Free Her Homecoming Cowboy by Debra Clopton

women especially, who were infatuated with him and his bull riding competitors. Some women seemed to be on the road from rodeo to rodeo as much as the riders themselves. He had let women like that distract him earlier in his career. But the last couple of years he’d barely given them a glance, hadn’t spent any time with them. He’d realized that to win the championship, he needed all his focus to be on the bull. Nothing else mattered. Until everything had come crashing down.
    “Maybe his mother used to be one of those women that followed me around.”
    Luke leaned forward and Jess straightened. Both brothers looked as though he’d just told them something they’d been waiting to hear. He studied them, his eyes narrowing. “What are y’all thinking?” He suddenly didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking.
    Luke cleared his throat. “It’s understandable that you don’t see what we’re seeing. Truth is, me and Jess saw something that first morning. Then Gabi said something. And you know how alert Gabi is to detail.” It was true. Gabi had proved that when she’d headed up the search for what was killing their cattle a few weeks ago.
    “Gabi came home the first day she met Leo and told me the kid reminded her of you. She didn’t think much about it at the time, because she didn’t know about Leo’s mother plastering pictures of you all over his wall. When I told her, she didn’t say anything except that it seemed a little odd.”
    Colt’s memory was suddenly shuffling through years of files.
    Luke leaned forward again and his somber brown eyes hit Colt in the gut. “Is there a possibility you could have a son?”
    “What?” Colt asked, thinking he had heard wrong. But one look at both Luke’s and Jess’s expressions and he knew they were serious. Dead serious.
    “You said they look familiar to you. Maybe it’s because when you look at Leo you see some of what we’re seeing,” Jess said.
    “And we don’t know what Annie’s sister looked like. Maybe they looked alike,” Luke added. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”
    “Well...” He rubbed the back of his neck with the hand of his good arm and thought about his past. He’d eased his loneliness with whoever happened to catch his attention. None of the relationships had ever meant anything and he’d always been careful.... Well, truthfully, he knew there were times when that just wasn’t true. “The truth is, maybe.”
    “That would mean Annie moved here for some reason but is hiding the truth,” Luke said. “I’ve only met her once, but I didn’t get the impression that she was a deceptive person.”
    “I need to go,” Colt said brusquely, standing so quickly that his collarbone retaliated painfully.
    He stepped from the porch.
    “Colt, what are you going to do?” Jess said.
    “Don’t do anything rash. It’s only a hunch, nothing concrete.”
    Luke’s words halted him. “I need to think. That’s all. Tell Montana and Gabi I’ll talk to them later.”
    He didn’t slow down again until he was at his truck.
    Was it true? Could Leo really be his son? Sure, there could be other explanations, but there was something about Leo that even he recognized as more than hero worship. Leo was only six, after all. The way he bit his tongue when he concentrated. And then there was the way he stood. Colt wasn’t one to jump to conclusions. But he was going to observe both Leo and Annie more closely. Because if Annie had something to hide, then he was going to figure it out.
    What are you going to do if it’s true?
    As he pulled his truck to the side of the road, gravel shot out from beneath his tires, and if he’d been on pavement he’d have burned rubber. He wasn’t daddy material.
    He’d never been daddy material and nothing had changed.
    His hands tightened on the steering wheel and his forearms strained with the pressure as his thoughts raced.
    What am I going to do if it’s true?
    * * *
    “Annie, can you