“Your mom is a smart woman.”
“The smartest. And she’s pretty too. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
“Very pretty.”
“Good.” He smiled.
Before Rowan could figure out how to respond to that, Sierra’s voice drifted down from upstairs.
“Huck! Come get ready! We need to leave for the arena soon!”
“Coming!” Huck slid off his chair and headed for the stairs, then turned back. “Mr. R?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know what my mom meant, but I’m glad you came back too.”
The boy disappeared up the stairs, leaving Rowan alone in the kitchen with the morning sunlight and the lingering scent of bacon and the sound of Sierra moving around in the room above his head.
Yeah, yeah, him too.
Six
She should have known that saying yes to Rowan’s request to join them would only drag up the past.
Sierra sat on the bleachers of the Renegade Community Arena, her travel mug of coffee growing cold in her hands as she watched the practice session. The morning sun slanted across the dusty arena floor, where a dozen kids worked on their roping techniques under a couple volunteer cowboys’ patient instruction. Parents dotted the stands around her, some chatting quietly while others called out encouragement to their children below.
Rowan had sat beside her for the first twenty minutes, making polite conversation about the weather and the upcoming Fall Festival Rodeo. But she’d seen the way his eyes kept drifting to the arena, the way his hands unconsciously mimicked the movements of the kids practicing their throws. When one of the instructors had called out a correction about wrist position that was completely wrong, Rowan had shifted restlessly in his seat.
“You should go down there,” Sierra had finally said.
“I don’t want to interfere?—”
“Rowan.” She’d given him the look that had worked when they were teenagers, the one that said she could see right through his protests. “Go help.”
But it wasn’t just the past she was worried about. It was how normal this morning had felt when she’d come down from taking a shower and found him in her kitchen, another pot of coffee brewing, a snack for Huck half packed on the counter. He’d moved through her space like he belonged there, reaching for mugs in the right cabinet without asking, and for a hot, dangerous minute, she’d let herself imagine this was her life—waking up to find Rowan making breakfast, their son chattering about his plans for the day, the three of them moving around each other with the easy familiarity of an actual family.
That was the real danger. Not the past, but how effortlessly, just like that, he fit into her present. How right it felt to have him here, how much she wanted to keep him.
She was already in so much trouble.
And it had only gotten worse. Now she watched him move between the young ropers like he’d been teaching children his whole life, his voice carrying clear across the arena as he demonstrated techniques that most of these kids had never seen before. The parents around her had started whispering, asking who the newcomer was, commenting on how naturally he worked with their children.
And Huck—her heart squeezed as she watched her son hanging on Rowan’s every word, his face bright with the kind of hero worship she’d never seen him direct at anyone before.
“Keep your wrist loose,” Rowan was saying, his voice patient. “The rope needs to flow, not fight you.”
Huck nodded seriously, his small hands working to position the coils correctly. “Like this?”
“Better. Now, remember what I said about your stance. You want to be balanced, ready to move with your target.”
Sierra’s breath caught as memories crashed over her—Rowan at sixteen, cocky and confident, showing off with his lasso at the county fair. He’d roped her then, literally, pulling her close with a grin that had made her teenage heart stutter.
“Caught myself something pretty,” he’d said, his voice low and teasing.
“Let me go, Rowan Wallace,” she’d said, but of course she hadn’t meant it.
“Not a chance.”
