Mary Sullivan - Rodeo Father

“Find out about him,” she ordered Nadine. “You’re a great reporter. You do research for your articles. Find out who Travis Read really is and then let me know.”

“Will do, honey. I’ll get back to you soon.”

Rachel wished Tori were home right now. She would give her daughter the biggest hug, but every Friday morning, Cindy and Tori had a standing date for a few hours of shopping and then lunch at the mall.

Cindy worked at the hair salon in town and had disposable income. Cindy cared more for clothes and perfect nails than she did about improving her living situation.

Every week, she gave Tori the treats that Rachel could not afford and, every week, Rachel rose above her own regret and envy to be happy for Tori.

The new mall out on the highway twenty miles away was a monstrosity into which Rachel refused to set one foot. She liked the shops on Main Street, thank you very much.

Her mom loved the mall, but then, she had no sense of loyalty to her town at all.

Rachel missed Victoria. They’d only been gone a few hours, but Rachel needed her daughter something fierce.

Tori was goodness and light and the antidote to every disappointment life had visited upon Rachel.

She took her straw cowboy hat from the hook beside the door. She’d embroidered the bitterroot flowers on the band herself, as well as the ones on the secondhand shirt she wore. She set it on her head defiantly, then sat on the porch step to wait for her daughter to come home. She shouldn’t be wearing straw at this time of year, at the end of October for Pete’s sake, but Davey had given it to her after their first date. ’Nuff said.

Chapter Three

What the hell had that kiss been about? Travis took himself to task about as hard as he ever had in his life.

What had he been thinking? He knew only that Rachel had run across the road and had touched him with hands more caring than any he’d ever known. Her concern for him, a man about whom no one cared or gave a second thought, was a powerful attraction.

Women usually wanted stuff from him, as opposed to worrying about him.

After a childhood as bereft of affection as a snowball in hell, tenderness took him by surprise.

He’d been winded and shocked at losing control of his bike, flat on his back cursing himself for a fool, and then there she was like an angel, leaning over him with thoughtful concern and fear for his well-being.

His parents hadn’t cared. His sister would have, but he’d spent too many years taking care of her and their pattern was set in stone. He was the caretaker, not she.

Travis watched the woman waddle back to the sad-looking trailer across the road, stubborn defiance stiffening her spine.

She asked for nothing and offered so much. Too much.

Have a care, Travis. You don’t even know the woman and already you’re kissing her?

He’d never done anything like it in his life. He’d had plenty of one-night stands, but not with women with pregnant bellies and a whole barn load of responsibility.

Lying in the road with his protective shields down, this morning’s attraction had flared.

Her hair turned out to be every bit as soft as a calf’s ear. And she’d tasted as sweet as he’d imagined.

But what good was attraction when he could do nothing with it? She was pregnant. He had a glut of duties to fill in the coming months. He didn’t need more.

He had his own life to live.

Case closed, Travis. End of story, got it?

He needed to back away from Rachel and stay away.

He unhooked his saddlebags from his bike and carried them into his house. His house.

Travis Read. Homeowner. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Home. Lord, how did a man learn how to make a home when he’d never known a single good one in his whole life?

The challenge scared the hell out of him.

The empty rooms waited like hungry sponges to soak up the noise and chaos Jason and Colt would surely create.

Was he doing the right thing in uprooting them and bringing them here? He had only his gut to rely on, and it was shouting a resounding yes.

In the old-fashioned kitchen, he unpacked his groceries and put them into the ancient fridge.

Upstairs, he chose the largest bedroom for himself and the new king-size bed he’d ordered. He’d slept in bunkhouses all his adult life. Now he owned a bed.

Soon it would be Samantha’s, and he’d be back in another bunkhouse somewhere.

His bags hit the floor with a solid clunk.

Walking back downstairs, he stared around. By the time Sammy and her boys arrived, he needed to turn this house into a home.

He had plenty of work ahead of him, in cleaning up the place and renovating. Floors needed sanding and walls painting.

He had no template to guide him. He would start with whatever needed fixing and then take inspiration from the many ranch wives who’d made homes and fed him and his fellow cowboys on too many ranches to count.

There was nothing inside him to draw on.

He had plenty of longing, but zero know-how.

Moving on was all he knew, and bunking with a dozen other men was his way of life.

Travis Read. Homeowner. A home meant obligation and duty, a millstone around a man’s neck...and he was damned tired of those.

* * *

RACHEL SAT ON the porch and watched her mother pull into the driveway and park her decked-out pickup truck beside Rachel’s old junker.

Cindy Hardy had no understanding of the notion less is more.

She had bought every chrome feature the local dealership could get its hands on.

Thank God Rachel had been able to talk her out of a lift kit.

Cindy mistakenly assumed that men drooled over her, when all they really wanted was her truck.

Too many of the men in town had known Cindy, as in known known, to want to have anything to do with her romantically.

To the people of Rodeo, Montana, Cindy had always been and would always be the girl from the trailer park—even if there was no park, only a trailer.

The second Cindy got Tori unbuckled, Rachel’s daughter jumped out of the truck, came running toward her mom and threw herself into her arms, squealing, “Mommy, Mommy.”

Rachel broke into a huge smile and hugged her little three-year-old bundle of joy. Cindy unloaded the bags. Rachel oohed and aahed over her daughter’s new purchases. Cindy had bought her a lot of fun stuff. Thank goodness it wasn’t all toys, but also new clothes. Another week of Cindy’s wages down the tubes.

Rachel should tell her to stop, but without Cindy buying Tori’s clothes, the child would have little to wear. Besides, how could she tell Tori’s only grandmother to stop spoiling her?

Nope. She didn’t have it in her heart to ruin Cindy’s fun, even if Cindy never had understood that it would have been better to have saved at least some of her money to improve her life’s situation than to wait for some man to come along and save her.

Rachel would never, not in a million years, depend on a man again where her finances were concerned. She planned to scrimp and save and work until her knuckles hurt, and then get her children into a stable, secure home life.

Tori chattered away, reminding her of what was at stake.

Davey’s parents had both died when he was in high school. Ironic that it had been a car crash.

Cindy was Tori’s only other relative apart from Rachel.

Maybe one day a week of being spoiled wasn’t so bad.

A sound from the road caught their attention. A truck turned into Abigail’s—correction, Travis’s—driveway.

Rachel brushed her fingers through Tori’s soft blond curls. Mother Nature had fashioned her daughter’s hair out of strands of pure sunlight.

She and Tori watched the activity across the road, Rodeo’s version of reality TV.