“We’re going to make a gift out of him, deliver him to Markovich.”
“Fun,” Honey said as she disappeared down the hole. “Want me to get on that?”
“Yep, have Ammo and Webb help you. I called Markovich on the way over. We’ve arranged a meeting place.” He followed Honey into the hole. Marisol gulped as she peered into the darkness. She wasn’t keen on climbing down a ladder she couldn’t see.
Then light flashed up at her, illuminating the way.
“I’ll go first, Mari-girl and guide you down, okay?” Linc soothed.
“Yeah, okay.”
He climbed down a few rungs then made space for her to follow. He moved at a slow pace and it felt like forever until they were at the bottom. Zander was waiting there.
“You are afraid of small spaces? The dark? Ladders?” he asked.
“Maybe all of the above?” she half-joked.
“You won’t do well down here then.”
Right. That was an understatement.
“Let’s get this over with,” Linc said briskly.
“She’s this way.”
Zander led them down a hallway, his flashlight bobbing. Then he knocked on a door. It opened, to reveal a dark-skinned, bald man. This room had more light, thanks to the battery-powered lanterns that had been set up. It held two chairs. Once close to the door, that the bald guy had likely been sitting in. Then another chair across the far side of the room, which her aunt was currently tied to.
As soon as Rosalind saw her, she started to wiggle, making noises behind the gag. She looked terrible, her hair was wild, her clothes dirty and torn in places. Her mascara was smudged down her cheeks. Marisol didn’t like seeing her like this.
“Can we take the gag out please?” she asked. She searched in her bag for some wet wipes, pulling them out as Zander nodded to the guy guarding Rosalind.
He drew out the gag and her aunt scowled up at him. “Coño de tu Madre!”
Marisol jolted in surprise as her aunt spat Spanish at Zander.
“Aunt,” she said quietly.
“You.” Rosalind turned her lethal gaze on Marisol. “Get me out of here. Now.”
Zander snorted.
Marisol looked over at Zander. “Can I wipe her face?” she asked, holding up the packet of wet wipes.
Zander reached out a hand to take them. “I’ll do it.” He moved closer to Rosalind. “Just a warning, you bite me and I’ll bite back.”
Rosalind spat at him. “Fuck you!”
“Aunt!” Marisol said, shocked by her. She was like a wild animal.
Zander calmly drew out a wet wipe and cleaned her face with measured movements. Then he turned away from Rosalind and gave the packet back to Marisol.
“Marisol. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.”
“I can’t, Aunt.”
“Can’t! After all I’ve fucking done for you! I should have let them send you back to that she-devil in Venezuela. I gave you everything and this is how you repay me? By letting them treat me like this? You owe me, Marisol. Do you think I wanted to take in a whiny brat? I had a life to live and you held me back, dragging me down.”
Marisol flinched, her gaze dropping to the ground. She tightly grasped hold of the pack of wet wipes.
“Why did you take her in?” Linc asked, placing his arm around Marisol’s waist. She leaned into him. Was Rosalind right? Did Marisol owe her?
“Because she was my sister’s daughter. I loved Gaby. And Gaby would have been devastated if her brat got sent back to our bitch mother.”
Marisol took in a shaky breath.
“So it had nothing to do with the money?” Zander asked calmly.
“What money?” Marisol asked.
“How do you know about that?” Rosalind snapped, glaring at Zander.
Zander turned to his man. “Leave us for a moment?”
“Gladly,” the other man replied and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Zander?” Linc asked.
“The money Rosalind’s husband settled on you, pipsqueak, when he divorced her.”
“What?” she whispered. “Harry?”
“Yep. See, I got curious about why someone as selfish as Rosalind would take in a four-year-old kid. So my tech guy did some research. Seems that when he was a teenager, Harry had an accident that left him unable to have children. My guess is that he pressured Rosalind to take custody of you. Or he got wind of you and she didn’t want him to think badly of her, so she took you in.”
“He was such a do-gooder,” Rosalind spat out. “My mistake was introducing you and Gaby to him. I couldn’t hide you from him once she died. He insisted that we take you in. He doted on you. Adored you.”
“But you said that he divorced you because of me. That he got sick of me.”
“I was sick of you!” Rosalind shouted. “I told you that to shut you up. Every night you’d cry for him, you were always asking for him. Christ, I should have left you with him.”
“But if you’d done that, you wouldn’t have gotten your monthly stipend from him to support Marisol,” Zander commented.
“What do you mean? Are you saying that Harry paid her to take care of me?” Marisol asked.
“Yep. Because Harry was smart and had a clause in his pre-nup that if Rosalind cheated on him, she got nothing. He had someone follow her, and Rosalind got caught on camera sucking some guy off in the parking lot of a bar.”
Eww.
“Rosalind was out with nothing,” Zander continued. “Except for you.”
“That asshole wanted me to leave you with him. I wish I had. It wasn’t worth the money he paid me to keep you,” Rosalind spat out hatefully.
“But you took the money, didn’t you, Rosalind? You’re still getting paid, aren’t you?” Zander asked.
“What?” Marisol gasped.
“What are you telling Harry? That’s she’s in college and you need it for the fees?” Zander queried.
“None of your fucking business. I am owed that money for taking care of her all these fucking years.”
Marisol’s mind was reeling. “All these years and I thought he didn’t want me. I thought it was my fault. You told me it was my fault.”
“You’re so gullible. A little mouse scurrying around, scared of your own shadow. It was all too easy to manipulate you into doing what I wanted. Now, get me the fuck out of here!”
“Marisol?” Linc asked quietly. “What do you want to do? We’ll let her go if that’s what you want.” She could tell he didn’t want that, though. The way he held himself told her that he’d rather do something much more horrid to Rosalind but was holding back because of Marisol.
Zander made a noise but didn’t say anything.
“He would have taken me?” she whispered. “He wanted me?”
“You were all he wanted,” Rosalind spat. “It was Marisol this, Marisol that.”
“Surprised he didn’t try to pay you for her,” Zander said.
Rosalind smiled. “He didn’t deserve to get what he wanted.”
That evil bitch. She’d made them all suffer, while she’d reaped the rewards.
“Take her to Ed or that task force. Drop her off. Tell them I’ll tell them whatever I know if they lock her up and throw away the key.”
“Gladly.” Zander smiled. It wasn’t pretty.
She turned away, but Linc paused, looking back. “You never deserved her. You were given her to care for and you neglected her. Abused her. And you’re going to hell for it. I hope someone makes you rot in jail and someone makes you their bitch.”
She didn’t say anything, instead she leaned into Linc as he guided her out. She barely heard Rosalind’s screeches. Barely paid attention as Linc led her up the ladder and out into his truck.
Halfway home, she turned to him. “He wanted me.”
Linc reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it lightly. “Of course he did.”
“She kept me from him all these years.” Tears dripped down her face.
“I know, Mari-girl. I’m so sorry.”
“I wonder why he never tried to contact me.”
“Maybe he did. Or maybe he agreed not to contact you. Maybe she told him lies like she told you.”
She gasped. “Oh God, maybe he thinks I didn’t want to see him.” She thought of all those lost years. “I could have had a family.”
“You have one now, teeny. You have me and everyone on the ranch. We will always be here for you.”
“I know.” She smiled at him through her tears. He parked outside their cabin. Their home. She let out a sigh of relief. He turned and undid the clasp of her car seat, pulling off the straps. Then he came around the truck and lifted her down. But instead of letting her walk, he carried her into the cabin.
After he removed their jackets and coats, he led her into the bedroom and sat on the bed with her on his lap.
She looked up at him. “If I’d stayed with Harry, I’d likely have been happier. Taken care of. Loved.”
“I know, Mari-girl.”
“But I wouldn’t have met you,” she whispered. “And if going through all of that pain means that I get you at the end, then it’s worth it to me. You’re worth that to me.”
“Teeny.” He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. “Me too. All the pain that Jessica caused me was worth it. Because here I am. With you. Always.”
Epilogue
“Daddy! Look at that giant gorilla. It’s so cute!”
She kept her voice low so no one would hear her. Although the fair was pretty quiet tonight. In fact, there was hardly anyone around them, other than the game attendant. It was one where you had to get the rings around the tops of bottles.
“Can I play?” She tugged at his arm excitedly.
“Of course you can, Mari-girl.” He kissed the top of her head.
It had been over a month since she’d seen Rosalind. Zander had been true to his word. He’d handed Rosalind to the task force on a platter. They hadn’t been overly pleased since they’d been hoping to get to Saber and the Devil’s Sinners. However, Rosalind had surprised them all by singing like a canary about everything.
Marisol wasn’t sure how Zander had gotten her to keep quiet about the role he and his people had played in everything. And she didn’t want to know, frankly.
Tiger had disappeared. She guessed Markovich had taken care of him. Sometimes she still felt some guilt over it, but then Linc reminded her of everything Tiger had done. That he likely would have gone on to hurt other women and she didn’t feel so bad.
It was less than three weeks until Christmas and Linc had brought her down to Houston for a break from the Montana winter. She loved the snow. But she was struggling with how cold it was. Linc had banned her from leaving the house without him, because she’d gotten a cold a few weeks back when she’d been making snowmen and stayed out too long.
He’d gone into protective overdrive. She’d found herself in bed for a week. And as soon he’d declared her well, she’d ended up over his knee, getting paddled.
Last night they’d gone out for some Venezuelan street food. She hadn’t eaten arepas since Ana had made them for her. They’d been delicious.
She attempted the ring toss, pouting as most of them missed. “I’m no good at this.”
“You can’t be good at everything. Let Daddy have a try.”
She glanced over at the attendant to see if he was paying attention, but he was more interested in his phone than the two of them.
Linc started tossing out rings, getting each one over the bottles. She clapped her hands and cheered excitedly.
“Well done, sir. You can choose anything from the top row.”
“The gorilla! The gorilla!”
“That’s going to be interesting to get home on the plane,” Linc said dryly as the attendant handed over the pink gorilla which was nearly as big as Marisol was.
“We might have to buy him his own seat,” she said with a giggle, hugging him tight. “Can we go have a corn dog, Daddy?”
He grimaced but nodded. “All right.”
Linc kept a close eye on her diet, but he wasn’t an ogre about it. And she liked that she had freedom, but she still knew he was watching over her. He could be far stricter about other things. Like her walking around while reading. She’d done that just this morning in the hotel suite when she’d thought he was in the shower. She’d just needed to finish beta reading Caley’s latest story. She hadn’t been looking where she was going and had ended up walking right into Linc.
Then she’d ended up over his knee, getting spanked. Afterwards, she’d had to sit on her hot ass and write fifty times, that she would not walk while reading.
Caley had hired her on as her assistant. She just worked in the mornings for her. Then in the afternoons, she read. Or if Linc was home, she crafted or played. Often times, he’d come home for lunch then put her down for a nap afterwards.
As they walked towards the corn dog stand, she slowed then stopped. There was something about the man ahead of them. He was walking towards them, watching her intently.
His dark hair was sprinkled liberally with gray. He had a handsome face. One of those men that got better looking as they aged. He wore a neatly pressed shirt and slacks. His clothes seemed too formal for a fair. And yet, he wasn’t exactly out of place.
As he drew closer, she gasped then looked up at Linc.
“I wasn’t sure whether to tell you,” Linc said quietly to her. “Don’t be mad at me.”
“You found him?”
“Yeah, baby. I didn’t want to let you know until I’d talked to him.”
He meant he’d wanted to make sure that Harry wasn’t going to hurt Marisol.
“He wants to see me,” she stated.
“Baby, as soon as I told him everything Rosalind revealed to us, he wanted to be on the first plane to Montana. Then when I told him about your life with her, well, he thought that you wouldn’t want to see him.”
Harry had stopped by now, he was watching them, obviously waiting for her to come to him.
“What?” she gasped. “Of course I want to see him.”
“He thinks you might be upset with him. Angry that he didn’t fight harder for you. That he took Rosalind’s word that you wanted nothing to do with him.”
“She told him that?” Pain lashed at her insides.
“Yep. She did her best to keep the two of you apart. But you have the opportunity to be together now. Go to him, baby. He’s hurting as much as you. If not more. He has a lot of guilt.”
She stepped forward, shaky at first but then as she grew closer to Harry, she gathered up speed and threw herself at him. He opened his arms, catching her, pulling her tight against him and rocking her gently.
“Oh, my girl. My darling girl.”
He even smelled the same. Sounded the same. He still had that accent.
She pulled back and looked up at him, tears dripping down her cheeks. “Harry.”
He ran his hand over her hair. “Look how beautiful you are. My precious girl. I’m so sorry. So sorry I left you with that viper.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” he insisted. “I listened to her lies. I shouldn’t have. I thought about finding you so many times. I sent investigators to check on you, but they always said you were fine.”
“She never did anything to me in public.”
He closed his eyes in pain. “I’m so sorry, banana. So sorry.”
She giggled at the old nickname, given to her because she’d gone through a stage of only wanting to eat bananas and nothing else. Harry had had their housekeeper make her all sorts of banana concoctions.
“I should have checked in on you myself. But it hurt too much to see you. I love you so much, banana.”
“Love you too, Harry. I’ve missed you.”
“Well, maybe we can make up for lost time, huh?” he asked.
She smiled, tears streaming down her face. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Harry looked over and she turned to see Linc approach with a smile. Harry moved her to his side as he reached out his hand. “You must be Linc.”
Linc shook his hand. “Sir.”
“None of that. Call me Harry. If you’re with my girl then you’re part of my family.”
She closed her eyes with contentment. The missing part of her heart was here. Maybe she hadn’t seen him for years. Maybe he had changed, although it didn’t seem that way to her. But even so, she wanted to know him. She wanted him in her life, even if it was just in a small way. She looked from Harry to Linc as they chatted.
Life with Linc was amazing. Not perfect. But pretty damn close.
And she wanted it noted, that staying with him was the best decision she’d ever made.
Daddy in Cowboy Boots (Montana Daddies Book 9) Page 32