Kat Brookes - The Cowboy's Little Girl

“We will.” She paused in the doorway and cast a glance back over her shoulder. “Thank you for including me.” Before Tucker could reply, she was gone.

* * *

Autumn sat quietly, looking out the passenger-side window of Tucker’s truck as he drove them across his property. Not that she would have had a chance to say much with her niece chattering away from her car seat behind them. Tucker’s warm, husky laughter told her he didn’t mind Blue’s constant barrage of questions and comments one bit. In fact, and much to her dismay, he was doing and saying all the right things where his daughter was concerned, and Blue was eating her daddy’s attention right up.

“I didn’t think you had any nieces or nephews,” Autumn muttered with a glance his way. That was the only thing that could explain his comfort level around Blue. Yet, Summer hadn’t mentioned Blue having any cousins on Tucker’s side.

He shook his head. “I don’t. My brothers are as single as they come, with no plans to settle down anytime soon.”

She frowned at his reply. That meant Tucker was just a natural with children. She should have known that by how quickly her niece had taken to him.

“I take it one of my brothers caught your interest this morning.”

The question was so unexpected, Autumn found herself choking. “What?” She turned to find him attempting to smother a grin, that lone Wade dimple that Tucker and both of his brothers had inherited in the family gene pool etched deep into his tanned cheek.

He cast a quick glance in her direction. “You looked a little put out to hear that my brothers are committed bachelors,” he explained, his gaze shifting back to the road, or, in their case, the pasture ahead.

Confusion must have lit her features, because he added, “You frowned when I made mention of their firm commitment to bachelorhood.”

“What’s interest?” Blue piped up from the back seat of the extended cab.

Autumn cast a disapproving glare his way. Leave it to her niece to lose interest in the scenery outside just when Tucker had made his offhanded comment. “Children miss nothing,” she reminded him.

“I see that,” he said, that devastatingly handsome grin still intact.

She had no doubt that his smile was what had first drawn her sister to this man. Rugged good looks aside, it was that playful curve of his lips with that lone-dimpled grin, one that exuded both humor and confidence and put others at ease, which was nearly irresistible. Nearly. But Tucker Wade was the enemy. At least as far as she was concerned, he was. The man was stealing Blue’s affection away with his silly jokes and eagerness to go that extra mile to make his daughter happy.

“Will you look at that?” Tucker announced, pointing toward a sparsely wooded hillside a short distance ahead, one made up of a few scattered pines, dirt, rocks and splotches of dried-up grass.

“What?” Blue said excitedly, tipping sideways in an attempt to see out the front window of Tucker’s truck, her view mostly blocked by the passenger seat Autumn was in.

Glancing up at Blue in the rearview mirror, Tucker smiled. “The rabbitbrush is just over the top of that hillside.”

Autumn gasped, her head snapping around in his direction. “Are you telling me you intend to drive us up that mountain?”

Tucker chuckled. “It’s a hill, not a mountain. And a poor excuse of a hill at that.”

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