Page 47 of The Cowboy's Redemption
She had baby Tanner with her. He’d grown a head of fuzzy blond hair since she’d last seen him, and he had eyes like overripe blueberries, bursting with the same determination his mother possessed. He took crawling out of her restrictive arms as a personal challenge.
“Hi,” Tate said, juggling her squirming son. He arched his back, exposing his belly between the hem of his red winter coat and the ruffly top of a disposable diaper. “It’s good to see you here.”
“Thank you.” This seemed to be her day for making peace with the past.
Her heart fell back into its normal rhythm. The last time they’d sat side-by-side in an arena their photos had ended up splashed from one end of the internet to another and considering the flashes from cell phones directed at them, it seemed likely to happen again.
“I’m sorry,” Tate said. She pinned the protesting baby to her chest and started to stand. “I’ll sit somewhere else. I just… I wanted to say hello.”
Dana took hold of Tate’s sleeve. “Stay. Please. I was hoping to see you.”
“Really?”
Tate had never been good at hiding her feelings, and regrets about the impulsive gesture that had brought her over to say hello were written all over her face, which was typical for her. She lived in the moment and never thought too hard about the end results.
Dana had always been a little envious of the way Tate approached life. If her brothers hadn’t stepped in, she would have been the bull rider in the family.
“Really.” Dana took a deep breath and ignored the covert stares from people who obviously knew their backstory. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
Where to begin? “For the way I returned Tanner’s Christmas present to you last year. You’d driven all the way to Billings to give it to me and I was so ungrateful. You had no way of knowing that he and I had split up the morning he…thatmorning.” He’d asked her to come for his last ride, and she’d agreed only because people would talk if she hadn’t. If she’d stayed away, her life might have taken a far different turn.
“I would never have guessed you were arguing. I thought you were worried about him because he’d drawn Crazy Legs,” Tate said.
Dana had been too angry to worry about him, even though the bull had a savage reputation. But she wasn’t going to say so to his sister, who preferred to believe they’d been arguing—which inferred they might also make up.
“Tanner and I argued that morning, too,” Tate said. She kissed the top of her son’s blond, fluffy head. “He wanted to quit, and I wouldn’t let him. Knowing the last words I ever said to him were angry ones… That’s hard.”
“It is.” Letting go of the anger was hard, too. But Dana was working on it.
The baby gave up on hopes of escape and settled into his mother’s arms. He snuggled his cheek against the front of her white puffy jacket. Long lashes brushed soft, baby skin as his eyes fluttered closed and Dana’s heart melted. Someday, when the timing was right and she had a say in the matter, maybe motherhood would give her a second chance.
Tate must have read yearning in the look on her face. “Would you like to hold him?” she asked, then without waiting for an affirmative—because how could anyone resist holding a baby—she handed him over, and Dana found a semi-comatose, cuddly, bundle of joy in her arms.
She didn’t have any personal experience with babies, but she began to see why Tanner might have been so excited by the prospect of one of his own. Baby Tanner was lovely.
The two women watched the last of the men’s barrel racing together.
A quick check of the time told Dana she had to prepare Tanoa for their race.
“Women’s barrel racing is up soon,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”
She returned the sleeping baby to Tate, then left the bleachers and made her way through the crowd to the pens and her horse. She half-expected Levi to be waiting for her, but he wasn’t.
She couldn’t afford to give in to disappointment right now. She had another relationship in which trust was important. She was riding a new horse who required her undivided attention to guide them safely between the barrels. She owed it to Tanoa to go into this race with a clear head, ready to make a fresh start.
She owed Levi that same focused commitment.
She owed it to herself, too.
*
Levi
Levi had takenup position in the arena’s sound booth, which was located partway up the stadium seats on the far side of the arena from the alleyway, so he could watch Dana’s race without being seen.
The past four months had been a nightmare of twisted regrets and resolve. He couldn’t help her come to terms with the past. She’d had to get to this point on her own. More than once he’d feared that she wouldn’t.
