The Daddy Survey

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Mommy, Mommy!” Libby practically jumped up and down beside the man’s table. Her voice carried clear across the dining room. “Mr. Sloan has a ranch with horses and kitties and everything and he’s part Indian and he thinks you’re real pretty.”

  Oh, Lord, Emily thought as fire stung her cheeks. Please open a hole in the floor and let me fall in.

  But, as was usually the case, no convenient hole appeared. She had no chance of falling out of sight. No chance that the man wouldn’t notice the heat flushing her cheeks.

  He chuckled, and so did several other customers at nearby tables.

  Emily’s face burned hotter.

  “Ladies,” the man said. “I think we’ve embarrassed your mother.”

  “Did we, Mommy?” Libby asked, fighting a giggle. “Did we embarrass you?”

  Deciding there was no graceful way to ignore her youngest daughter’s comments, Emily rolled her eyes. “I’m usually embarrassed whenever you blab everything you know to the entire world.”

  “Ah, Mommy.” Libby snickered. “But it was true. Wasn’t it, Mr. Sloan?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man said as Emily set his plate down before him.

  Emily hadn’t meant to look at him again, but the good-natured laughter in his voice drew her gaze.

  “Every word of it.” And he winked. Not at her daughters, but at her.

  Good grief. Did men still do that? Wink at women? It seemed more like something she would see on television rather than have it happen to her.

  He’d winked. What was she supposed to do about it? Say thank-you? Scowl? Flutter her lashes?

  What she felt like doing was joining her daughters in a decidedly childish giggle.

  Good grief.

  “That looks like manna from heaven,” the man said of the food on his plate.

  Feeling like an idiot for standing there staring at him like a schoolgirl with her first big crush, Emily hurriedly set his cutlery down in front of him. “I’ll get you some more tea right away. Girls, run along now and let the man eat.”

  “But, Mommy,” Libby cried.

  “They’re fine,” the man said. “Really. If it’s all right with you, I’d like them to stay and keep me company.”

  Pervert? Emily wondered, or nice man who liked children? Having no way of knowing, she opted for safety over the pleas of her daughters and a stranger. “That’s very nice of you,” she told him, “but they’ve bothered you long enough. Girls.” She gave them the look, the one they knew not to argue with.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Janie nudged Libby to let her out of the booth. “G’bye, Mr. Sloan.”

  “G’bye, Mr. Sloan,” Libby echoed.

  Emily nearly rolled her eyes again at their pitiful tone of voice.

  “’Bye, girls,” the man answered back.

  Emily followed the girls and shooed them onto the last two stools at the counter, where they would be out of everyone’s way. A minute later she was back at the man’s table refilling his iced tea.

  Grateful for her promptness, Sloan smiled and thanked her. “Those are some great girls you’ve got. You must be proud of them.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a slight smile. “I am. Can I get you anything else? Maybe a piece of apple pie for dessert? Baked fresh this morning.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  She placed his ticket facedown on the table and left him to finish his meal. Sloan watched her walk away. She stopped at the counter and whispered something to her girls.

  Her baby-sitter must be sick today, Sloan figured, so she’d had to bring the girls to work with her.

  But the impression he’d gotten from the girls and their survey was that they hung out in the café a lot.

  Raising kids alone was rough on anyone, man or woman. But when it was a woman doing the raising, and she looked as vulnerable and defenseless as a newborn kitten, it had to be more than rough. She couldn’t make much money in a place like this. There didn’t seem to be enough business for tips to be any good. Maybe she couldn’t afford a baby-sitter. Maybe the girls came to work with her every day.

  Would a boss allow that?

  Sloan shrugged and tackled his chicken fry. It was none of his business. Emily Nelson was not a damsel in distress, and he was not her white knight.

  Not that there was anything wrong with someone who needed a helping hand now and then, man or woman. And helping out someone in need, well, that was every person’s responsibility, wasn’t it?

  Just because he’d gone a little overboard and thought he’d fallen in love a couple of times with a couple of damsels in distress—well, one of them had been in genuine need. The other had played him like a fish on a line. Taken advantage of his generous nature.

  Or, as his brothers insisted, she’d merely read the word sucker that they swore was tattooed across his forehead when it came to women.

  He didn’t know why he had a thing for women in need, because if he took the time to envision himself with a wife, she would be a strong woman who could stand on her own beside him, not one who needed his help every time he turned around. Lord bless Connie Sue Walters. She should have cured him of helpless women, but, no, not him. A couple of years after that disaster, he’d fallen for someone new. Donna Daniels had only pretended to be helpless. She had turned out to be about as helpless as a she-bear. She’d had it in mind to convince him to sell his portion of the ranch and buy her a house in town so she could live in a manner to which she would like to have become accustomed.

  No, sir, no more falling for the helpless act again, not for Sloan Chisholm.

  It was a crying shame, he’d always thought, that he couldn’t have fallen for Melanie. Melanie Pruitt lived on the ranch next to theirs. If ever there was a woman strong enough and smart enough to stand beside a man and face whatever came, it had to be Mel. She could ride and rope with the best cowboys, yet when she cleaned up and put on a dress, man, oh, man, she could render the cockiest cowboy speechless. She was a looker, Mel was, and that was a fact.

  If all that wasn’t enough to get Sloan’s attention, she had been in love with him and in hot pursuit since she was five years old.

  Why he’d never been able to return those feelings, he didn’t know. But all he’d ever felt for Mel was a deep and abiding friendship. And now she was over him and thought of him as a friend. He had really missed out. He loved her, but as the little sister he’d never had, not the way a woman deserved to be loved.

  Yes, sir, a crying shame that he always fell for the wrong ones.

  That night as Emily tucked her daughters into the double bed next to hers in their motel room, Libby asked for the fifth time since supper, “You liked Mr. Sloan, didn’t you, Mommy?”

  And for the fifth time since supper, Emily replied, “He seemed like a nice enough man.”

  “But you like him, right?” Libby insisted.

  Emily leaned down and kissed her youngest on the nose. “I don’t know him well enough to say. Now, close your eyes and go to sleep. Both of you,” she added with a smile for Janie.

  “But, Mommy—”

  Emily placed a finger over Libby’s tiny lips. “Sleep.”

  Beneath her finger the tiny lips curved upward. “Okay. G’night, Mommy.”

  Following the round of good-nights came the usual requests for drinks, then back to the bathroom a few minutes later, then another round of kisses and hugs and good-nights. The ritual took an average of thirty minutes each night, and this night was no different. But finally the girls were tucked in, eyes closed, breaths deep and even with sleep.

  God, but they were beautiful. They might look like her, but they had so much of their father in them. Especially Libby, with her outgoing personality and total lack of fear. Janie was quieter, more studious and sober, but had Michael’s keen intelligence.

  For the hundredth time Emily wondered if she was doing the right thing in taking them to Arkansas. It had seemed like her only choice two weeks ago when she’d made the decision to leave C
olorado for a chance at a new job at the factory where her cousin worked in Fort Smith. After her job at the museum gift shop had been eliminated, Emily simply hadn’t been able to find work that paid enough to cover groceries, rent, day care and all the other things two growing young girls needed.

  “Oh, Michael,” she whispered. “Am I doing the right thing?”

  She often asked him questions, but he never answered. Leukemia had taken him two years ago. Her only answers these days were silence and doubt.

  But she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. She had to earn enough money to pay for the repairs on her car. With grim determination, she pulled her checkbook and wallet from her purse and began adding up her meager assets.

  Today’s tips had been decent, thanks in part to the man her daughters had been so enamored of. He’d been more than generous with the cash he’d left on his table.

  A few more customers like him—and if her boss’s wife would come home so he would keep his lecherous hands to himself—and Emily might be able to get her car fixed in another week. Maybe.

  Sloan spent the night at a ranch outside Wagon Mound, New Mexico. Jeb Cotter was so glad to have his mare back, and without that nasty habit of trying to bite her rider—which Caleb and Justin had worked out of her—and without having to drive back to Oklahoma to retrieve her, that he put Sloan up in the guest room of his home rather than the bunkhouse, where visiting cowboys usually stayed.

  When Sloan crawled into bed that night and closed his eyes, he saw two adorable little girls and their delicate, pretty mother. He’d thought about them the better part of the afternoon as he trailered the mare the rest of the way to her home ranch. Thought about them, worried about them.

  It was that worry that had him stopping back at that same café two days later on his way home. Ordinarily he would have taken a different route back to the Cherokee Rose; he liked to see new sights whenever he got the chance. But not this time.

  They were none of his business, really, Emily Nelson and her daughters. He just wanted to look in, check up on them while he had the chance. After today he would never see them again, so what was the harm?

  It was just past noon when he pulled up at the café that sat at the intersection of a state highway and a county road. This time he wasn’t pulling a horse trailer, so he could have parked in front of the café, except business seemed to be brisk. There were no empty spots. He parked across the street, where he’d parked two days earlier, next to the motel entrance.

  When he entered the café a moment later the bell over the door jingled. There were no little girls there to greet him. No delicate, sexy waitress wending her way between the tables.

  He felt enormously let down, which told him he had placed way too much importance on a chance encounter.

  Just as he was telling himself that this was for the best, that he had no business coming here today in the first place, he heard his name.

  “Mr. Sloan!”

  He spotted her immediately. It was the little one, Libby. With a grin and a wave she jumped off the bar stool at the counter and dashed toward him. Janie followed, a bit more sedate than her little sister.

  “Mr. Sloan,” Libby called again, rushing his way, curls bobbing, grin flashing. “You came ba—”

  Sloan saw it all as if it happened in slow motion. The loose edge of carpet, where a seam had come undone, caught the toe of Libby’s small shoe and pitched her forward.

  He cried out her name and lunged, but he knew he’d never reach her in time.

  Libby pitched forward. She tried to catch herself by grabbing toward the table beside her, but all she managed to do was knock a customer’s iced tea into the man’s lap on her way down.

  The customer, a fifty-something man in bib overalls, yelped in surprise.

  But it was the sound of Libby’s tiny head hitting the floor that stopped Sloan’s heart. He dove for her just as she rolled and completed her somersault. Her feet whacked him in the face.

  Sloan was much more concerned about the child than about the slight discomfort of a miniature sneaker or two in the eye. It took him a moment, as she was flailing around pretty good trying to right herself, but finally he had the child by the shoulders.

  “Libby, are you all right?”

  Big blue eyes looked up at him, wide with shock. “I fell down.”

  “You sure did, sweetie. Does your head hurt?”

  Her bottom lip quivered; her eyes filled. “N-no.”

  “Are you sure, baby? You hit the floor pretty hard.”

  She sniffed and rubbed the top of her head. “I’m okay, Mr. Sloan, honest.”

  Sloan quickly felt her head, her arms and legs. Finding nothing broken, he let out a huge sigh of relief. It could have been worse. It could have been disastrous. But little Libby was lucky. He would be, too, he thought ruefully, if he didn’t end up with two black eyes. But as long as Libby was all right, he would gladly bear the bruises.

  He was helping Libby to her feet and Janie was rushing up to check on her sister when the swinging door to the kitchen crashed open and banged against the wall. A short, balding man shaped like a barrel, with a dish towel tied around his ample waist, charged out from the kitchen a half second before the door swung shut again. He brandished a stainless-steel spatula in one beefy paw. “What in blue blazes is going on out here? What have those brats done now?”

  At Sloan’s side, Libby whimpered.

  Sloan felt steam bubble in his ears. He placed a hand on Libby’s shoulder and stepped in front of her. “She’s just fine. Thanks for asking.”

  The man snarled.

  “There’s no call to get ugly,” Sloan said. “It was just a little accident.”

  “Who might you be?” the man demanded.

  “I’m a friend of Libby’s. Who are you?”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “I’m Howard Bisman. I own this place, and I’ll thank you to stay out of things.”

  Sloan gave him a cold, hard smile. “And I’ll thank you to speak more kindly in front of the children.”

  Emily had been in the office getting a new roll of quarters for the cash register when Howard had stormed out of the kitchen. She hadn’t heard the commotion in the dining room, but she’d heard the swinging door bounce off the wall, heard him bellowing about something.

  Her first thought was of the girls. Howard was mad at her and might take it out on them. She rushed from the office.

  “Those kids,” her boss was saying, “have been nothing but trouble since I hired their mother.”

  At his words, Emily froze in midstride. Then she dashed forward. “What’s going on here?”

  “Trouble, that’s what,” Howard snapped. “And it’s these brats of yours, as usual.”

  Emily was normally the soul of politeness and calm. But nobody picked on her children. “Don’t you dare call them brats. Margaret hired me, and she said they were welcome here.”

  “Well, my wife’s not here, and I want these kids out of here before they tear the whole damn place apart.”

  “That’s not fair,” Emily said.

  Sloan had to give her credit for her reasonable tone. If he opened his mouth again his words were bound to come out in a snarl.

  “My girls have never caused any trouble.”

  “They have now,” her boss growled. “I want them gone.”

  Janie sidled up next to her mother.

  Emily put an arm around her eldest daughter. “You know I can’t leave them alone at the motel.”

  “Tough.”

  Sloan had had enough. “Look, mister.”

  “You stay out of this.”

  “I won’t stay out of it.” In his socks, Sloan stood six feet tall. In his boots and hat, as he was now, he hit about six-five. He leaned down over the much shorter man, got right in his face and spoke quietly. “You’re upsetting the ladies.”

  The shorter man took a step back. “This is none of your business.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong. Libby was
coming to see me when she tripped over your torn carpet.”

  “Libby fell?” Emily cried.

  But Sloan was on a roll and didn’t answer. “How long has that loose edge been sticking up like that? I’m surprised somebody hasn’t sued you yet. Libby could have cracked her head open.”

  “Libby?” Emily craned her neck to see around the two men arguing about her and her daughter as if neither were present. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t need this kind of trouble,” Howard claimed, ignoring her question. “Emily, you take your brats and your mouthy friend and get out of here. You’re fired.”

  The room was so quiet, you could have heard ice melt. Emily’s gasp of shock was the only sound.

  Sloan felt the pressure of steam building inside his head. Any minute it was going to shoot out of his ears. “You can’t fire her, you little weasel, she quits.”

  Emily shook off her shock. “Now wait a min—”

  “Fine.” The balding man gave a single, sharp nod that made his cheeks jiggle. “She’s fired from the motel, too. I want her cleared out of there within the hour.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind Sloan knew he was going too far, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “She’ll be out in half that time.”

  Sloan spun on his heel and reached for Libby.

  The child was not there. He turned again, looking, searching.

  “Where’s Libby?” Emily demanded. “Is she all right? You said she fell.”

  Sloan frowned. “She was right here a minute ago.”

  But now, he thought with alarm, she was gone.

  Chapter Two

  They looked everywhere. Beneath every table and chair, behind the counter, in the kitchen, even the men’s room. The search took less than four minutes. Libby was nowhere to be found.

  Emily felt the panic rise up and swell in her throat. Her baby was missing. But that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

  They questioned every customer, but no one remembered seeing what Libby did, where she went, once Sloan and Howard had started arguing.