A reason to stay, p.1
A Reason to Stay, page 1
“Why are you being so nice to us?”
Sharpe clutched his chest over his heart dramatically. “You wound me.”
“That came out wrong,” Emma said, her cheeks turning the color of a ripe tomato. “It’s just that you have to admit it would have been so much easier for you to take my money. Instead, you offered to spend time with my brother, even after he destroyed your poor pumpkins.”
He shrugged. “I guess I see a lot of myself in Aidan. I got into a fair bit of trouble of my own when I was his age. I just thought I could help him, show him what it means to be responsible.”
“Well, thank you. I believe if anyone can handle Aidan, you can,” Emma said. She captured his gaze with hers. “He already appears to respect you.”
He didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to her. He really felt for Emma. It took courage to suddenly step in as a guardian when she hadn’t even known she had a brother.
And for some reason, which he still couldn’t put his finger on, he wanted to help her.
Maybe it was a God thing.
Or maybe he was just losing his good sense.
A Publishers Weekly bestselling and award-winning author of over forty novels, Deb Kastner enjoys writing Western stories set in small communities. Deb lives in beautiful Colorado with her husband. She is blessed with three adult daughters and two grandchildren. Her favorite hobby is spoiling her grandchildren, but she also enjoys reading, watching movies, singing in the church choir and exploring the Rocky Mountains on horseback.
Books by Deb Kastner
Love Inspired
Rocky Mountain Family
The Black Sheep’s Salvation
Opening Her Heart
The Marine’s Mission
Their Unbreakable Bond
A Reason to Stay
Cowboy Country
Yuletide Baby
The Cowboy’s Forever Family
The Cowboy’s Surprise Baby
The Cowboy’s Twins
Mistletoe Daddy
The Cowboy’s Baby Blessing
And Cowboy Makes Three
A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
Her Forgotten Cowboy
Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com for more titles.
A REASON TO STAY
Deb Kastner
And the Lord God said,
It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make an help meet for him.
—Genesis 2:18
To my granddaughter Isabella and in memory of her border collie, Baloo. You continue to amaze me with your intelligence, kindness and strength as you grow into a lovely young lady.
I’m so proud of you!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Excerpt from The Cowgirl’s Redemption by Mindy Obenhaus
Chapter One
Up until this moment, Emma Fitzpatrick had surprisingly been enjoying her day at the Colorado mountain country Harvest Festival, much more than she’d expected, since country anything wasn’t her cup of tea in the least. The local park was covered in hues of glittering reds and golds from the aspen trees and muted evergreen from lodgepole pines. Country music boomed from a local band playing on a platform that had been erected in the middle of the town park. The entire town—the entire state, for that matter—had gone from green to gold in the blink of an eye, and Emma couldn’t fail to be moved by God’s natural beauty.
Whispering Pines, Colorado, was a great deal different from Chicago, where she’d been born and raised, and even more so LA, where she currently lived.
Her grandmother had asked her and her younger brother, Aidan, to accompany her to the town’s annual Harvest Festival on the first Saturday in October. Thanks to her father’s estrangement from his mother, Emma hadn’t been allowed any contact with Nan growing up. And it was especially important to her to spend time with her now. Nan had said she wanted to meet up with friends, but due to her fading vision, she couldn’t drive herself, and there was no rideshare service or a taxi in such a small town.
Emma couldn’t very well say no to her adorably begging Nan, so here they were at the fair—although her feisty eighty-year-old nan had long since deserted her for the company of a beaming man around Nan’s age.
Friends, indeed.
Nan and the handsome old gentleman had their heads together and looked as if they were high schoolers on their first date, smiling and laughing loud enough for those nearby to hear.
Emma would have rolled her eyes if it wasn’t so cute.
Instead, she adjusted the light rust-colored scarf Nan had knitted her and joined a small group of women all in their mid-to late twenties, including her new friend Ruby Winslow, whom she’d met the other day in town at Sally’s Pizza when she’d been picking up dinner for Nan and Aidan.
Relaxing into the moment as she chatted with her new friends, she wasn’t paying attention to the noises around her until her ears picked up the sound of skirmishing boys and recognized the still only slightly familiar voice of her nine-year-old brother, Aidan.
This past week had given her the biggest shock of her entire twenty-nine-year life. Not only did she have a brother she hadn’t known existed, but she had discovered she was his legal guardian.
Emma looked over to see what was going on.
“Leave me alone,” Aidan growled, his face flushed with anger and nearly as red as his curly hair. Though his tone was high and tight, his words didn’t sound like a plea so much as a rough demand.
Four much older boys, probably all in their late teens, hovered over Aidan, who, though small and gangly compared to the boys around him, puffed out his chest and lifted his chin in response, not backing down despite his smaller size.
“You little twerp,” said a large boy with white-blond hair, poking his finger at Aidan’s chest. “Look at you, tough guy. You wanna fight with me?”
“Oh, no,” Emma murmured as she watched the brawl unfolding before her, knowing she should do something but feeling frozen to the spot.
She didn’t know how to take care of her brother.
She didn’t even know her brother.
The older boy laughed and pushed Aidan in the chest with both hands, sending him sprawling backward into the dirt.
Aidan quickly regained his footing. Before the blond boy even realized what was happening, Aidan scrambled to his feet and shoved his shoulder into the boy’s gut, following it with a strong left hook that landed high on the boy’s cheek. The kid was definitely going to have a shiner from the exchange, and Emma cringed.
Emma’s limbs loosened, and she rushed forward, calling Aidan’s name, knowing she was already too late to undo the damage her brother had created. As her brother’s newly appointed guardian, she was now accountable for him and knew it was up to her to step up to the plate and take responsibility for his actions. But breaking up the young boys’ fight was entirely out of her comfort zone, not to mention her experience.
She combed nervous fingers back through her pixie-cut auburn hair, puffing out a visible breath in the cool, crisp fall air as she wondered if she should—or even could—cut into the middle of the skirmish. She was only five-two, and three out of the four teenage boys were taller and broader than she was.
Thankfully, at that moment, a dark-haired cowboy Emma didn’t recognize took it upon himself to step into the fray. Emma wondered if he was any of the boys’ father.
“Knock it off, guys,” the man said calmly, holding out his hands between the two scrapping young men. The other boys in the group, those not directly involved with the fight, quickly dispersed, backing away from the tall, scowling man.
Emma couldn’t blame them for making themselves scarce. The cowboy was quite intimidating, with his broad shoulders and black cowboy hat pulled low over narrowed ice-blue eyes.
“Brandon, you’re better than this,” he told the blond boy in a gruff, low voice. “If your daddy catches you fighting again, you know he’s gonna take your cell phone away from you for the rest of the year.”
Emma absorbed the cowboy’s words, trying to make sense of them. First, the man apparently didn’t have any skin in the game, as she’d first suspected, which made her especially grateful that he’d stepped in to help. He wasn’t anyone’s father—at least, none of the scrapping boys’.
Also, it was clear this wasn’t Brandon’s first tussle. It had appeared to Emma that the young man had been the one picking the fight against Aidan, but there was no way to know for sure.
She had no idea whether or not her broody little brother had the tendency to get into scuffles. From what little she knew of him, he preferred to spend his time alone playing video games or coding on his computer, which in truth came as no real surprise to her. Video games were probably Aidan’s way of escaping the real world—somewhere that had probably been as bad for him as the reality she’d fled from when she’d turned eighteen.
Aidan would have felt equally trapped, as she honestly didn’t believe her parents would have changed much since she’d broken all contact with them. From what little she’d learned from Aidan, he’d grown up in the same situation as she had. Their fath er was hardly a decent role model, having been one way in public and much different behind closed doors. Their mother wasn’t much better. Emma had never been allowed to know her grandmother. And according to Aidan, it had been likewise with him.
Emma had escaped to the West Coast the moment she’d turned eighteen. She hadn’t looked back since.
Until now.
She’d worked hard for a full scholarship to Stanford, then had taken a job at a major marketing firm in LA—until she’d received the totally unexpected call that had immediately sent her world into a tailspin.
She jerked herself from the past and turned her attention back to the scene before her.
The teenager Brandon had immediately dropped his gaze at the cowboy’s gruff words, looking at the ground and scuffing his cowboy boots in the dirt. “Yeah. I know. Please don’t say anything to my dad.” The tough boy’s voice was suddenly a squeaky, high-pitched whine now that all his friends had deserted him.
“I suggest you go find the other kids you were hanging with and stay out of trouble for once. Oh—and leave the new kid alone.”
“Yeah, okay,” Brandon said again, this time using the cowboy’s words as an excuse to exit the scene as fast as he could, bolting off at a dead run.
The cowboy then turned to address Aidan, but Emma’s brother had surprisingly disappeared into the crowd and was nowhere to be seen.
Emma’s gaze had been focused on the interaction between the man and Brandon, and she hadn’t seen which direction her brother had gone. Her anxiety increased exponentially with every passing second. Her heart was pounding out of her chest.
She belatedly wished she had followed her original instincts and skipped the festival altogether, no matter how much Nan had pressed her. Aidan hadn’t wanted to go, and she shouldn’t have dragged him out the door with him complaining the whole way.
She shouldn’t have forced his acquiescence—at least, not until she knew him better. How could she have known he had a propensity for fighting?
Emma rejoined the small group of women she’d been chatting with earlier, her gut churning with apprehension and adrenaline pulsing through her veins.
“Aidan took off,” Emma said, her voice lined with worry. “I’d better go see if I can find him before he gets into even more trouble.”
“We’ll help,” Ruby replied. “My five siblings are hanging around here somewhere. I’ll give everyone a quick text and ask them to be on the lookout for Aidan. Between all of us, we ought to be able to find him in no time. Don’t worry, Emma. It’ll be okay.”
“I appreciate it,” Emma replied, her gloved hands curling into fists. It wasn’t so much that she was concerned for Aidan’s safety. Whispering Pines was a small, friendly mountain town with an almost nonexistent crime rate. She was more worried about what Aidan could do to Whispering Pines if given the opportunity. He’d already shown his penchant for creating trouble.
“Give me a minute to gather my peeps,” Ruby said.
Ruby was as good as her word, and within minutes, all five of her adult siblings were gathered around, three smiling women and two handsome men—including, to Emma’s surprise, the dark-haired cowboy who’d broken up the fight earlier. Though the Winslow siblings had various combinations of hair and eye colors, all six were clearly related, with strong facial features and clefts in their chins.
“I appreciate everyone being willing to help look for my brother. Aidan is nine years old and almost as tall as I am,” she started, holding up her hand to gesture the boy’s height. “He’s skinny and has a mop of curly red hair and blue eyes.”
Knowing a picture was worth a thousand words, Emma brought up on her phone a photo she’d taken of Aidan and showed the picture around, her chest tightening as she forced a breath of biting mountain air into her lungs. Colorado’s dry, crisp autumn air was unlike any she’d ever experienced before.
“How do you want to go about this?” the cowboy she’d seen earlier asked in a low, rich but husky baritone. “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we find this kid, the better.”
Emma’s gaze widened in surprise at the unspoken but blatantly clear message—better for me.
While Ruby’s brother’s statement could have indicated that he was worried about Aidan, Emma thought it sounded more as if he felt she was taking him away from something he considered a more important use of his time.
What could possibly be more important than finding a missing child?
“Sharpe, don’t be such a jerk,” Ruby said, slapping her brother on his shoulder.
So Emma had been right.
This cowboy, Sharpe, was more concerned about his own schedule than he was about Aidan. And yet, earlier, he’d taken the time out of his obviously busy schedule to break up the fight between the boys. The disparity was a bit baffling.
Sharpe shrugged. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t search for the boy. Can I help it if all of you get to play around and enjoy the festival while I have work to do?” He didn’t sound bitter, just matter-of-fact. “I’m just saying we need to get this done as fast as possible so I can get back to selling my pumpkins.”
“As you can see, I’ve got plenty of help here to assist me in my search,” Emma said to Sharpe, feeling her ire rising at his cavalier attitude, knowing and not particularly caring that it showed in her voice. “Please feel free to go back to whatever you were doing that is clearly so important to you.” Emma couldn’t help but slip in that last part.
Despite the composed way he’d handled the fight between the boys earlier and her gratefulness for him stepping in for Aidan so her brother hadn’t gotten seriously hurt, now that he was here with the other adults, she immediately rather disliked this man. He had arrogant written all over him.
Sharpe grunted and crossed his arms over his chest, highlighting his biceps, to Emma’s dismay. She’d always been a big fan of well-built biceps, but not when they were attached to blatantly rude men. She shifted her gaze back to his frowning face.
“Well, I’m here now. Let’s get this done.” Sharpe pushed his words through in a gruff monotone.
“Do we need a plan of action as to who is going to search where?” a blonde Winslow sister who introduced herself as Avery asked. “I suggest we spread out. Half of us can go toward the north side of the festival area and half toward the south. I doubt Aidan will have wandered out much farther than the festival perimeter. There are way too many interesting things that would no doubt capture a boy’s interest going on at the fair for him to have completely left the area.”
Emma half wanted to disagree with Avery’s words. From what little she knew of Aidan, she wasn’t sure a country fair would interest her brother. He was used to city life, where festivals had roller coasters and spinning teacups and famous bands, not games like trying to throw a ring over a bottle or a dart at a balloon. Just this morning, Aidan had complained about having to accompany her, saying he’d rather stay home and play video games than go to some stupid hick festival.
And now he was proving his point.
For all Emma knew, Aidan could be anywhere, and he’d already gotten into trouble once today. Maybe he’d taken off down Main Street and was halfway back to Nan’s house by now—if he knew the way to Nan’s house, which Emma wasn’t sure he did. That only made her even more nervous, and her throat tightened as her anxiety rose once again.
“I’ll check the food tent,” said Frost, the other Winslow brother, who, unlike broody Sharpe, was wearing a smile that matched his chipper, welcoming attitude. “When I was nine years old, that’s exactly where I would have gone first.”
“That’s still where you go first thing,” Ruby pointed out with a chuckle.
Sharpe grunted in agreement, not nearly as amused as his sister appeared to be at his brother’s antics, but Frost ignored his brother and grinned nonetheless, patting his trim stomach for emphasis.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Emma appreciated the easy banter between the Winslow siblings. She’d grown up as an only child and had always longed for a brother or sister.
But now that she suddenly had one, she had no idea what to do with him.
She felt as if life had just knocked her on the side of the head with a steel pipe and tossed her into the Pacific Ocean.
