Free Cowgirl Come Home by Debra Salonen - Big Sky Mavericks 03 - Cowgirl Come Home

her father berate her mother in a drunken rage panicked. She grabbed his arm with both hands, pulling him against her like an anchor.
    She shook her head and put one finger to her lips. “No,” she mouthed.
    They held each other, fear the glue that bound them tighter than sex probably would have, listening to the bullshit and banter, waiting for the moment OC turned around and spotted her coat.
    “Found it,” the other guy chortled. “Look out Kermit E. Frog, here I come.”
    Bailey braced for the worst.
    She heard the two men return, something fell, a box of some kind.
    “Goddamn it,” OC snarled. “I gotta get in here and clean this place one of these days. Or make my daughter do it. Yeah, I like that idea.”
    She knew at that moment he’d spotted her jacket. The taste in her mouth turned sour. Her heart skipped every other beat as she waited for him grab her from Paul’s arms.
    A moment later, the light flicked off. The front door slammed with a resounding crack and she heard the deadbolt click into place.
    “Holy crap that was close.”
    She didn’t tell Paul the truth because she didn’t know what just happened. Her father chose not to expose them? The man who routinely berated bad drivers, baffled tourists, bumbling store clerks and anyone else who didn’t do things OC Jenkins’s way gave her a pass? “I think we better go.”
    “Why? He’s gone.”
    She looked around, her eyes nearly adjusted to the dark again. “You were right. Picking this place for our first time is a little twisted. I didn’t plan it that way, but…it’s not going to happen.”
    Paul, being Paul, shrugged. “Can I still cop a feel in my truck?”
    She punched him on the arm, but she laughed, too. He always knew how to make her smile.
    All these years later, Bailey sighed and relaxed, bemused by the memory.
    OC never brought up that night, never asked if she’d been there. She and Paul found other places to make out. Their first time happened in the hayloft.
    She honestly couldn’t remember if it was good or so-so. But she knew they got better as spring turned to summer. By the time she found out she was pregnant and they broke up, he could make her quiver like a mare in heat any time he touched her.
    Groaning at the unwelcome sensation that swept through her body, she turned on her side and squeezed her eyes tight. She needed a nap, not a horny stroll down memory lane.
    The last thing she had any business thinking about was a man. She’d messed up her last relationship about as badly as possible—Ross was dead, after all.
    Maureen insisted Ross’s death was not Bailey’s fault.
    She blamed “survivor’s guilt” for the crushing weight Bailey couldn’t shake.
    “When someone close to us dies accidentally, it’s human nature to spend hours, months, years thinking of all the ways we could have prevented the accident from happening. But your hands were not on the wheel, Bailey. You need to let go and move on.”
    As if that were possible. She might have been able to come back from losing Ross—he’d literally separated from her months before the accident. But she would never get over losing Daz. Her horse. Her baby. Her future.
    She’d go on. She’d find meaningful work. She’d channel her passion for rodeo into her western art. She’d sublimate, but she’d never ride again.
    Not without Daz.
    *
    Louise pushed the book cart toward the enclave set aside for the library’s younger readers. Things had changed dramatically since she first started working in the Marietta Community Library. For one thing, computers and eBooks were in hot demand by nearly all of the library’s younger patrons—except for Louise’s readers. The children she served loved to pick up and hold a book in their small hands.
    And Louise never tired of being the one to suggest, “Have you read Thomas the Train, yet? Or, we have a new, must-read Fancy Nancy.” Seeing their eyes light up more than made up for the complaints she heard from