The frown on Janie’s face told him that the girl wasn’t capitulating, at least not yet. She was being defiant and he knew that he needed to convince her. He told her the only thing that he could. “I am never going to try to replace Hank.
“You’re right, you know. Your ‘real’ dad is the one who was there for you, who raised you and encouraged you to do your best even when it wasn’t easy. He got to spend the years with you that I couldn’t, because I didn’t know about you. I can never have that, just like I can never replace him.
“But I would very much like to get to know you, Janie, and get to spend some more time with you if you’ll let me. And if you’re willing to give me that chance, I think you’ll get to see that I’m not really such a bad guy after all.”
Dan looked at his daughter for a long moment, then put his hand out to her. “What do you say, Janie? Will you give me another chance?”
Janie frowned and chewed on her lower lip, debating whether or not to believe him. Still debating, she looked down at his hand. And then, finally, she slipped hers into it.
“I guess I can give you one more chance,” she told him.
Dan felt as if his very insides had lit up like the candles on a birthday cake.
“I promise I won’t disappoint you,” he told his daughter, solemnly shaking the small hand.
“We’ll see,” Janie said, sounding every bit the way her mother did. “But I’m not going back to my mother,” she warned.
“I understand. But I’d like you to think about it. She really misses you a lot and she really was trying to do her best for you. You have always been her first priority.”
Janie shrugged, trying hard to sound distant. “We’ll see.”
“That’s all anyone can ask,” Dan told his daughter. “And it means a lot. To your mom and to me.”
“Yeah,” was all Janie would say, but from where he was standing, it sounded positive to Dan.
The first step had been taken, he thought. Now all he needed was to get Janie to keep walking.
Chapter Eighteen
The moment it looked as if he and Janie had finished talking for now, Hank seemed to materialize out of the shadows and swooped in, looking extremely solemn.
“I’ll see you out,” Hank said.
It wasn’t an offer. It was a command.
Dan felt like he was given his walking papers. Since he had said what he had come to say to Janie and the situation looked at least somewhat hopeful, he acquiesced to Hank’s offer.
“Sure. See you, Janie.”
The girl merely nodded, going back to her TV program.
Hank walked beside him in silence until they were at the front door again. Opening it, the stone-faced man surprised him by coming out with him to the front porch.
Once outside, Hank pulled the door closed behind him. It was obvious that the man wanted to talk, so Dan braced himself.
“I appreciate you not trying to strong-arm Janie into anything,” Hank told him.
He’d had a feeling that Hank had been in the background somewhere, listening. It had made him doubly cautious as he’d chosen his words.
“I was serious when I said that all I wanted was a chance to get to know her,” he told Hank.
Arms crossed before his chest, Hank stood studying him for a long moment, saying nothing. Dan had almost turned to leave when Hank finally said something further. And what he said really surprised him.
“You know she never got over you. Anne,” Hank added, although there was no doubt who he was talking about. “I knew that when I married her. But I hoped that in time, she’d learn to love me. Not the way she loved you,” he allowed, knowing that wasn’t possible. “That kind of thing only comes along once in a lifetime. But there are other kinds of love,” he said philosophically. “Gentle, patient kinds of love.
“But I learned that there was never going to be any room in Anne’s heart for any other man but you. Eventually, I gave up trying to find a tiny space in that heart for me.
“I’m telling you this,” Hank went on, “because if you’re not sure about your feelings for her, you should leave now before you do any more damage to Anne—or to Janie. I won’t stand for either one of them being hurt,” Hank said adamantly. “They don’t deserve it.”
“No, they don’t,” Dan agreed quietly. “And I would die before I was the reason that either one of them wound up being hurt again.”
“You did before,” Hank pointed out. “You left Anne twelve years ago, vanishing out of her life without a single word.”
He knew all that and the act weighed heavily on him now. “The circumstances were different back then.”
“Anne was still Anne,” Hank reminded him.
It wasn’t that he wanted Hank not to blame him. He just felt that the rancher needed to understand why things had happened the way they had.
“And at the time I left, I felt that she deserved to be with someone who was better than me,” Dan told him. The words seemed to be coming out of their own accord.
Hank frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he wanted to know. He couldn’t help thinking that Dan was just attempting to snow him.
Okay, it was time, Dan decided. Time to let the other man know why he had left Rust Creek Falls and why he had stayed away as long as he had.
“It means that at the time I left, I really didn’t feel worthy of anybody, least of all someone like Anne.” Dan took a breath before he went on. The words hurt. There was no way of getting away from that. “I felt that I was responsible for my parents’ deaths.”
Hank looked at him, confused. “I heard that your parents died in a car accident.”
“They did,” Dan said grimly.
Dan blaming himself for something like that didn’t make any sense to Hank. Unless... The thought struck him.
“Were you driving the car at the time?” Hank asked.
“No, but I was the reason that they were driving.” Dan saw that Hank looked more confused than ever.
He hated this story, hated having to revisit it. But he felt that Hank needed to hear it so that the rancher could see Dan wasn’t just some self-centered cowboy who came and went whenever the whim suited him without any thought to the people who mattered. Namely Annie and Janie.
Wishing he could shield himself somehow, knowing that just wasn’t possible, Dan finally launched into the story that changed his life—and everyone else’s.
“My two older brothers, Luke and Bailey, went out drinking one night. I went with them but at the time I didn’t know that was what they intended to do. It wasn’t too long before they were both much too drunk to drive home safely. I didn’t have the keys to the car and Luke wouldn’t give me his. I was afraid we’d all wind up in an accident—or worse—so I called my parents to ask them to come pick us up.”
Hank shrugged, not hearing anything out of the ordinary. “Sounds like a scene that happens every night all over the country,” he acknowledged. “Parents come get their inebriated kids all the time.”
“Except that those parents all get home in one piece,” Dan said grimly. “Mine didn’t.” He looked at Hank. The rancher was obviously waiting to hear more. “Don’t you see? If I hadn’t called them to pick us up, my parents would still be alive.”
Hank didn’t quite see it that way. “Maybe yes, maybe no. When your time comes, you can’t outrun your fate,” the rancher said philosophically. And then he looked at Dan sharply. “Is this what you’ve been running from all this time?”
“Yes,” Dan said heavily.
“A lot of things to feel guilty about in this world,” Hank said. “Not being there for a good woman when she needed you is one. Not being there for your kid when she was growing up is another. But being responsible for your folks’ deaths in a car accident when you weren�
��t anywhere near that car? Get over yourself, Stockton,” he told Dan. “You’re not in charge of everything going on in the universe. Stuff happens and you’re just another bystander.”
And then he surprised Dan by putting his hand out to him in a show of tentative friendship.
Dan took it, finding himself on the receiving end of a hearty handshake.
“Thanks for trusting me with your story,” Hank told him. “Now stop wasting time talking to me and go patch things up with Anne,” he ordered.
Relieved, feeling as if a rock had been lifted from his shoulders, Dan murmured a heartfelt “Thanks” as he hurried off to his truck.
“Good luck,” Hank called after him.
Dan acknowledged his words with a quick wave just before he got in behind the steering wheel.
* * *
The urgent knocking on her door startled Anne. Her first thought was that something had happened to Janie and someone was here to notify her.
Fairly running to the door, she threw it open and was startled to find Danny standing on her doorstep.
A wave of déjà vu passed over her, except that the first time, Danny’s knocking hadn’t been nearly so urgent as it was now.
She was about to ask what was wrong, but she never got the chance because the very next moment, Dan was scooping her up in his arms and then twirling her around, stealing her breath away, not to mention making her dizzy.
“No more running away,” Danny declared, setting her down on her feet inside her house. He held her shoulders in an effort to keep her from losing her balance and falling over. “Even if you decide that you don’t want us to be together, I want you to know that I’m not going anywhere anymore, and I’ll be here any time you need me for any reason.”
Annie looked at him uncertainly. “Then you’re staying?”
“I’m staying,” he confirmed. “I’m moving back to Rust Creek Falls permanently so I can get to really know our daughter—and be here for her, as well. I want to be a hands-on dad, not just one in name only.”
She was afraid to believe him, but she had to admit, she was sorely tempted to. This what she’d been dreaming about all these years: Danny, coming back and wanting to take care of her and their daughter.
“And you’re not going to change your mind tomorrow?” Anne asked.
“Not tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that times infinity,” he replied. “I’m here to stay, Annie. Besides, where else would I go? The only woman I have ever loved lives here, so I can’t go anywhere else.”
He had never said those words out loud to her, even though she’d hoped and prayed that he would. “You love me?” she asked, wanting to hear him say it again.
“I love you,” he repeated. “I loved you twelve years ago. I love you now and I will go on loving you until the day I die. Maybe a little longer than that,” he added with a smile.
But Anne felt as if she needed a lot of assurance after what she’d been through. She was not about to begin building castles in the sky on a foundation of sand the way she had before.
“I can’t help wondering if you’re in love with me, or if you’re just in love with the girl I used to be. The girl without a serious thought in her head,” she recalled ruefully. Her eyes met his. “Because I’m not that girl anymore.”
“I know that,” Dan told her. “I know you’re not the same person you were then. You’ve done a lot of growing and maturing over the years. You became a responsible mother and you were even willing to marry someone you weren’t in love with just to give your daughter a stable life. And when you realized that you felt Hank deserved someone who loved him for himself, you divorced him even though doing that meant you had to make sacrifices in order to provide for your daughter. That’s not something a girl ‘without a serious thought in her head’ would do. That’s something a responsible woman would do,” he told her.
“Twelve years ago,” he went on, “I promised to protect you and stay by your side and I blew it. Right now, all I want to do is spend the rest of my life making it up to you—if you’ll let me.” He took her hands in his. “Will you?”
Anne stared at him, wondering if she understood him correctly.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” she asked, afraid to let herself believe that. What if she’d somehow misunderstood him? She didn’t relish looking like a fool—or having her heart broken a second time.
Danny grinned. “I guess I’m not really any good at this,” he confessed. “But in my defense, I’ve never proposed before.”
“Proposed,” Anne echoed, her eyes widening as she stared at the man in her living room.
“Proposed,” Dan repeated with feeling. Taking her hands again and this time pressing them to his chest right over his heart, he said, “Anne Lattimore, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life loving you. Will you marry me?”
He saw tears shining in her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. “Tears,” he said. “Are they good tears, or bad tears?”
Anne tried to answer, but her throat was completely choked with emotion and for a moment, she couldn’t say a word.
Second guessing the reason for her silence, Dan wanted to put her mind at ease and told her, “Hank gave me his approval.”
That surprised her.
“He what?” she cried, not really certain she liked the fact that her fate was being hashed out by the men in her life.
“He was trying to protect you, saying that if I wasn’t completely committed to you—and to Janie—then I needed to go back to Colorado. That was when I explained to him why I left in the first place. He heard me out and then he came around.”
She knew that sharing his reasons with Hank had to have been painful for Danny. “You did that?” she asked. “You told him what happened?”
“I would do anything if it meant that we could be together,” he told Anne. “I went to talk to Janie about things. I got her to listen and I think she’ll come around.” All he wanted to do was show Anne how much he loved her.
And now that he had asked her to marry him, he wanted it to become a reality, but he felt he shouldn’t rush her. Dan struggled to rein himself in.
“We don’t have to set a date yet,” he continued. “I just wanted you to know that I mean business because this time, I’m not planning on letting you get away—not ever again.”
“You mean business,” she repeated with a trace of amusement.
“Yes.”
A wicked smile flirted with her lips. “Well, if you really mean business, then why don’t you show me?”
“And how do you suggest I do that?” he asked her, bemused.
“You’re a very smart man, Danny Stockton,” she told him, lacing her arms around her neck. “I think you can figure it out.”
“How many chances do I get?” he teased.
She could feel her heart accelerate as it swelled with joy. “As many as you need,” she told him.
“Oh, good,” he said just before he lowered his lips to hers. “Because I intend to use them all.”
And he very nearly did.
Epilogue
“I can’t believe that we’ve owned our old ranch this entire time and never realized it,” Bella Stockton Jones said to her brothers in amazement.
She, Jamie and Dan moved around the first floor of the old house at Sunshine Farm, trying to avoid cobwebs as they wove their way through an incredible amount of dust and even more old memories.
“We still wouldn’t have known about it if Zach Dalton hadn’t come to me and asked if I would consider selling the old ranch to him,” Jamie said, tugging back a drape and unleashing a swirl of dust.
“I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Jamie continued. “That the ranch didn’
t belong to us. But Zach insisted that it did. He said that he’d looked it up in county records and according to them, the property was still ours.”
“If it belonged to you, why didn’t your grandparents tell you?” Annie asked, puzzled. She’d insisted on coming along for this walk-through in case Danny needed a little moral support for his return to his old family homestead.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” Dan told her. “I have no idea why those two old people did anything.” He wasn’t bitter toward his grandparents at this point—he was just sad.
“Maybe they felt too put-upon just taking care of us and didn’t want to be bothered looking into anything else. They did take in two of us,” Bella said, adding, “Grudgingly.”
“Those days are best left behind us,” Dan told his siblings. He had no desire to dig up any more painful memories. They had all had enough of those to last them a lifetime and a half and it was time to move forward.
“I guess we have a lot to thank the Daltons for,” Jamie said, crossing to the other end of the room and pulling back more drapes.
“You mean for telling us about the old Sunshine Farm?” Dan asked.
“That and airing that program of the triplets and me that Travis had documented. If it hadn’t been for that—and for him—you would have never come back to Rust Creek Falls,” Jamie pointed out.
Dan’s hand tightened around Annie’s. “Oh, I’d like to think that I would have come back eventually. But you’re right,” he agreed, looking at Jamie. “Travis was instrumental in making me finally decide that it was time to at least come back to see how everyone was doing.”
“So now that you’ve taken a look around, what are you going to do with this place?” Anne asked, directing her question to all three Stocktons.
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