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16
Rosalie Reynolds gave the cowboy in front of her a few moments to think. He obviously needed them, and she was used to waiting. Autumn had taught her that. Working with game developers had too. Now that she had several products in her educational line-up, she’d learned even more patience when dealing with teachers, administrators, and superintendents.
What she didn’t have a lot of recent experience with was handsome, dark, brooding cowboys who didn’t clap after her fantastic demos. Rosalie normally didn’t care how people reacted, though tonight’s crowd had been exceptionally excited about the video game with a dragon hero that led children through their math facts.
It definitely felt more video game than addition or subtraction worksheets, and she’d spent a long time in development with parents, teachers, and children to get the game right.
The silence between her and Handsome thickened, and Rosalie glanced over her shoulder. “Do you have a child in third grade?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. “Ford’s right over there.” He nodded toward the mob of kids in front of the big TV screen mounted on the back wall of the kiva. “He’s the redheaded one.”
Rosalie spotted him easily, her smile also returning to her face without any effort. “Does he like math?”
“Depends,” the man said.
She focused on him again. “What do you think I could improve about my demonstration or speech?” She wasn’t asking to call him out, though her previous question may have been a bit confrontational. “I really want to know.”
“Oh, uh.” The man lifted his cowboy hat, showing all of his glorious, deep, dark auburn hair as he ran his fingers through it, pushing it back. He resettled his hat on his head. “It was fine.”
“You didn’t clap or anything.” She tilted her head. “There has to be something I could do better.”
“Everyone else was clappin’,” he said. “You did fine.” His eyes were the color of forests in the night, definitely green, but not emerald and not spring.
Autumn would call them “green like Daddy’s Army gear.” Rosalie’s throat tightened at the thought of her four-year-old and her ex-husband.
James had the girl tonight so Rosalie could be here, and she was grateful for that. Autumn was so good to help her daddy around the house, and she adored his therapy dog. It was the guilt that got Rosalie every time she thought of the two of them together.
He made his choice, she reminded herself. She’d done the best she could with that choice, and she’d come a long way in the past eighteen months. Sure, maybe she still had some rocky road to tread, and she had the wild thought that it would be nice to go on the journey with the cowboy in front of her.
“I’m Rosalie Reynolds,” she said, sticking out her hand and hoping to get Handsome’s name. She’d noticed him in the back, leaning against the wall, before he’d shunned her near-perfect performance.
“Lee Cooper,” he said, and Rosalie felt a certain level of victory for tonight. Even if none of the parents here and none of the teachers at Hanover Elementary purchased her software, tonight was a win because she now knew Lee Cooper’s name.
“Is your wife around?” she asked. “Maybe she will have a better opinion of the software or the presentation.”
“I’m not married,” Lee said, pushing his hat further over his eyes. “Excuse me.” He moved away as if he were water easing through cracks in the crowd.
Rosalie had never met anyone like him, and surprise moved through her as he went over to his son, bent down, spoke, and the boy turned to go with him. No argument. No begging for the game—which plenty of other children were doing.
Someone appeared in front of her, blocking her view of Lee and Ford Cooper, and she had to blink to focus on the man’s face. “We’d love to buy this for our son,” he said, smiling at her.
Rosalie slipped into businesswoman mode, but the lonely woman inside her watched Lee walk away from the orange kiva, his arm slung protectively around his son’s shoulders.
He didn’t look back, not even once. Not even a flicker of his eyes toward her, and Rosalie told herself not to be silly. Her butter-yellow blouse was usually like a lucky penny, but perhaps it would be in the sales she could make tonight and not with a love match to a handsome, single father cowboy.
Her heart dropped to her stomach at the very thought of dating again, especially someone as no-nonsense as Lee Cooper. No wonder his son hadn’t argued with him, and Rosalie told herself to forget about the man as he and his son rounded the corner and re-entered the classroom down the hall.
For the next hour, she did her best to focus on whoever was in front of her, answering their questions and taking their money.
She sold out of the games she’d brought, but Miss Bair and the other teachers said they’d send home her order form with their students next week.
As she pulled up to her house with all-dark windows, a sigh slipped from her lips. Autumn wouldn’t be inside, and she’d forgotten to turn on the hall light so she wouldn’t have to enter the house in the pitch blackness.
Thankfully, the outside lights triggered by movement, and they flashed to life as she got out of her car.
Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day, and she’d scheduled herself to work from home. No school visits. No online meetings. No phone calls. No appointments, not even the fun ones like getting her hair or nails done.
She left all of her boxes and bags in the car, grabbed her purse and her keys, and went up to the front door.
