Brenda Minton - Jenna's Cowboy Hero

Adam stamped down the desire to ask her name. He pushed aside old habits that had gotten him into more trouble than he could handle. More gossip than real trouble, but to the world, it might as well be true.

“I’m really sorry about the boys, and the dog.” She had rounded up all three and they gathered close, in a tight-knit huddle at the side of the road.

“It’s okay. I just wouldn’t want them to get hurt.”

“You’re right, of course. I’m Jenna Cameron.” She held out a small hand with pink-painted nails. “Welcome to Dawson.”

“Yeah, thank you. I’m looking for a half-finished summer camp.”

“You sound happy about that.”

“Real happy.” Because he never expected to lose his cousin, and he hadn’t expected the camp to be unfinished. He pulled the directions out of his pocket and read them off to her. “Do you have any idea where that is?”

She stepped to the edge of the road and pointed. Three hundred feet ahead, on the other side of the road and barely visible due to shrubs and grass, was a gravel drive. “That’s your place.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He took a step closer to her and the dog snarled, raising an upper lip in a pretty convincing warning. Adam backed away.

“Sorry, he’s my guard dog.” Her hand rested on the dog’s head. “I’m afraid I don’t reprimand him for doing his job.”

“No need, as long as he doesn’t bite me.” He didn’t want to add dog bite to the things that had gone wrong today. He looked at the overgrown drive and the address on the crumpled paper in his hand. “Are you sure that’s it?”

It was a cow pasture dotted with trees. He couldn’t see much of the property because trees lined the fence row that ran parallel to the road.

“That’s it. Earlier this summer they were working up there, until…well, anyway, they built a barn and a dorm. They even hauled in a single-wide mobile home.”

“At least he did that.”

“So, you’re the owner.”

“I’m the lucky guy.” He shoved the paper back into his pocket and walked back to his car. She followed, slower, taking it easy over the rocks. The boys and the dog remained at the edge of the road, all three looking at him like he might be public enemy number one.

He was used to that look, more used to the look than to kids. He had made a careful choice not to date women with kids. Or at least he’d had that policy since Morgan.

“You’re probably going to need help getting your car out of that ditch.” She walked closer, eyeing the car. She smelled like soap and peaches, not Chanel.

“I don’t think this car is going anywhere anytime soon.”

“I can give you the number of the local garage,” she offered, looking up at him. “They can tow it for you.”

“Are you going to pay the tow bill, seeing as it was your kids who caused the wreck?”

“If you insist.”

“No, I don’t insist. Forget it.” He glanced back at the boys and the dog. “They’re cute.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mackenzie, and I really am sorry.” She bit down on her bottom lip and averted her gaze back to his car.

He didn’t know what to say. She knew him, which meant that even here he couldn’t find anonymity. And it wouldn’t be long before his family knew that he was back in Oklahoma.

Jenna looked away from the pale blue eyes of the man towering over her. She’d get a crick in her neck if she kept looking up at the six-and-a-half-foot giant, whom she knew well from watching football with the guys in her unit. His face was all smooth planes beneath a sandy-brown goatee, and when he smiled, there was something about it that changed his eyes, making her think a light was hiding inside his heart. It was a kind of shy smile, almost humble, but powerful.

Maybe it wasn’t real. It could be a part of his lady-killer image. As an optimist she liked to think that it was something else. It was the real person hiding inside the public image, hidden by tabloid stories of models and actresses.

She’d like to know the real Big Mac Mackenzie.

But of course, she wouldn’t. Getting to know a man wasn’t on her five-year plan. Or her fifteen-year plan. She would get her boys and walk back up the drive to her house, away from the temptation to ask him questions about his life and why he was here now.

He had finished checking out the wrecked car and walked back to her, shaking his head.

“Is it bad?” She was mentally calculating what a car like that would cost, and how much the repairs would cost her.

“No, I don’t think so. Two tires are blown, and there’s a good dent in the driver’s side door.”

“Do you want the number for the garage?”

“I guess I have to.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

“Sorry, you’ll have to come up to the house for the number.” Jenna gathered the boys and looked back over her shoulder.

He was standing in the road, looking unsure, like this was all some malicious trap on her part. He looked like a giant, but he looked lost and a little vulnerable. She shook off the thought that compared him with David, her smallest twin, after he’d had a bad dream.

Big Mac Mackenzie wasn’t a lost child. He was a grown man standing in the road wearing faded jeans, a loose white shirt with the top three buttons undone and a black cowboy hat firmly in place.

“Are you coming?” She waited. “I’ll get you a Band-Aid for the cut on your head.”

He finally nodded, let out a sigh and took long-legged strides that soon put him next to them. And then he walked slower, keeping pace with them as they made their way up the drive to the house.

Horses whinnied from the barn, reminding Jenna that it was feeding time. She glanced in that direction, thinking of work that needed to be done, and how she’d rather be sitting on the front porch with her leg up and a glass of iced tea on the table next to her.

She loved her front porch with the ivy and clematis vines climbing the posts, drawing in bees and butterflies. She loved the scent of wild roses in the spring. Like now, caught on the breeze, the scent was sweet and brought back memories.

Some good, some bad.

“What are your names?” Adam Mackenzie asked the boys, his deep voice a little scary. Jenna gave a light squeeze to their hands to encourage them.

“Timmy.” The bigger of her two boys, always a little more curious, a little more brave, spoke first. “And we don’t talk to strangers.”

He also liked to mimic.

“Timmy, mind your manners,” Jenna warned, smiling down at him.

“Of course you don’t, and that’s good.” Adam Mackenzie turned his attention to the smaller of her two boys. “And what about you, cowboy?”

“I’m David.” He didn’t suck his thumb. Instead he pulled his left hand free from hers and shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked up at the tall, giant of a man walking next to him. “And we have a big uncle named Clint.”

A baritone chuckle and Adam made eye contact with Jenna. She smiled, because that light was in his eyes. It hadn’t been a trick of the camera, or her imagination. She had to explain what David had meant to be a threatening comment about her brother. Leave it to the boys to think they all needed to be protected from a stranger.

“My brother lives down the road a piece.”

“Clint Cameron?” Adam’s gaze drifted away from her to the ramp at the side of the porch. Her brother had put the ramp in before she came home from the hospital last fall.

“Yes, Clint Cameron. You know him?”

“We played against each other back in high school. What’s he doing now?”

“Raising bucking bulls with his wife. They travel a lot.”

Jenna grabbed the handrail and walked up the steps, her boys and Adam Mackenzie a few steps behind, watching her. The boys knew the reason for her slow, cautious climb. She imagined Adam wondering at her odd approach to steps. In the six months since she’d been home, she’d grown used to people wondering and to questioning looks. Now it was more about her, and about raising the boys. She was too busy with life to worry about what other people were thinking about her.

It hadn’t always been that way. Times past, she worried a lot about what people thought.

She opened the front door, and he reached and pushed it back, holding it for them to enter. She slid past him, the boys in front of her.

“Do you want tea?” She glanced over her shoulder as she crossed the living room, seeing all of the things that could make him ask questions about her life. If he looked.

He stood inside her tiny living room in the house she’d grown up in. A house that used to have more bad memories than good. For her boys the bad memories would be replaced with those of a happy childhood with a mom who loved them.

There wouldn’t be memories of a dad. She wasn’t sorry about that, but then again, sometimes she was.

The walls of the house were no longer paneled. Clint had hung drywall, they’d painted the room pale shell and the woodwork was white now, not the dark brown of her childhood. The old furniture was gone, replaced by something summery and plaid. Gauzy white curtains covered the floor-to-ceiling windows, fluttering in the summer breeze that drifted through the house.

Everything old, everything that held a bad memory, had been taken out, replaced. And yet the memories still returned, of her father drunk, of his rage, and sometimes him in the chair, sleeping the day away.

Adam took up space in the small house, nearly overwhelming it, and her, with his presence. As she waited for his answer to the question about iced tea, he took off his hat and brushed a hand through short but shaggy sandy-brown hair.

“Tea?” He raised a brow and she remembered her question.

“Yes, iced tea.”

“Please. And the phone book?”

“The number for the garage is on my fridge.” She led him down the hall to the kitchen with a wood table in the center of the room.

She loved the room, not just the colors—the pale yellow walls and white cabinets. She loved that her sister-in-law, Willow, had decorated and remodeled it as a way to welcome Jenna home. The room was a homecoming present and a symbol of new beginnings. They had worked on the rest of the house as Jenna recovered.

Jenna poured their tea while Adam dialed the phone. When she turned, he was leaning against the wall, watching her. She set the tea down on the table while he finished his conversation.

“Is it taken care of?” She pulled a first-aid kit from the cabinet over the stove.

“They’ll be out in an hour. They wanted to call the police to write up an accident report.”

Jenna swallowed and waited for him to tell her how he’d responded to that. Accident. She hadn’t really thought about that. Her boys had caused an accident. She pulled out the chair and sat down, stretching her legs.

“I’m so sorry. You really could have been hurt.”

“Your boys could have been hurt.”

She nodded. “I know. The rule is that they don’t go down the drive. They’re usually very good boys.”

“I’m sure they are.” He picked up the glass of tea. “I’m going to need to rent a car.”

“Not around here. And I want to finish talking about the accident report. You’ll need to let them call the county so you can get this covered on your insurance.”

He drained half the glass of tea in one gulp and set it down on the table. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Just like that, you’ll take care of it?” She bit down on her bottom lip, waiting, because it couldn’t be this easy. “My boys caused an accident and major damage to an expensive car.”