Bad News Cowboy: Shoulda Been a Cowboy by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2015-12-11T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JACK DIDN’T KNOW why he was sitting here opening a vein and bleeding all over Kate. Maybe because she had gone first. Because he wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. Because for the first time he didn’t feel alone.

A strange shift had happened in his life, and he could hardly figure out how or why. Eli and Connor had been his best friends for as long as he could remember having friends. And he’d never even been tempted to talk to them about this. In turn, they’d never spoken about the way they felt. With their mom leaving, their dad a drunk, their entire life focused on the responsibility of caring for Kate and the ranch. Of course they hadn’t. They were men and men didn’t talk about their feelings.

And he’d never had a long-term relationship with a woman. Never been in a situation where he wanted to talk to women about anything but which position they liked best.

Kate was different. She was different from those women, and she was different from a friend.

She was Kate. That was the beginning and end of it.

“Your dad gave you money in exchange for you...keeping yourself a secret?” Kate’s tone was incredulous, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Yes. And I took it. It was all the child support money my mother had refused all of our lives. And then some. I was so angry, Kate. So angry when I found out, because we had lived in that trailer that was falling down around us for all of my life. Because she wouldn’t take his money. Because she had too much pride. She was disappointed to discover that I didn’t suffer from the same problem.”

“Is that why she...?”

“Why we don’t speak? Why she moved into a different trailer about fifty miles away? Yeah, I think so.” He laughed, leaning his head back, tightening his hold on Kate, suddenly very aware of the warmth of her body pressed against his. “I traded a lot of things for that money. My relationship with her. My fantasy of ever having a relationship with my old man. My fantasy that he was somehow decent, just unable to be with us for some reason. My self-respect. It’s tough to feel proud about that kind of decision. So I felt like I better make damn sure I used that money well.”

“That’s why you ended up in the rodeo.”

“Something I never would have been able to afford to get into otherwise. Without it, I don’t know. I would probably be working at the gas station store or working as a hired hand for Eli and Connor. Sometimes I think that might’ve been better. There’s a lot of honor in something like that. Working for every bit of what you have instead of getting ahead of the game by taking a handout.”

“That isn’t what you did. What your father had was yours.”

He shrugged. “Is it? I mean, I get that legally he owed us a certain amount. I get that morally you could make the argument that what a parent has also belongs to their children.

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