Zeke had spotted his car from their backyard and raced his way before he came to a full stop. “Dad!”
The old knot loosened the moment Zeke jumped into his arms.
This was his reason for living, right here. This boy was his only connection to his beloved wife. And while he loved his son more than he could have ever imagined, if he’d known that Anna would be trading her life for Zeke’s, Heath would have found a different way to have a family. As he held his beautiful and precocious son in his arms, that thought made him feel like a lesser man.
“Junior taught me the coolest things you’ve ever seen in your life!” Excitement exploded from the boy like fireworks in a night sky. “He thinks I might be the best cowboy to ever ride the Wild Wild West someday, but he says I gotta get some boots, Dad, and I told him I’ve been askin’ for boots for a long, long time.” Two hands smooshed Heath’s cheeks as Zeke leaned closer. “I told him I would ask you again, because it is so very, very important.” He pushed his face right up to his father’s, making his voice sound squished and slightly robotic. “Can I please have a pair of real cowboy boots like you and Harve and Junior and everybody else in the world?”
Heath let his voice get all squishy, too. “I’ll think about it. Good boots are pricey, and your feet grow fast. In case you hadn’t noticed.” He deadpanned a look that made his little boy laugh out loud. “Let’s see if you were good for Rosie, okay?”
“He’s always good!” Harve’s wife bustled out of the door, despite the bulk of a nearly nine-month pregnancy. “And he is such a help to me, Heath. I don’t bend so well right now, and Zeke is right there to get things for me when the twins need something. And a true hand with the chickens and the pigs.” She beamed down at him.
“They smell.” Zeke screwed up his face as Harve Junior joined them. “But Junior says if I want to be a cowboy, I’ve got to be a good helper and not worry about a little stink now and then.”
“Junior’s right. And he’s a good hand on the ranch, so he knows what he’s talking about.”
“A good hand who needs to spend more time with his studies.” Rosie leveled a firm look to her son. “Fewer sheep, more facts.”
“A ranch hand doesn’t need college, Mom.”
“While that’s true, a well-rounded ranch hand never stops learning,” offered Heath mildly. “There’s a big world out there, Junior.”
“It’s pretty big right here, sir.” Frank admiration marked the teen’s gaze as he indicated the lush valley and the starker cliffs surrounding it. “There’s not too many things on the ranch I can’t fix, things I learned from my dad. Those are skills I can take with me wherever I go. Or if I stay here in Shepherd’s Crossing.” He jutted his chin toward the rugged mountains climbing high to the west. “I like taking sheep upland, then bringing them back down. There’s a sameness to it that suits me.”
Except they wouldn’t be doing that anymore, and the new grazing regulations were changing the face of ranching across the West. Where would that leave the hardworking shepherds who’d given up their lives in Peru to work at Pine Ridge and other sheep farms? Heath wasn’t sure.
“I send you to school for that very reason,” scolded Rosie lightly. “Because it is too easy for one to become entrenched in sameness. A rich mind entertains possibilities. And our town does not have much to offer these days,” she reminded young Harve. “A failing community offers few opportunities to youth. A wise mother encourages her child to have roots but to also grow wings, my son.”
“Dad!” Zeke drew the attention off Junior with that single word. “I think I’m almost big enough to come with you and the sheep up the tallest hills. I’m this many.” He held up five little fingers. “And I’ve been practicing my riding on the fence rail over there.” He pointed to the split rail fencing along a nearby pasture. “I’m getting really good!”
“Not yet, son.” When Zeke scowled, Heath lifted him higher in his arms. “And that face won’t get you anywhere. You need to be bigger to handle the sheep and the dogs and the horses. That’s all there is to it. It will all happen in its own time.”
He ignored Zeke’s pout as he set the boy down and hooked a thumb toward the Jeep. “Car. Seat belt. Let’s roll.”
“Okay! Bye, Rosie-Posie!” The boy hugged Rosina but not too hard. “I can’t wait to see the baby!”
“It is a feeling I share,” Rosie assured him, laughing. “I’ll see you next week, God willing. And after that?” She shrugged lightly. “Who knows?”
“I’ll bring my dinosaurs!”
“And we’ll create a habitat for them, a perfect spot for them to roam, beneath the old cottonwood tree.”
“Okay!”
Zeke scrambled into his booster seat, adjusted his belt, then got down to the important matters of the day. “What’s for supper?”
“Whatever Cookie came up with, but I thought I smelled beef and potatoes cooking.”
“Stew?” Eyes wide, the boy wriggled in excitement. “I love stew, Dad! And cake. And ice cream. And sometimes hot dogs.”
“A well-balanced diet is a boy’s best friend,” Heath teased as he drew closer to the main house again.
“And I get to have supper with our new company!” Zeke aimed a heart-melting grin at him through the rearview mirror. “That will be the most fun of all!”
From the boy’s vantage point, maybe. Heath held a different view, but that was his problem. Not Zeke’s.
“You sure do.” He pulled the car around to the back parking area, and climbed out. He was just about to remind Zeke about the basic rules of behavior around women...simple things, like wiping your face, washing your hands, no barreling through the house like a young elephant, and flushing the toilet, thank you very much...
But Zeke had spotted Lizzie coming their way across the square of grass. He raced toward her like a flash. “Hey! Hey!” He skidded to a stop along the dirt walk, spattering her jeans with fine brown dust. “Oops. Sorry!”
“I’ve been dirty before. I expect it will happen again, my friend.”
That voice. The drawl. Softened by years of education, but still enough to draw a man in, which meant he’d have to watch his step because the drawl and the beautiful woman were far too familiar.
She’d bent to talk to Zeke at his level, then looked up at Heath, smiling.
The smile gut-punched him. Was that his fault? Or hers?
She turned those rusty brown eyes on him and all he wanted was to go on listening as she spoke. Meet her gaze above that pretty smile. Since those were the last things he could do, he put the trip down memory lane on hold.
The kitchen gong sounded, the perfect segue into something else. Anything else. Anything that didn’t remind him of old losses and broken hearts. He’d made a grievous mistake by taking things too far. Yes, they’d been young. And in love.
But he should have known better.
“There’s my young helper.” Cookie grinned when they walked into the kitchen, and the hulking Latino’s