Kayla's Cowboy. Callie Endicott

worked. Anyway, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

      Elizabeth nodded. “Okay. No more agonizing over past mistakes. We concentrate on being a family from now on.”

      “That sounds good to me.” Kayla chuckled. “Alex calls the situation messy and he’s right, so we need each other to deal with it.”

      * * *

      JACKSON SADDLED HIS STALLION, his ranch foreman watching with raised eyebrows.

      “Going to ride fences again?” Greg asked as Jackson checked the tools in Thunder’s saddlebag. The black-and-white Appaloosa sidestepped lightly, eager to get moving. “You’ve got ranch hands to take care of that.”

      “Drop it. I’m not in the mood.”

      “Whatever you say, boss.”

      Jackson rode north, trying to let go of his tension. The way he saw it, time riding fence lines wasn’t wasted. Besides, he’d never enjoyed being indoors all the time, which was why giving up college hadn’t bothered him as much as it had bothered his parents. Since then he’d realized how much he had missed, but at least he’d supplemented his education with online and extension courses.

      While he hadn’t told Morgan she was expected to attend college, he’d raised her with the assumption she would do so. Lately her grades had been poor enough that no decent school would take her, but she still had time to get her act together...if she tried. With the new bombshell in her life, it was hard to say what would happen.

      It was ironic to learn he had a second child. Marcy had refused to consider having another. She’d been too busy reading fashion magazines and nagging him about wanting to move to the city.

      Jackson reined in Thunder and gazed at the horizon, unable to imagine living anywhere else.

      It was a beautiful time of year on the ranch. Everything was lush and green, the brilliant blue sky arching overhead, broken only by puffs of scattered white clouds. If he turned a certain direction, he didn’t even see fences, just miles of rolling grassland and trees, the way it must have looked when his ancestors had settled here.

      Morgan loved the ranch, too, or at least she’d loved it when she was smaller. It was difficult to tell how she felt now. Who would have guessed that her mother, who’d grown up on the ranch adjacent to his parents’ spread, would hate Montana so much? Then, not long before Marcy had taken off for New York, he’d discovered she was sneaking around with other guys.

      Thunder snorted, tossing his head, and Jackson realized his hands had gone tight on the reins.

      “Sorry, boy.” He patted the stallion on the neck and urged him back into a walk.

      In all honesty, he shouldn’t have let Marcy’s cheating bother him so much, but the one place they’d gotten along was in bed, so why had she gone looking for it somewhere else?

      At least she hadn’t fought him for custody of Morgan, which meant his marriage had ended with more of a whimper, than a bang. Of course, by then he’d basically seen the worst Marcy could dish out. The cheating had been the final knife thrust to end a long, miserable period that had seemed more of a prison sentence than anything else.

      “I can sure pick ’em, can’t I, Thunder?” he murmured, thinking about the woman he’d dated for a while after his divorce.

      Patti had been a paralegal for his divorce attorney. Very sympathetic. Supportive. Nice. At least that was what he’d thought. It turned out she’d seen the documents on his net worth and had decided it was her chance to catch a rich husband. She lived in a nearby town and he’d surprised her one evening with a pizza...and caught her longtime boyfriend hopping out a side window.

      Perhaps he ought to be grateful he’d learned his lesson about women. Since then he’d vowed to keep life uncomplicated, yet now he had a huge complication. And the complication wasn’t just Alex, it was also Kayla.

      She’d claimed that she didn’t need any money, but whether or not that was true, what about a college fund? Or sharing parental responsibility? The fact that another man had adopted Alex didn’t mean a damn thing. The guy might be all right, but it was Kayla, not her ex-husband, who’d driven to Schuyler looking for her runaway son.

      If their positions had been reversed, Jackson knew nothing could have kept him from searching for Alex, as well.

      Jackson spotted a slack wire on a fence and reined in Thunder again. He swung down from the saddle and took out his tools, thinking about the frosty expression in his former girlfriend’s eyes. He was quite certain she’d prefer to keep him away from Alex, so to have a relationship with his son he’d have to figure out how to get along with Kayla.

      Still, it wouldn’t hurt to call the Garrison household and make sure she hadn’t made a beeline for Seattle. For that matter, he had only Kayla’s word that she’d told Alex the identity of his birth father. If there was one thing he’d learned from Marcy and Patti, it was how many ways a woman could shade the truth.