by Deb Kastner
“Look who just rode in, Caden.”
Seth grinned and tipped his hat to her.
“It’s your cowboy father. Er...is that what you’re going to have him call you? Father?”
His gaze widened, the burden of responsibility weighing even more heavily on his shoulders as he realized that was just one more decision he had to make, out of the hundreds he’d already made and the millions more ahead of him.
“I haven’t even had a chance to really think about it. I’ve been talking to my lawyer about the steps I’ll need to take to legally adopt him as my son, so I guess that would be an important step.”
“And probably the sooner, the better, so Caden can get used to it. What do you think? Father? Dad? Daddy? Pop?”
“I called my own father Daddy, at least when I was a little tyke like Caden. I’d feel honored to follow in my father’s footsteps—and hope to be able to do half as good a job as he did parenting Samantha and me. We were a handful.”
“Did you hear that, Caden?” Rachel raised the toddler from her hip to seat him in the saddle in front of Seth. “Do you want your daddy to take you on a horsey ride?”
Caden squealed with delight and pumped his arms and legs with such joyful abandon that Seth could barely contain him in the saddle, never mind keep Windsong steady. Fortunately, the horse was calm and patient. Seth wasn’t a great horseman yet, but somehow he managed to walk the horse around the corral a couple of times.
He couldn’t contain the smile that split his face. He knew Caden’s excitement was over being on a large animal well off the ground, but his own heart was internally performing the same squealing pump-and-wiggle dance.
Daddy.
So this was what it was like to care for another person more than he cared for himself. A peculiar array of emotions slammed into him so suddenly and so intensely that it was all he could do to keep his back straight and his boots in the stirrups as he continued to lead Windsong around the corral with Caden propped securely just behind the saddle horn.
Despite the tragedy that had put them here, he and Caden were now a family. He would love and cherish this little piece of humanity with everything in him.
All of a sudden, Caden wasn’t a burden.
He was a blessing.
“Say horsey,” Rachel said, waving to get Caden’s attention as she snapped a picture with her cell phone. She held it up so Seth could see what she’d taken.
“There you go, you two. Your first family photo.”
Chapter Four
“Has Seth asked you out on a date yet?” Zooey teased as she helped Rachel unhook the swings from the old swing set in anticipation of tearing the entire thing down.
It had been a crazy week with Seth learning to be a new father. Rachel had spent several evenings with him, sometimes working on modifying his apartment, other times simply enjoying playing with the toddler.
She’d told him multiple times that he didn’t need to worry about her backyard plans, that she’d find another way to get the work done on her play set, but he’d insisted on starting on his project on this bright Saturday morning in June.
To Rachel’s relief, Zooey was in a good mood for a change and had even offered to help break down all of the day care’s old playground equipment. Rachel suspected that Zooey’s good mood had more to do with the fact that Seth and Caden were on their way than any genuine desire to help her mother.
But at this point Rachel was grasping at straws with the girl and would take whatever pleasant interaction she could get, even with strings attached. Zooey had really taken to Caden in the past week, giving the toddler extra attention when she wasn’t attending summer school. If Rachel had to use Seth and Caden as bait in order to spend more time with her daughter without it turning into an argument, so be it.
“No,” Rachel answered, using a hand drill to remove some of the screws that held the play set together. She was both systematic and judicious, not wanting the whole set to collapse on top of her before Seth arrived to direct the project. “Seth has not asked me out. And he’s not going to. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention the harebrained scheme you and Lizzie came up with at the auction. I already came clean with him and told him all about it, so there’s no sense bringing it up again and putting him—well, everyone, really—in an awkward position, right?”
Zooey shrugged. “I don’t see how you two going out on a date would be awkward. It might just be nice, you know. Dinner and a movie? How long has it been, Mom, since you’ve been in a relationship? I mean, really.”
Too long.
Rachel wouldn’t even know what to do on a date or how to act. She felt certain it would be beyond awkward.
Especially if her date was Seth.
“Give the poor man a break. He just found out he’s going to be an adoptive father. He doesn’t have time to be asking women out on dates.”
“But that’s what makes you two a perfect match. Single mom. Single dad. Totally gorgeous guy. Pretty woman. Mom, really. What more could you ask for?”
“For you to keep your nose out of my business,” Rachel replied promptly, wrinkling her nose at her daughter.
Zooey sputtered out a laugh, knowing Rachel was teasing. She didn’t sound at all convinced.
“I’m not looking for a relationship right now, and he’s definitely not. He’s barely keeping his head above water with all that has just gotten dumped on him.”
“Then he needs a woman’s help now more than ever. You’d be great for him, Mom. I know you would.” She paused and frowned, her forehead wrinkling as if she were pondering some great thought. “You should be in the market for a husband, or at least a boyfriend. Why aren’t you?”
“In a relationship? When would I have time to date? Between operating my day care and raising you—”
“Mom,” Zooey protested, the word sharp and piercing. “I’m sixteen.”
Precisely the point, Rachel thought but didn’t dare say aloud.
Boys. Dating. Parties. Peer pressure. She needed to keep a closer eye on her daughter than ever.
“I know you don’t want to think about it, but I’m not going to be around forever,” Zooey continued. “College is only a couple of years away and then I’ll be off living my own life. What are you going to do then?”
Zooey’s words jabbed Rachel’s heart. She knew them to be true and right—the way life should be—but that didn’t make it any easier. She’d spent half her life caring for her daughter. What would it be like when she was gone?
Lonely.
For the single mother, it was the empty-nest syndrome in spades.
She didn’t know what to say to Zooey. She didn’t want her daughter to worry about her when she should be thinking about her future.
Relief rushed through her when Seth let himself into the backyard through the side gate she’d unlocked for him.
“Good morning, pretty ladies,” he called.
Whew. Saved by the bell—or rather, the handsome man. Now she wouldn’t have to continue with the excruciating task of answering Zooey’s question—especially because she had no idea what her future would look like when Zooey struck out on a life of her own. She’d been so focused on securing Zooey’s future that she had neglected her own.
It was a sobering thought, but one she couldn’t dwell on. Not with Seth here.
Seth would have caught any woman’s eye this morning, not just Rachel’s. He had changed up his look, favoring a black T-shirt that hugged his muscular frame and a Texas Rangers baseball cap, along with bright blue running shoes rather than his usual cowboy hat and boots.
He was holding a squirming Caden under his arm like a football, just above the tool belt strapped around his waist. Rachel’s first and natural instinct was to dash forward and correct Seth for the way he held the boy
, but then she realized both he and the toddler were making zooming noises while Caden stretched his arms out like the wings of an airplane.
It was a very guy kind of thing to do, and it warmed her heart to see the way the handsome suddenly-a-cowboy-daddy and Caden were bonding.
“Not a word to Seth about what we’ve been talking about,” Rachel cautioned Zooey from under her breath as Seth put the little boy on the ground. Rachel cast a sidelong look at her daughter to make sure she’d been listening.
If she saw so much as a mischievous sparkle in Zooey’s eyes, she was immediately going to send her on an errand to pick up...something...she needed right away.
From Australia.
As it turned out, Rachel needn’t have worried. The moment Zooey spotted Caden, she rushed forward and swept the toddler into her arms, asking him if he wanted to dig in the sand with her.
The oversize sandbox contained not only shovels and pails but a large collection of toy dump trucks, bulldozers and a toddler-sized backhoe to scoop the sand up and into the backs of the trucks.
Zooey wasn’t the type of teen to worry too much about fashion or invest in clothes that had to be kept immaculate. Dressed in jeans and a baggy bright green T-shirt, she sank on her knees into the sand and pulled Caden onto her lap, showing him how to use a bulldozer to push the sand into a pile and then scoop it up with the backhoe and haul it around with a dump truck. To Caden’s delight, she even made truck noises to go along with the various movements.
Rachel shook her head at the incredible sight.
If she didn’t know better, she would never have guessed that Zooey was an only child with no brothers and sisters to play in the sandbox with. She’d always interacted regularly with Rachel’s day-care children, but the scene playing out before her somehow went beyond anything in Zooey’s past.
She and Caden almost appeared to be brother and sister, even with the age gap between them. Zooey was clearly taken with Caden, and the little boy was smitten with her, as well. It was the cutest thing to watch, and Rachel’s heart warmed.
After a brief discussion with Seth, she waved at Zooey. “Seth and I are going to unload some more tools from the back of his truck. Are you going to be okay with Caden for a few more minutes?”
Zooey grinned, her face beaming with delight. “We’re fine right here, aren’t we, Caden?”
Caden giggled and tossed a handful of sand into a nearby bucket.
Rachel’s throat pinched and she snagged in a breath. It was a poignant moment, watching Zooey and the toddler having fun together.
“Wow,” Seth said with a low whistle as he and Rachel headed out front. “Like mother, like daughter, huh? She definitely picked up your nurturing genes. Look how great she’s doing with Caden. She’s a real natural at this. You can tell Caden already loves her.”
“I agree,” Rachel said. “She’s always had a special gift for children.”
Her memories were bittersweet.
“From the time she was about four years old, she started helping me out in my day care. At first she’d just play with the kids, but as she got older, she’d read to them, feed them snacks, give them hugs if they fell down and scraped their knees. She’d bandage them up and kiss all their owies away.”
“Sounds like maybe she’d make a good doctor,” he commented as he sorted through some of his tools.
Rachel sighed. “I used to think so, too, until she hit Algebra II and didn’t pass the course. I’m not sure if it’s because math is not her thing, or if she just wasn’t applying herself. I believe that part of it is that she lost interest in doing well in school.”
And she started hanging out with a questionable group of friends who influenced her in a bad way, but Rachel wasn’t about to admit that aloud.
“I guess who can really blame her, right?” Seth said, chuckling. “Algebra II is when they start you on imaginary and irrational numbers, isn’t it? Why in the world would you want to work with irrational numbers? And don’t even get me started on imaginary. If they aren’t real, why would you want to do equations with them?”
“I excelled in language arts and literature when I was in school,” she agreed. “Irrational and imaginary apparently have entirely different definitions to science nerds.”
Seth belted out a laugh. “Good point.”
He grabbed a couple of sawhorses and leaned them against the truck, then handed her a circular saw.
“Careful. It’s a little heavy,” he warned her as he picked up the sawhorses and carried them, one under each arm.
The saw was heavy and was awkward in her grasp, much like how her emotions played out nearly every time Seth was in her presence.
Heavy and awkward.
She liked him, and she liked being around him. Most of the time she felt comfortable with him, but she couldn’t always account for her feelings when their eyes met and her stomach flipped or a spark of electricity zapped through her.
That, she was keeping a major secret. If Zooey ever even suspected Seth had a crazy effect on her, she would never hear the end of it. Besides, it wasn’t like it was a big deal. He was an attractive man. There was nothing strange or unusual in noticing that, particularly when she had no intention of doing anything about it.
“I don’t know that I had a favorite subject in high school, but I did enjoy playing sports.”
“Which one?”
He chuckled. “Oh, all of them. I especially liked track and soccer. I hadn’t grown into my full height yet, so football was something of a challenge for me. My smaller frame had its advantages, though. I was a decent running back, and I could slip through the lines because of my size. I would pretty much do anything as long as I was outside running in the fresh air and not cooped up in a stale classroom.”
She could easily imagine Seth as a youth, antsy and squirrelly and not wanting to feel boxed in by four walls. Maybe that was why parkour appealed to him so much. He could jump on the walls rather than be smothered by them.
“I don’t know why the school system thinks it needs to torture every one of its students with upper-level math. Who actually uses that stuff?”
“Right?” he agreed, shaking his head. “I mean, I suppose if you want to be a chemist or a rocket scientist, you need to know equations and formulas and Xs and Os.”
She laughed at his misuse of algebraic formulas. She’d never seen an equation with XO before.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an O in a mathematical formula, though I have seen some at the bottom of a love letter.” She blushed. “On television, I mean.”
She sped forward so as to cover her own embarrassment. She’d never received a love letter in her life.
“Honestly, I’ve never used algebra at all,” she said, “other than solving for a single X, which comes in handy when I’m missing one variable of a real-life equation. Otherwise, I don’t use upper math. Ever.”
“Me neither. I’ve got to say, I am freaking out about keeping the books at the Bar H ranch. I’m not sure I can afford to hire a regular accountant, but I don’t know how I am going to be able to get along without one.”
“Let me help you,” Rachel offered. “I’ve always done my own books for the day care. I can show you how to use the spreadsheets you’ll need for taxes and work with you until you’re comfortable doing it on your own.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t. I offered. And it’s no big deal, especially after all you’re doing for me with the playhouse. Just let me know when it’s convenient for you and we’ll take a look at your ledgers together. I’m not familiar with the business side of ranching, but tallying income and expenses is the same no matter what kind of business you’re running.”
“It’s not paper ledgers. It’s some computer program that’s supposed to make things easier. So
far I haven’t found that to be the case. It may as well all be written in Greek for all the good it does me.”
“Trust me. Once you learn the program, entering or scanning your numbers into the computer is way easier than using a paper ledger, like I had to do when I first started my day care. The computer does all the hard calculations for you.”
“If you say so.”
She didn’t know how the conversation had gone from Zooey and Caden to accounting, but after seeing Seth’s relieved expression when she said she would assist him, she was glad they’d set off on that particular bunny trail.
She wanted to help him, however she could, and it wasn’t just because he was helping her prepare her day care to pass inspection.
His success was Caden’s success, and that little boy deserved the best.
“If you ever find a use for upper arithmetic, be sure to let me know,” she teased. “I’ve been around longer than you and I’ve never seen it.”
“You make it sound like you’re ancient. You’re not exactly an old lady. What are you, maybe—”
“Stop right there, mister.” She nearly dropped the circular saw in order to hold up a hand. “Haven’t you ever been told not to guess at a woman’s age?”
He shrugged. “I’m just telling it how I see it.”
“Let’s just say I’m older than you. And I’ve seen a lot in my...years.”
Rachel didn’t miss the flash of sorrow and grief that crossed Seth’s gaze and immediately began to apologize.
“I’m so sorry. That was a thoughtless remark for me to make. You may be a few years younger than me, but I know you’ve seen and experienced the world in ways I never have. It’s not like you’re fresh out of high school. I imagine two tours in the military made you grow up pretty fast.”
She didn’t mention Luke’s and Tracy’s deaths, but she knew they were heavy on Seth’s heart.
With effort, he turned his frown into a smile. “Yeah. Well, that may be true. I have seen a lot, and not all of it good. But I don’t like to think about those times, much less talk about them. Anyway, my biggest challenge ever is right in front of me, hanging out in the sandbox getting ready to—”
