Page 49 of Forbidden Cowboy

I didn’t notice, too obsessed with the occasional, small movements my brother was making to notice anything else. Even when a nurse came in with a tote filled with things for me, and said it had been left at the nurses’ station for me, I didn’t move except to thank her.

I fell asleep there, not bothering to use the cot they provided for me. It was uncomfortable, but there was something soaliveabout the movements that only grew in number as the night wore on. By morning, Beau was gently opening and closing his hands, even if his eyes didn’t open.

Anna showed up around midday, and we ate tuna salad sandwiches in Beau’s hospital room. I got the impression Wyatt was avoiding me, since Anna clearly didn’t just drive herself, and I had a horrible inkling as to why, but I refused to dwell on my own life when Beau’s was only just returning.

I read to Beau. I read boring news articles off my phone, and silly feel-good pieces about dogs saving cats from ponds and trees. We listened to tinny music on my phone, and when I played ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, which we used to sing when we were teenagers and swap the high and low parts, his hand practically squeezed mine, so I started singing. I couldn’t singwellby any means, but I exaggerated the high and low parts for the sake of it, and got into the theatrics of the thing. I played drum beats on Beau’s forearm, and when I trailed off on the last melancholy note, I opened my eyes, only to see something I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing for months and months. Even before his accident, I hadn’t put in the effort to see it.

His eyes. His green, magnificent eyes. His expressive eyes. His eyes were looking at me in confusion and joy and some pain.

Hiseyes.

Chapter Sixteen

Wyatt

The news that Beau was awake had me wanting to fly out of my seat and to the hospital as soon as I saw the picture from Sierra.

I didn’t, though, because apparently, he needed space, as much as could be given to him. Sierra was a good thing for him—something to ground him and help him come back to reality slowly.

I was a little sad I couldn’t see him, but knowing he was doing better was everything I needed. His eyes were open. He was awake. He was coming back to us.

While worrying about Beau, my mind kept trailing back to Sierra as well. She was acting strange. She had also gained some weight. I wasn’t sure if she noticed it, and I knew it would probably make me sound creepy if I pointed it out, because the only way I had seen it was because I had familiarized myself with everything about her, every muscle and every curve. I didn’t care if she put on a couple extra pounds from comfort food or from being happy or whatever—what I cared about was that it was all centered.

Did she know? After I had told her about Eliana moving in, she had left via the drainpipe outside her window. I only knew because I’d peeked into her room, concerned, and seen the open window. She hadn’t done that since Anna first tried to lock her in. She didn’t want to face me, and it left me anxious about what she might be hiding.

It was a ridiculous thought, and I shoved it out of my mind. Even if we hadn’t used protection, we had gone immediately and found an emergency contraceptive. I had even seen her take the two pills. There wasno way. Also, I knew Sierra wouldn’t do what Eliana did. She wouldn’t disappear into the ether and have my child and then show up a year later to ask for child support. She knew what Anna meant to me, and surely, she must know what it meant to not know about her for a year.

“You’re overthinking things,” I growled to myself as I mucked out a stable.

Andy, one of the grooms, kept shooting me weird looks, but didn’t ask anything. I really had taken a backseat on anything administrative, and had gone about with work on the ranch like it was any family farm. It was therapeutic, and I wondered why I hadn’t done it more. I was spending more time on Melisandre, as she had become my new favorite to ride, and had helped with everything from cutting the cattle for veterinary care to checking in on the children’s riding lessons being provided by the stables. I was trotting my horse down to the hay meadows to really get a feel for how the fields were looking and spending more time outdoors than I could remember doing in a long time. My employees looked surprised to see me, but not unhappy about it, and I spoke to the managers in every area—beef cattle, dairy, agriculture, stables, education—and pressed them about what they wanted to see changed. The biggest things were just minor repairs that had been left to the wayside—a broken fence here, a kicked-in stable door there. My wranglers all spoke highly of their jobs, and I couldn’t be sure they weren’t just putting it on, but everyone mostly seemed happy.

It was a different world than the days I had just seen Greg calling in the cattle, sometimes riding out to herd them. With more than three thousand cattle and four hundred horses on the ranch at any one time, I had forgotten how huge the place was, and that I was maybe seeing two hundred of the cows and only a handful of horses most days.

I promised myself I’d start setting a couple of days a week aside to work the ranch with my men.

By the time I got home that night, I was sweaty, covered in horse crap, and thinking about ordering a pizza because we no longer had Sierra cooking for us while she was at the hospital.

My surprise when I walked in the door to smell beef cooking was obvious.

“You should see your father, Anna,” Eliana said, calling into the next room from where she was stirring something in a pan on the stove. “He shows up, almost late to dinner, covered in poop, and looking like he’s seen a ghost.”

“You’re—you’re cooking,” I said bluntly.

“I know how to cook a couple of things,” Eliana said, turning up her nose at me. “But you’ll be eating none of it if you don’t shower before dinner, and don’t track those boots of yours through the house. I just mopped.”

I looked at the kitchen floor, which was indeed very clean. Nodding dumbly, I toed off my boots and left them on the back deck, walking through the kitchen in sock feet. I passed the smallest living room, where Anna was curled up in a chair, watchingThe Little Mermaid.Her eyes met mine, and we shared a look that said neither of us knew what was going on. I found some comfort in knowing I hadn’t just stepped into some parallel universe where Eliana was a domestic goddess.

I showered as quickly as I could while still being thorough, and stepped back into the kitchen for dinner. Anna was setting the table while Eliana prattled on and on about some time she had made whatever was in the pan on the stove for dinner with friends in Vegas.

I didn’t know she’d ever been in Vegas, but it didn’t surprise me.

When she served it into bowls, Anna and I shared another look. Whatever was in front of us was somewhere between a red and brown color, and too thick to be a soup, but too thin to be a stew. There were chunks in it. After dissecting one with my knife and fork (how did she think I was going to eat it with a knife and fork?), I concluded that it was the very overcooked beef I had smelled when I first entered the kitchen. Eliana was looking at Anna and I expectantly as she took her place across from our daughter.

Scared for what I was about to do to my body, I braced myself, stabbed the piece of beef mince I had cut open, and placed it in my mouth. It was not good. Somehow, the sauce, which I figured was meant to be something made from tomatoes, was both very salty, a little spicy, and somehow tangy, while the beef was completely unseasoned and tough to chew, like rubber. I was a little horrified that this kind of tough beef had come from one of my cows, and prayed that it was just Eliana’s cooking that had made it this way.

Anna saw whatever minute expression I let slip through my calm exterior, and obviously braced herself to eat her own food.

“‘s goob,” I slurred around a mouthful, using the food to make my lack of intonation sound more convincing.