Mama Moon

  Crescent Moon Ranch

  Book One

  Tess Thompson

  Contents

  A NOTE FROM TESS

  1. Stella

  2. Stella

  3. Jasper

  4. Stella

  5. Stella

  6. Jasper

  7. Stella

  8. Jasper

  9. Stella

  10. Jasper

  11. Jasper

  12. Stella

  13. Jasper

  14. Stella

  15. Jasper

  16. Stella

  17. Jasper

  About the Author

  A NOTE FROM TESS

  A note from Tess…

  I hope you enjoyed XX.

  Grab the next in the series XX.

  * * *

  I adore hearing from readers, so don’t hesitate to say hello or sign up for my newsletter at www.tesswrites.com. You’ll receive a free ebook just for signing up! Also, join my Facebook group, PATIO CHAT, for sneak peeks and other book loving fun!

  * * *

  Sending love to your home from mine XO

  1

  Stella

  No good ever came from loving a rodeo cowboy. At least a half dozen country crooners sing that cautionary tale. My mama was no singer, but she’d told me the same thing.

  It was just shy of twilight when I spotted the young man climbing on the back of that bull. A perfect summer night in western Montana, the warm evening soft and silky against my young cheeks. Air perfumed with hay and popcorn. The bleachers packed. Goose bumps from the recently sung national anthem still prickling my arms.

  My breath caught as man and bull burst from the holding gate. The power of that bull against the sinewy strength of a rodeo rider. My stomach clenched. Would the mighty beast toss this boy to the ground and deprive the world of his beauty?

  I’d heard once that the right lighting could trick a mind into believing just about anything. So if I’m going to hold anyone besides myself responsible for the way that man ruined my life, then I might as well blame the setting sun for casting him in her golden light. He was gorgeous, shimmering, holding on for dear life as the bull bucked and bucked.

  I tore my gaze away to glance over at Jennie. My best friend since we were three years old. My perky, cute blonde friend. All the boys in our high school were obsessed with her. No such luck for them. A year ago, she gave her heart to Mark Armstrong. They were planning on eloping at the end of the summer.

  Now, however, she was staring at Rex Sharp with the same hungry expression I felt deep in my own gut.

  "Look at him," Jennie said in more of a sigh than a sentence. “Rex Sharp.”

  Rex Sharp. We’d seen his name in the program. “Sumptuous. Resplendent.”

  “Can’t you just call him a babe like everyone else would?” Jennie had asked, poking me in the ribs.

  Right then, the bull tossed Rex Sharp onto the ground as though he was a rag doll. He popped right back up and ran to safety while the clowns came out to lure the bull back into his pen. Rex yanked his hat from his head and waved it at the cheering crowd. I held my breath, drinking him in. To my surprise, he turned slightly and somehow, he found me. Singled me out. I couldn’t pull away, simply stared. He stared right back. Just for a second, mind you. But long enough that I knew he wanted to see more. Then he was gone, disappearing into the building behind the arena.

  Jennie and I had sneaked out to see the rodeo. My mother would never have allowed us to go alone, for fear something would happen to innocent girls out in the big city of Bozeman, Montana. She liked to keep me close. So close that at times I felt as if I might suffocate.

  Jennie’s mom had died when we were young, and her father disappeared soon thereafter, leaving Jennie to be brought up by her elderly grandmother.

  In just a few months, I was headed to Missoula for college. I'd secured a full ride and planned to study biology and then go to veterinary school. My dad couldn’t complain or forbid me to go, because he didn’t have to pay for it. This was my chance to get away from him, finally. Freedom so close I could almost taste it that summer.

  Jennie managed to get us invited to a gathering at a local bar after the show. The drinking age was twenty-one, but the guy at the door just waved us through. My stomach fluttered, hoping Rex Sharp would be there. He was. Standing in the corner of the room with a beer in his hand and his eyes on me.

  The rest of that night blurs at the edges, twelve years later. I remember Jennie managed to inch us closer and closer to the star of the night until finally, we were standing next to him. He was even sexier close up—eyes the color of a wintry blue sky and a mouth that curved into a smirk every time I uttered a word.

  Jennie was only a few inches taller than five feet. I was a full five inches taller than her and had earned my ropy muscles and wide shoulders from days of work on my father's ranch. An only child growing up on a ranch, I learned early how to use my body in aid of the family business.

  So, as we stood there, taking in the golden boy of the rodeo, I wouldn’t have thought I'd have a chance. When we were together, boys only had eyes for Jennie. I was used to it. In fact, I didn’t mind at all. I had big dreams. None of which included a man. I was the smart one, and she was the pretty, popular one. I excelled in chemistry class and she got the entire student body to cheer for our sad little football team, even though we hadn't won a game in ten years, just by bouncing on her toes and waving red and gold pom-poms.

  To my surprise, however, Rex Sharp couldn't stop staring at me. I'd never had a man’s gaze roam my figure or comment on how pretty my brown eyes were. By the end of the party, I was in the cab of that boy's truck losing what was left of my innocence.

  By August, I knew I was pregnant. All dreams evaporated into the clear Montana sky when those two pink lines showed up on a pregnancy test. We'd seen each other a dozen times by then, always ending up in his truck with the same result. When I told him I was pregnant, he said right away that we should get married. My parents agreed.

  Only Jennie asked me about my dreams. My plans. "Do you really want to give it all up for a pretend cowboy who probably has eyes on your daddy's ranch?"

  "He does?" I'd been eating crackers to help with the nausea, but they weren't doing a thing.

  “What if he’s a grifter? You don’t know that much about him.”

  I'd sat with that for a minute, her words like a sharp dagger to my heart. Was she right? And if she was, what could I do about it now? There was a baby growing inside me.

  On a September day in 1993, I married Rex Sharp. A few weeks later, Jennie married Mark. We gave birth to our babies only four months apart. For me, a fat baby boy with a serious demeanor that I named Atticus after my favorite character. For Jennie, a delicate baby girl with fair skin and bright red hair and an early smile. The panic and despair I’d felt over the unplanned pregnancy was forgotten the moment I held Atticus. He was mine. This helpless little bundle needed me. Just me. The way I was. Unlike everyone else in my life, Atticus loved me for no reason at all, other than I was his mother.

  Did I mourn the idea of my original plan? Sometimes, in the middle of the night, doubt would set in. However, then I'd roll over and see my gorgeous husband and scoot a little closer.

  Five precious boys came to me from the union, one after the other.

  Now, I yawned and knelt to get one of the mixing bowls from the cupboard. The door hung lopsided because one of the hinges had come loose. I’d asked Rex to fix it for months now. He wasn’t exactly what you’d call handy. Most of the time I gave up and just did whatever needed doing myself. I was perfectly capable. Daddy had had no sons, so he treated me like a boy, teaching me everything I needed to know to run this ranch. Regardless, it was the principle of the thing. Rex should have to pull his weight around here.

  The scent of coffee filled my small kitchen, as it had every morning since I could remember. I moved around preparing breakfast on autopilot, pulling ingredients out of the pantry and listening to the radio set to 106.1. The local DJ didn’t seem to know what era he currently resided in, because most of the country music had been hits in the eighties. I didn’t mind. Those songs were like old friends. As comforting as a hug.

  I knew every inch of that old farmhouse. After all, I’d lived there all my life. If I went suddenly blind, I’d know how to get around without stubbing my toe or running into a wall.

  Rex and I had moved into the big house to help my mother after my dad died. Atticus was only two, and I was about to give birth again.

  My mother had lived with us all that time, but Mama died last year. I would have loved to fix up the house. The decor was outdated and frilly. My mother loved her doilies. Truth told, sentiment wasn’t the only reason for the lack of change. There wasn’t money for a new couch or anything else to spruce the place up and coax it into the modern era. So I left it the same. The boys didn’t care. Rex didn’t notice anything around him, other than the television and the bottom of an empty beer bottle.

  I was measuring the flour for biscuits when I heard Rex’s boots clicking across the tiles. Up before the sun? That wasn’t like him. Usually he didn’t rise until after I’d gotten the older boys off to school. Soren and Thad were still home with me. Next year, when Soren went to kindergarten, it would just be me and my little funny devil. Thad was a rascal who kept me on my toes.

  I didn’t bother to look at my husband. That’s how it was between us now, this simmering anger that neither of us dared let out for fear of what it would d
o to us.

  “Coffee’s ready. There’s a fresh carton of half-and-half in the fridge.” I scooped a tablespoon of sugar into the bowl and reached for the Crisco. The boys loved their biscuits. The smell coaxed them from their beds like nothing else.

  “Stella, look at me.”

  Something in the tone of his voice made me turn around, spoon in hand like a weapon. He was fully dressed in clean jeans and a flannel shirt, a cowboy hat perched on his head even though my mother had had a strict rule about no hats on in the house. His face was clean-shaven, making him look remarkably as he had the first time I laid eyes on him.

  He had a suitcase in his hand.

  “I’m leaving,” Rex said. “For good this time.”

  I simply stared at him. The clock above his head ticked away the seconds. “Why now?” I asked, finally.

  “This isn’t my life, Stella. Never has been. I need to take care of myself for once.”

  For once? That was a good one.

  “What about the boys?” I asked.

  “They only love you anyway,” he said. “And you only love them. You stopped loving me a long time ago.”

  “This is it then? You’re just walking out the door without saying goodbye to them?”

  “What’s the use in all that talking?”

  Talking. When was the last time he really talked to me or the boys? At me, yes. But not a real conversation. Had he ever?

  “Will you come see them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Not sure. I’m moving far away from here.”

  My fists clenched at my sides, itching to punch his smug face. Anger rushed through me like a sudden storm. Abandoning me was one thing, but the boys? Those sweet, innocent little guys who vied for their father’s attention and approval. Some days I worried his lack of engagement would be the primary wounds of their lives. I should know. My parents’ lack of affection was mine. Heck, I carried it around like a bucket of rocks. “How can you leave them? I understand about me, but they’re your sons. They need you in their lives.” As much as I hated to admit it, I knew that was true. Boys needed a father. Even this one.

  “Listen, Stella, you’re making this harder than it has to be. You always do that.”

  “I always do what?”

  “Never mind,” Rex said. “We’ve hashed all this out so many times.”

  “Where are you going?” My throat was so dry the words came out raspy.

  “I’m going to go back to the rodeo.”

  My mouth dropped open. “The rodeo? Are you kidding me? You’ll be killed.”

  “That’s just it, right there. You’ve never believed in me. You always think the worst. So that’s what I’ve done. But this is a chance for me. A real chance to fulfill my destiny.”

  Destiny?

  The word sounded weird coming out of his mouth, like me swearing. Which I felt compelled to do at him at the moment.

  “Get out,” I whispered. “Don’t come back this time. Just stay out of our lives.”

  2

  Stella

  I stood at the window watching the back of Rex’s truck as he barreled down our dirt driveway as if the devil chased him. The sun peeked over the hilltop, rising from the eastern sky in glorious orange.

  That golden light. It followed him everywhere.

  The house was quiet. Only at night and the early morning were the sounds of my rambunctious boys silenced. They all slept like the dead, worn out from roaming the hundreds of acres of ranchland my daddy had left me. “Don’t lose the ranch, girl. That’s all I ask.”

  Those were the last words he ever said to me. I was twenty at the time.

  Now, as Rex’s taillights disappeared from view, I didn’t cry. I’d shed so many tears for Rex Sharp by then my eyes were dry, leaving only the dust of this land stuck in my lashes and coating the back of my throat. Clinging to me like failure.

  I grabbed my coat and went out to my front porch and sat in one of the rocking chairs my grandfather had carved with his own calloused hands eighty years before. Yellow grasses swayed gently in the cold fall wind. A layer of frost remained sparkling on the dirt. No birdsong this time of year. Thanksgiving was just around the corner, and the weather had turned cold a week ago.

  I breathed in cold air and pulled my jacket tighter. A hint of pine needles, newly turned dirt, and the horses’ stalls filled my nose. Randy would be here soon to help me with the horses. After that, he’d ride one of them out to check on our cattle that roamed freely on our property. These days we were the only small ranch left, so it was less likely anything was amiss.

  The old chair creaked, perhaps tired like me. I drifted my fingers over the arm of the twin rocking chair next to me. How sad these chairs were. Built for two, yet destined for one. They were meant for a loving couple to sit together and rock in perfect time and harmony, until the years brought white hair and wrinkles, and a deep, loyal friendship replaced the early drug-like attraction. That’s what I’d wanted. But the truth? Rex was never the one to give it to me.

  I could almost see my mother out here, snapping beans or peeling potatoes and looking out over the fields with that defeated look in her eyes, growing thin and feeble. Then, one day last year, I’d gone to wake her and found her curled into a semicircle, her body already growing cold. I’d fallen to my knees beside the bed and stroked her hair. Something I would never have done if she were alive. My family was not what I’d call affectionate.

  I’d already known then that Rex would eventually leave and not return. I was alone. The boys had only me. A single mother with no education and a dying ranch in the middle of nowhere.

  We’d done one thing right. Our boys. They were perfect. All different and yet alike at the same time. Fierce and clever, as physical as the litters of puppies I’d raised over the years. For a decade, they’d come every other year like clockwork. My five little angels disguised as mischievous, rambunctious little boys. They were as much a part of me as my own limbs and organs, the very blood that flowed through my veins.

  Now I would have to tell them their father had left without a backward glance.

  “He has such potential,” my mother had said after the first baby came. “If he steps up and becomes a man, you two might have a chance. But I fear he’ll never outgrow that rodeo. Wanderlust, you know. I can see it in his eyes. Mark my words, he’ll spend more time at the tavern than with you and the baby. If he sticks around at all.”

  Her words had wounded me like nothing else she’d ever said to me. Mostly, I suppose, because she was right.

  I sat there for some time, watching as the sun rose higher and higher, its orange hue softening into the yellow light of morning. The expansive Montana sky was blue today, not a cloud in sight, leaving me with the sensation that there was no beginning or end, that it went on and on forever. Having never lived or visited anywhere else, I couldn’t be certain the sky here was bigger than other places in the world, but I’d always believed it to be true.

  Three times Rex had left me. Usually not long after one of the babies had come. He always came back, though. After six months or so on the rodeo circuit, he’d come back with his proverbial tail between his bowed legs, begging forgiveness. “I got it out of my system this time.”

  Forgiveness came easy to me. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps it was my father’s fault. The way he’d held back affection and love, making it a game in which I tried with all my heart to get him to love me by being the very best girl I could be. I excelled at school. Kept slim and took special care with my appearance, just as my mother did, so that he would be proud of me.

  I sat there, growing colder by the minute, procrastinating, unsure how I could tell the boys their father had abandoned them. The door opened, and Atticus stuck his head out. “Mama, what’re you doing out here?”