always.”
EJ turned his attention to Bianca. “Mommy, can I get a pair of boots?”
She wondered how much youth-sized cowboy boots would run. “We’ll see.”
“Get some rest,” Nate told her, ruffling EJ’s hair as he turned for the door, then quickly added, “Not because you look like you need it. Because you deserve it.”
She flashed a smile. “Good save, cowboy.”
He nodded then led EJ from the room. Bianca readjusted the pillow, then laid back and stared up at the ceiling. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to fall asleep again, but within seconds her eyes drifted shut. Maybe just a few minutes more, she told herself. Just a few.
“Like this, Mr. Nate?”
“Exactly. Hold the nail steady with one hand and the hammer with the other. Careful of your fingers.”
Later that morning, Nate stood next to EJ at the workbench on the far side of the barn, watching as the little boy hammered together two boards to be used as a ramp for the chicken coop. It was a mundane chore Nate had been putting off for weeks, but it was the perfect job for an eager four-year-old.
Nate never would have guessed how much he’d enjoy having a kid shadow him all morning as he fed and watered the livestock and then drove out to check the perimeter fences. EJ’s enthusiastic stream of questions and excitement over every new task made the time fly by. EJ wanted to be involved in every piece of the action, reminding Nate of himself and his brothers when they were kids.
Earl and Cynthia Thompson, who’d owned the ranch, had been like grandparents to the triplets. Had his mother been as exhausted as Bianca seemed?
Probably.
He and his brothers were more than a handful.
Earl had been a quiet man with a surly countenance that hid a gentle heart. From the time Nate could remember, the craggy rancher had worked the Fortune boys, teaching them to manage the land and livestock and giving them a purpose when they might have turned wild with a less steady hand guiding them.
Nate wanted to do that for EJ, the way Eddie would have if he’d survived that last mission. As guilt exploded in Nate’s chest, he had to force himself not to step away from the boy. What right did he have to insert himself into this child’s life and try to offer direction?
When push had come to shove, he hadn’t been able to save his best friend. His brothers and mother had done fine for decades on their own while he was traveling the world with the navy. And shortly after he’d come home, all hell had broken loose with the discovery that Gerald Robinson was their father. Not that Nate could blame himself for that bombshell, but he hated that he hadn’t been able to protect his mom from revisiting that old heartbreak.
At the end of the day, he couldn’t trust himself to offer support to anyone. Bianca and EJ were far too precious to risk.
But they’d sought him out, and Nate had to believe that meant something. He needed to mean something to Eddie’s sister and her boy. He placed a hand on EJ’s arm to steady him and gave a few quiet instructions about how to position the next nail. The pink tip of EJ’s tongue poked out from the corner of his mouth, a sure sign the boy was deep in concentration.
“I thought I might find you two out here.”
At the sound of his mother’s voice, EJ stopped hammering and jumped off the stool Nate had pushed to the front of the workbench.
“Mommy,” he shouted, running toward her and launching himself against her legs. “I petted a cow and scooped horse poop and fed the chickens and now I’m fixing part of the coop. That’s what you call the chicken’s house—a coop. There are fifteen but only one rooster on account of he doesn’t like to share his girlfriends.”
“Whoa,” Bianca said with a laugh, lifting EJ into her arms. “Slow down, buddy. Take a breath. It sounds like you had a busy morning.”
“I got boots, too,” EJ said, kicking out his feet. “They used to be Mr. Nate’s.”
Her grin faltered as she looked to Nate. Damn, she was beautiful. She wore a simple white T-shirt and a pair of snug jeans with a tiny rip above one knee. That small strip of skin was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen because it held the promise of so much more.
Nate had never been one for flash and dazzle in his women, so Bianca’s natural beauty hit him hard. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, exposing the graceful line of her throat. More than anything, he wanted to know if her skin was as soft as it looked.
He was so damn close to making a fool of himself and embarrassing them both.
“Or one of my brother’s pairs.” He shrugged, feeling suddenly self-conscious that he’d dug through the shed out back to track down the bins of clothes and shoes his mom had kept from his childhood. “It’s hard to know, but my mom saved anything we didn’t wear out and Earl insisted on good boots, even when we were young. We all had the same style.”
“Thank you for sharing them with EJ,” she said after a moment.
“He needed a decent pair of shoes for the ranch.” The words came out more gruffly than he meant them because he didn’t want her to think that after one day he was trying to step in as the boy’s father or something. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Mommy, I got so many things to show you.” EJ wriggled to the ground and skipped in a circle around Bianca. “You want to see the poop I scooped or the fence I helped Mr. Nate fix?” He waved his hands in a windmill motion as he moved, a bundle of boy energy even after working for hours. Temperatures in January usually hovered in the low fifties, but today the thermostat had climbed nearly ten degrees above normal. Nothing appeared to dim EJ’s enthusiasm.
“Right now,” Bianca said gently, pulling a cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans, “I need to talk to Mr. Nate. Why don’t you check out your favorite YouTube channel for a few minutes?”
Nate frowned as EJ took the phone and hit a button, the blue light from the screen illuminating his small face. “It’s not working, Mommy,” EJ said almost immediately, handing the phone back to Bianca.
“No service,” Bianca muttered. “I guess it’s because we’re so far out of town. Do you have a Wi-Fi password?” She glanced from the phone to Nate.
“Nope,” he said, massaging a hand over the back of his neck.
“Maybe the signal is bad in the barn,” she told her son. “If you take it to the house’s front porch—”
“You still won’t have any luck.” Nate stepped forward. “Cell service out here is spotty, and the ranch doesn’t have Wi-Fi.”
Bianca and EJ stared at him with mutual horror in their dark gazes.
“You can get internet in town at the library,” he added quickly. “Normally it’s open on Wednesdays.”
EJ’s mouth dropped open.
“Once a week?” Bianca asked, her tone incredulous.
“I haven’t been there for a few months. It might have different hours now.”
“I want to watch a show,” EJ complained.
“We have a satellite dish,” Nate said. “My mom likes to watch the Rodeo Live channel when she’s not on the road with Grayson.”
“Do you have Elmer the Elephant?” the boy asked.
“I’m not sure about that,” Nate admitted. He’d heard of a puppet named Elmo but never an elephant called Elmer. “What channel is Elmer on?”
“YouTube,”