Excerpt of A Cowboy & A Gentleman by Ann Major

Anthony Duke felt so cold and alone that he shivered as the truck he drove hurtled through the high, wrought-iron gates of Memory Lane Cemetery.

"Slow down, son," his mother commanded.

"Hell." His boot tapped the brake. Maybe he felt alone, but he wasn't. Henrietta Duke, his short, stout mother, who had an iron will, sat beside him, her gnarled fingers repeatedly rubbing circles around her kneecap. Noah, his hyper, eight-year-old son, was slumped in the back seat over one of his electronic games that made nerve-racking, beeping noises as he tapped the plastic keys.

Not that the illusion of solitude was strange to Anthony. He'd lived with it for years — when he'd been with Rene and Noah, as well as when he was out in some desolate pasture working cattle or in one of his breeding barns where he worked to improve deer stock to sell to other ranchers.

Something warm and bright had gone out of his life a helluva long time before Rene had died.

"Daddy! Do little boys ever get new mommies?"

Anthony hissed in a breath.

That same question again. The lines around his mouth deepened. Rene had been dead a year. His ranch hands, his mother, and even his son were constantly pressuring to set him up with someone.

The cab of the pickup went deathly still. Was it that cemeteries seemed quieter than the rest of the world? Or was it just his guilty conscience? He had no right coming here.

"Do they get new mommies?"

Anthony's chest tightened. "We already had this conversation. No."

"What if you got married again? Would she be my new mommy?"

Anthony's fingers gripped the steering wheel as he headed toward Rene's grave. "We're here for your mother's birthday. You can't replace her. I'm not getting married again. Not in this lifetime. End of conversation."

But it wasn't. His mother, who was tuned in to him like radar, had her eye on him. Noah's questions and Anthony's answers lingered in the silence as Noah pressed his nose to the glass window to look at the orderly rows of tombstones.

"Why do people have to leave these junky artificial flowers and wreaths? Don't they know that they fade almost as soon as they put them out under fierce south Texas sun?" his mother whispered.

"Because real flowers die."

Anthony wished he hadn't said anything. When she turned to regard him, Anthony kept his eyes glued to the black asphalt. Still, he was aware of her fingers making those incessant circles on her knee.

"Well, except for the fake flowers, this place is one of the prettiest in the county," she exclaimed.

"Look at the trees! Except for the ebony and live oak, they've almost all lost their leaves," his mother continued.

Anthony gritted his teeth. "The grass is mostly brown, but there's still quite a few patches of green," she continued, her fingers skimming her knee even faster.

"Do you think I'm blind? I can see trees and grass."

The fingers froze on her kneecap. "Edgy aren't we? You've been spending way too much time alone."

"My life is none of your business."

"What life? And don't tell me my son and my grandson are none of my business."

Anthony slowed down as they neared the big gray tombstone that spelled out Duke.

""D-U-K-E! There she is!" Noah cried. Anthony shut the engine and opened his door, but the wind howled and slammed the heavy black door back in his face.

Guilt rushed through him. Who was he trying to fool with these visits to Rene's grave? He had no right to pretend grief for his perfect wife.

Well, he'd pretended for eight long years, hadn't he? He and Rene had fooled everybody…except themselves. And except maybe his mother and Zoe's aunt Patty.

It was the first of February, yet this far south the afternoon was warm. The winter ice storm that gripped most of the United States had not reached south Texas. The temperature was in the eighties. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and a pair of old jeans. In another month, no telling how hot it would be. Or how cold.

"Looks like we've got the place to ourselves." Henrietta unsnapped her seat belt. "Not many people make social calls to cemeteries," Anthony said.

"Shh," whispered Henrietta.

"Why is this necessary? There's nobody here."

"Mommy's here," Noah said quietly. She's gone. Handle it. People die. Thousands, millions die, violently, peacefully or slowly and too young as Rene had. But the world keeps on turning. Time keeps passing.

People betray you in worse ways — they kill you and leave you alive.

Keeping his thoughts to himself, Anthony whirled around just as Noah stuffed his game into his sling pouch. The will to speak his mind died when he saw his son's grubby, little-boy hands with the black moons beneath the fingernails clutching a withered bunch of purple wine cups. How solemn his face had been as he'd knelt and picked them one by one, selecting the very best blossoms from the field in front of the house.

"How Rene loved flowers," Henrietta said.

"When do bluebonnets bloom, Dad?"

"March." Anthony bit out the word because bluebonnets always reminded him of someone he preferred never to think about.

""Member how she liked bluebonnets, Dad?" A vision of a girl in blue gingham, not Rene, never Rene, sitting in a field of bluebonnets rose in Anthony's mind. He fought against the image, tried to dutifully replace it with Rene — fought and failed — as always.

Old girlfriends? Was everybody haunted by old girlfriends?

"Can we pick some and take 'em to Mom in March?"

"Sure we can." Anthony threw his door open and jumped out of the cab before it could blow back on him again.

"Are you all right?" his mother whispered. Anthony shrugged. It was a test of his nerves when Noah shot out behind him and skipped eagerly through the tombstones with his bouquet and thermos toward Rene's grave. It was as if the boy expected her to rise up and hug him.

Daddy! Do little boys ever get new mommies? "Why the hell does he drag us here every damn week?"

"Shh," his mother said.

What if you got married again?

"Just go with him," Henrietta said. "I know it isn't easy, but that's all you have to do."

"When is he going to get over her?"

"When are you?" Their black eyes met and locked. Then a fierce gust nearly blew off his Stetson. He grabbed the sweat-stained, cowboy hat and pitched it into the back seat. When his longish, black hair fell against his brow, he combed back the thick strands with his callused fingers.

Why wouldn't his mother stop looking at him? He hated the way he always felt as transparent as glass around her.

As soon as he removed his hand, his hair blew back into his eyes. "Damn."

""Bout time for a haircut," Henrietta said as he loped around the hood to her side of the truck.

"Don't nag," he said as he opened her door and helped her out.

Dead leaves crunched under his boots as he began walking. Soon he stepped up behind Noah, who was pouring water out of his thermos into the urns on either side of the massive gray tombstone. Carefully Noah knelt and tried to arrange the pitiful-looking flowers in the urns. He hadn't picked enough, and the wind caught the fragile blossoms and sent them tumbling across the brown grasses onto other graves.

Noah's face went white and stark. His pupils seemed pinpricks of black in the middle of blazing blue irises. "Dad —""

Noah was chasing after the flowers. The wind had scattered them in all directions. Soon Noah was back, his eyes brighter, his lashes wet. He looked up at his father, but Anthony stared at the two shredded flowers with the broken stems.

"I couldn't catch them."

The boy had straight yellow hair and big eyes that burned Anthony. Why did he have to look exactly like his mother?

Anthony knelt and beckoned Noah closer. Noah, who used to fly into his mother's arms, held on to the flowers and hung his head.

Anthony flushed, not knowing what to do or say. So, he read the dates etched in the gray polished stone beneath Rene's name. She was buried beside his father, Anthony Bond Field.

"Your father died young, too," Henrietta said.

"You were only a year old when they brought him home."

"I don't remember him. You wouldn't talk about him. Why did you take your maiden name back?"

"Because he ran off after you were born. He wasn't much of a husband, and he certainly wasn't much of a father. But the name Duke meant a lot more around here than Field, so I took it back. I had to be a mother and a father to you," Henrietta continued, "just as you have to be both for Noah."

Anthony stared at the dates on his father's tomb-stone. Then his gaze drifted back to Rene's stone.

Dates? Was that all a life added up to in the end? Rene was dead. Noah backed away from him and ran to his grandmother. Slowly Anthony stood up.

He couldn't quit looking at those dates. Strange how he felt just as dead as she was. He closed his eyes and then covered them with his work-roughened palms. The wind rushed through the trees, battering his face, plastering his shirt against his broad chest. His hell went soul deep.

He stared at his mother who held his son. When had it all gone wrong?

He knew when. Again he saw that pixie face in the sea of bluebonnets. Not Rene's face. Never Rene's face. But a slim, young face with long-lashed, brown eyes and flyaway auburn hair, which she'd washed every day just so it would be shiny and soft for him. How he'd loved to wind that sweet-smelling silken mane through his fingers. Sometimes he'd used it to pull her close — the better to kiss her, to smell the lilacs in her shampoo, the better to love her.

Yes, he knew why. She was the reason he felt stripped of everything. He'd cheated Rene in so many ways…and all for a woman who'd betrayed him in the worst possible way.