Page 45 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

I don’t even realize how much I’ve shared until I hear myself ask, “What about you? How does a guy like you end up climbing onto horses that are actively trying to launch you into another zip code?”

Sadie giggles.

Emmett groans. “It’s a terrible career choice.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

He leans back in his chair, smiling despite himself. “I grew up around it. My dad rode. My granddad rode. Every man in my family rode at some point.”

“So you inherited poor decision making.”

“Apparently.”

Sadie nods seriously without looking up from her picture. “Daddy falls down a lot.”

Emmett closes his eyes.

I burst out laughing. “What about Sadie’s mom?”

The question slips out before I really think about it. The second it does, I wish I’d found a slightly smoother way to ask.

Emmett doesn’t look upset, but I can tell I’ve wandered into a part of his life that isn’t easy to talk about. He glances toward Sadie, who’s still busy adding increasingly questionable details to Rover the dragon, then wraps both hands around his coffee mug.

I start to backpedal. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”

“It’s okay.” He gives me a small smile. “We were young.”

I grin. “How young?”

His expression shifts into the look of a man revisiting mistakes he’d rather not examine too closely. “Young enough that if Sadie ever comes home and tells me she’s making the same decisions we made, I’m boarding up the house and moving to another state.”

I laugh. “That bad?”

“We were the kind of teenagers who thought we had life figured out.”

I wince. “Oh, that’s rough.”

“See? You understand.”

“That’s because I’ve met teenagers.”

He chuckles. “Exactly. We loved each other,” he says, watching his daughter color. “At least I thought we did. Then life happened. We grew up, wanted different things, and stopped looking toward the same future.”

“She left?” I ask gently.

He rubs the back of his neck before nodding. “Eventually.”

I can hear the rest in everything he doesn’t add. In the way his attention keeps drifting back to Sadie. In the careful way he talks about her mother despite whatever happened between them.

The whole conversation makes me understand him a little better.

I’ve noticed from the beginning how closely he watches his daughter. How quickly he responds whenever she needs anything. How naturally every decision he makes seems to circle back to her.

Now I understand why.

Every choice he makes starts with one question: What’s best for Sadie?

Across the table, Sadie suddenly lifts her picture. “Rover has a sword now.”