“Oh, really,” Laurie said wryly. “You two certainly had your heads together often enough.”
“Not about this,” Val insisted.
“Well, I hope you’re telling me the truth, because if you’re not, you can kiss this job goodbye.”
Val did grin at that. “In the meantime I’ll make the reservations.”
“Forget reservations. Charter a damned plane.”
Laurie listened as Val called and booked a charter flight for three. “I gather you’re coming along,” she said when Val had hung up.
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
* * *
Laurie was so furious, so terrified, she had Amy Lynn and Val up at dawn and at the airport by seven. A few hours later they were in Los Piños with a rental car waiting at the local airstrip.
“Are we going by your mom’s?” Val asked.
“No,” Laurie said, aiming straight for White Pines. “You wanted to be in the thick of things, didn’t you? Well, strap on your seat belt, honey, ’cause it’s gonna get downright bumpy.”
As if to emphasize the point, she hit a bump in the road that just about bounced them through the roof. She still hadn’t calmed down by the time they reached the ranch.
Still, her manners hadn’t completely deserted her. She managed to make small talk with Melissa and Cody Adams as she deposited Amy Lynn with them and finally shuttled Val off in search of Slade Sutton. She noted that it didn’t take much urging to get her assistant to go, despite her protestations that she was here to watch the fireworks.
“Where is he?” she demanded, her gaze fixed on Cody.
“Harlan Patrick?” he inquired innocently.
“No, the blasted tooth fairy. Where is he?”
“I believe he’s working on his house.”
“Building a new addition,” Melissa chimed in.
It wasn’t until she was climbing the hill to Harlan Patrick’s house that the significance of Melissa’s words began to sink in. He was building a room for his daughter, in anticipation of gaining custody of her. The sneaky, conniving devil. She wondered if she could bring the whole thing tumbling down and prayed for the chance to try.
She heard the hammering first, then spotted a bare-chested Harlan Patrick on the roof. Good, it would be a nice long drop from up there when she clobbered him. She found the ladder around back and climbed up, nimbly scrambling over the roof until she could stare him in the face. The bare expanse of gleaming chest made it difficult to concentrate, but she forced herself.
“How could you do this?” she demanded.
He glanced up as if he’d just noticed her arrival, which had to be a crock since he had a 360-degree view of the surrounding area from up here.
“Hey, Laurie. What brings you by?”
“Don’t you put on that innocent act for me, Harlan Patrick Adams. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Building an addition to my house.”
She grabbed the hammer out of his hand, only barely resisting the urge to use it to pound some sense into his thick skull.
“I am not talking about right this second, you idiot. I am talking about those papers you had served last night.”
He feigned sudden understanding. “Ah, those.”
“Yes, those. What were you thinking?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t see any other way to get your attention.”
“Oh, you have my attention, all right. I’m so mad I could tear you limb from limb right now.”
He grinned. “I can see that.”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me. This is important, Harlan Patrick. Amy Lynn’s future is not some game.”
His expression sobered at once. “No, it’s not a game,” he agreed.
“Then why did you do it? Why did you file for custody?”
“Because I want her here with me. I don’t want her to ever have the same doubts about her daddy’s love that you’ve had about yours.” He reached over and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I want you here, too, Laurie. Always have.”
She’d heard the words before, but for some reason they seemed to take her by surprise. She studied him with bemusement. “Is this your peculiar idea of a proposal, then?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“What you intend to do with that hammer.” He gestured toward the tool she was thumping repeatedly into the palm of her hand.
“This?” She paused thoughtfully. “I’m tempted to use it to get your attention.”
“How about kissing me instead?” he suggested with a wicked gleam in his eyes.
Before she could respond, he leaned over and took her mouth with an urgency that left her breathless and reeling. She clasped his shoulders to steady herself. That was a mistake, because his skin burned beneath her touch, sending shock waves of desire cascading through her.
She sighed when he released her. “Harlan Patrick, that’s never been the problem between us. That’s what muddies the waters.”
He gazed into her eyes. “Be honest with me, Laurie. Can you do that?”
Something told her that she didn’t have a choice. Whatever she said now was going to make all the difference in how the future turned out.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” she agreed.
“How do you feel right now?”
“Besides panicked?”
His smile was grim. “Besides that. Being back here, how does it make you feel?”
“I love it here. You know that. I just can’t stay here.”
“Could you stay here some of the time, say, between concert tours and recording sessions?”
Her gaze locked with his, and her heart began to pound. “What are you suggesting?”
“Something I should have insisted on long ago. It’s a genuine compromise, darlin’. It’s hardly any wonder that neither of us recognize it. Bottom line, we make this our home. You go to Nashville when you need to, go on tour when you have to, but you come back here. Amy Lynn and I’ll be waiting and maybe a few more kids when we can fit the baby-making into your busy schedule.”
She searched his face, desperate to see if he could truly live with this solution. “Are you sure? Can you really accept having a part-time wife?”
“As long as it’s you,” he assured her. “It took me long enough to grasp the truth, but I figure having you half the time will be better than having a poor substitute all the time.”
She grinned at him. “Harlan Patrick, you do have a romantic way with words.”
“I’m not the wordsmith in the family. You are.”
“You know,” she said slyly, “you can carry a tune pretty good for a cowboy. Maybe you could come along and sing with me once in a while.”
“No way, darlin’. The bright lights and glamour are all yours.”
Suddenly it all fell into place for her. She had no idea why she’d fought him so long. This was where she belonged, right here, in Harlan Patrick’s arms. He’d been steadfast in his love practically forever. Unlike her father, he knew his own heart and was willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to keep her in his life.
As for her singing, the acclaim, well, it was all just icing on the cake. He was offering her the chance to have that cake and eat it, too. How could she possibly say no to that when it was what she’d dreamed of practically forever.
“This room you’re building, is it going to be a nursery?”
He shook his head. “A whole new master-bedroom suite with a music room right alongside it, so you can write your songs and rehearse right here at home.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You see, I’ve been counting on you coming home.”
“Just how far along is this room?”
He grinned. “Not far enough along for
what you’ve got in mind, but it will be by the time we say I do.”
Laurie looked into his eyes and saw the love there, understood finally the risk he had taken to bring her back from despair. He knew her inside and out and he wanted her.
“I love you, Harlan Patrick Adams.”
“I know that.”
“I always have.”
“I know that, too.”
“And you?”
“Darlin’, you and our family and White Pines are all I’ll ever need to make me a happy man.”
She threw her arms around him then, recklessly wrapped her legs around his waist, regardless of their precarious perch on the roof. After all, she was a woman who liked to live dangerously.
“Then prepare yourself to be ecstatic, cowboy,” she said, her gaze locked with his. “I’m coming home.”
* * *
Suddenly, Annie’s Father
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
One
Slade Sutton knew a whole lot about horses, but he didn’t know a blasted thing about females. The only woman with whom he’d ever risked his heart had damn near killed him in a car crash, then divorced him when he could not longer win rodeo championships. Worse, she’d left him with a daughter who was a total mystery to him.
Annie was ten-going-on-thirty, wise beyond her years, clever as the dickens and the prettiest little girl he’d ever seen, even if he was a mite biased on the subject. While he’d been on the circuit, they’d been apart more than they’d been together, which had left both of them as wary as if they’d been strangers.
Ever since the accident and Suzanne’s desertion, Annie had been living with his parents, but he knew the time was fast approaching when he would no longer be able to shirk his responsibilities. He’d begun dreading every phone call, knowing that most spelled trouble. Annie had a knack for it, and his parents’ level of tolerance was slipping. He could hear it in their tired voices. He’d been making excuses for weeks now for not going home for a visit. He’d half feared they’d sneak Annie into his truck on his way out of town. Every night he prayed she’d stay out of mischief just a little longer, just until he could get his bearings in this new job.
Of course, he’d been working for Harlan and Cody Adams for nearly a year now at White Pines, caring for their horses, setting up a breeding program, breaking the yearlings. He could hardly claim he was still getting settled, but he dreaded the day when his parents called him on it.
He studied the picture of Annie that he kept on his bedside table and shook his head in wonder. How had he had any part in producing a child so beautiful, so delicately feminine? He lived in a rough-and-tumble world. She looked like a fairy-tale princess, a little angel.
Judging from the reports he’d been receiving, however, looks could be deceiving. Annie was as spirited as any bronco he’d ever ridden. She charged at life full throttle and, like him, she didn’t know the meaning of fear.
The phone on the bunkhouse wall rang, cutting into his wandering thoughts. Hardy Jones grabbed for it. Hardy had more women chasing after him than a Hollywood movie star. It had become a joke around the ranch. No one saw much use to Hardy’s pretense of living in the bunkhouse, when he never spent a night in his bed there. And no one besides Hardy ever jumped for the phone.
“Hey, Slade, it’s for you,” the cowboy called out, looking disappointed.
Trepidation stirred in Slade’s gut as he crossed the room. It had to be trouble. Annie had been too much on his mind today. That was a surefire sign that something was going on over in Wilder’s Glen, Texas.
Sure enough, it was his father, sounding grim.
“Dadgumit, Slade, you’re going to have to come and get your daughter,” Harold Sutton decreed without wasting much time on idle chitchat.
Much as he wanted to ignore it, even Slade could hear the desperation in his father’s voice. He sighed. “What’s Annie done now?”
“Aside from falling out of a tree and breaking her wrist, climbing on the roof and darn near bringing down the chimney, I suppose you could say she’s having a right peaceful summer,” his father said. “But she’s a handful, Son, and your mama and I just can’t cope with her anymore. We’ve been talking it over for a while now. We’re too dadgum old for this. We don’t have the kind of energy it takes to keep up with her.”
Slade’s father was an ex-marine and had his own garage. He put in ten hours a day there and played golf every chance he got. His mother gardened, canned vegetables, made quilts and belonged to every single organization in Wilder’s Glen. Slade wasn’t buying the idea that they couldn’t keep up with a ten-year-old. Annie had just stretched their patience, that was all. It had to be.
“Look, whatever she’s done, I’m sure she didn’t mean to. I’ll talk to her, get her to settle down a little.”
“This isn’t just about settling her down,” his father countered. “She needs you.”
The last thing Slade wanted was to be needed by anyone, especially a ten-year-old girl. Between the aches and pains that reminded him every second of the accident that had cost him his career and very nearly his life, and the anger at the woman responsible, it was all he could do to get through the day on his own. He was grateful every single minute of it, though, that his parents had been willing to take Annie in when he hadn’t been up to it. She’d been better off with them than she would have been with him. He’d been too bitter, too filled with resentment toward her mama to be any kind of example for an impressionable kid.
“You know I’m grateful,” he began.
“We don’t want your thanks,” his father said, cutting him off. “We love Annie and we love you. We know the jam you were in after the accident. We understood you needed some time to get back on your feet.”
“But—”
“Let me finish now. Your mama and I aren’t up to raising Annie the way the girl ought to be raised. We had a houseful of boys. Girls just aren’t the same, even though Annie seems bent on being the toughest little tomboy in the whole town. Besides that, times have changed since you and your brothers were kids. The world’s a different place.”
“Not in Wilder’s Glen,” Slade protested. “It’s perfect for Annie. It’s a small town. She’ll be as safe there as she could be anywhere.”
“Her safety’s not the only issue. Even if it were, she’ll be just as safe in Los Piños. No, indeed, there’s a more important issue, and you know it. She misses you. She belongs with you. We were glad enough to fill in for a while, but it’s time for you to take over now and that’s that. Otherwise the child will be scarred for life, thinking that her own daddy didn’t want her any more than her mama did.”
“But—”
“No buts, and you can forget coming after her. We’ll bring her to you this weekend,” Harold announced decisively, as if he no longer trusted Slade to show up for her.
Slade sighed heavily. The sorry truth was he wouldn’t have, not even with a deadline staring him in the face. He would have called at the last minute with some excuse or another, and counted on his parents to hang in with Annie a little longer.
Hearing a date and time for assuming responsibility for his daughter all but made Slade’s skin crawl. Much as he loved Annie, he wasn’t cut out to be a parent to her. His experience with her mother was pretty much evidence of his lack of understanding of the female mind. He was also flat-out terrified that the re
sentment he felt toward Suzanne would carry over to their daughter in some way he wouldn’t be able to control. No kid deserved that.
Annie was the spitting image of his ex-wife in every way, from her gloriously thick hair to her green-as-emerald eyes, from the dusting of freckles on her nose to her stubborn chin. Apparently she had her mama’s wicked ways about her, too. She’d caused more trouble in the last year than any child he’d ever known. She’d topped his own imaginative forms of rebellion by a mile and she hadn’t even hit puberty yet. What on earth would her teenage years hold? To be fair, he couldn’t blame his parents for not wanting to find out.
“Are you sure?” he asked, his own voice desperate now. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea for her to come here. She’s comfortable there with you. She’s starting to think of that as home. She spent the school year there. She’s made friends. Uprooting her all over again won’t be good for her. Besides that, the Adamses don’t even know I have a daughter. I’m living in a bunkhouse. Some days I don’t get to bed till midnight and I’m back up again at dawn.”
He’d ticked off a half-dozen excuses before he was done, most of them flat-out lies. He knew that a staunch family man like Harlan Adams would never object to Slade bringing his daughter to the ranch. If anything, he’d be furious Slade hadn’t brought her to be with him before now.
As for the living arrangements, Harlan Adams would make adjustments for that, too. It had been Slade’s choice to live in the bunkhouse, rather than one of the other homes dotted across Adams land. He’d wanted to stay close to the horses that were his responsibility. Horses were something he understood.
He tried one last panicked ploy. “I could get you some help,” he offered. “Maybe a housekeeper.”
“This isn’t about cooking and cleaning,” his father scoffed. “It’s about a little girl needing her daddy. We’re coming Sunday and that’s that.”
There was a finality to his tone with which Slade was all too familiar. Just to emphasize his point, Harold hung up before Slade could think of a single argument to convince him to keep Annie with them.
West Texas Nights Page 19