Betsy Amant - The Rancher's Secret Son

He never did.

As if she could sense his thoughts, Emma glanced at him over her shoulder, then hung back until she fell in step beside him. He fought his surprise and hoped his shock didn’t register on his face.

“I know this is weird—us showing up like this.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, the familiar gesture from his memories strangely comforting. Except it made him want to do it, too, so he looped his thumbs in his belt loops. “When we got the assignment, I didn’t know—I mean, I didn’t realize that you were...” Her voice trailed off.

“Not weird. Surprising, definitely.” He kept his gaze straight ahead as the campers neared the main house, watching as Luke instructed them to wipe their shoes on the mat before going inside. Sort of pointless on a ranch, but Nicole insisted, so Luke had picked up the habit. “One of the other counselors handles the paperwork, so I only ever saw Cody’s name. Didn’t have a chance to put two and two together.”

Her expression paled, and he wondered what he had said. But she pressed on before he could ask. “Cody is a good kid. He just...” She bit her lip, making him glance away again. She always did that, and it’d always been his undoing. Did she have any idea the effect that lingered after all this time? Did she feel it, too?

It didn’t matter. That was a different lifetime, and clearly, they both had other priorities right now.

“He just what?”

She lowered her voice as they neared the cabin. “He just needs some time. Got caught up in the wrong crowd and made some mistakes. I think we caught him early.”

“We?” The word blurted from his lips before he could censor. A boyfriend? Cody’s dad? Was he still in the picture?

Her expression tightened. “Cody’s judge and I.”

Ah. Not a boyfriend. He didn’t want to acknowledge the relief he felt creeping through his stomach.

He held the screen door open for her to enter behind the stream of teens, but she resisted, stepping in front of him so her back was turned to the rest of the crowd. “Just so you know, I’m taking a leave of absence from work and staying at my mom’s while Cody is here. I wanted to be nearby—just in case.”

Max frowned. Just in case what? She changed her mind about the camp? Or was she that worried about Cody making it through the program? So many questions. Yet only one escaped his mouth. “What do you do?” It’d been years since he’d looked her up on the internet, at the start of the social media hype, but her pages were all set to private. Not surprising. Even less surprising—he didn’t have any of those pages for himself.

She shot him a look he couldn’t quite interpret, her voice lowering to a near whisper. “I’m a child psychologist in Dallas.”

He almost snorted. Child psychologist. And yet Cody... He didn’t have to state the obvious. If Emma was anything like he’d remembered, she’d probably beaten herself up about that enough. She was good at emotional pummeling.

Just ask his heart.

* * *

Max Ringgold had done well for himself. Emma almost didn’t even recognize the muscular, smiling cowboy that had greeted her and Cody on the front porch and now sat across from her at the dinner table. Hard to reconcile this Max with the one she’d known years ago, as a naive teenager about to head for college. That’d been a daredevil, moody, flirty Max. This was a successful Max. A contented, living-for-a-purpose, fulfilled Max.

Scared her to death.

The shock that had racked her body when he lifted that hat brim earlier had almost knocked her in the dirt. How did someone like Max come to lead a camp for troubled teens? He was a troubled teen. Apparently he was drawing water from the “been there, done that” well. Had he really transformed so completely? It seemed that way.

Yet for all his success, there was something in his eyes when he looked at her that didn’t seem all that complete.

She knew the feeling.

She winced as Cody stabbed at the green beans on his plate with more force than necessary. The campers and parents were sharing dinner together in the main house before the adults left for the night. During their tour, she’d seen a large working kitchen with a temporary live-in cook Max affectionately dubbed Mama Jeanie, a dining room with a picnic bench–style, carved wooden table big enough for everyone to eat together, and a bathroom that surprisingly smelled like peaches and cinnamon. Max’s quarters were upstairs, the only part of the house he deemed permanently off-limits.

To the back of the dining hall was a room with a locked door, which Max and the other counselor Luke let everyone peek into briefly—the recreation center. Treadmills, an old-fashioned Pac-Man arcade game, an air hockey table and a large-screen TV with different game systems were just a few of the treats she glimpsed before Max shut the door, explaining the rec room was incentive and a reward for good behavior, only. That is, the kids had to earn it.

Emma liked this setup already, though she could tell by the tight line of Cody’s mouth he didn’t necessarily agree.

She tried to send him a silent warning with her eyes as he continued to scrape his fork against his plate, forming a rhythm he nodded his head to. The dark-haired teen sitting to his right immediately picked up the grunge-band sound, tapping his knife against the side of his half-empty water glass and stomping his foot under the table. An older teen girl with blond curls snorted and rolled her eyes at them.

“Cody.”

He ignored her, as usual, and the parents continued to eat as if nothing had changed, as if their ears weren’t suffering from the high-pitched screeching sounds. Maybe that was part of why their kids were there in the first place. Did their efforts to be noticed always go ignored? Not acknowledging cries for attention wasn’t always the best course of action. They weren’t innocent toddlers playing the drop-the-spoon-from-the-highchair game. They were miniature adults who needed positive reinforcement—and consequences for negative behavior.

Well, these parents might think ignorance was bliss, but she wasn’t that kind of mom. “Hey!”

She looked over in surprise as her firm voice mixed with Max’s gruffer tone. They’d spoken at the same time. He glanced at her, amusement flickering in his caramel-colored eyes, then back to the kids.

“All right. That’s enough.” His deep voice left no room for argument, and if that hadn’t been enough, the I-mean-business glare he turned on them would have been. He was establishing his authority from the beginning, a smart move. Max had common sense after all. Maybe Cody would be fine here.

As long as they didn’t discover the truth before she was ready.

The weight of her secret pressed her into her chair, threatening to send her crashing through the raised floorboards and landing somewhere in the basement below. How low could she sink? Even a tornado cellar didn’t feel far enough, deep enough, dark enough to conceal a secret of this magnitude.

Thirteen years of getting over Max Ringgold, of convincing her heart he didn’t exist, and now he was in charge of her son for a month. No, his son.

God really did have a sense of humor.

She realized she’d been staring aimlessly at her plate and quickly sat up straight and brushed her hair off her shoulders. Thankfully, Cody had stopped his impromptu band immediately, and the other kids had followed suit. One grumbled incoherently, but Max let that go. So he picked his battles, too, didn’t demand perfection.

Really weird they had that, of all things, in common.

Was it possible this was part of God’s plan for Cody? Maybe this was the avenue he needed to turn his life around. God knew what He was doing...right?

Emma sure hoped someone did, because she’d never felt more lost. How embarrassing was it for her to struggle to understand her own child, when she was paid good money to evaluate the inner musings of other kids? In all her career, she never imagined she’d end up here.

Probably just part of the punishment for her own reckless choices that summer. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about the sins of the fathers affecting their children? And speaking of fathers and sins...she kept her eyes lowered as she studied Max. He looked more like Cody—or rather, Cody looked more like him—than she’d realized at first glance in the parking lot. The way they hunched over their plates, one forearm resting casually to the side, was identical.

Hopefully no one else noticed the similarities. Her stomach hurt just imagining that particular scenario. At least Cody would have no reason to suspect. All she’d ever told him growing up was that his father had been a bad guy who left her when she was pregnant. Not a complete lie—even though she’d been the one to technically do the leaving.

But Max had left emotionally first when he chose to do that drug deal and break his promise.

She sat back, pushing food around her plate with her fork as she observed the way Max interacted with the other parents. Patience personified, though he didn’t seem patronizing or condescending. Just confident. The parents, especially the mothers, seemed to warm to his personality like butter melting on a crescent roll. Not flirty, though one father did scoot his chair closer to his wife when she laughed at something Max said.

She swallowed a sip of water, her appetite long diminished from the tension-laced drive over with Cody and the surprise of seeing Max again for the first time in so long. Her body hadn’t caught up to her emotions.

And if her stomach kept jumping every time Max’s gaze flitted her direction, it might not ever catch up. Over a decade had passed, and he still had the power to physically undo her.

She was absolutely terrified to analyze that one.

“Well, folks.” Max scooted his chair back with a scrape against the polished wooden floors and stood. He braced his hands on the table, leaning forward slightly and pausing to briefly look every parent in the eye. “It’s time to say goodbye. I’ve learned the hard way already that here at Camp Hope, dragging it out isn’t good for anyone.”

No kidding. She’d end up crying and Cody would end up looking for an escape. Not like he needed any more prompting to run away. It wouldn’t be the first time. She slowly stood with the others, fighting the rising panic welling in her throat as they filed outside to the porch. He would be fine. And so would she.

But what if he found out? What if Max found out?

She smiled at her son, who bobbed his head in a nod but didn’t return the smile. He was nervous. She could tell by the pinched brow and the way his bottom lip curved on the side. Suddenly, all she could see was her baby boy, the one who used to follow her around the house, zooming a fire truck under her feet and burning his fingers on the cookie sheet because he was too impatient to wait. He needed her. Needed his mom.

But the only way for her to be there for him now was to leave.

Unwanted tears welled, and she blinked rapidly, forcing her voice to stay strong. She held out her arms, praying he would pacify her request for a hug. He fell quickly into her embrace, then hid a sniff behind a cough. She clutched him tightly, despite his stiffening against her touch, and tuned out the sounds of the parents around her performing similar rituals with their own kids.

Far too soon, she pulled away until she could see Cody’s eyes. “I’ll be back when it’s time. You just obey Mr. Ringgold.” The name tasted foreign on her lips, but her heart knew it well.

“He said to call him Max.” Cody kept his eyes focused somewhere past her shoulder, and she could only assume it was for the same reason she kept darting her gaze to his nose. Easier not to cry that way. Maybe he wasn’t so tough after all.