Page 109 of Risking it for the Cowboy

Barking, barking.

“Enough, buddy!” she called.

He glanced at her but kept barking, chasing back and forth along the base of the fence as if what he wanted was just on the other side.

“It’s just a squirrel.”

She crossed the yard, up the back steps, pushing into the house, calling Artex in, though he chased through the house to the living room window and kept barking.

“What on earth, dog?” she grumbled beneath her breath, dumping the jumpsuit in the washer beneath the stairs and flipping on the lights in the kitchen, when a vehicle in the driveway caught her eye, shadowed in dusk.

Were Thad and Daisy home already? She flipped on the porch light and unlocked the front door to peer out into the shadows of the canopy of live oaks, opening the screen—

It yanked back. A hand gripped her neck and dragged her out.

“What the fuck is this about, Charlie!” Jason roared and thrust a roll of paper in her face, stinking of whiskey.

It bounced off her cheek and fell to the porch.

She threw her hands over her face, but he yanked them down as Artex snarled and barked inside.

“You though—thought this rettraining order would work?” he slurred. “Like I’m some criminal? Y-you think some fancy new lawyer is gonna keep you from me? You think you had it bad before? ’Cause I’ll show you bad! I’ll show you—”

She yanked back the screen and slipped inside, slamming the wooden door and bolting the lock, fingers shaking, when he banged his fist through the screen and rattled the windows over the top.

Oh God. She fumbled with her cell, alarm clawing up her throat. Memories flashing through her mind. Fists striking. Banging against a wall from a shove. Soundbites kept buried boiled over now. He hadn’t put his hands on her since that day when she’d finally crumpled, snapping beneath the weight as she hit rock bottom, her nose crusted with blood and a bruise swelling on her cheek as she packed up her baby to drive to this very porch at three in the morning.

“You’re mine, Charlie! Not McClintock’s!” he thundered, his pounding jolting her back against the door. “Open up and stop fightin’ it!”

If she called Thad, he’d panic. He’d fly back here with Daisy, and she didn’t want Daisy here. Didn’t want to ruin her big night. Why did Jason always find a way to ruin everything? She slid down to the floor, her knees tucked up, grabbed the Louisville Slugger, hands shaking so badly she could barely wake up her phone, as the wood at her back thumped with each pound of his fist, with each yell—

Glass shattered.

She screamed, covering her head. Shards rained down from the windows over the door.

“Stop it!” she screamed as she finally managed to hit the emergency icon.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“This was the best night ever.” Daisy sighed, yawning, belted into the passenger seat, her cowboy boots kicked off onto the floorboard and the remains of the hundredth cookie she’d eaten from the punch table crumbling on the dash.

“Can I play your grandma’s song again?”

“Have at it, girlie. I loved hearin’ you practice.”

T.R. wasn’t fool enough to think that being a dad was so simple. But it sure felt wonderful to mean something to Daisy. Watching her sparkle at school like a million dollars in her pretty dress while she danced in his hold, standing on his feet as he moved, had tugged at his heart. That she’d thought to ask him to take her.

He didn’t want to drop Daisy off. He didn’t want to kiss his Flower Girl good night and then drive home to separate houses, separate beds, to talk into the night via cell phone or to decipher whatever text she sent so he could try to answer, when he could lie beside her and hold her like a hus—like a boyfriend—and her hold him.

His phone rang. The photo booth picture of him and Charlie glowed from the console.

“It’s your momma. Tell her all about your dance. Know how to put it on speaker?”

Daisy stopped the song and nodded, tapping the call.

“Hi, Mommy! We had so much fun! T. Rex did the limbo! He looked funny!”

T.R. grinned. “Yeah, well, I looked like somethin’. I haven’t bent like that in at least twenty years—”