True-Blue Cowboy Christmas (2 page)

Thack didn't speak as he marched Kate back to the ranch. All he did was hold on to her hand and text Dad with his free one.

Found. Okay.

He didn't trust himself to say much of anything. Yelling wasn't the answer. Blubbering all over her
certainly
wasn't the answer, even though that's all he'd wanted to do after he'd spent a good half an hour searching the property for her. Finding no sign of her.

The problem was that he had no idea what the answer was anymore. If he couldn't trust Dad to keep an eye on her, and he couldn't trust her to follow the rules, would he have to trust someone else?

Not an option. Not if Kate was going to run away and talk to strangers. A woman he'd
never
seen before, and Kate had been all but curled up in her lap. She could be anyone. She could pose any danger. She could have kidnapped Kate easy as you please.

Thack took a deep breath and let it out. Kate was safe.
For now.

The ranch came into view. The house he'd grown up in. The house he was busting his butt to keep up with. From the outside, covered in snow, it looked picture perfect, if a little dull, with sun-bleached logs and roof. But as winter settled in and work with the cattle became mainly feeds and ice breaks and keeping the herd alive, Thack's attention had to shift to fixing everything that had been ignored during the hectic spring and summer months.

The barn needed a new roof and door. The back porch on the house needed a new joist, which would be a pain to replace in all the snow, but the floor was currently a danger to his rebellious daughter.

“Daddy…”

“You know you're not supposed to wander off like that,” he said, exhausted. Wrung out. “It's dangerous. Not to mention you left the property. That is absolutely one hundred percent against the rules.” The things that could have happened to her while he was looking the other way…

Kate huffed out a breath. “But I saw a fairy palace! And I knew just where I was.” She tugged her hand out of his grasp. “Kinda.”

“You're not supposed to wander alone. You're not supposed to cross the fence. You're not supposed to…” He trailed off. This had been a constant refrain for how long? She just didn't listen, and Dad didn't listen either.

Kate ran across the yard and up to the porch where Dad was standing and flung her arms around his waist. He patted her back and said something Thack couldn't hear. Thack took his time crossing the yard, hoping to rein in some of his frustration before he spoke to his father.

When he reached them, he looked at Kate instead of Dad. “I'm very disappointed in you. You did something you knew very well you were not supposed to do. Go to your room, and do not come out until I come talk to you.”

“But I'm hungry.” Big, blue eyes looked imploringly up at him. Because she was too smart a kid not to know how to hit him where he couldn't deny her.

“Up to your room. I'll bring you something to eat once I talk to your grandfather.”

She grumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like “mean Dad,” and then ran inside. The sound of her crying echoed out the door, in his ears, and down into his chest. Everything
hurt
, and every time he thought they'd outgrown the hard part, more hard parts cropped up.

You are doing this all wrong.

He finally met his father's gaze. Why couldn't he get this man to listen? Dad had his own way of doing things, and it didn't matter how much Thack begged for cooperation. Dad still did what he'd always done—whatever the hell
he
thought was right.

“We can't keep doing this,” Thack said, irritated that his voice was hoarse instead of harsh.

“Now, Son, I know you had a bit of a scare.” Dad turned away, as if this wasn't important. As if Kate being safe in the end made everything okay.

“She wasn't even on the property.”

“But Shaw's right next door.”

“She crossed the property line. If she had wandered onto Parker land, she could have fallen into their pond. She could have come across a wild animal.” All the promises he'd given Michaela would have been broken, and he could have lost Kate, his most precious gift. The thought was unbearable. “She could have been ab—”

“Boy, she isn't an infant. She's seven. Your mother and I let you—”

“I don't care. I do not care. There is nothing about what you and Mom did that pertains to my daughter.”

“My granddaughter. You can't lock her up. You can't magically keep her from the dangers of the world.”

“She's
seven
! That is my job.” But he couldn't do it and run the ranch at the same time. Not without someone he could count on. If he couldn't even leave Kate with his own father, who the hell
was
he supposed to trust? “She was with a stranger, Dad. A complete and utter stranger, and I have no idea for how long. I don't know what was said or done. That woman could have given her drugs or told her to—”

“On Shaw property? You sure it wasn't the Shaw boy's wife? He got married last month, was it?”

“No, it wasn't her.”

“Oh, was it the mystery sister? You know, talk over town is that she—”

“It doesn't matter who it was. It matters that it could have been anyone. It matters that Kate is too young to be wandering the property alone.”

“That's how you learn to be a man. A Lane. You explore—”

“She's not a man. She is a little girl.”

“Now, isn't that the sexism they're always talking about?”

Thack shook his head. He couldn't do this and keep his anger under control, and as much as he'd love to lay into his father, lay into anybody or anything really, he'd made a promise to himself ever since they'd lost Michaela.

He would never be the kind of man his daughter would fear. He would be even-tempered and fair. She would always know she was loved and safe. They had sacrificed so much to bring her into the world, and he wouldn't let anything,
anything
happen to her.

Lord knew life had tested every last inch of that promise, but he wasn't about to let it go. That promise was the only thing keeping them all sane. He hoped.

So he walked inside instead. His first stop had to be the kitchen, since Dad had probably let her eat pickles and ketchup and juice for lunch. That was all Kate ever wanted. Well, this time she was getting a sandwich. He'd make sure she ate real food, even if that made him the bad guy again.

He kept thinking things would let up, but Halloween was bearing down on him, and Thanksgiving would be here before he knew it, before he got half his repairs done, and then it would be Christmas and a brand-new year. He kept putting little Band-Aids on things, only to have them fall off altogether.

Thack paused with the sandwich half made, closing his eyes against a fresh wave of helplessness and hopelessness. Would he ever get to the other side? The side where things went smoothly? Where he didn't have to worry and micromanage and just…be petrified every second she wasn't in his sight?

“You need help.”

He didn't spare his father a glance, because he would lose his shaky battle with emotion if he did. “You're supposed to be my help.”

“We need a woman around here. It's been—”

“Do
not
go there. Mom's been gone how long?”

“Not the same.”

“Exactly the same. Fifteen years. You haven't even looked at another woman.”

“I wouldn't go that far. I just didn't let you know about it.”

“It doesn't matter. Kate is all I have room for.” Dear God, how could he possibly add another relationship to his life when every spare minute was stretched as thin as possible? And he was supposed to add a woman? For
help
. Right, because relationships like that didn't take any time at all.

“Well, at the very least you could make room for a housekeeper. Or a nanny. I know you don't like the idea of trusting anyone else, but we do need help. Even if I did everything the way you want me to with that girl—which I won't, because you can't cage her up like an animal—we can't do it alone anymore.”

“Why? We got through the hard years. The baby years and the toddler years. She's in school now. She—”

“She needs more than just us, Thackery. The sooner you accept that, the happier we'll all be.” Dad left without giving him a chance to respond.

Not that Thack had anything to say. He wanted to be everything his daughter needed. He was trying so hard. She deserved everything he could give her, and yet it all seemed to come up short.

But what could a stranger offer? Bringing in a
nanny
. It was like paying someone to love Kate, paying someone to give her their time and false affection until they moved on to the next job and left Kate behind. She didn't need any more loss. The problem with people was they always left. Whether willingly or not, they left.

Kate had already had enough of that to last a lifetime. Why would he willingly add more?

Frustrated with himself, with
life
, Thack trudged upstairs with a sandwich and a juice box.

When he opened Kate's door, she was sprawled on her bed, looking at one of her books. Michaela had loved to read, so her parents had shipped all her childhood books to them when they'd found out Kate was a girl.

Memories like that, so out of the blue, could gut Thack a million different ways. If only Michaela had been able to see this: their daughter so perfect and happy, enjoying what Michaela had enjoyed as a little girl.

“Daddy. Look.” She waved him over to the book she was inspecting so closely. “See! It looks just like it.”

Thack crossed the room, taking a seat on the floor next to her bed. The book she handed him was one he'd read to her a million times at least. He looked at the fairy castle illustration on the page Kate held open.

“That's green and pink. Hers was blue. And this is surrounded by flowers. That place was surrounded by snow. But it had trees just like this.” Kate pointed at the illustration animatedly. “And she looked just like the fairy queen. See? She had brown hair tied with a ribbon, and a big skirt like that, and—”

“You know she's not a fairy, Katherine Marie.”

Kate sighed. “I know, but it's fun to pretend.” She closed the book and grabbed for the juice box, but he held it back.

“Five bites.”

“Ugh.” She took the sandwich, putting the bread just barely to her lips, taking a bite so minuscule he was certain she got nothing but air.

“No juice box until you take five
real
bites.”

“What about five fairy bites?” she asked hopefully, even though they had this same conversation and struggle at almost every meal.

“No, ma'am.”

She rolled her eyes, and he saw a glimpse into her teenage years. His heart all but stopped beating. How would he ever survive this?

You just will.

They were Dad's words, after they'd buried Michaela. Dad had promised, so somehow Thack had made it through.

For her. For Kate. For the daughter who could be lost to him just as easily as his wife had been. “I know it's hard sometimes, but you have to follow the rules, Kate. You have to. The rules will keep you safe.”

“It's so boring when no one will explore with me,” she whined, taking an air bite as if he wouldn't notice.

“You're always welcome to come riding with me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “It's boring. You just fix fences and stuff.”

Just fix fences and stuff.
A seven-year-old's description of his life's work was not exactly flattering. “I thought you liked the horses.”

“I like to watch them run. Grandpa read me this story about Pocahontas, and she got up on the horse and it flew, and can I—”

“No.”

Kate flopped on her bed. “Why is everything so
boring
?”

Thack looked up at the ceiling. The only time he'd been bored as a kid had been when he was trapped in the house on blizzard days or in English class. He was doing a disservice to Kate by letting her be bored, but why did everything she want to do have to be so damn dangerous?

“Would it help if…we had someone come watch you in the afternoons?”

“Like a babysitter?”

“Well, more like…someone to play with.”

“But Grandpa plays with me.”

Thack didn't say what he wanted to. That he didn't trust
Grandpa
or anyone else. That she was the most precious thing in his life, and no one seemed to take that nearly as seriously as they should. But he was going to have to make an effort to trust, just a little, for her.

“Can it be a girl?”

“I don't know yet, Katie Pie. Would you listen and follow the rules?”

Kate looked at him slyly. “Could it be the fairy queen?”

“Absolutely not.” The
fairy queen
was some stranger at the center of the town's gossip. She would not be the answer to his needs. And she didn't look anything like a fairy. A hippie, maybe. Trouble, definitely. Beautiful and fierce together were always trouble. Just like the girl on her bed taking fairy bites, reading fairy stories, and wanting to ride flying horses.

“Did that lady say anything to you?”

“No. She was just trying to help.”

Yeah, she probably was.

“Well, whoever it is will at least have to know
some
fairy stories. And know how to make that stuff I had at Grandma and Grandpa Jenks's house that one time we visited. What was that stuff?”

“Pot roast.” He had a seven-year-old who thought a pot roast was magic.

“Do you know how to make pot roast, Daddy? Can we have it for Christmas this year?”

“I'll see what I can do.” He couldn't ignore the situation any longer, not with Christmas less than three months away. Not with a daughter whose imagination was bigger than the ivory tower he was so desperate to keep her safe and sound inside.