen - Six Weeks To Catch A Cowboy

“I was your sister’s friend,” she said, as she tore off a piece of her sandwich and popped it into her mouth. “Not yours.”

“Maybe we weren’t friends,” he acknowledged. And then, because he apparently did want to have the awkward conversation they’d skipped seven years earlier, he added, “But we were almost lovers.”

She shook her head as she finished chewing. “A quick roll in the hay would not have made us lovers.”

He touched a hand to her arm. “I treated you badly that night, and I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago—and long forgotten,” she told him.

But he didn’t believe it.

Certainly he’d never forgotten.

“Then you’re not still mad at me—about what happened that night?” he prompted.

“ Nothing happened,” she said again, tearing off another piece of her sandwich. “And I was never mad at you,” she confided. “I was mad at myself. And...embarrassed.”

“Why would you be embarrassed?” he wondered aloud.

She swirled her spoon in her soup. “Because I threw myself at you.”

Apparently they had different recollections of that night. Because while there was no denying that she’d made the first move, he’d made a lot more after that. “As you said, it was a long time ago and nothing happened.”

“Nothing of any significance,” she agreed. “But not for lack of trying on my part.”

It was true that she hadn’t been shy about what she wanted. And he’d been unexpectedly and shockingly aroused by the bold actions of a girl he’d previously dismissed as just another friend of his little sister.

“Back then, you and me—” He shook his head. “It would have been a mistake.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“But now...” He deliberately let the words trail off and dramatically waggled his eyebrows.

She smiled, seemingly appreciative of his effort to lighten the mood, but immediately shot him down. “Now it would be an even bigger mistake.”

She was probably right—for more reasons than even she knew—but he was curious about her rationale. “Why would you say that?”

“Because even if we weren’t friends before, I get the impression you showed up at my door because you need a friend now.”

“Or at least wanted to see a friendly face,” he acknowledged, as he shoved the last bite of sandwich into his mouth before turning his attention back to the soup.

“What was going on at your parents’ place tonight that you didn’t want to eat there?” she asked.

“Celeste had a thing this afternoon—a baby shower? Bridal shower? Some kind of shower, anyway. And I told her that I’d fend for myself so she didn’t have to rush back.”

“Fending for yourself meaning inviting yourself to share my dinner?” she queried dryly.

“I offered to take you out,” he reminded her. “You could have had a thick, juicy steak at Diggers’—or anything else on the menu.”

“Mmm... I do love their strip loin, but this is better,” she told him.

He spooned up the last of his soup which, along with the sandwich, had sated his gnawing hunger but was, by no stretch of the imagination, better than steak. “Why?”

“Because if we’d walked into Diggers’ together, the whole town would be buzzing about it before the meat hit the grill.”

“And that would bother you?”

“I don’t like being the subject of gossip and speculation,” she said.

“You’re not worried that people will remark on my truck being parked outside your apartment?”

“I wasn’t—” she frowned as she stacked the empty bowls and plates “—until just now.”

“I’m sure they have better things to talk about,” he said, attempting to reassure her.

“You’re the closest thing this town has to a celebrity,” she reminded him, as she transferred the dishes and cutlery to the dishwasher. “Everything you do and say is major news.”

“Then the gossips are going to throw a ticker tape parade when they find out about Dani.”

She sent him a quizzical look. “Who’s Dani?”

“My daughter.”

Chapter Four

Kenzie stared at him, stunned. “You’re serious? You have a child?”

Spencer nodded. “A little girl.”

There were so many thoughts swirling through her mind, she didn’t know where to begin.

“How old is she?” she asked, latching onto the most obvious question first.

“Three. Well, almost four.”

“Are you...married?”

He shook his head. “No. Never. I mean, I would have married Emily, but she never told me that she was pregnant. In fact, it was only six weeks ago that I found out about Dani.”

“I can’t... I never...wow.”

“Yeah, that about sums up my reaction, too,” he admitted.

She took another minute to absorb the information he’d provided, but her brain was stuck on the fact that the wild child of the esteemed Channing family had a child of his own now. But maybe even more shocking was that the object of her adolescent adoration was sitting in her kitchen talking to her about it.

And while it had taken a concerted effort not to drool over his hotness as she sat beside him eating her dinner, this new information made her uneasy, because now she knew she hadn’t been ogling—surreptitiously, of course—the hottest guy in school but a little girl’s father.

Obviously her tired brain needed caffeine to process this.

She reached into the cupboard for a mug, then remembered the hot guy still in her kitchen. “Do you want coffee?”

“Sure,” Spencer said.

She grabbed a second mug, then popped a pod into the single-serve brewer. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Black’s good,” he said.

She handed him the first mug then brewed a second, to which she added a splash of milk.

“So.” She lifted her cup toward her lips, sipped. “An almost-four-year-old daughter.”

He nodded.

“And you only found out about her six weeks ago?”

He nodded again.

Which jived with the timing of his shoulder injury, she realized. Probably not a coincidence. More likely, he’d been distracted by the revelation when he’d climbed onto the back of the bull for that fateful ride.

“Why did her mom track you down now?” Kenzie wondered.

“She didn’t,” he acknowledged, his tone grim. “Emily died in a motorcycle accident three months ago.”

“Oh, Spencer.” She set her mug on the counter and instinctively reached out to touch a hand to his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too,” he said. “Mostly for Dani. But I’ll admit to being a little frustrated, too, because now I’ll never know why she didn’t tell me about my child.”

“Then how did you find out?”

“Linda—Emily’s mom and Dani’s grandmother—tracked me down through the PRCA,” he said, referring to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

“Just to stop by and tell you that you were a father?”

“No, to tell me that Emily put in her will that she wanted me to have Copper Penny—her horse—and custody of Dani.”

“Wow,” she said again.

“Can you picture it?” he asked her. “Me? With a kid?”

She lifted her mug to her lips again.

It was obvious what he thought her response would be, and her knee-jerk reaction was to give him the definitive “no” he expected. Because when she tried to picture the Spencer Channing she’d known in high school as a dad, the image refused to form. But when she looked at him now and took a moment to really consider his question, she realized that her instinctive reaction wasn’t just unfair, it was wrong.

“Actually, I can—and it’s not as hard as I would have imagined.”

“Well, I can’t,” he told her. “I mean, what was she thinking? We met at a rodeo—she knows what my life is like.”