Her Homecoming Cowboy by Debra Clopton Page A

do whatever it took to help the situation work out right. In her mind, that was for Leo to know Colt Holden was his daddy.
    “I got a big red star on my paper today. I colored a big ol’ fat donkey with me riding her! Annie Aunt, you ever in your whole life seen anything as cute as that fat ol’ Samantha?” Leo asked as he climbed into his car seat in the back. Annie laughed. She loved this kid. What in the world would her life be like without him? What a blessing he was.
    Maybe, just maybe, Leo was here to rescue his daddy.
    The thought slipped into her head as she drove home listening to Leo’s lively chatter about his day. Is that what this is about? She wasn’t going to let him off that easy and say yes...not when she’d once been the kid whose parents had dropped her off on a doorstep and driven away. She knew too well what it felt like not to be wanted. The memory was etched into her soul in bright red. The one thing she hadn’t wanted was for Leo to ever feel that he wasn’t wanted.
    But what she couldn’t ever do as long as there was breath in her lungs was forget what her parents had done...and she prayed that one day Leo didn’t hold against her what she’d done in keeping his father a secret for a year. But she couldn’t dwell on that. No, she just had to fix it. She had to get Colt to claim his son.
    * * *
    “I’m here to work,” Colt said without preamble when he walked into the office to face his brothers. It wasn’t going to be a pretty meeting.
    Luke was sitting behind his desk with a logbook in front of him. Jess was pouring a cup of coffee. He looked as surprised as Luke about Colt showing up.
    “It’s good to see you coming around,” Jess said.
    Luke studied him. “You up to working?”
    “I’m up for it. I’ll be here for a few weeks anyway, until I can find a job.” To this point, he’d relied on his earnings as a bull rider to provide his portion of support for the ranch. Jess had a trucking business and Luke had a rodeo stock business. They were building up the new ranch stock and not taking income from it.
    Both his brothers were clearly baffled—he didn’t blame them.
    “What about your bull riding?” Luke said. “You’ll be good as new when that arm is healed, and you might still be in contention for the championship. Your points are high enough that you may not lose a foothold.”
    “It all depends on if the job I get will let me go compete that week. But I’m not too sure I’ll remain up there for long.”
    “If you ride some before then, you know you will.” Jess’s brows knitted together. “What’s going on?”
    “Yeah, Colt. You know we’re behind your riding one hundred percent,” Luke said.
    “Y’all were right,” he admitted. “Leo is mine.” He’d been fighting the joy that thinking about Leo brought him. With that surge of joy also came the reminder that he had no right to it.
    “Man,” Jess said. “That’s awesome and unbelievable at the same time.”
    “I was pretty sure,” Luke said, disbelief in his voice. “But telling myself I wasn’t right at the same time. How are you doing?”
    “I’m angry.” Colt paced the room, rubbing the back of his neck to ease the knot of tension throbbing there. “I have a child and nobody thought it was my business to be told.” He glared at the ceiling, words stuck in his throat. “It stinks.”
    Both brothers agreed.
    “So, what did Annie say?” Luke asked.
    He told them the story. They listened intently, and he felt justified in his feelings as he watched their expressions mirror the emotions that were warring inside him.
    When he was done talking, Luke’s brown eyes held his. “Colt, I love you, brother, but I’m going to say this because I need to know your thoughts. You fathered a child with a woman you didn’t know. I’m not sure if you should have expected anything.”
    “Don’t think I don’t get that. I messed up. Seems like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. If I could