Free The Cowboy SEAL by Laura Marie Altom

hate being poor!” Back in bed, her daughter finished her performance by tugging the covers over her head.
    This probably should’ve been the moment when Millie nipped that sass by grounding LeeAnn for the rest of her life, but she didn’t have the strength. After perching on the bed’s edge, she ran her hand along her daughter’s side. “Know what? I’m kind of sick of being poor myself, only you might find this hard to believe, but hon, we’re actually pretty rich—and blessed. We have a nice, solid roof over our heads and plenty of food in our bellies. We have each other and love and—”
    “Stop!” LeeAnn sat up, letting the quilts fall around her waist. “You say we’re so rich and blessed? Then how come Daddy died and Grandpa had a stroke? And our barn’s so crappy that the chickens have to live in our kitchen?”
    “Lee...” Millie’s throat tightened. She’d asked herself the same questions countless times, and was fresh out of fortifying platitudes. “Look, since you’re
sooo
old, I’ll be straight with you. No one’s more tired of our temporary cash
shortage
than me, but it is what it is. I wasn’t raised to be a quitter and neither were you. When times are tough, we just have to dig in our heels and fight harder. We—”
    “Mom, seriously,
please
stop. Our life sucks. Everything sucks, and sometimes I just want to run away!” She was crying, and the sound of her child’s sobs shattered what little remained of Millie’s heart.
    “Okay, yes—” she drew LeeAnn into a hug “—at the moment, there’s not a whole lot to be happy about, but you know what?”
    “What?” Sniff, sniff.
    “On the bright side, things can’t get much worse, right?”
    Millie kissed the crown of her daughter’s head, then tucked her in, longing for simpler times back when Jim had been here to coparent. J.J. she could still handle, but with her daughter, Millie felt about as in control as if she were juggling boiling water.
    In the hall, she’d just shut LeeAnn’s door and turned for her own room when Cooper reached the top of the stairs.
    When their eyes locked, she stopped breathing.
    Had she really just noted that things couldn’t get worse?
    “Everything all right?” he asked.
    She wagged the cell. “Just putting on my sheriff hat. Guess I’m not ready for her to be acting this old so soon. When we were her age, no one had phones.”
    “True. But then to her way of thinking, we probably seem old enough to have been riding dinosaurs to school.” He cracked a smile. “Pretty sure your old Chevette could’ve technically been from the Stone Age. That thing was nasty.”
    “Oh—” she raised her eyebrows “—like your truck was much better?”
    “At least it was a Ford.”
    “Watch it...” Lord, Cooper and Jim used to battle for hours over the merits of Ford versus Chevy trucks. She’d forgotten. In the hall’s chill, her throat knotted under the guilty weight of how much else of her husband’s daily quirks she’d forgotten.
    Outside, the wind had once again picked up and rattled the shutters.
    “I really am sorry about Jim. I would’ve come to the funeral, but didn’t even know he’d died until a month after he’d been gone. By then...” He shrugged. Rammed his hands into his pockets. “Well, I couldn’t.”
    “Sure. I understand.” But she didn’t. Which was no doubt a big part of the reason why she found it so difficult being around him.
    *
    C OOPER HID OUT from Millie until she’d shut herself into her room for the night.
    Once the coast was clear, he handled the half-dozen chores still needing to be addressed, then was too keyed up to sleep. He tried boning up on the latest deep-dive recs, but his job felt a million miles away. What he really needed to think about, but didn’t want to, was the mess he’d made of things here.
    He sat on the sofa, leaning forward to cradle his forehead in his hands.
    In the short run, he’d soon enough get the ranch in ship-shape