Six Weeks to Catch a Cowboy

by Brenda Harlen

  “Dani, I’d like you to meet your grandmother and grandfather,” Spencer said to her. Then, to his parents: “Grandma and Grandpa, this is Dani.”

  “Hello, Danielle,” Margaret said formally.

  Spencer shook his head. “Her name is Dani.”

  “Isn’t Dani short for Danielle?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s actually short for Daniel.”

  His father frowned. “But Daniel is a b—”

  “—great name,” he interjected loudly.

  “Dani is a lovely name,” his mother acknowledged with a forced a smile. “If a bit...untraditional.”

  “Says the woman who named her daughters Regan and Brielle,” he noted wryly.

  Margaret turned her attention back to her granddaughter. “Are you hungry, Dani?”

  The little girl gave a hesitant nod.

  Though she’d started to open up to Spencer and seemed totally at ease with Kenzie, he could tell that she was a little uncomfortable in the big house filled with lots of shiny and breakable things.

  “What’s your favorite thing to eat?” Margaret asked.

  “Ice cweam?” she suggested hopefully.

  Spencer couldn’t help but chuckle, pleased by this evidence of both her spirit and optimism. “Nice try, kiddo, but I don’t think you’re going to get ice cream for dinner.”

  “We’ll see if Celeste has any in the freezer for dessert,” his mother promised. “But for dinner, we’re having mushroom-stuffed quail with a truffle wine sauce and seasonal root vegetables.”

  Dani looked worriedly at Spencer, clearly at a loss to understand the words that might as well have been spoken in a different language.

  “That means you’re probably going to be really hungry when you finally get your ice cream,” he told his daughter. Then, to his mother, “You couldn’t have gone for something simple, like burgers or pasta?”

  “I wanted a special meal to welcome your daughter to the family. But I was only teasing. I didn’t expect that Danielle—Dani—” she quickly corrected herself “—would find quail appealing.”

  “So we’re not having quail?”

  “Of course we are,” Margaret said. “But Celeste is making chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese for Dani.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with my mother?” Spencer asked her.

  She sniffed, clearly insulted by the question. “Do you really think I’m so out of touch?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “Okay, so the chicken fingers were Celeste’s idea,” she admitted.

  “My vote was for steak,” Ben chimed in, and winked at Dani. “For all of us.”

  “There’s nothing special about steak when you live in Nevada,” his wife protested.

  “At least it’s a substantial meal.”

  “The quail sounds great,” Spencer injected, noting that the bickering between his parents—although mostly lighthearted and familiar to him—caused Dani’s grip on his hand to tighten.

  “I remembered it was one of your favorites,” Margaret told him.

  Spencer didn’t remember any such thing but kept that thought to himself. Instead he only asked, “When do we eat?”

  Chapter Nine

  They ate in the dining room, of course. At the ten-foot table set with pressed linen napkins, gleaming crystal, gold-rimmed china and polished silverware. And one plate and cup that he recognized from his own childhood.

  Once upon a time, the face of the plate had been printed with a graphic of a cow jumping over the moon and the side of the cup with a cat and a fiddle. Over the years, they’d been used and washed so many times that the images had almost completely faded. But they’d never been used in the dining room before—his mother would never have allowed it.

  Apparently she had mellowed over the years. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed that Dani’s place setting was different than the others around the table.

  Dinner wasn’t served until Regan got home. Despite it being a Sunday, his sister had gone into the office for a few hours—and lost track of time. Though his mother had grumbled that the quail would be overcooked, there wasn’t much heat in her words. Probably because, of all her children, her eldest daughter was most like her—at least in so far as her commitment to Blake Mining. The rest of Regan’s siblings knew that made her the perennial favorite.

  While they were eating, he noticed that Dani seemed intrigued by the little birds everyone else was eating, so he pulled some of the meat off his and set it on the edge of her plate.

  “It’s a little bit like chicken, if you want to try it,” he said.

  She looked dubious, and nibbled on some more macaroni before deciding to stab a piece of the meat with her fork and lift it to her mouth.

  Her grandmother smiled, obviously pleased by the girl’s willingness to try something new.

  Dani chewed, then decided she didn’t like the quail and spit it out on her plate. Margaret’s smile turned to a grimace.

  In a stage whisper from the other side of the table, Regan said, “Believe me—I would have opted for chicken fingers, too, if I’d been given a choice.”

  Dani responded with a shy smile.

  “Maybe next time we’ll all have chicken fingers,” Margaret suggested, a little testily. “Or maybe we’ll go for something truly gourmet and head to the Elko Golden Arches.”

  “The quail was delicious, Mother,” Spencer interjected.

  “I’m glad you, at least, enjoyed it,” Margaret said.

  “Because it’s all about me, right?” he said, and grinned at his sister.

  “The prodigal son,” Regan muttered. But then, because it was her nature to play peacemaker, she attempted to appease their mother. “Dad obviously liked it, too. He practically licked his plate clean.”

  “That’s because your father’s still a caveman in some ways,” Margaret said, though with an affectionate glance at her husband.

  “Now, Maggie—” her husband sent her a playful wink “—the kids don’t need to know about our role-playing.”

  “Don’t need to know,” Regan said firmly. “And don’t want to know.”

  “Your sister’s still perturbed because she walked in on us when we forgot to the lock the door a few weeks back.”

  “Aside from the fact that this is an inappropriate conversation to have with a child at the table,” Spencer noted. “Why would you walk into their bedroom?”

  Regan shook her head. “Oh, no. It wasn’t their bedroom—it was the boardroom.”

  “It was late,” Ben pointed out in defense of their activities. “We thought everyone else had left the office.”

  “Believe me, I wish I’d left with everyone else,” Regan said.

  “Speaking of leaving, maybe it’s time for me and Dani to go,” Spencer suggested.

  “But she hasn’t had her ice cream,” Margaret protested.

  “We can stop for ice cream on the way home,” he decided.

  “You will have dessert here,” his mother said firmly. “And we’ll agree to pretend that each of our four children was delivered by a stork, conveniently ignoring the ten hours of labor I suffered through with you, Regan, and fourteen for you, Spencer.”

  “Did somebody say something about ice cream?” Regan asked, desperate to change the subject.

  As if on cue, Celeste appeared to clear away the dinner plates and offer dessert. She had prepared a white chocolate mousse with cherries but confirmed that there was also ice cream in the freezer for anyone who preferred it.

  “What kind of ice cream do you like?” she asked Dani.

  “’Nilla?” she suggested.

  “Plain or with chocolate sauce and sprinkles?”

  Dani’s eyes lit up and her lips curved. “Choc’ate sauce an’ spwinkles.”

 
“Do you want to help me dish it up?” Celeste invited.

  The little girl looked at Spencer, as if for permission, and he nodded.

  She slid off her chair to follow the housekeeper into the kitchen.

  “She’s a quiet thing, isn’t she?” his father remarked.

  “Her caseworker said she has a pretty extensive vocabulary for her age,” Spencer said. “But she is very shy.”

  “She needs a mother,” Margaret abruptly decided.

  “She recently lost her mother,” he reminded his own.

  “And it’s your job to find another one for her.”

  “Despite scanning all the street corners on the drive over here, I didn’t see any obvious candidates.”

  Across the table, Regan hid her smile behind her wineglass.

  His mother huffed out a breath. “Must you always resort to sarcasm?”

  “I apologize for mocking your ridiculous question,” he said.

  “Your mother was expressing a sincere concern about our granddaughter,” Ben said.

  “Well, ‘mother’ isn’t a job opening—like a lab tech—that can be filled by any qualified college graduate,” he pointed out to them.

  “A little girl needs a mother,” his own insisted.

  “Luckily, she has a concerned and loving grandmother.”

  “You should think about Kenzie,” Margaret continued.

  He had been thinking about Kenzie—more than he wanted to admit, a fact that he had no intention of confiding to his mother.

  “What about Kenzie?” he asked instead.

  “I know you’ve been spending time with her,” Margaret told him.

  Of course she knew, because there were no secrets in Haven. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Well, it’s no secret that she used to have a crush on you,” Margaret noted.

  So maybe she wasn’t as oblivious to the details of her children’s lives as they’d always believed, but he still didn’t see the relevance of the remark. “When she was sixteen,” he noted dryly.

  “Sometimes old feelings can be rekindled,” his mother said.

  “Right now, I’m focusing on my daughter.”

  “You should give some thought to your future, too,” his father suggested.

  “I have,” he agreed. “But I’m still trying to figure some things out.”

  “You can’t go back on the circuit,” Margaret said.

  He’d pretty much decided the same thing himself, but her implacable tone urged him to challenge the assertion. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s dangerous.”

  “Crossing the street can be dangerous,” he pointed out to her.

  “You didn’t dislocate your shoulder crossing the street. You didn’t crack three ribs last spring crossing the street. You didn’t get either of your two concussions crossing the street.”

  “Okay, Mom. You’ve made your point,” he said, grateful that she only knew about half the injuries he’d sustained riding bulls.

  “Not to mention that living out of a suitcase, moving from one motel to the next, might be okay for a single man, but it’s no life for a child.”

  She was right about that, too, but it wasn’t in his nature to give in easily—especially when giving in meant giving up everything familiar to him. “I could get an RV,” he suggested impulsively. “Dani might think it’s fun to live in a house on wheels.”

  “She might enjoy ice cream for breakfast, too,” his mother noted. “That doesn’t mean it’s good for her.”

  “Speaking of ice cream,” he began, “I better go see what’s taking so long with dessert.”

  And he escaped the rest of the parental interrogation by following the path his daughter had taken to the kitchen.

  * * *

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Spencer asked, as he unbuckled the harness of Dani’s car seat, when they were finally home again.

  “Bad,” she said, and wagged a finger, clearly imitating something she’d seen and heard before.

  He chuckled softly. “I meant ‘not bad.’ Good.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Of course, the best part is that we’re home now,” he said, as he lifted her out of her seat. “And it’s time for your bath, then pajamas and bed.”

  “Bubbles?” she asked.

  “As many bubbles as you want,” he promised.

  That earned him a small smile.

  Then she put her arms around his neck and dropped her head to his shoulder.

  It was probably an indication of her exhaustion more than anything else, but Spencer was happy to take it as a sign of her growing comfort with him.

  Of course, it helped that he was with her almost twenty-four seven. Aside from his massage therapy appointments, before which he would drop Dani across the hall to hang out with Mrs. Powell, he was rarely apart from his daughter.

  How was it possible that he hadn’t even known this child existed a couple of months earlier? Already he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

  He was grateful that Emily had put his name on Dani’s birth certificate, but he was still angry with her, too. Angry that she’d never made any effort to tell him that she was going to have his baby, that she’d never given him the chance to be there for her or their child.

  Had she assumed that he wouldn’t want to know?

  Did she think he’d abandon her to raise their child alone?

  And if she thought so little of him, why would she name him as Dani’s guardian?

  Of course, the most likely answer to that question was that she didn’t imagine he’d ever have to step up and be a father. After all, there was no way she could have known that her life would be cut short by a tragic accident, leaving her young daughter to grow up without a mother.

  And while he grieved for Emily, and especially for Dani, he also mourned the loss of the first years of his daughter’s life. Maybe he hadn’t been ready to be a father four years ago. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he was ready now, but he didn’t have a choice. Dani needed him. He was the only parent she had left, and he was determined to step up for her.

  “Sto-wee time?” Dani asked, after her bath.

  She could barely keep her eyes open, but he’d already learned that she fought sleep to the bitter end. And although it was later than her usual bedtime, he’d read somewhere that routines were important to kids, and a story before bed was one of Dani’s routines.

  “Go pick a book,” he told her.

  She skipped over to the shelf under the window, immediately locating a familiar and favorite book.

  He tucked her under the covers, then sat on the edge of the bed and began to read The Going to Bed Book.

  As he’d suspected, Dani was asleep before the storybook characters had “brushed and brushed and brushed their teeth.” He finished the story anyway, then set the book aside, kissed her soft cheek and turned out the light.

  * * *

  Conscious of her mother’s warning, Kenzie kept herself busy through the week so that she didn’t make excuses to stop by Spencer’s place. But her efforts were for naught, because he called or at least texted her every day with a question or a request for a favor.

  She wasn’t blind to the fact that he was using her as a buffer with his daughter. More troubling to Kenzie was the realization that she was willing to let him—and happy for any and every excuse to spend time with Spencer and Dani.

  Which was how she found herself agreeing to meet them in Battle Mountain on Thursday afternoon.

  Spencer knew that she didn’t work at Back in the Game on Tuesdays or Thursdays. What he didn’t know, until he invited her to go shopping with him and Dani, was that she worked at another clinic in Battle Mountain on both of those days, although she finished at one o’clock on Thursdays.

  So they
arranged to meet at 2:00 p.m. outside of Baby Cakes—a store specializing in infant and children’s clothing.

  “I really appreciate this,” Spencer said to Kenzie, as they walked into the store, each holding one of Dani’s hands—almost as if they were a family. “I wouldn’t know where to begin if I tried to tackle this on my own.”

  “I’m sure you would have figured it out—or conned someone else into helping you,” she added.

  He lifted his daughter into the seat of a shopping cart. “Do you feel as if you’ve been conned?”

  “Maybe not conned,” she allowed. “But certainly manipulated.”

  “How did I manipulate you?” he wanted to know.

  “You suggested this shopping expedition in front of Dani.”

  “Because it’s for Dani. And you’re the one who pointed out that most of her clothes are too small for her.”

  “Only because you didn’t seem to notice that her leggings and T-shirts were more like capri pants and crop tops.”

  “Don’t girls wear capri pants and crop tops?”

  She shook her head despairingly. “Not in northern Nevada in the fall.”

  “And that’s why I need your help to do this,” he told her.

  “And that’s why I’m here,” she confirmed, guiding him past the infant and toddler sections to an area labeled Preschool.

  “I guess it won’t be too long before she’s a schooler rather than a preschooler,” Spencer noted.

  “Less than a year,” Kenzie confirmed.

  He seemed surprised by her response. “That soon?”

  “Some parents start their kids in preschool even earlier.”

  He shook his head. “How is it possible? It seems like it was only a couple of months ago that I learned I was a father...oh, right—that’s because it was only a couple of months ago.”

  “It’s understandable that you’d be angry about missing the first years of your daughter’s life,” Kenzie acknowledged.

  “Angry’s one word,” he agreed. Then he looked at his daughter, who wasn’t saying anything but clearly taking in every word of the adult conversation, and he made a conscious effort to shake off his mood. “But now, we’re happy,” he said, in a deliberately upbeat tone. “Because we’re shopping.”