One From The Heart Read online

  “You’ve got freckles,” Ernie said.

  Hannah frowned. His proximity and his clean male scent were calling up that dark, warm feeling again. Lord, what a nice face he had. Nice face, nice thighs …

  “Yes, I know,” she said dryly. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to South Dakota.”

  “So did I. I got to thinking about the kid—”

  “We’re doing all right,” she interrupted.

  “—and you,” he finished.

  And me? she almost said, the dark, warm feeling spreading, making her knees weak, making her heart pound. “You didn’t have to come back,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster.

  “Yeah, that’s what I told myself the whole time I was getting my knee patched up, and all the way down I-35—in both directions. Somehow I just couldn’t make myself believe it …”

  Writing as Cheryl Reavis her Silhouette Special Edition, A CRIME OF THE HEART, reached millions of readers in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine and won the Romance Writers of America’s coveted RITA award for Best Long Contemporary the year it was published.

  She also won the RITA for her Harlequin-Silhouette novels, THE PRISONER, PATRICK GALLAGHER’S WIDOW, and THE BRIDE FAIR. Three additional novels, BLACKBERRY WINTER, PROMISE ME A RAINBOW, and THE BARTERED BRIDE have been RITA finalists.

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY described her BERKLEY single-title novel, PROMISE ME A RAINBOW as “…an example of delicately crafted, eminently satisfying romantic fiction.”

  From the LIBRARY JOURNAL regarding her Harlequin Historical, THE CAPTIVE HEART: “…a study in cultural contrasts, this well-written, vividly descriptive tale skillfully juxtaposes the “savage” with the “civilized” and allows the reader to draw some occasionally unexpected conclusions. Realistic cultural detail, a sensitively handled romantic relationship, a heroine who strengthens with the story, and a hero who comes to terms with his two cultures, combine in a sensual, emotionally involving romance that is both brutal and tender and satisfying…”

  Reavis’s award-winning literary short stories have appeared in a number of “little magazines” such as The Crescent Review, The Bad Apple, The Emrys Journal, and in The Greensboro Group’s statewide competition anthology, WRITER’S CHOICE. Visit Cheryl at cherylreavis.blogspot.com and on facebook!

  Other Second Chance at Love books by

  Cinda Richards

  THIS SIDE OF PARADISE #237

  SUCH ROUGH SPLENDOR #280

  DILLON’S PROMISE #330

  FIRE UNDER HEAVEN #382

  ONE FROM THE HEART

  First Published in the US by the Berkley Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2011 Cheryl Reavis

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE FIRST TIME Hannah Rose Browne saw John Ernest Watson, she had two thoughts. The first was a passage from the Song of Solomon: “Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me”; the second was the certain knowledge that the compelling sadness she saw in this man’s eyes had something to do with her sister Elizabeth—no great piece of detective work on her part, because he was standing on her doorstep with Elizabeth’s sleeping child slung over his shoulder.

  “Are you going to let us in or not?” he asked, turning around so she could see Petey’s face. He sounded tired and more than a little harassed.

  “What are you doing with Elizabeth’s daughter?” Hannah demanded as he stepped inside. He paid her no attention whatsoever.

  “Where’s the bedroom?” he asked, limping in the wrong direction. He was a tall man with dark eyes and a dark mustache. He needed a shave, and he was wearing faded jeans with a red plaid shirt and a denim jacket. His oversize black cowboy hat made him look as if he’d just dropped in from a smokeless tobacco ad or a dusty cattle drive of the last century.

  “That’s the kitchen,” she said when he reached the kitchen door.

  “Well, thanks a lot, lady. I’ve been driving for seven hours, I’m hungry, I got no sleep, I got a knee that needs sewing up, and somehow I got to get to Rapid City, South Dakota, by tomorrow afternoon. So go ahead—let me wander all over the dang place—it’s not like I’m in a hurry.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” Hannah said, unimpressed by his troubles. “What are you doing with Petey?”

  “I’m trying to give her to you if you’ll tell me where I can put her down!” he said loudly enough to cause the little girl over his shoulder to lift her head for a moment. “Go back to sleep now, Pete,” he whispered to her, rocking her back and forth. He glanced at Hannah and then back again, as if her physical appearance had only just registered. His eyes swept over her, face to breasts to hips and back to her breasts again before he finally met her eyes. Hannah stared at him calmly—hoping she looked much calmer than she felt. She had experienced—and enjoyed—many a lingering male appraisal in her time, but he was quite bold in assessing whatever he thought she might be hiding under the baggy sweat suit she was wearing, bold enough make her pulse quicken and her cheeks flush. The dark eyes that now probed hers offered no apology. If anything, he seemed more annoyed—as if he’d found her more physically attractive than he’d expected, sweat suit or not, and that was the last thing in the world he needed.

  “In here,” Hannah said after a moment, trying to ignore her response to whatever it was he thought he was doing. It wasn’t that her response was unpleasant so much as it was a surprise. She had always found the archaic keep-’em-barefoot-and-pregnant attitude men in this part of the country seemed to have unappealing, yet she couldn’t deny that in this case she had responded. In that one long look, he had suddenly changed from a generic cowboy to one who was most definitely individual—and male. She led the way to the bedroom, now intensely aware of that maleness. Clearly, Elizabeth wasn’t with them, and Hannah was going to have to take care of first things first. She had been working on several scripts for a furniture-outlet commercial, and she had to move a stack of papers and a bean-bag lap desk before he could put her niece down on the bed. He did so gently—after figuring out he had to first stand still so that Hannah, flustered now by his proximity, could get out of his way.

  “Ernie?” Petey murmured sleepily as the two of them tucked Hannah’s patchwork quilt carefully around her.

  “Yeah, Pete, what is it?” he said kindly.

  And suddenly Hannah realized who John Ernest Watson was: Elizabeth’s childhood friend, Ernie, the famous bull-dodging clown on the professional rodeo circuit, or perhaps infamous was a better word. He was supposed to have become a hard-drinking womanizer in recent years—if she could believe Elizabeth. She felt a familiar pang of annoyance. Whatever else Elizabeth was, she was truthful—when it suited her. And God only knew what he was doing with Petey or what Elizabeth was up to now.

  “You’re the rodeo clown,” Hannah said, feeling a little better about the situation and wondering why. She carefully avoided looking at him, because she could feel him looking at her. Again.

  “Yeah, well, that’s the way I like to think of myself. The Rodeo Clown.”

  “Ernie,” Petey murmured again, “don’t make it dark.”

  “I won’t, baby. Go to sleep—she’s afraid of the dark,” he said to Hannah.

  “I lost Cowpoke,” Petey said sleepily, feeling around under the quilt.

  “Aw, we left him in the car,” Ernie
said. “I’ll get him—unless Miss Hannah will do that for us so old Ernie doesn’t have to walk with his bad knee and everything.”

  Hannah glanced at him. He gave her a warm, persuasive grin; she gave him an arch look, promptly losing the feeling of reassurance she’d just had. Any man who would use a child to manipulate a situation to his advantage was capable of anything, bad knee or not.

  “Yes, please, Aunt Hannah,” her niece said politely.

  “Petey, where’s your m—”

  “Say hello to Aunt Hannah, Pete,” Ernie interrupted, giving Hannah a sharp dig in the ribs with his elbow.

  “Hello, Aunt Hannah,” Petey said dutifully, briefly opening her eyes. “Are you surprised? Ernie said you’d be surprised.”

  “Boy, am I ever,” Hannah said in all truthfulness. She wanted to bend down and kiss her niece on the forehead, but somehow, with Ernie Watson watching, she wasn’t quite at ease enough to do it. Petey was a sweet child, though not beautiful as children went, having a sort of Holly Hobby look, with her light brown braids and freckles. In fact, she looked more like her Aunt Hannah than her exquisitely blond and blue-eyed mother.

  “So,” Hannah whispered to her. “What’s a—Cowpoke?”

  “Brown,” Petey whispered back.

  “I see,” Hannah teased. “I go out into the parking lot—and I keep looking until I find brown.” She punctuated the “brown” with an awkward little pat, glancing at Ernie and forcing herself not to ask questions about Elizabeth now.

  “I’ll go get him,” he said. “I can do it faster than I can tell you what he is. Kiss,” he said to Petey, tapping the spot on his cheek where he wanted it. Petey obliged him while he shot a quelling look at Hannah. Whatever was going on, he didn’t want her to interrogate Petey about it. He limped away, coming back in a few minutes with an obviously homemade stuffed bear. It was indeed brown, and it was dressed in a sequined western suit with fringe that made it look like a poor man’s mascot for Porter Wagoner.

  “Cowpoke,” he explained, holding up the bear as he came into the bedroom. “And don’t ask me why.” Petey had already gone back to sleep, and he quietly tucked the bear in beside her.

  “Mr. Watson …” Hannah said as soon as they had moved into the hall.

  “Ernie,” he corrected her, and he seemed to be looking for something.

  She ignored his invitation to familiarity. He’d gotten more than familiar enough for her liking. “Mr. Watson,” she repeated, but he held up his hand to stop her.

  “Where is Elizabeth?” she asked anyway, whispering so she wouldn’t wake up Petey.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered back, leaning close to her so that she got the barest whiff of his definitely appealing masculine scent. “My knee’s bleeding again, Hannah. I need your bathroom,” he added in a normal tone of voice.

  She looked down at his knees. One jeans leg had a big red stain, which was widening in an alarming manner.

  “Oh, Lord—in there, in there,” she said, trying to wave him in the right direction, all the while trying to assess how it was she came to have an unauthorized child in her bed and a bleeding cowboy wandering all over the place. She didn’t mean to go along with him into the bathroom, but he was holding on to her by that time, his big hand warm and firm on her shoulder, and somehow she just went.

  “Help me get my pants off,” he said, standing on one foot while he took off his jacket. Hannah looked at him, her pulse rate kicking up again.

  “Hey,” he said, grinning and chucking her under the chin. “I generally have to know a woman awhile before I drop my pants, but this is an emergency.”

  “You need a doctor!” Hannah insisted, frowning because the idea of having to get him out of his tight-fitting jeans was costing her what little composure she had left—and he knew it. He handed her his hat.

  “No, honey, I need to get my pants off. Can you help me with that boot?”

  She didn’t budge.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked innocently.

  “Nothing,” she said in a tone of voice that positively reeked of untruth.

  “What is it you think I’m going to do, Hannah?” He was smiling and trying to look into her eyes.

  “Nothing!” she said again, making herself look at him.

  “Well, I’m going to bleed to death if you don’t help me.”

  “Lord!” she said, abruptly kneeling down and tugging at the boot while still holding his hat. He let out a yelp of pain, and she turned his foot and the hat loose, nearly causing him to fall.

  “Wait—wait!” he said, hopping until he could put the lid down on the commode and sit. “Now pull.”

  “How did you get in this fix anyway?” she felt compelled to ask, largely because it kept her mind off the fact that she was having to put her hands all over him.

  “Same way I always do. A high-kicking bull—”

  She got his boot off, then his pants, trying not to look at his noticeably manly thighs. A random comparison image—soccer-player thighs—flitted through her mind, and she glanced up at him in spite of her attempts to stay as removed as possible from the situation. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  She frowned again and backed out of the bathroom, leaving him alone with a stack of towels and cold water running in the sink, stumbling over a boot on the way out. After a moment she came back in to offer him antiseptic. And to prove to herself he was having no effect on her. He shooed her away, a bit irritably, she thought, informing her that anybody—even she—should know soap and water was the best thing to clean out a cut.

  “No, I didn’t know,” she muttered to herself when she was back in the hall. Somehow she was holding his darn hat again. She hovered around for a minute, mentally chastising herself because his muscular thighs and overt assessment had rattled her so. He was one of those flirtatious, good-ole-cowboy types, and she should have more sense than to respond to his heavy-handed technique. She’d never responded to that type before, she assured herself, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now. She went to check on Petey. Her niece was sleeping quietly with her flashy cowboy bear clutched close. She reached out to turn off the light, then remembered that Petey was afraid of the dark.

  Petey, Petey, she thought. She closed her eyes for a moment. Where the devil was Elizabeth, and what was she supposed to do with a four-year-old child? She had to go to work tomorrow; she had no place to leave Petey, and she couldn’t take her along. She had no vacation days left for the year—

  “Hannah?” Ernie Watson called from the bathroom.

  “What!” she said, giving in to the exasperation she was feeling. “Lord!” she said under her breath. God only knew what she was supposed to do about him, either—particularly if he was going to look at her the way he did and insist on having his pants off.

  He wanted her to search through his jeans pockets for some butterfly adhesive bandages. Then he gave her the choice of either taping the cut closed with the butterflies while he held the gaping edges together or vice versa. She chose the latter—because he did need help—but she was able to accomplish it only by closing her eyes. First aid was definitely not her forte, and touching this man’s bare knee wasn’t helping.

  “So. Hannah,” he said after a moment. “What’s new?”

  She opened her eyes. “What’s new?” she repeated, momentarily bewildered by the triteness of the question … given the recent turn of events. She found herself staring into his dark eyes again. Something about them reminded her of the grave dignity of old daguerreotype photographs, and the sadness she’d noted earlier was not diminished by the teasing grin he was still wearing. “Oh,” she said airily, “not much. Why?”

  His grin broadened, then faded away. “You know your sister’s a long-term nut case, don’t you?” The words were light, but, oh, those sad eyes. He pulled several sterile gauze pads out of his shirt pocket and gave them to her to open. She tore open the ends of the packs and carefully took the gauze squares out while he kept pressure on the c
ut.

  “Yes, well … I didn’t know Elizabeth until I was sixteen,” she said, trying to be careful where she looked, a difficult task when one had only arresting eyes, naked muscular thighs, and a bleeding cut to choose from. “I can only vouch for the last nineteen years or so.”

  She and Elizabeth had been separated by their parents’ divorce when Elizabeth was four and she was two. Hannah had gone to live with their mother, while Elizabeth had remained with their father in the bosom of one of the most successful ranching families around Tulsa. But it was Hannah who had been the better off, growing up poor but happy, bouncing from motor court to trailer park in the vagabond life their free-spirited mother had chosen.

  Shamelessly spoiled, her sister Elizabeth had had every material thing money could buy. She had been born with their mother’s beauty and strong will and their father’s reckless charm. Everyone loved Elizabeth, especially Hannah—and probably John Ernest Watson. There was something in her that inspired mindless devotion. But to expect anything in return for it was like waiting on the corner for a streetcar—in Death Valley.

  “Shouldn’t you put something on that first?” Hannah asked worriedly as he arranged the gauze over the cut. It looked awful, and soap and water hardly seemed enough. She raised her eyes and found him staring at her. This look was neither grave nor teasing. It was a man-woman look, one that quickened her already hustling pulse, one that made her forget what she was talking about, and one that was definitely not suitable for the person he knew only as “Elizabeth’s sister.” Once again she had the feeling that while he might find her attractive, he also considered her something on the order of a fate worse than death. Then he smiled abruptly, and she couldn’t tell if she’d imagined it or not.

  “Hannah, will you let me handle this? A man who’s been kicked and hooked by a damn cow as many times as I have knows what to do. Reach into my jacket pocket, will you? There’s an elastic bandage in there. So why did your mother keep you and Elizabeth apart?” he asked, all business now and obviously interested in the subject she’d had no more sense than to introduce. She found the bandage and handed it to him. She also found herself answering him.