“I dug, too,” Kara volunteered, and Jake stifled another laugh. They were good kids, and despite his apprehensions about getting attached, he liked having them around.
A couple of days after they started tagging after him, Jake had paused, his hammer halfway to the nail in the subflooring they were securing, when Trevor announced their parents were dead. He’d gazed over at the boy, afraid to ask any more about them, unsure of what the kid and his sister had already endured.
“So, who do you live with then?” he had asked instead.
“Sally’s mom takes care of us.” Trevor pointed out a brown-haired girl about his sister’s age running with the other kids in the yard. Apparently, children were still a priority to the women of this new world. This was not the first time he’d heard of orphans or unwanted kids being taken in by other families. When he and Bret had been hiding in the mountains, many of the people there had banded together out of necessity. That others had done the same here surprised him at first, but now it only seemed natural that good people did what needed to be done.
“Do you like living with them?”
“Yeah.” Trevor grinned. “She makes us cookies—” Distracted by shouts from the other children playing, Trevor ran off, ending the conversation, for which Jake was grateful. The thought of what those kids must have gone through in their short years disturbed him, and he hoped they were as content as the boy said.
“Well,” Jake said to the children now, as they knelt on the sandy riverbank, gazing at him expectantly with big smiles of accomplishment on their little faces, “you must have worked up a mighty big hunger then.”
“Yep!” the children replied in unison.
“You want to head back for dinner?” He grabbed his straw cowboy hat off the ground and stood, before placing it on his head.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
The siblings jumped to their feet and rushed toward him. Kara held her arms up, her denim-colored eyes earnest, and Jake had to swallow the lump in his throat. She’d only started asking him to carry her a few days before, and the familiarity of the act, the open trust in her face, affected him as much now as it had the first time she did it.
“Carry me,” she demanded when he didn’t immediately move to pick her up. Understanding he wouldn’t be living there long, he knew that encouraging their growing friendship wasn’t a good idea, but he couldn’t help wanting to find the same connection the children seemed to have found in him. He was fond of them too.
“You want a ride to the house?”
“Yes!”
“All right, come here then,” he said and gathered the little girl in his arms. He looked down at Trevor and saw the boy’s mood had darkened. Guessing the cause, he shifted Kara to his hip and offered his hand to her brother.
“Hey, Trev, would you lead me back? I’m a little tired, and carrying your sister is hard work. I might need a little help. I don’t want to lose my way.”
Trevor looked at him with the same denim-blue eyes as his sister and frowned, as if Jake had lost his mind.
Again, Jake had to hold back a smile. Damn kid’s too smart for his own good.
“Okay,” Trevor said, as if Jake’s request was an arduous task, but Jake caught the hint of a grin curling the boy’s lips as he began leading him to the house.
Jake dropped the kids off with their new mom, promising he’d be back to go in to dinner with them, and then made his way to his bedroom to clean up. When he went back to meet them, he was a little surprised to find Shawn waiting too, but he made no comment about it. Kara wanted another ride, and Trevor didn’t need an offer to take Jake’s hand; he simply grabbed hold and they started walking. Sally’s mother smiled at Jake as they turned toward the dining room. He gave her a brief nod but no indication he wanted any other interaction with her, as Trevor tugged at his hand to go. Thankfully, she appeared more interested in Shawn than him.
They joined the other ranch workers for the meal, and the lighthearted banter at their table made Jake feel more at home than he had in too many years. It also reminded him of his long lost friend.
He could almost see Bret’s green eyes light up in his too-handsome, suntanned face as a broad grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“I’ll make a cowboy out of you yet, Jake.” He heard Bret’s voice plainly in his head as he recalled the hours of training his friend had given him.
Jake took a lot of ribbing from the other cowboys the first few months after he joined Bret on the ranch he ran, before the war drove them into the mountains. He’d been trying for days to learn how to rope a steer but was wretchedly inept at the chore. Bret stuck with him until Jake could finally loop the lariat over the stationary practice head consistently. Bret’s regular praise, patience, and enthusiasm never waned, even when they graduated to working with moving targets and it seemed to Jake that he had to start all over again.
“You’re doing fine, Jake,” Bret encouraged more than once. “Just keep at it. You’ll get it.”
Bret was a good friend and Jake knew how much the man cared about him, but Bret didn’t trust easily. His personal demons often caused him to push people away, even Jake, and his need to be loved had left them open to attack.
“Amy’s brainwashed you, Bret.” The memory of his own voice sounded loud and coarse in Jake’s
