by Deb Kastner
“It’s like we were talking about in the park. I have the tendency to hover over Matty, worry too much about him getting hurt trying new things. I guess it’s just a residual response from when I was raising him all on my own—trying to be both a mother and a father to him.”
Wyatt made a low, indistinguishable sound from deep in his throat, part groan, part growl.
She held up her hands to stop him before he stated the obvious.
“I know. I know. That was entirely my own fault, born of the poor decisions I personally chose to make. I hope someday you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her spirit felt lightened, unburdened, now that she’d finally admitted her mistakes out loud, and to Wyatt.
His gaze narrowed and he pressed his lips into a thin, hard line. Carolina could see he was trying to suppress his urge to share his own opinions on her choices.
She took a deep breath and bolted ahead with her thoughts before she lost her nerve.
“That was one of the things I need to talk to you about today.”
She gathered her thoughts as she considered how to approach the subject, about how it was time for Matty to know Wyatt was his daddy and how they were going to work out the logistics of sharing him between them. What they had now, with Carolina employed in Wyatt’s office, was working out wonderfully. But what would happen once Wyatt took off to do service on foreign soil? What would that mean for Matty?
For her?
She coughed to remove the strangling sensation in her throat. “For starters, though, I think we need to address what happened on the dance floor the other night.”
His gaze didn’t waver, but his shoulders visibly tightened and a tic of strain showed at the taut corner of his whiskered jaw.
“Nothing happened.” His voice was scraping as coarse as sandpaper.
“Almost happened, then,” she modified.
“What are you getting at, Carolina? We don’t have much more time left before Nick gets here. If you have something that you want to say to me, just spit it out.”
The harshness of his tone caused her emotions to scuttle, crab-like, back into the shell of her heart.
So much for being vulnerable. Clearly she’d misread all the signals—or maybe there hadn’t been any to begin with. Was her imagination running overtime? Or maybe there were unresolved emotions lingering.
“What do you want Matty to call you?” She barely got the words out. But if he wanted a change of topic, he’d just been belted with the best one she had.
“I—” He paused to lift his hat and brush a palm back through his hair. “What do you mean?”
“I think it’s time to be truthful with Matty. It’s not fair to him or to you to go on the way we’re doing. I know that you have plans for the future, and I don’t want what has happened between us to change those intentions, but I also know you want to be part of Matty’s life.” She gulped for air but found none. “So what I want to know is this. Have you thought about what you’d like Matty to call you? He refers to me as Mama.”
Carolina had only once in her life seen Wyatt cry. That was the night he’d been certain he was about to lose his gran. The night Matty was conceived. But now Wyatt’s beautiful dark eyes turned glassy and he took a deep breath to steady himself, grasping for the stall door.
“You mean, like Daddy?”
His voice was shaking with emotion, and Carolina couldn’t help but smile at him.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Daddy,” Wyatt breathed.
“Daddy!” Matty echoed excitedly.
Somehow the toddler had managed to tuck his legs underneath him on the horse’s back, and he sprang at Wyatt without forewarning.
Carolina was grateful for Wyatt’s quick reflexes. He gave an audible oomph as Matty slammed into his chest, but Wyatt held the boy tight and kissed the top of his head.
“What did you say, little guy?”
“Daddy.” Matty beamed with pride.
Carolina marveled at the fact that their son appeared to have had no trouble at all following their conversation, nor segueing from Mr. Wyatt to Daddy. And here she’d been worried about how they could possibly explain the concept of fatherhood to a toddler.
She’d been reluctant partially because she was worried about how Matty would handle the transition, but she saw now that she shouldn’t have been. Children had the amazing capacity to embrace love and to keep things simple that adults always managed to complicate. It was the other part of the equation—when the man Matty would come to depend on went away—that worried her. She and Wyatt would have to deal with that issue when the time came, but right now, it was enough that Wyatt was acknowledging his relationship with his son.
“Daddy it is, then,” Wyatt choked out emotionally.
Carolina wandered down the line of stalls, intending to give Wyatt and Matty a moment of personal space for them both to adapt to this new, happy reality. She passed another llama and then paused by the stall that held the yearling buck they had rescued.
She’d asked after it a few times and Wyatt had indicated that all was going well with the deer. In fact, he had said he was planning to release the young buck back into the wild sometime during the coming week.
She’d expected to see a healthy deer, possibly suspicious of her presence and definitely eager to get out of the tiny stall and back into the grassy world in which he belonged.
Instead, the buck was lying on its side, much like when she’d first seen it, although this time it was cushioned by a light covering of hay on the floor of the stall.
She obviously wasn’t an expert on animals, but there was something off in the way the deer was lying. Its legs were sticking straight out to the side instead of folded up underneath it, and the gash on its haunches was smeared with fresh wet blood.
“Wyatt,” she called.
“What is it?” He walked toward her with Matty in his arms, the joyful light in his eyes echoed by his beaming smile.
“Is the buck still supposed to be bleeding?”
The grin dropped from Wyatt’s lips as he strode forward and thrust Matty into Carolina’s waiting arms. He slipped into the stall and knelt before the deer, running a comforting hand down the buck’s quivering neck.
“What happened?” He sounded genuinely perplexed and, more than that, dejected.
In short order, Wyatt had wet a towel and washed out the wound. It was one of the original gashes from when the deer had been hit by the truck, but for some reason, instead of healing, there were now angry red flames of infection around the laceration.
“I don’t understand. He was getting better.” Carolina couldn’t miss the note of discouragement in his tone.
“Could he have hit himself on something in the stall and reopened the wound?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Wyatt’s voice scraped out a frustrated growl. “But I don’t see how. There’s nothing in the stall sharp enough to do any real damage. This gash is seriously infected. I’ve managed up until now to keep all of the wounds clean and covered, and now this happens.”
“But he’ll get better, right? Will you be able to—” her throat closed and she had difficulty finishing her sentence “—save the poor thing?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s bad. I may have to put it down, after all.”
Seething with frustration, he planted his fist into his open palm and grumbled something unintelligible.
Carolina’s heart hurt for him. Wyatt genuinely cared. That was what made him such a good veterinarian.
But this? This felt like it was more than just the typical situation with an animal Wyatt vetted, as if he had formed a special bond with the creature.
Wyatt thoroughly cleaned the w
ound with antiseptic and wrapped it with layers of gauze. Carolina guessed the fuzzy-antlered buck would probably make short work of the dressing, but she hoped he would ignore it so the wound would stay clean and covered.
Nick McGarrett, who often did farrier work for Wyatt, entered just as Wyatt was finishing up. Wyatt was clearly still distracted by the ailing buck, but he turned his attention to the horses.
“I thought I would spend a little time this afternoon putting together some plans for Gran’s birthday party,” Carolina said. “It looks like you two are going to be busy.” She eyed the farrier’s tools, some of which didn’t look particularly safe for a curious two-year-old boy to be near. “Would you like me to take Matty back to the office with me? I’d hate for him to get underfoot and be a bother to you.”
Wyatt took Matty’s hand and smiled down at him. The boy beamed back at his daddy. “He won’t be a bother. He’s my big boy, right, Matty?”
She started to tell Wyatt to be careful but bit the inside of her lip to keep the words from tumbling out of her mouth.
There was absolutely no question that Wyatt was going to take care of Matty. He’d probably be even more attentive than she would have been.
No more helicopter mom for her. She had to let go of all her fears and worries for their son. Wyatt could handle Matty just fine for a while on his own, and they needed time to bond. There wasn’t anyone else on the planet, after Carolina, who cared as much about Matty as Wyatt did. After all, he was the boy’s daddy.
Chapter Eight
Trimming the horses’ hooves was a routine procedure that every ranch had done on a regular basis, and yet Wyatt was breathing in the experience as if for the first time, seeing everything through Matty’s curious eyes. As Nick worked, Wyatt explained what the farrier was doing—how he got the horse to trust him enough to lift its legs, and what he was doing with the files, hammers and nippers.
Nick even let Matty place his little hands over Nick’s larger ones, allowing the toddler to “help” him file. Everything was going well at first, but then Matty got a little overexcited and his happy squeal and flapping arms set the already anxious gelding skittering to the side.
“Whoa, there,” Wyatt said, pushing against the horse’s flank and scooping Matty safely out of the way.
Wyatt frowned. He needed to pay closer attention to what was happening with his son. Maybe a stall with a nervous horse and a busy farrier wasn’t the safest place for a toddler to be, after all.
It was bad enough that Wyatt couldn’t seem to keep his mind from wandering back to where things had gone wrong with the injured buck. He couldn’t toss off the idea that he could have done more to save the deer, even if rationally he knew otherwise.
But he knew his feelings came from the heart, which was what made the whole thing so devastating. He’d somehow become invested in this buck—and far more than that, so had Carolina and Matty.
He didn’t want to disappoint them. They would both be brokenhearted if he had to put the buck down.
Wyatt sighed and brushed the dark hair off Matty’s forehead. He had passed strike three in making mistakes as a new father a long time ago. This felt more like he was striking right out of the game, maybe even the season.
Swing, miss. Swing, miss.
He probably should have taken Carolina up on her offer to watch Matty, but he so desperately wanted to spend every waking moment with his son, to teach him all the things a boy should learn from his father.
His heart did a somersault every time he heard Matty’s sweet, innocent voice calling him Daddy.
But maybe he was trying to do too much too fast. Wyatt could and would teach the boy how to care for the ranch animals, but clearly he was overcompensating for the time he had missed, and he had to remind himself that Matty was only two years old. He wouldn’t be shoeing horses for a few years yet.
He had time, as long as Carolina didn’t up and disappear out of his life again. Years’ worth of time. Any thoughts of leaving Haven, of being separated from Matty for even one day, were long since behind him. He was Matty’s father. He wouldn’t disappear from the boy’s life, no matter what that meant to his own prior vision of his future.
He had a new dream now, one that included his son—and even the boy’s beautiful mother.
With effort, Wyatt turned back to his work. Nick had taken the mare out of the next stall and had haltered her loosely against a pole so he could replace the shoe she’d thrown.
Mercury, as her name suggested, was a bit of a bugger at times and she liked to bite—especially when people fiddled with her legs. Nick had been Wyatt’s farrier for some time now and was well familiar with Mercury’s bad habits, but there was only so much a man could do when a horse had sensitive legs and had been known to kick as well as use her teeth. The shoe still had to be fitted.
“Let me hold her head for you,” Wyatt offered, knowing his presence would calm the mare down so the farrier could do his work with more ease.
Matty started wiggling, pumping his chunky arms and legs and pushing against Wyatt’s chest so it was hard to hold the toddler in one arm.
“Down. Down,” Matty insisted.
Now wasn’t a good time to put the boy on the ground, but when Wyatt tried to calm him, he became even more adamant, making the calm horses in the other stalls skittish, and that was nothing to say of further agitating Mercury.
Wyatt looked around for a solution.
Just inside the barn door, framed in a ray of sunshine, was Blitzy, one of Wyatt’s young goats.
Wyatt breathed a sigh of relief and dropped Matty down by Blitzy, who was just the right size for a toddler to play with, without fear that the goat would knock him over or create too much havoc. Fortunately, this particular goat was among the friendliest Wyatt owned, and he was sure the animal would be up to a little friendly petting.
Besides, Wyatt would only be a few steps away.
He stepped back to the mare’s head and smoothed a hand down her neck as Nick took his position at the mare’s left hind leg.
“Easy, there, girl,” Wyatt soothed.
Mercury snorted her disdain and tried to toss her head when the farrier picked up her foot, but Wyatt held tight and didn’t let her move. She shifted and struck out with her back legs in a half buck, but Nick was an old hand at his work and managed to avoid getting a hoof in the face.
Nick chuckled. “Stubborn old goat, isn’t she?”
At the word goat, Wyatt’s gaze slid over to Matty, expecting the boy and his new four-legged friend to be playing together, safe, sound and secure.
Instead, he discovered that Matty had somehow led the goat to the side of the barn, where a partially used bale of hay had been tossed up against the wall.
It took Wyatt just two seconds too long to figure out what Matty was trying to do.
Wyatt slipped underneath the mare’s neck and darted toward Matty, just as the toddler scooted on top of the hay bale and scrambled onto the goat’s back.
Wyatt and Matty’s voices were simultaneous, one terrified, the other exultant.
“Matty, no!”
“Go, goat!”
At the sudden extra load wiggling on its back, the goat reared and bolted, catching Matty unaware. The toddler flipped forward off the goat’s back and somersaulted twice before hitting the edge of the barn door.
Wyatt dived toward him but missed getting his hands under the boy by inches.
Matty sent up a spine-chilling wail.
This wasn’t just the sound of a scared little boy. This was a pain cry. And Wyatt knew with gut-wrenching certainty that Matty was seriously injured.
“Oh, Lord, please. Not Matty,” he breathed.
God had to be there. He just had to listen. Not because of Wyatt, who didn’t deserve a moment’s notice from the Almight
y, but for Matty. The kid was an innocent. He didn’t deserve to be hurt because of Wyatt’s negligence.
He felt like throwing up as he scooped his son into his arms as gently as he could and tried to soothe him with whispered words. Matty had been injured on his watch.
Carolina would never forgive him.
He would never forgive himself.
But despite his own sense of humiliation and disgrace over what had just happened, he didn’t pause at all before running straight for the office.
For Carolina.
She was going to be so, so angry.
But she was a nurse, and Matty’s mom. She would know what to do, how to help him.
Wyatt was beyond thinking rationally. His son was hurt—his beloved son. And it was all his fault. Guilt and shame poured over him like thick, wet cement.
“What happened?” Carolina asked as Wyatt kicked the already partially open door wide with the toe of his boot.
“I goofed up,” Wyatt admitted bluntly. “I goofed up, and now Matty is injured.”
Carolina appeared not to have heard his words. Her eyes—and her full attention—were on Matty.
“Where does it hurt, baby?”
Matty tried to lift up his right arm and then wailed in pain, clutching his hand to his chest. “Owie!”
Wyatt cringed at the sound, and even more when he saw the little boy’s face crumple. It was like a punch in his already churning gut. He wanted to try to explain what had happened and why he had let Matty down, but he knew Carolina wasn’t interested in his excuses.
Not now. Maybe not ever.
Carolina took Matty’s right arm and examined it from his fingertips to his shoulder.
“I think he may have fractured his wrist. It might just be a few torn ligaments, but he’s having difficulty moving it. At the very least he has hyperextended his thumb. We’ll have to get his hand x-rayed to know for certain.” She picked up a stray board. “I’m going to stabilize his hand until we can get him to the doctor. I’ll need a roll of gauze.”
She sounded amazingly calm and collected, considering what she was saying, and she expertly wrapped Matty’s arm within minutes.
