Down Home Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “I suck at making cakes. Like, I’m the actual worst at it. So, she’s probably going to give me more remedial cake instruction, so that she doesn’t have to fire me.” Violet made a comically dramatic gesture that he had a feeling was completely genuine.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “Do you really think it’s that bad?”

  “Yes! I keep torpedoing cakes.”

  He was stuck trying to figure out the best thing to say, trying to figure out exactly what she needed to hear. He really had never been very good at the whole verbal communication thing. Not in marriage, not in fatherhood. And, when Violet had been little, he hadn’t had to. He had tossed her up in the air, blown a raspberry on her stomach and made her entire day.

  But now...she needed more. She needed something else. And he didn’t know how to offer it. Maybe it was time he admitted that.

  Which meant starting with talking.

  “Are you feeling okay after the hangover, Bo?” he asked, trying to sound much more okay with everything than he was.

  Violet shot him a wary look. “Yeah. I feel fine.”

  “The breakfast that I made you helped?”

  “Yeah.” She looked down at her hands, peeling at some paint on one of her fingernails. “I don’t understand why you’re talking about it without breathing fire now.”

  “Because I breathed all the fire I had. It’s used up. Now, I just want to figure out how we’re going to move forward. I can’t have you going out and not know where you are. I understand that you’re mad at me, and I understand it isn’t just about last night. Bo, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I can’t tell you that your mother didn’t leave because of me. Mostly because she did.” He shook his head. “It sure as hell wasn’t because of you, honey. It wasn’t. It was a combination of me and her. Everything that went wrong. And I... I’m mad. I’m mad at her because she left. I’m mad at me because if I had noticed sooner, maybe I could have fixed it. Maybe I could have said the right thing, done the right thing. But I didn’t. I completely fucked it up.”

  His daughter looked a little bit...bemused at hearing him say those things. At hearing him swear like that. But, it was honesty hour. He was trying to fix something, trying desperately to make sure he didn’t leave anything broken. “I really want to make sure I don’t do the same thing with you. I want to make sure that we fix this. That you don’t walk out of here one day and never come back.”

  Violet blinked, and he could see that she was holding back tears. And that she was angry about it.

  “I’m not going to do that.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “I came with you this far. If I was going to run away, I would have done it back in Texas.”

  “Before we got to this hellhole, as you’ve labeled it?”

  “It’s not a hellhole. It’s more of a hellmouth. Not quite at the center of the devil’s unholy kingdom, but still pretty bad.”

  “Well, that’s giving of you.”

  Violet heaved herself down off the island and started to pace. “I don’t want to be mad at you. I don’t want to feel awful all the time. I don’t know what I want. I don’t really know who I am.”

  She stopped pacing then, her hands down at her sides, her expression one of absolute defeat. Her green eyes—eyes that were the same color as his own—full of that same sadness he felt sometimes.

  That broke him. Broke him straight down to his core. Anger was actually easier to deal with than this. Than her apparent desolation. Than her sadness. All that pain that she carried down deep.

  But honestly, he wasn’t surprised. Kathleen’s leaving had affected him, and he was a grown-ass man who had more than enough anger, and had had more than enough reason to want some distance from her. Kathleen was Violet’s mother. And there was going to be a whole lot more hurt and a whole lot less relief involved for her than there was for him.

  “You’re mad at me,” he said. Mostly because he just wanted everything to be said.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

  “That sounds about right. Sometimes I get mad at you too,” he said. “But mostly, I get angry at me.”

  “Why?”

  “I already told you. Sometimes I think it’s my fault. What you said to me earlier. I believe it too.”

  “I don’t think I do really.” Violet tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t. I was mad at you because I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that you saw that. Embarrassed that my friends saw you get mad. It would have been better to not get caught. Then, you wouldn’t know that I did that, and they wouldn’t know that you are a jackass.”

  He laughed, in spite of himself. “Well, I am kind of a jackass.”

  “And one of my friends said you were hot,” Violet said, her entire face turning red. “And I pretty much don’t think I’m ever going to recover from that.”

  He laughed again, because he really couldn’t help himself now. “Wow. I went in there to embarrass you and it worked on so many more levels than I could have possibly anticipated.”

  “Dad. I thought we were trying to have a moment.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m having a moment now. A moment of pure triumph. That is...gold. It is actual gold. How horrifying is that for you?”

  “Seriously. You’re the worst.” Except she didn’t sound even half as angry with him now as she had earlier.

  “The worst. But kind of hot.”

  “No. That’s disgusting. You’re my dad. You are not hot. You are old.”

  Right on that note, in walked Alison, carrying an armful of baking accoutrements, followed by his brothers, Liam and Finn. “Where do you want these?” Finn asked.

  “Over there is fine,” Alison said, gesturing to the island at the center of the room.

  Finn complied, carrying everything over there and dumping it on the high gloss surface. Liam followed shortly behind him.

  “Thank you,” Alison said brightly, turning her smile on to both of them.

  Cain’s stomach tightened, and he recognized vaguely that he was feeling jealous. Jealous of his engaged brother, and his younger brother, who he could probably still beat up.

  Though Liam had some kind of brooding appeal that women kind of lost their shit over. Also, tattoos.

  Plus, Liam was much closer to Alison’s age. At least, Cain assumed so. He didn’t know exactly how old Alison was. Late twenties, maybe. And—as his daughter had just kindly pointed out—he was old.

  “I didn’t realize you were coming by tonight,” he said, in what he hoped wasn’t a terribly transparent bid to turn her attention on to him.

  “Sorry,” she said, biting that lip he had sucked on last night. “I should have called.”

  “It’s okay. You’re always welcome to come.”

  He hadn’t really meant to infuse that statement with a double entendre, but he was more than happy to let it stand. More than happy to let her mull that over.

  “Well,” she said, sounding a little bit flustered now. Damn, that was satisfying. “We should probably get started. It takes a while to bake a cake. And it’s already late.”

  Cain frowned. “You open the bakery awfully early. Are you sure this isn’t too much?”

  She waved a hand. “No, it’s fine. I have a wedding cake to do tomorrow, so I’m going to be at home most of the day until I go serve. That means I get to sleep in until at least six.”

  Violet pulled a face. “That’s not sleeping in.”

  “Yes it is.” He, Finn and Liam spoke that in unison.

  Her face grew even more horrified. “So being an adult is basically just never getting to sleep in past sunrise?”

  “Well, and being in charge of your own grocery purchases, which means you can buy whatever you want,” Finn pointed out.

  “And eat cereal for dinner,” Alison said.

  “Ye
ah,” Cain agreed. “That.”

  “I think I’ll take sleeping in over cereal for dinner, but you’re really selling the adulthood thing.”

  “There are other attractions to being an adult, Violet,” Liam said. “You’re just too young to hear them.”

  Violet stuck her tongue out. “You’re gross, Uncle Liam.”

  “And you’re a brat. Anyway. I have to go. Headed out to the bar tonight.”

  “Spare us all the details of the debauchery. I’m way too young to hear about how many chicken wings you ate before you feel asleep in front of 60 Minutes,” Violet said, her parting shot as Liam grinned and left the room, Finn right behind him.

  That left Cain, Alison, Violet and a whole lot of weird energy.

  “I can leave you guys to your baking,” he said.

  “You don’t have to go,” Alison said. “You want to learn how to make a cake?”

  He looked at her, at her petite frame, at her curves—which he now knew were slightly exaggerated by the bra she wore, but he didn’t give a damn—at the way her thin T-shirt molded to said curves. Yeah, there was pretty much nothing else around here that he would rather look at than her. And he didn’t see the point in pretending otherwise.

  “Sure. I can always use a new skill.” He patted his stomach, which was flat and hard, and he knew it. “But I have to be careful not to eat too many sweets.”

  Alison laughed, a high unnatural sound. “Right. Because you have to watch your figure?”

  “Hey, if I don’t no one else will.”

  “Fair enough.” Alison set about preparing the ingredients, and then began to instruct Violet on how to assemble everything.

  “I killed that last cake too, so you know. The one that we started here,” Violet said. “Why did you leave?”

  Alison looked stricken. “Oh. I guess... I guess I forgot to talk to you about that. Because of all the...” He could see her looking for a reason, probably because she didn’t want Violet to know that she knew about her little drinking escapade. And she definitely didn’t want Violet to know about their little escapade. “I’ve been busy. Because of the wedding cake. Anyway, I got a text from a friend, and I had to go. And I meant to tell you.”

  Alison was actually a pretty damn bad liar, but Violet didn’t seem to notice. Probably because it didn’t occur to her that an authority figure would lie to her. That adults were just as fallible as teenagers. A strange thing, considering she had been abandoned by her mother. But a testament to her age. Things were generally black-and-white to her. Kathleen was bad because she had left. And she didn’t know what to make of Cain at this point because he had stayed, but she also blamed him a little bit. Which made a lot of sense when he really thought about it. That dealing with their relationship was hard because it contained both good and bad feelings. It was hard enough for him, and he was a grown-ass man. It was probably a lot harder for a sixteen-year-old. Not for the first time he wondered if he waffled between being too easy on Violet, and too hard on her.

  Honesty was just going to have to be the new policy.

  Except when it came to his sex life.

  “Well, I need you to supervise me before this cake comes out of the oven, or I’m going to flatten it again. And I’m getting really tired of looking at sunken cake.”

  “It’s just something you have to learn, Violet,” Alison said, her voice assuring. “It’s not a failure, it’s just part of learning. You don’t get things right the first time. There’s no guarantee you’ll get them right the second time. Or the third time. But you’ll never get it right if you stop.”

  Her words were applicable to a host of things, and hit a little too close to home.

  “You could be a motivational speaker,” Violet said, and he had to fight the urge to scold her for her tone. Alison could certainly handle herself. And the interaction.

  “I thought of that. But I prefer life with a little bit more butter.” She looked over at Cain and treated him to a secret smile. One his daughter completely missed because she was fully absorbed in her own situation.

  He wanted...well, he wanted to be alone with Alison. He wanted to move up behind her and grip her hips. Draw her back into his body so she could feel just what she was doing to him without even trying.

  But since they were currently in the kitchen watching his daughter bake a cake he figured that was probably an inappropriate thought to have.

  Still, that didn’t stop him from taking a long, appreciative look at her as she bent over the counter, talking to Violet about baking times and rising cakes and...luckily he was thirty-eight and not eighteen, or the cake wouldn’t be the only thing rising.

  “So, Violet,” Alison said, her tone light and conversational. At least she was forcing it to try and sound light and conversational. “If you aren’t busy tomorrow, I have that wedding I’m bringing dessert to, and I would love help with the service.”

  Violet looked up. “Oh. Like with serving guests?”

  “Yes. I always go to the reception to cut and serve cake because there’s a particular trick to it. If you want to help me, I’d pay you your regular hourly rate and you’d get a little more experience to add to your resume.” Alison shot Cain a quick look. “I can take you from the bakery and bring you home after.”

  “Dad?” Violet asked.

  “Fine with me,” he said, and managed to not add anything about how it was funny she seemed perfectly capable of asking his permission to do things like go to a supervised work shift, but not if she could go underage drinking in a barn.

  They were being civil. So he was going to be civil.

  “Okay, then,” Violet said, “that would be great.”

  Violet actually looked happy for the rest of the cake-baking session. And Cain could only marvel at it. He ended up staying in the kitchen the entire time. And about halfway through he realized it wasn’t just interesting because of Alison’s body.

  No, it was good to watch Violet do something she enjoyed. To watch her succeed. He even liked seeing Alison excel, liked watching her operate in her natural environment.

  Of course, at some point, the whole thing started to feel a little overly domestic to him. And that only gave him a renewed sense that he and Alison really needed to keep what was happening between them, well, between them.

  One thing he wasn’t in the market for was this kind of happy-family situation. Mostly because he knew that ultimately that didn’t exist. Happy families. It was all a weird smoke screen. Something that lasted for a couple of years at best before it started to erode like rocks being pounded by waves.

  Or, in the case of his first marriage, waves on sand.

  Drunken lust and a baby were a pretty crappy foundation. Both he and Kathleen had tried for a long time to build off it. But ultimately, it wasn’t strong enough to bear the weight of the life that had piled up on top of it.

  He hadn’t really seen evidence of anything else being a whole lot better. His brother Finn and his fiancée, Lane, were a notable exception. But then, the two of them had been friends for years before they had ever taken their relationship to the next level. And he figured if anybody had a chance of making it work it was people like that. People who knew everything there was to know. Who had no surprises left.

  He couldn’t imagine that being remotely as hot as what he and Alison had. As that kind of dark, forbidden attraction that had a shot of the unfamiliar in it, making the whole thing a pretty potent cocktail.

  He supposed, though, that for the purposes of what Finn seemed to want—home and family and all of that—familiarity was better than heat. Cain just wanted the heat. And nothing else.

  He was already up to his eyeballs in domesticity. He didn’t need any more.

  This time, when the cake came out of the oven it was perfect. Violet’s exuberance at the victory was enough
to make Cain momentarily forget everything. Everything except for seeing Violet enjoy something. Seeing her feel proud of herself. It wasn’t until he saw that smile—a smile that went all the way to her eyes and made them sparkle—that he realized that all the little spots of happiness in between her moods weren’t the kind of happy she used to be.

  But this was.

  “I’m going to have to leave that with you,” Alison said, patting Violet on the back. “But it’s perfect. And I know that you have frosting down since you’ve been helping with that for a couple of weeks now. Just let me know what kind you want.”

  “Just buttercream is fine,” Violet said, surveying her work. “I can’t believe it. I actually did it.”

  “It’s not that hard,” Alison said. “You just needed a little bit of confidence. Maybe we move on to piecrust next?”

  “But aren’t there like nine thousand ways to mess that up?”

  Alison laughed. “Oh, at least ten thousand. But you mastered this after it got in your head. So I wouldn’t worry too much about anything else. If you don’t get it right the first time, or the second time, or the third time... Maybe on the tenth time. And that’s okay.”

  Alison began collecting her things.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Cain said. “I think I might go work on the barn house for a while anyway.”

  “Barn house?” Alison asked.

  “I’m remodeling an old barn for Violet and me to move into eventually.”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m super excited to go move to a barn while we could be living here.”

  “But I’m cleaning a stall out just for you,” he said. “How about giving me some credit?”

  “Fine.” Violet turned to Alison. “My dad is making us a really great place to live. Because he’s awesome and he builds awesome things. And he isn’t going to make me sleep in a stall.”

  “Good,” Alison said, “because I was genuinely concerned that he might.”

  “Yeah. Well. Good night, Violet,” Cain said, as he moved toward the door. “I’m just...going to check on some things in the barn.”