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“I have thirty minutes before I need to leave for work.”
Cody took the bucket from her hand and started the job of dumping feed into the stalls. “You water, I’ll feed. And they told me you work three days a week at the Hash-It-Out.”
“Since Dad can’t work, we do what we can to make ends meet.” She didn’t tell him that the ends rarely met. “So, about you and this big apology.”
“Why can’t your dad work?”
“He has cancer.”
She couldn’t tell him that her dad had only months to live. Saying it made it too real. And she couldn’t make eye contact with Cody, not when she knew that his eyes would be soft with compassion.
“I’m sorry, Bailey.”
“We’re surviving.”
“It can’t be easy.”
Cody poured the last scoop of grain into the feed bucket of a horse she’d been working with for a few weeks.
“It isn’t easy.” She turned the water off and then finally looked at him. “But we’re doing our best.”
“Of course you are.” He sat down on an upturned bucket, absently rubbing his knee as he stared up at the wood plank ceiling overhead.
“Let’s talk about you, Cody. What happened?”
“Bailey, I’m an alcoholic. I started AA about seven months ago. I’ve been sober for six months.” He shrugged. “About five months ago I wrote out a list of people I had hurt, people that I needed to apologize to. You were at the top of the list.”
“I see. And how did this all start?”
“Apologizing, or realizing that I needed to grow up and make changes in my life?”
He smiled a crooked, one-sided smile that exposed a dimple in his left cheek. Bailey hadn’t forgotten that grin. She saw it every time Meg smiled at her. It reminded her of how it had felt to be special to someone like him. He had picked her wildflowers and taken her swimming in mountain lakes.
That moment in the sun had happened when her dad had been healthy and the farm had been prosperous. Their horses had been selling all across the country, and they’d had a good herd of Angus. Now she had five cows, two mares, no stallion and a few horses to train.
“What made you go to AA?”
“I turned thirty and realized I didn’t have a home and that I had a lot of blank spots in my memory. I was getting on bulls drunk.” He shrugged and half laughed. “I realized when I got trampled into the dirt back in Houston last winter.”
“I saw you on TV the night it happened.” She closed her eyes as the admission slipped out and then quickly covered her tracks. “I’ve always watched bull riding. Dad and I watch it together.”
“Gotcha.” He leaned back against the wall. “I guess one of the big reasons for changing was that I didn’t want to waste the rest of my life.”
“I’m glad you’re doing better.” It was all she could give him. She was glad he was sober and glad he was safe. “We’ll work something out so that you can get to know Meg.”
“Get to know her? Bailey, she’s my daughter and I want more than moments to ‘get to know her.’ I want to be a part of her life.”
“You can, when you’re in the area.”
“I made a decision last night.” He didn’t smile as he said the words. “I’m not leaving.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m staying in Gibson, Missouri.”
Bailey’s heart pounded hard and she shoved her trembling hands into the front pockets of her jeans. Dust danced on beams of sun that shot through the open doors of the barn, and country music filtered from the office. She had been here so many times and yet never like this, never as unsure as she was at that moment.
“What about the tour? You’re closer than ever to winning a world title.”
She knew what that meant to him. She knew how hard it was for bull riders to walk away from the pursuit of that title.
“Some things are more important. And if I choose to go back, bull riding will always be there.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“I’m going to park my RV under that big oak tree by your garage, and I am most certainly going to stay.”
“This is my home, my property, and I beg to differ.”
“And that’s my little girl you’ve got in that house, so I think you’ll get over it.”
Bailey sat down on the bucket he’d vacated, her legs weak and trembling. She looked up, making eye contact with a man she didn’t really know. He wasn’t the guy she’d met in Wyoming, the one who’d said he didn’t plan on ever having a family or being tied down to anyone. Back then she had thought finding the right woman to love would change him. Now she didn’t want him changed and living on her farm.
She had to get control. “Fine you can stay for a week, and then we’ll work something out.”
“I’m not leaving, not until I decide to go.”
“Cody, I don’t have time to argue with you.”
He shrugged, casually, but obviously determined. His mouth remained in a straight line, not smiling and not revealing that good-natured dimple.
“I’ve lost five years of my daughter’s life, Bailey. I’m not losing another day. Don’t take this personally, because I’m not trying to make it personal, but I’m not letting you call the shots. You’re not going to keep my daughter from me.”
Did it look that way to him? She hadn’t meant for that to happen. She had really thought he didn’t care, or wouldn’t care. He was in this life for a good time. Those had been his words the day he walked away from her.
People did change. He wasn’t the only one who needed to apologize.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to keep her from you.” She glanced down at her watch and groaned. “I have to go to work.”
“I’ll be here when you get home.”
Would he? She didn’t know how to deal with that thought. Of him in her life, and in her daughter’s life.
She had learned to rely on God and the knowledge that He would get her through whatever came her way. If she closed her eyes, she could think of a long list of whatevers. At the top of the list was losing her dad; then came being a single mom, and then the pile of bills that were growing as large as Mount Rushmore. God could get her through those things.
Now she had to worry about Cody and what his staying would mean. Would he try to gain custody of Meg, or visitation? Would he stay only long enough to prove that he had rights?
How would it feel if he walked away? She tried to tell herself that she wouldn’t be hurt. This time it would be different because now the person who would be hurt was Meg.
Bailey wouldn’t let that happen.
Chapter Three
Cody stood outside the barn and watched Bailey drive away, the old truck stirring up a cloud of dust as it sped down the rutted gravel drive. When he turned toward his RV, Jerry Cross was there. It had to happen sooner or later, that the father of the woman he’d gotten pregnant would want to take a piece out of his hide.
If someone ever hurt Meg that way, Cody would like to think he’d be there to do the same thing. It would help to start off on the right foot. “Hello, sir. I’m Cody Jacobs.” Father of your grandchild.
“Are you staying?” Jerry sat down in the lawn chair that Cody had unfolded and stuck under the awning of the RV.
“Planning on it.” Cody grabbed another chair out of the back of his truck and plopped it down next to Jerry’s.
“Think she’ll let you stay?”
“The way I see it, she doesn’t really have a choice.”
Jerry laughed at that, the sound low and rasping. Cody glanced sideways, noticing the tinge of gray in Jerry’s complexion. It couldn’t be easy for Bailey, having her dad this sick and handling things on her own. The condition of the farm pretty much said it all. The barn needed repairs, the fence was sagging and the feed room was running on empty.
“I like you, Cody, and I hope you’ll stick around. Let me give you some advice, though. Bailey isn’t a kid anymore. She isn’t going to be fooled. She’s strong and she’s independent. She takes care of this farm and she juggles the bills like a circus clown.” Jerry’s eyes misted over. “I worry that life is passing her by and she isn’t squeezing any joy out of it for herself.”
“I didn’t mean to do that to her.”
The older man shrugged shoulders that had once been broad. Cody couldn’t imagine being in his shoes, knowing that life wouldn’t last and that people he loved would be left behind.
“It wasn’t all you, son. I have more than a little to do with the weight on her shoulders.”
“Is there a way I can help?”
Jerry shook his head. “Nope. Others have offered. She’s determined to paddle this sinking ship to shore. She thinks she can plug the holes and make it sail again.”
“I’ve got money…”
Jerry’s gnarled hand went up. “Save your breath and save your money. She won’t take charity.”
“It isn’t charity. I’m the father of the little girl in that house.”
“Then I guess you’d really better tread lightly.”
Jerry stood, swaying lightly and balancing himself with the arm of the chair. Cody reached but withdrew his hand short of making contact. If it were him, would he want others reaching to hold him up, or would he want to be strong on his own? He thought that Jerry Cross wouldn’t want a hand unless it was asked for.
That made him a lot like his daughter.
“I’m going in to check on the young’un. Holler if you need anything,” Jerry said as he walked away.
The young’un. Cody sat in the chair and thought about the little girl. His daughter. For a long time he waited, thinking she might come out of the house. When she didn’t, he went to the barn.
Thirty minutes and two clean stalls later, a tiny voice called his name. Cody swiped his arm across his brow and peered over the top of the stall he had been cleaning. Meg stood on tiptoes peeking up at him. He hid a grin because she was still wearing her nightgown and yet she’d pulled on those pink cowboy boots she’d been wearing the previous day.
“I have kittens.” She chewed on gum and smiled.
“How many?”
“Four. Wanna see ’em?”
He wanted to see those kittens more than anything in the world. A myriad of emotions washed over him with that realization. He had never hugged his child. He hadn’t held her or comforted her. He hadn’t wiped away her tears when she cried. Five years he had missed out on loving this little girl with Bailey’s sweet face and his blue eyes.
“I do wanna see ’em.”
He opened the stall door and joined the little girl that barely reached his waist. Her hand came up, the gesture obvious. Cody’s heart leaped into his throat as his fingers closed around hers.
In that instant he knew he’d follow her anywhere. He’d give his life for her. And if anyone ever did to her what he’d done to her mother…
Regret twisted his stomach into knots. He couldn’t undo what he’d done to Bailey, but he could do something now. He could be a father. Or at least make his best attempt.
Doubt swirled with regret, making him wonder if he could. What if he couldn’t? What if he turned out to be his own father?
“The kittens are in there.” Meg pointed to a small corner of the barn where buckets and tools were stored. The area was dark and dusty, but a corner had been cleared out and straw put down for the new mother.
“How old are they?”
“One week. They don’t even have their eyes yet.”
Cody smiled and refrained from correcting her about the eyes. “I bet they love you.”
She shook her head. “Not yet, ’cause I can’t touch them or the momma kitten will hide them. She’s afraid they’ll get hurt.”
“Momma cats are like that.” He peeked into the corner and saw the mother cat and the four little ones.
“There’s a yellow tabby, a gray, one black cat and a calico. I like calico cats best.”
“I think I do, too.” Little fingers held tightly to his, and at the same time it felt like they were wrapping around his heart.
Meg led him from the area. “We can’t stay long or she’ll be mad.”
“We wouldn’t want to make the momma mad.”
“My mom is mad at you.”
Cody had never been fond of amusement-park rides. He could handle eight seconds on the back of a bull, but that up-and-down roller-coaster feeling was one he couldn’t hack. And this felt like a roller coaster.
“I’m sorry that she’s mad at me, Meg. Sometimes adults need time to work things out.”
He kneeled in front of his daughter. Her mouth worked her gum as she stared into his eyes. When she rested her hand on his cheek and nodded, his eyes burned and he had to blink away the film of moisture.
“I know you’re my daddy.” She nodded at that information. “My mom told me about your eyes when I was just a little kid.”
“Meg Cross, you’re about the sweetest girl in the world.” And he hoped he wouldn’t let her down.
As he was thinking of all the mistakes he could make, his daughter stepped close and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her head rested on his shoulder and he hugged her back.
