The Cowboy's Sweetheart. Brenda Minton

and got a half smile in return. The girls had stopped running and were watching. They weren’t used to horses. Wyatt had taken a job as a youth minister in Florida and they had lived in town.

      “Long night?” Wyatt stepped back, watching.

      “Yeah, kind of.” How did he tell his brother? Wyatt had always held it together. He’d held them together as best he could.

      “What’s up?” Wyatt followed him to the gate, opening it for Ryder to let the horse out into the pasture.

      “Nothing.”

      “Right.”

      Ryder pushed the gate closed and latched it. The horse reached for a bite of grass, managing to act like he hadn’t eaten in days, not hours. Horses were easy to take care of. They could be left alone. They didn’t make requirements. They had to be trained, but he was pretty sure they were a lot easier to train than a child.

      He ranched. He raised quarter horses and black angus cattle. He didn’t raise babies.

      Until now.

      The girls ran up to them, tiny things, not even reaching his hip. He closed the gate and turned his attention to Molly and Kat. And boots. They were wearing his boots. The good ones that had cost a small fortune.

      He glanced up, pretty sure that God was testing him. This was a lesson on parenting, or patience. He didn’t know which. Probably both.

      “We like your shoes.” Molly grinned, and he was happy to see her smiling. But man, she was wearing his best boots.

      The look he gave Wyatt was ignored.

      “Boots.” Kat giggled. The pair she was wearing covered her legs completely.

      “Yep, boots.” He scooped up Kat and snuggled her close. She giggled and leaned back. She looked a lot like her mom. That had to be hard for Wyatt. Kat had Wendy’s smile, her dimples, her laughter.

      And she was a dirty mess. Mud caked her, and his boots. From the tangles in her hair, he guessed it had been a couple of days since it had seen a brush.

      “You need a bath.” He held her tight as they headed toward the house.

      Kids needed things like baths, and their teeth brushed. They had to be tucked in and someone had to be there for them. They didn’t need parents who drank themselves into a stupor and made choices that robbed a family of security.

      He didn’t drink. He had one thing going for him.

      Anger knocked around inside him. The past had a way of doing that, and a guy shouldn’t get angry thinking of parents who had died too young.

      “If you need to talk…” Wyatt followed him up the steps to the back door, and then he shrugged. They’d never been touchy-feely. Sharing was for afternoon talk shows, not the Johnson brothers. They’d always solved their problems, even dealt with their anger, by roping a few calves or riding hard through the back field.

      Every now and then they’d had a knock-down-drag-out in the backyard. Those fights had ended with the two of them on their backs, staring up at the sky, out of breath, but out of anger.

      Talking about it didn’t seem like an option.

      “Yeah, I know we can talk.” Ryder put his niece down on the floor and flipped on the kitchen light. Kat stomped around in his boots, leaving dirt smudges on the floor he’d mopped last night. “Did you guys eat?”

      He looked around. There was an open loaf of bread on the counter and a jar of peanut butter, the lid next to it. He glanced down at Kat. She had a smear of peanut butter on her cheek. He twisted the bread closed.

      “Did you feed the girls?” Ryder asked again when Wyatt hadn’t answered.

      “Molly made sandwiches.”

      “And you think that’s good?” A three-year-old making sandwiches. Ryder screwed the lid on the peanut butter because he had to do something to keep from pushing his brother into a wall to knock sense into him. “Girls, are you hungry?”

      Kat grinned and Molly looked at her dad. Ryder exhaled a lot of anger. He didn’t have a clue what little kids ate. Wyatt should have a clue. If Wyatt couldn’t do this, how in the world was Ryder going to manage?

      “Tell you what, I’ll make eggs and toast. Do you like eggs?” Ryder opened the fridge door.

      “I can do it.” Wyatt took the carton of eggs from his hands.

      “You girls go play.” Ryder smiled at his nieces. “I think there’s a box of toys in the living room. Mostly horses and cowboys.”

      His and Wyatt’s toys that Ryder had dug out of a back closet the night before.

      When the girls were gone, he turned back to his brother. Wyatt cracked eggs into a bowl and he didn’t look up. “I’ve taken care of them for a year.”

      “Yeah, I know you have.”

      The dog scratched at the back door. Ryder pushed it open and let the animal in, because there was one thing Bear was good at, and that was cleaning up stuff that dropped on the floor. Stuff like peanut butter sandwiches.

      Bear sniffed his way into the kitchen and licked the floor clean, except he left the mud. Not that Ryder blamed him for that.

      The dog was the best floor sweeper in the country.

      “I’m taking care of my girls.” Wyatt poured eggs into the pan. “And I don’t want tips from a guy who hasn’t had kids, or hasn’t had a relationship in his life that lasted more than a month.”

      “That’s about to change.” Ryder muttered and he sure hadn’t meant to open that can of worms. He’d meant to butter toast.

      “What’s that mean?” Wyatt turned the stove off.

      “Remember what it was like, growing up in this house?”

      “Sure, I remember.” Wyatt scooped eggs onto four plates. “Always laughter, mostly the drunken kind that ended in a big fight by the end of the night. And then there were the phone calls.”

      Phone calls their mother received from the other women. Ryder shook his head, because memories were hard to shake. His dad’s temper had been hard to hide from.

      “Right. That’s not the kind of life our kids should have.” Ryder let out a sigh, because he had been holding on to those memories for a long time.

      “Well, as far as I know, the only kids in this house are mine, and they’re not going to have that life, not in this house. If you’re insinuating…”

      “I’m not insinuating anything about you or how you’re raising those girls.” Ryder tossed a slice of buttered toast to his blue heeler. “Wyatt, there isn’t a person around who blames you for having a hard time right now.”

      “I guess this isn’t about me, is it?”

      No, but it would have been nice to pretend it was. Ryder shrugged and poured himself a cup of that morning’s coffee. He ignored his brother and slid the coffee into the microwave.

      “No, it isn’t about you.” He took his cup of day old coffee out of the microwave. “I’m going outside.”