Texas Cowboy's Protection by - (best book clubs .txt) 📕

Regina Anderson tucked her earbuds in, tied off her running shoes, and pushed off her front porch. She turned up the volume on the heavy metal rock band music she played. Mornings sucked. Running sucked. Loud music sucked. The ritual kept Gina, as everyone but her mother called her, from taking her anger out on the world.

The loose, wet gravel on the drive of the fishing cabin caused her foot to slip as she rounded the corner onto the familiar country road. A couple extra forward steps righted her as she struggled to find her pace. Those first few steps were always the hardest to take, she reminded herself. Nothing in her wanted to do this.

The morning air didn’t help matters. With every breath, she felt the crisp edge to the frigid temperature burning her lungs. The simple act of taking in oxygen was the equivalent to painful stabs at her rib cage.

Gina pounded the pavement with her feet. The stress of a major move with a baby, even though she was moving back to the small town where she’d grown up, had given her a tension headache.

It was early. Six a.m. was an ungodly hour.

Head throbbing, what she really wanted was caffeine. Big cup. Quiet room. The quiet room was a fantasy once her daughter, Everly, woke but the coffee was realistic.

The sun beat down on a spot at the crown of Gina’s head. April weather in Gunner, Texas was unpredictable. Today, the sun was out and the temperature was expected to hover around forty-seven degrees. This time of year, days could be swallowed up with thunderstorms and the kind of lightning that raced sideways for miles across a dark sky. Much like the thunderstorm from last night, but Gina didn’t mind. That kind of weather matched her mood.

At twenty-seven-years-old, she was a single mom to a little girl who would never know her father, a man who’d been so anxious for his daughter’s arrival he’d painted her room pink the day a sonogram revealed her sex. Little did Gina know it would be the last day she’d ever see her husband again. Their daughter, Everly, would never meet her father.

The music matched the level of her anger at losing a decent man who would’ve been a great father. The things she would go back and do differently if she could. The regret that filled her chest and hardened her heart toward the world, but not towards Everly, was heavier today.

Bright sunny days just soured her. The run gave her a sense of normalcy in a world that had turned upside down. She’d stayed in Dallas for the rest of her pregnancy; bringing her baby home to the house she’d shared with Des had been important to her. After all the work he’d done on the nursery, she wanted baby Everly to spend her first year there. It only seemed right to Gina, a small way to honor Des.

Gina’s mother had put up a strong argument for her to move home to Gunner so she would have help with the baby. Gina loved her mother, don’t get her wrong; the woman was a saint in many ways. But she just hadn’t been ready to love her mother full-time. Mom was a little too free with advice about pretty much every aspect of life and a little too needy when it came to attention.

Growing up, it had only been Gina and her parents. There’d been no siblings or cousins around, no extended family. Gina had always wondered what it would be like to be surrounded by a large family. Big holiday gatherings with all the trimmings. Boisterous laughter around a table brimming with every food a kid could imagine. Kids running around wild and happy. Her parents had been busy with the restaurant, or too tired from it to do anything but relax after work, and so she’d been left to her own devices for much of her childhood.