“She has?” Kenzie was both surprised and pleased by his revelation.
“Apparently she wants to be with anyone but me,” he noted grimly.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said, stepping inside his apartment.
“She woke up crying for ‘Mommy’ again this morning,” he admitted.
She winced sympathetically.
“And then, after I had to remind her that Mommy was gone, she wanted Nana. So I got to break her heart again by telling her that Nana had to go away on a trip, and she immediately asked for ‘Ke’zie.’ I tried to explain that you don’t live here, but she apparently didn’t believe me because she went from room to room looking for you.”
“Maybe I spent too much time with both of you yesterday,” she said.
He immediately shook his head. “Are you kidding? I’m not sure we would have made it through the day without you.”
“Well, you know you’ll be on your own tomorrow, right? I do have an actual job to go to.”
“I know,” he agreed. “And I’m sure we’ll manage—at least until you finish at the clinic.”
“I’m not stopping by on my way home,” she told him.
He waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll figure out the details later.”
“There are no details to figure out,” she said. “You and Dani need to—”
“Ke’zie!”
The little girl’s happy exclamation cut off the rest of Kenzie’s protest. And really, who could protest being greeted by a child’s warm and enthusiastic hug?
She tugged gently on one of Dani’s pigtails, smiling as she imagined Spencer’s big hands trying to secure the little elastics around his daughter’s fine hair—his struggles evident in the lopsided results.
“It looks like you’re ready to paint,” she said, noting the old T-shirt—likely belonging to Spencer—that covered Dani’s clothes, with a knot tied at the back so it didn’t completely fall off her much smaller frame.
Dani nodded. “I like to paint.”
“Then I guess we should get started,” Kenzie said.
Spencer had already taped off the trim to protect it from wayward brushes and rollers and spread drop cloths over the carpet. Dani was given a plastic cup of paint and let loose inside the closet. Conscious of Spencer’s shoulder injury, Kenzie suggested that he stand on the ladder to do the edging, while she followed behind with the roller.
They worked in tandem for a while, making quick work of the first three walls while Dani contentedly dabbed away with her brush in her assigned space. They’d just started the final wall when Spencer’s phone rang in the other room, and when he finally got down from the ladder to check the display, he saw that he’d missed a call from his agent. They’d been playing phone tag for nearly a week, so Spencer called him back right away.
There was a tiny bit of a mishap while he was out of the room on the phone. Dani tripped on the track of the closet door and, when she reached out to break her fall, her hand landed in the tray of paint. Then she put her hand on the door for support to stand up again, leaving a painted handprint on the surface.
And that gave Kenzie an idea.
When Spencer finally ended his call, Kenzie and Dani were in the bathroom washing up.
“You can’t be finished already,” he said.
“You were on the phone quite a while,” Kenzie said.
“Talk, talk, talk,” Dani chimed in, echoing what Kenzie had told her when the little girl asked what he was doing.
Spencer’s brows lifted and Kenzie felt her cheeks flush.
“You didn’t run out of paint?”
“No. Why?”
“Because you seem to be wearing quite a bit of it—” he lifted a hand to trail a finger along her jaw “—here and—” his gaze skimmed over the rest of her “—everywhere.”
“Painting can be messy work,” she acknowledged.
But now that she’d managed to scrub most of the paint off his daughter, she started to use the cloth on herself.
“Dani, why don’t you take Daddy into your bedroom and show him what we did?”
Spencer didn’t expect that Dani would actually follow Kenzie’s suggestion. Although she seemed less fearful of him today than she’d been yesterday, he knew she still wasn’t completely comfortable around him, preferring to stick close to Kenzie. So he was surprised when she willingly took his hand to lead him back to her bedroom.
“Wow,” he said, stepping inside the doorway and looking around the room. “It really looks good.” He’d been a little concerned when Dani had chosen purple, but Kenzie had cleverly warned the little girl that the color she’d selected on the palette would probably be a little lighter once it was actually on the walls—and then she’d pointed to a color that was several shades lighter when she gave the paint to the guy at the hardware store to tint.
But Dani moved further into the room, tugging on his hand to draw him along with her. Then she turned to face the closet, and when he did the same, he saw the child-size handprints that decorated the lower-third of the doors. He took a couple of steps for a closer examination, then looked at Dani again.
“Did you do that?”
She nodded.
Kenzie, having scrubbed most of the paint off herself now, stepped into the room. “What do you think?”
“I think it looks great,” he said sincerely.
“The first one was an accident,” she confessed. “I was going to wash it off, but then I decided that adding more would make a nice accent.”
“Did you have fun making painted handprints?” he asked Dani.
She nodded again and held up her hand—the one not holding his—and splayed her fingers, as if to demonstrate her technique.
“Since we all worked hard this morning—”
“Some of us harder than others,” Kenzie interjected.
He inclined his head to acknowledge her point. “I think we all deserve a treat,” he said. “How does ice cream sound?”
“Yummy!” Dani said, and dropped his hand now to race off toward the kitchen.
“It sounds like bribery to me,” Kenzie muttered.
He grinned, unrepentant, and moved toward the doorway. “Do you want ice cream or not?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Of course, I want ice cream,” she said in a tone that suggested her answer was never in doubt. “But while you’re dishing it up, would you mind if I put Dani’s clothes in your short dresser so that she isn’t living out of a suitcase until Wednesday?”
He stopped then and turned back to face her. “How do you know I’m not using that dresser?”
“Because I checked,” she admitted. “And you’ve barely used the top three drawers in the tall dresser.”
“You were poking around in my drawers?”
“I only looked to see what space you were using,” she assured him.
“Not to satisfy your curiosity about whether I’m a boxers or briefs type of guy?” he teased.
“I have no curiosity about your underwear,” she denied, but the spots of color high on her cheeks suggested that she was thinking about them now.
He nudged her playfully with his elbow. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Not interested,” she said firmly.
He was tempted to remind her that she hadn’t kissed him like a woman who wasn’t interested. But as much as he enjoyed teasing her, he didn’t want to make her mad—especially when she’d come through for him in such a big way both yesterday and today.
“Not even in the ice cream?”
“Only in the ice cream,” she assured him.
He chuckled as he turned toward the kitchen. “Go ahead and start unpacking Dani’s stuff, if you want. I’ll let you know when your ice cream is ready.”
* * *
Ke
nzie spent the rest of the afternoon with Spencer and Dani, until it was time to head over to her mother’s house.
Their Sunday night dinners had become a ritual when Kenzie moved into her own apartment in town. At first, she’d balked at the idea of every Sunday night, because she’d wanted to do her own thing on her own schedule. But Cheryl had made a lot of sacrifices to provide Kenzie with opportunities while she was growing up, and she couldn’t help feeling a little bit guilty about moving out—as if she was abandoning the one person who’d always stood by her.
Brielle had assured Kenzie that she didn’t have to apologize for living her own life, but Kenzie didn’t think it was a big deal to share a meal with her mother one night a week. And usually it wasn’t. But every once in a while, Cheryl seemed to forget that her adult daughter was capable of making her own decisions—most often when those decisions concerned the male species.
Kenzie understood that her mother wanted to spare her making the same mistakes that Cheryl had made, but she sometimes resented that her mother’s experiences had colored her own expectations of personal relationships.
Growing up, she’d heard the story of her father’s abandonment so many times that she didn’t trust any man she cared about to stick around. When she’d fallen for Spencer in high school, she’d wondered if she’d chosen him because he’d never made any secret of his plan to leave Haven. And when he did, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. It didn’t matter that their relationship had existed mostly in her mind—she’d loved him and he’d abandoned her, which was exactly what she’d expected him to do.
She knew that Spencer’s return was a trigger for her mother’s concern, and Kenzie was prepared for an uncomfortable atmosphere around the dinner table. But Cheryl had recently been promoted from housekeeping supervisor and part-time evening desk clerk at the Dusty Boots Motel to full-time daytime clerk, making the new job the focus of her mother’s attention. As a result, she asked only cursory questions about Kenzie’s weekend and made no mention of Spencer at all.
The next day, when Kenzie finished her shift at the clinic, she had three voice messages and twice as many texts on her phone—all from Spencer. All requesting that she stop by his apartment “just to say hi to Dani” on her way home from work. She called him back as she made her way to the car.
“I have to stop at The Trading Post to get the groceries that I never got around to getting on the weekend,” she told him, explaining why she couldn’t take the time to detour to his apartment—and not admitting, even to herself, how much she wanted to do just that.
“Or you could come here to have homemade lasagna with me and Dani,” he suggested.
“Homemade?” she said dubiously. “Who made it?”
“You didn’t pause, for even two seconds, to consider that I might have layered the noodles and meat and cheese,” he noted.
“When would you have had the time to do all that?”
He chuckled softly. “Yeah, because that’s the only reason for your doubts.”
“So who made it?” she asked again.
“My brother,” he admitted.
“Jason cooks?”
“Apparently his fiancée has been teaching him.”
“I’ll bet that’s more of a challenge than her senior math classes,” Kenzie remarked.
“I’d be a fool to take that bet,” he said. “And you’d be a fool to turn down homemade lasagna.”
“No one ever wants to be called a fool,” she assured him.
So she postponed her grocery shopping once again to share another meal with Spencer and Dani.
And so it went throughout the week, with Spencer—or Kenzie—finding a reason for her to stop by almost every day. Wednesday was a particularly exciting day, because Dani’s bed and other furniture were finally delivered.
Apparently Spencer had also been persuaded by the sales clerk to pick up some extra items that coordinated with the bedding and curtains—decorative throw pillows, wall art, a bedside lamp, bookends and even a wastebasket. All the little touches truly transformed the room, and Dani—surrounded now by Pocket Ponies—absolutely loved it.
And Kenzie was loving the time she spent with Spencer and his daughter—and especially seeing the little girl warm up to her daddy. Though Dani had yet to actually call him “Daddy,” she no longer hesitated to take his hand or snuggle close to him on the sofa, and her shy, sweet smiles came more easily and frequently as the week progressed.
Kenzie enjoyed hanging out with both of them, and their adventures including a quick stop at The Daily Grind Saturday morning. Of course, their paths crossed with several people who knew Kenzie or Spencer—or both—and she suspected that the news she was keeping company with the cowboy would soon make its way to her mother.
It happened even sooner than she’d anticipated. In fact, Kenzie was pouring gravy on her mashed potatoes the following Sunday night when Cheryl looked across the table and said, “So what’s going on with you and Spencer Channing this time?”
Yes, she’d anticipated the interrogation, but she hadn’t expected it to start before she’d even picked up her fork. “Nothing’s going on,” she said, because aside from the kisses they’d shared before Dani came to Haven, it was true.
“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time together.” Her mother stabbed at a piece of meat with her fork. “And I’m concerned that you’re going to get caught up in his...situation.”
“What situation is that?” Kenzie asked.
“The man has an illegitimate child.”
“Yes, a little girl whose whole world was recently upended by the tragic death of her mother.”
“I didn’t know she’d lost her mother,” Cheryl said, in a quieter tone. “The poor thing.”
Her mother’s instinctive and sincere sympathy tempered Kenzie’s annoyance.
Cheryl had always been—in Kenzie’s opinion—overprotective, overbearing and overly strict. Which, of course, led to her daughter balking at the rules and constraints. But though their relationship had sometimes been contentious, Kenzie had never had cause to doubt that her mother loved her. And she couldn’t imagine what she would have done—how her entire life might have changed—if something had happened to take her mother away from her.
Cheryl scooped up some mashed potatoes, then looked across the table, her expression worried. “I suspect you’ve spent even more time with Spencer than I realized.”
“He’s living in one of the units in that building his brother owns, across the hall from Mrs. Powell, in fact, and I ran into him—and his daughter—when I stopped by to see her last week,” Kenzie confided.
“You’ve always been soft on him,” her mother noted.
“I had a crush on him when I was a teenager,” she allowed. “I’m not a teenager anymore, Mom.”
“I know. I’m just...concerned that he might exploit those old feelings for selfish reasons.”
“Translation, please,” Kenzie said in response to her mother’s uncharacteristically cryptic remark.
Cheryl pushed some peas around on her plate. “It’s not easy raising a child alone.”
Which was the same tune Kenzie had heard her sing plenty of times before, so she sat silently and chewed on her roast beef.
“Plenty of women do it,” her mother continued. “But single fathers are a rarer breed. And I don’t think it will be too long before he’s looking for a mother for his little girl.”
“He doesn’t even have legal custody yet,” Kenzie told her.
“Maybe I’m jumping the gun a little,” Cheryl acknowledged. “I just want you to consider that he might have had ulterior motives for seeking you out.”
“Even if Spencer is looking for a mother for his daughter, why do you think he’d choose me?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kenzie wished she could take them back. Because if she w
anted someone to reassure her that she was a smart, beautiful woman and that, of course, any man would want to build a life and a family with her, that someone wouldn’t be her mother. Cheryl had never been one to tiptoe around hard truths or shield her daughter’s feelings, insisting that it was better to have a bruised heart now than a broken one later.
A philosophy that she proved once again when she said, “Because your history makes your heart ripe for the picking.”
“Well.” Kenzie blew out a breath, not sure how else to respond to that.
But Cheryl didn’t expect a response, because she hadn’t finished making her own point. “And you can bet that, when he has you wrapped up in his life again, willing to take on the burden of his responsibilities, he’ll hightail it out of town again, just like he did seven years ago.”
Kenzie had thought the same thing when Spencer first returned to Haven—that this was only a temporary stop. A place to recuperate and rehab his injury until he was ready to ride bulls again. But then he’d told her about Dani, and she’d witnessed firsthand the efforts he was making to be there for his daughter, and her opinion had changed.
“Spencer wouldn’t do that,” Kenzie said to her mother now. “He wouldn’t leave his daughter.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Kenzie wanted to respond affirmatively, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure about anything. She didn’t really know what his plans were—and it was entirely possible that her mother was right.
* * *
Dani’s caseworker had spent a lot of time with Spencer at their first meeting in Denver, answering his endless questions and providing suggestions and strategies to help Dani adjust to all the changes in her life. She’d also suggested that Spencer should take some time to get to know her himself before introducing her to a lot of new people.
He’d hoped to rely on that sage advice as his justification for turning down his mother’s invitation to Sunday dinner. But as Kenzie pointed out to him, Margaret and Ben weren’t “a lot of new people,” they were Dani’s grandparents, and she was their first grandchild. So while Kenzie was having dinner with her mother, he took his daughter to his parents’ house.
Six Weeks to Catch a Cowboy Page 10