Page 103 of Risking it for the Cowboy

Then Charlie, too, squatted down and rubbed Daisy’s back. “Sweet girl. Why don’t you tell T. Rex why we showed up earlier than we were supposed to.”

Daisy pulled back, swiping the back of her hand across her splotchy eyes, and reached into her pleather purse. She withdrew the now-creased card from the mail and handed it to Thad. Baby blues staring into baby blues.

He looked down at it. Took a moment to scrutinize it, and rested his thumb across the letters, slowly dragging it from left to right as he read…

“Will you come with me?” Daisy asked, her voice mousy and uncertain.

He chewed his cheek.

“My dad didn’t show for the other ones, and I didn’t have anyone to ask last year, but everyone talks about it at school and asks why I don’t come, and I know you’re not really my daddy, and, and maybe you don’t even wanna be one, but, but maybe you could come as, you know, my friend—”

Thad picked up Daisy’s hand and brought it to his lips. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles, his throat bobbing on a rough swallow.

“Girlie,” he choked out against her knuckles, voice thick. “It’d be my honor.”

*

Thad introduced Daisy to Unicorn, as Faith helped Daisy walk the horse to the stable, to get comfortable in his new environment.

He turned around. “You comin’, babe?” Thad called.

Charlie nodded. “Need the bathroom!”

“Straight down the hall, off the side of the kitchen!” T.R. called.

She slipped up the stairs, her certified letter in hand. Tapped on the door, and a moment later, thudding across the planks pounded closer.

The door opened. “Hey Charlie,” Tyler said. “Don’t need to knock.”

She smiled and crossed the threshold. The metronome of a grandfather clock in the distance ticked. Antler chandelier over the stairs. Polished banister. Old house smell.

Family photographs spanning generations lined the walls like a time capsule, horse and wagons to modern. She slowed, searching for prints of Thaddeus, her eyes landed on a blond tween, leaning on the McClintock Farms wagon, a flock of sisters next to him and parents behind the girls, hands on their shoulders.

She walked to it. Took him in, his arms folded, his boot slung over the other as he leaned on the wagon, a sullen, forced smile. As if an interloper in someone else’s photo.

In fact, as she perused the frames, the only photos where he was laughing, were early childhood photos, a boyhood picture of him holding a guitar as big as him, blinding blond hair, an older woman in an apron—their grandma?—holding him on her lap, smiling dotingly. Another in that fringed western shirt and giant belt buckle, ten-gallon hat, on a stage. She smiled at his grin, brilliant even back then. A black-and-white photo of a teenage Thaddeus with three other boys … the cousins! The blond who’d looked like Thad out in the stable. Tyler, and the other dark-haired brother that bore a striking resemblance to him.

All shirtless and knee deep in a creek … Thad’s classic truck in the background though it still looked like a beater, the escarpment and cabin in the distance, no tattoos yet. Thad proudly showing off a fish hooked on his finger as they laughed.

This farm, where he ached to put roots in the soil.

“What can I do for you?”

“I got a letter from my attorney.” She pulled it out, glancing out the window to the stable.

“Speaking of the attorney, I got your case files just now.”

She peered through the door to his office.

“C’mon in,” he said.

She walked by a row of law volumes to his desk where stacks of folders were laid out.

Dixon-McClintock business accounts.

Dixon-McClintock budgets.

Dixon-McClintock expansion projections.