A Girl, A Guy And A Lullaby. Debrah Morris

you go.” He let out a slow breath.

      “Hey, that gives me an idea for a song. ‘I ain’t got nothin’ left but spunk/ but I can’t get far on that.’ What do you think?”

      Tom smiled in the darkness. Good thing she had a sense of humor; she’d need it. He made the mistake of looking at her. Her wide eyes reminded him of the frightened doe.

      Damn. He didn’t need this. And he didn’t want it. “It” smelled too much like involvement.

      “Or how about this? ‘I don’t have a husband/ I don’t have a home/ but I’m gonna have a baby/ so I won’t be alone.”’

      “Sounds almost pitiful enough to be a hit.” He found it hard to resist her ability to act up, even when she was down.

      “You think?”

      “It’d be better if your dog died. Or you maybe drove an eighteen-wheeler.”

      “I’ll work on it.”

      He turned to her after a few minutes. “Feeling better?”

      “Yeah. I’d forgotten how good it feels to have someone to talk to.”

      Yeah, right. If she wanted a sympathetic ear, she was barking up the wrong cowboy. According to Mariclare’s exit speech, he was incapable of listening. Too wrapped up in himself to care about others. What was it she’d called him?

      Oh, yeah. An emotionally unavailable, self-centered SOB.

      The accusations had cut deep. He’d had a lot of time to think about them. He knew she had her reasons, but he could never quite reconcile the heartless man she’d described with the one whose face he shaved every morning.

      Tom stuffed those feelings down and concentrated on maneuvering the curves. Ryanne was humming now. Like she was testing out an elusive melody heard only in her head. She’d been through a lot for someone so young. He didn’t want to add to her pain.

      And he did not want to share it.

      “I don’t know what happened to me back there,” she said. “It was either a fleeting episode of temporary insanity or a really bad case of bus lag.”

      “I reckon you just needed to let off steam.”

      “You reckon?” She laid her head back on the seat. “Just don’t think I’m a high-strung, world-class hysteric. I’m not. Normally I’m pathologically stoic.”

      She made it sound like she cared about his opinion. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “You’ll be home soon.”

      “Home. You don’t know what that means to me.”

      But he did. He’d come home to lick his wounds, too. To find comfort in the familiar world of his childhood. To slip back into the skin of the nice guy he’d once been. The man he’d been when he left Brushy Creek. The one his hometown thought he was. “Home is the place you can’t appreciate until you leave.”

      “That’s pretty poetic for a cowboy.” For once she sounded sincere.

      At least she’d calmed down. He wasn’t up to handling raw emotional upheaval in any form. With his own future so uncertain, he sure as hell didn’t want to get involved in anyone else’s life right now.

      Especially not the overwrought, messed-up life of an abandoned fiddle-playing wannabe country singer who looked like she could give birth and/or have a nervous breakdown at any moment.

      In his heart, that hollow place he’d boarded over when Mariclare walked out, Tom knew Ryanne needed reassurance that things would be all right. But understanding the problem and taking responsibility for it were two different things.

      No way would he volunteer for any comforting jobs. He had enough problems, without letting some little gal get under his skin.

      Ryanne let out a sudden squeaky yelp.

      He resigned himself to another outburst. “Now what?”

      She grinned and patted her belly. “Tom Hunnicutt, meet the future clogdancing champion of the world.”