Rodeo Sheriff by Mary Sullivan

Author:Mary Sullivan [Sullivan, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-11-15T16:06:47+00:00

Chapter Nine

Shortly after one in the morning, Cole trudged up the back staircase to Honey’s apartment, rubbing the back of his neck where he carried his tension. He planned to wash up and make up a bed on the sofa as quietly as possible.

Passing Honey’s bedroom, he noted the open door.

He should close it in case the kids woke up.

Reaching for the doorknob to pull it shut, he halted.

Faint moonlight streaming through a gap in the curtains fell on her bed.

She wasn’t alone.

Madeline curled between Honey on one side and the wall on the other. Her head rested on Honey’s outstretched arm. Crooked against the wall, Honey’s wrist looked uncomfortable.

On Honey’s right side, Evan sprawled, taking up an unfair share of the bed.

Cole stepped close. Honey lay on her back, her hair spread around her head in glorious disarray. He understood Madeline’s fascination with it. He’d spent endless hours sitting on a bar stool fantasizing about running his fingers through it.

In her sleep, she looked younger than her twenty-eight years. Always happy, always laughing with her customers, she’d taken on a lot of responsibility, too, in running her business alone since her mother’s death.

Asleep, the worry lines that sometimes made a show disappeared, leaving only peace.

He’d often wondered if, as much as she loved Honey’s Place and liked to run things, it ever felt like a burden.

With the children, he’d added to her burdens.

Shame on him.

Reaching for Evan, he picked up the boy to take him back to his own bed.

Honey stirred and opened her eyes.

Disoriented, her gaze cast about until she saw him and realized what was happening.

“He can stay.”

“No. I’ll put him to bed.”

“Leave Madeline, though. I don’t want her upset again.”

“Okay.”

Cole in Honey’s bedroom. Honey in bed amid a froth of lace. Two children. One in Honey’s arms and one in Cole’s.

A family. Like the dream he’d always had about Honey, while she’d barely been aware of him as a man.

A spear of longing so sharp his eyes watered stabbed through Cole. He hadn’t realized how much resisting making advances toward Honey had cost him all of these years.

He rushed from the room.

Had he been in there without the children, had there been only Honey in her amazing, beautiful glory in her inviting bed, he might have begged her to let him stay.

He felt her gaze follow him out of the room.

In the guest bedroom, Evan clung to him. “With you, Uncle Cole.”

“Okay.”

He set up Evan snugly. The child fell asleep almost right away.

Cole undressed in the bathroom and put on his sweatpants. He climbed into the guest bed beside Evan and stared at the ceiling.

Two children and a man and a woman in one apartment.

Like a family.

Exactly like a family, and yet, Cole lay in one bed and Honey in another.

Close, but no cigar.

* * *

ON THURSDAY MORNING, a sharp knock on the outside door woke Cole early.

“Stay put,” he told Evan.

When he opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, his parents stood on the street, his mother with a puckered mouth.

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