Page 49 of Risking it for the Cowboy

“And the unicorn reared back its head, whinnying, and…”

He was making up a narrative? Daisy was giggling at his sound effects, his natural acting.

She threw on her clothes. Knotted up her hair. Could hear them talking, eventually could hear Daisy … sounding out words? Willingly?

She inched out her door. “The. Very. La … ast un—”

“Remember to keep each letter covered, girlie,” T.R. cautioned softly.

Charlie eased down the stairs as morning light cast bright shafts across the floor, careful to avoid the creaks.

“Un … i … corn. Unicorn, is now hi—hi-dden well,” Daisy continued.

Silence. Then an audiobook narration began to play: “By those who have put him under a spell.”

The narration stopped as she leaned around the doorframe. He sat on her couch, his torso curved into the cushion, glasses on his face? And her daughter, who desperately wanted a daddy who gave a shit was cuddled up to him, his arm around her, holding her Magic Treehouse book between them with her knees tucked up inside her nightgown.

“Now you try,” he said. “Cover each letter … there.”

His hand began to mindlessly brush back Daisy’s messy bedhead poking out in every direction. God, to see this rough-around-the-edges man so … gentle … when Charlie noticed, on his knee was his phone, an app open, and his finger hovering over it as Daisy muddled her way through the sentence, actually doing better than she normally did.

So sweet. This womanizing frontman and greased-up mechanic nothing more than a teddy bear, succeeding at something Charlie had wrestled with Daisy to do for years now. Attempt to read.

And when she finished a sentence, he tapped play again, listening to the narrator read the book aloud as Thad followed the sentence on the page for her, followed again by Daisy reading the same passage.

“You did great, girlie,” he said softly as Charlie eased back into the kitchen to start prepping breakfast, and yet, her ears were piqued toward the man with her daughter, and the easy way in which he helped her. “Does that help? Having the audiobook to hear?”

“Mm-hmm. The letters always look so … noisy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I get it. It’s like that for me, too. Like this one, to me, looks backward—”

“Yeah, but when I cover the others, it flips back around.”

He nodded. And her thoughts stalled, considering him, bacon and produce hanging limply in her arms.

“So I’m not stupid,” Daisy muttered softly.

What? Daisy didn’t realize how bright she was?

“What’d you just say?” Thad growled.

Charlie whirled around at his terse reaction to see Daisy frozen, staring wide-eyed up at him.

Her pulse spiked as she landed a foot to return to the family room, when Thad shifted his phone on the coffee table, turning to Daisy and taking her cheeks in his palms so tenderly, Charlie’s pace slowed.

“Who said that to you, baby girl?”

“Just … a boy at school last year … said I was stupid when the teacher asked me to read the sentence on the whiteboard.”

Brow still furrowed, his jaw pumped when the words bit out. “Don’t you dare believe it. Don’t you dare listen to anyone who tells you you ain’t smart enough.”

“Then why can’t I read like the other kids?” And like that, Daisy’s blues were filling with tears, and Charlie wanted to take her into her arms except, she seemed to be opening up to him, and she didn’t want to dash this moment of trust sowing between them.

“You just have a different way of understandin’. Kinda like me. I’m dyslexic. My letters mix up sometimes. Makes it hard to concentrate.”

“Is that why you listen to all those books in your truck?” Daisy asked instead. He nodded, when she whispered, “Did people call you stupid, too?”

He sat there. Frozen. Tense. Eyes shuttered. Jaw tight. Oh God. Daisy had just sledgehammered the truth.