Teresa Southwick - Just What The Cowboy Needed

“Not until you’re ready,” Grace assured her. “I’ll be here with you, okay?”

“I know.” The little girl nodded and relaxed against Grace again.

Logan had heard that kids had an instinct about people and didn’t suffer fools. If that was true, Cassie completely trusted this woman, and he was relieved about that. In a perfect world, no one would ever let this little girl down. The irony was that a kid’s father should be the first line of defense, but Logan worried that he was the one most likely to disappoint her.

When Cassie yawned again, Grace asked, “Do you want to go back to bed?”

Cassie nodded and crawled out of her lap beneath the covers, then grabbed the stuffed bear Logan had bought her on one of their mall trips. Grace reached over and turned out the light but not before he caught a glimpse of her in the flimsy flowered pajamas she wore to bed. His body went tight and hard, proving how much he wanted her. If he needed any, it was more proof of how much he was like his father. He was lusting after the childcare professional while his little girl was in the middle of a meltdown.

Cassie whimpered. “I’m scared.”

“I’m here.” Grace stretched out on the bed and pulled the child against her. “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

“There’s a monster on my ceiling.”

Grace looked up. “The shadows?”

“Uh-huh.”

Between the moon’s rays streaming through the princess curtains and the night-light plugged into an outlet, a whole bunch of shadows were hovering above the bed. The only way to make them disappear was to leave the light on, and Logan was just about to suggest that. Then Grace started talking in her soft, sweet, soothing tone. He wished he could see her because when she used this voice there was always something innocent in her eyes that he liked.

“I don’t see a monster on the ceiling. It looks like an elephant to me, a cute and cuddly one.” She pointed. “There’s his trunk and big, floppy ears. Can you make it out?”

“Yes,” Cassie said.

“Or maybe a fairy—like Tinker Bell. There are the little wings and her arms stretched out for flying.”

“I can see her.”

Grace pointed again. “I think that could be an ice-cream cone. See the pointy part and the mound on top?”

“Uh-huh.” Cassie’s yawn was long, and her mouth stretched wide open. “In the corner I see a ladybug. There’s the round body and tiny wings when she flies away.”

“Good one.”

Between his daughter’s yawn and her getting involved in finding friendly shapes in the ceiling shadows, Logan knew the crisis was winding down. Grace had managed the situation without resorting to keeping the light on. He backed out of the doorway but stayed in the hall, listening to the low voices that soon became just one—Grace’s.

Eventually she tiptoed out and looked startled when she saw him, the same expression she’d worn when he scared her into dropping her panties while unpacking.

“I thought you went back to bed,” she whispered.

“No.”

“You could have.” Based on the hushed voice, it was hard to tell whether or not her tone was defensive.

“I stayed—just in case.”

“Everything is under control. And I assume you have to get up before God to work in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Then I have to conclude that you don’t trust me.”

“Not you, Grace. It’s me I don’t trust.”

“I kind of figured that. In town. Cassie and the carnival ride clued me in.”

“Yeah.”

“You act like a bodyguard, and I mean that literally. In order to be sure she’s physically all right, you can’t let her out of your sight. But you don’t want to get down and play with her. Why are you putting that distance between you? Do you want to talk about it?”

Just minutes ago she’d told Cassie that sharing something you’re scared of can make it lose the power to be frightening. Maybe she was right. For reasons he didn’t understand, Logan was going to tell her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do want to talk about it.”

Chapter Four

Logan wanted to talk about this so Grace would stop looking at him as if he was winning the Worst Dad of the Century award in a landslide. If she understood how screwed up his childhood had been, she would get that he was doing this for Cassie.

“Grace, I—”

She put a finger to her lips to stop him and angled her head toward the open door to his daughter’s room. In a whisper she said, “Let’s go downstairs. I’m going to grab a robe.”

He felt a stab of disappointment at the prospect of her doing anything to cover up that sweet shape. Yet another shred of proof about his being messed up in general and not just his dad skills.

Then her gaze dropped to his bare chest for a moment and something flashed in her eyes. He might not know how to be a dad, but he knew female appreciation when he saw it. Too bad that made his ego feel better because other parts of him felt pretty damn lousy.

“I’ll put on a shirt,” he said.

Logan did that, then went downstairs. He’d barely flipped on the lights when he felt Grace behind him. She was tying the belt of her short satiny robe, and darned if that wasn’t sexy as hell.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked.

“Water.”

“I was thinking something stronger.” Even though he knew there wasn’t enough Scotch in the world to take the edge off the crap of how his childhood played out.

“You go ahead,” she said.

He shook his head. “Water it is.”

After getting two glasses and filling them with filtered water from the fridge, they sat down at the kitchen table facing each other.

Grace took a sip, then wrapped her hands around the glass. “So, talk. I’m listening.”

No point in sugarcoating this. “My father is a bastard.”

She blinked, but otherwise her expression didn’t change. “I’m going to take a wild guess. You mean that as an indictment of his character and not about his being born out of wedlock.”

“You would be correct. My paternal grandparents are good people. Salt of the earth. Their other son, Hastings—”

“Your uncle.”

“Yes.” He had cousins, too, here in Blackwater Lake. They’d reached out, but Logan wasn’t wired to jump in with both feet, because they were family. “Anyway, Hastings is the kind of son every parent would be proud of. A loving husband and father. Never gave his folks a bit of trouble. And then there was Foster.”

“Your dad.”

Dad? Logan never thought of him that way. The term was intimate and implied a level of commitment and caring to earn the name.

“My father is the complete opposite of his brother. Uninvolved with his family and unfaithful to his wife. Beats me why he proposed to my mother at all since he didn’t stop seeing other women even after they were engaged.”

“Well, that really stinks.”

The anger on her face was better than pity. “He had affairs and mistresses and kids with more than one of them.”

“You have half siblings?”

“They’re around.”

“That boggles the mind. I don’t understand—”

“Join the club.”

“No,” she said. “I meant why didn’t your parents just get a divorce?”

“The better question is why he ever got married in the first place.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t have confirmation, but I have a guess about that.”

“Shoot.”

“He was looking for the same kind of approval from his parents that Hastings already had. Foster got tired of hearing about his older brother’s beautiful wife and family and wanted his share of the parental approval pie.”

“So he proposed to your mom. I guess she had no idea he was a cheater.”