Page 22 of Lost and Found Cowboy

“Oh yuck,” Max said, waving his hand in front of his face. “Izzy pooped.”

“Everybody poops, bud,” Mack responded, unfazed by the baby’s fragrant odor. “And cowboys see a lot of it. Cow poop, pig poop, chicken poop. Just this morning, I was cleaning out piles of horse poop that were bigger than your head.”

Max giggled.

“Did you know that because elephants only digest about forty-five percent of their food, and their poop is mostly made up of fiber, that an Elephant Conservation Center in Thailand created a method for making elephant dung into paper,” Mack told him. “They clean the fibers first then process them and turn them into handmade notebooks. One elephant can poop enough to make over a hundred pages of paper a day.”

“I don’t know if I’d want to write on paper made from poop.” Max scrunched up his forehead as if considering the idea. “It sounds kind of gross.”

“I think it sounds pretty cool that they figured out a way to make something useful from waste,” Mack said. “But if you really want to hear something gross, they also make a really expensive coffee from beans that are collected from the poop of an animal in Asai called a palm civet.”

“Coffee from poop?” Max did the bones-to-jelly move as he slid his body off the sofa and onto the floor. Then he looked up at his mom. “Is that true? Do you have poop coffee at your shop.”

Lorna laughed. “Yes, it’s true. But no, I do not serve that kind of coffee. For one thing, it’s ridiculously expensive, andI’ve heard it’s more of a gimmicky thing, and doesn’t even taste that great. And I’ve also heard that they aren’t very kind to the animals that make it.” She glanced over at Mack. “I’m kind of impressed with your vast knowledge of poo trivia.”

“That’s how I usually win over the ladies,” he said, then couldn’t hold a straight face and busted out a laugh. “Really, I’m just good at remembering weird facts. I could tell you a ton of other things about scat. You just never know when a piece of that kind of odd trivia might come in handy.”

Lorna laughed with him. “Do you get into a lot of conversations where you need to pull out this trove of poop-related trivia?”

He offered her a mischievous grin. “I’m in one right now.” He lifted Izzy up. “You want me to change her?”

Lorna shook her head as she stood and took the baby from him. “No, I’ve got it. But the fact that you offered is noted.”

The sound of the front door opening had Lorna turning her head then the very air in the room changed as a man’s voice called out, “Honey I’m home….”

Chapter Ten

Lorna’s mouth went dry and every muscle in her body tightened. The spaghetti in her stomach churned and roiled and threatened to come back up.

She hadn’t seen him in a year and a half, but she knew that voice—that mocking tone laced with underlying menace.

Her body shrunk into itself—the way it had for the full five years of their marriage—as if only she could make herself smaller, which was laughable for a curvy woman who stood over five feet eight inches tall, then maybe he wouldn’t notice her. Or he might leave her alone.

But it had never worked.

And it wasnotworking now.

She breathed out his name. “Lyle.” Forcing back the wave of panic that threatened to consume her, she flashed a hard stare at Mack then at her son then back to the cowboy. “Stay here,” she commanded, then hurried down the hallway, her primary goal to keep her ex away from the family room and Max.

She tried to keep the fear—the emotion that like a vampire to a drop of blood—he most liked to feed on, tamped down as the man she’d given six years of her life to walked into the kitchen at the same time she did.

He looked a little different—his dark hair was cut into a trendier style, and he may have lost a few pounds. She imagined those were both due to him trying to keep up with a younger girlfriend. Same with his clothes, tan golf shorts and a red polo shirt that was still a little too tight around his bulging middle. Maybe he’d changed, but she’d never known him to play a round of golf. Although, his outfit also made her think of someone who might help her find the laundry detergent at Target.

He was a few years older and had played defensive end for their high school football team. A few inches shy of six feet, he’d once had the body, and the strength of an athlete, but he’d let his workouts go after they’d gotten married and packed on an extra fifty pounds. Which, of course, he’d blamed on her for feeding him too much. And despite losing his athleticism, he still had plenty of strength, as her blackened eyes and split lips had proved.

She swallowed and tried to force some pleasantness into her tone. He’d always hated sarcasm or when she’d questioned some decision he’d made. “Hey Lyle. What are you doing here?”

He cocked an eyebrow and brandished that expression he used to make right before he asked her if she was stupid. “I just told you. I’m home.”

The word sent a chill racing down her spine.

“This is not your home,”she wanted to scream.

But she knew—as sure as she knew how to back slowly away from a rattlesnake coiled in the middle of a hiking path—to do the same with that comment. The wrong word or any sudden movement could cause the snake—and Lyle—to strike.

“Where’s Misty?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light as she peered behind him for the petite younger blond woman he’d left his family for. He was such a cliché, running off with the administrative assistant at the insurance company they’d both worked at.

Wrong question.

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