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He sat back in the chair, his hand trembling when he lifted it to remove his glasses. As he directed his grimace downward to rub the lenses against the tea towel, he said, “Ella didn’t want me to come around and disrupt her plans for those girls, but I missed knowing them.”
Whatever had happened between her parents to split them up, the man didn’t act monstrous now. Perhaps he’d simply fallen victim to Mother’s fierce personality, as Josie and her sisters had.
“Do you want me to tell you about them?” Josie asked.
He readjusted his glasses over his ears and nose, then stared across at her. A moment later, he gave another nod.
There was so much to tell. Josie was proud of her sisters. They were exceptional. She sometimes wondered if she’d have survived her childhood if Callie and Isabel, the middle sister, hadn’t been around to buffer the experience. It would be tougher to brag about herself, but Rick’s reaction to that particular description should be interesting.
“Callie’s a research scientist who lives in Wichita with her husband, Ethan,” she began. “They have a kindergarten-aged boy named Luke and a baby girl named Lilly.”
She might have mentioned Lilly’s seizures then, but her father pulled off his glasses again. Josie realized they had fogged. He blinked a few times, then wiped his index finger against the corner of his eyes. Was their conversation affecting him? God, Josie hoped so.
“Calliope was smart as a whip,” he said as he laid the wire-rimmed spectacles atop the towel. “I could tell that by the time she was old enough to talk.”
His sweet, tremulous smile was encouraging. Without his glasses, she could see that his eyes were a soft gray, like Callie’s, and that his eyebrows had the same wide and pleasing arch that Isabel’s did.
She’d definitely found her father.
“She’s still smart.”
Josie remembered the billfold she kept in her truck’s glove compartment. She’d crammed the accordion-style photo sleeve full of niece and nephew pictures. Should she go out and get them? Was this the right moment to tell her father the truth?
“And the youngest girl was only a tiny thing last time I saw her,” her father said.
Josie thought for a moment he was speaking about her. She was about to mention the fact that he’d actually left before she was born, until he added, “She was a happy thing, with pretty blue eyes and wavy brown hair.”
Josie’s hair was board-straight, her eyes hazel. Her father had just described Isabel. Had he forgotten that he had another daughter? Well, he did. And right now she felt ignored, abandoned and outraged.
She should have escaped when she could.
“That little girl followed her mama around as if they were attached at the heart by a strand of Elly’s yarn,” Rick added. “How is she?”
“You mean Isabel?” Josie prompted.
“That’s right, Isabel,” he said. “I do love that name, and I got to choose it for her. What’s she doing?”
“She married a Colorado law professor a couple of years ago. She and Trevor live near Boulder and have a one-year-old daughter named Darlene. Izzy works with kids at a wilderness camp, and also runs Blumecrafts. Remember their mother’s business?”
“I do remember. Hard to believe the baby has a child now, too.”
Josie was the baby, not Isabel. Why didn’t he mention her? She worked up the guts to ask. She should just say it. I don’t take after Ella physically, but I’m just as stubborn and I, too, inherited her artistic talent.
If Rick had made the slightest indication that he knew about and was interested in her, she might have found the courage. Or if she wasn’t alone here to deal with an old man’s reaction to her news.
Suddenly, she wished she’d invited Gabe. Maybe. She leaned on him enough already.
“Do those girls want to meet me?” Rick asked.
“Callie and Isabel?” Josie queried, clarifying for herself that he wasn’t speaking of all three of them now. That poor health or a mixture of medicines or nervous forgetfulness hadn’t caused him to omit mention of the third daughter.
“Of course. Calliope and Isabel. My children.”
The rock that had lodged in Josie’s chest earlier seemed to turn, piercing the tender flesh around her heart.
He didn’t know about her. Or if he did, he’d forgotten or blocked out the memory.
What would happen if she just got up and left now, and never told a soul about her trip to Woodbine today? The thought was tempting. But her father had asked her a question, and even now those cool gray eyes sought an answer.
Did her sisters want to meet him?
No. They had made it clear that they saw no advantage to meeting their father. Despite Josie’s arguments. Despite Lilly’s condition. Whenever the subject came up, they both said that Ella must have had good cause to warn against the contact.
If Josie told her sisters about Rick’s apparent forgetfulness concerning the third baby, they might change their minds. They might want to meet him to support Josie.
Yet to all appearances, Rick was harmless. He was just a quiet old man. And he had expressed a genuine interest, at least in them.
“Maybe they’ll want to meet you,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll mention the idea to them.”
“You do that,” he said, standing. He shuffled into the hallway and rummaged around in a glass candy dish. After pulling out a business card, he returned and handed it to Josie. “This card’s for Brenda’s dog-breeding outfit, but the phone number’s the same. Have your friends call me, er, Sarah? Sarah Thomas, didn’t you say?”
She stared blankly at him until the dog cued her by trotting to the front door. “Sarah. Right,” Josie said. She stuck the card in her pocket and allowed her father to let her out, then waved from her truck window before she looped out of the drive.
She hadn’t even talked about Lilly’s condition. She’d gotten hints that her father might not have a history of seizures, but she hadn’t asked.
She’d learned a lot of other things today, however. Rick Blume was just an old man, either forgetful or ignorant of a few truths about his past. Thoughtful, in some ways. Introspective—like her sisters.
Josie preferred action. People. Noise.
The more she’d spoken to her father today, the more she’d been reminded of everyone but her. In a family of tortoises, she was the only hare.
She wanted to think for a while, to figure out how or if she should return to discuss Lilly, and if she should break the other news to her father at all.
Congratulations, you have a girl! She has brown hair and hazel eyes, and weighs a smidge over a hundred and thirty pounds.
That wouldn’t be right. She also wanted to settle into her feelings before she told her sisters that she’d contacted Rick Blume. She wouldn’t risk inviting the man into their lives if doing so would harm her family.
She wouldn’t breathe a word about this to Gabe, either. He’d probably just give her a hard time for not warning him about her trip to Woodbine today. And then he’d proceed to tell her exactly how she should have handled it and what she should do next. The man liked being in charge.
But then, Gabe had strong ideas about a father’s role in a child’s life. Real strong ideas. She couldn’t fault him for feeling the way he did. His dad had been his hero.
She simply wanted to handle this in her own time, and in her own way. Keeping the secret might be hard. Josie might have invited trouble by concealing her identity, but she hadn’t anticipated her father’s response, or the pain she’d feel when he hadn’t mentioned her.
But perhaps Rick had left the family before Josie’s mother had told him about the pregnancy. Maybe there was more to their history than Josie and her sisters had realized.
Right now, Josie sensed that that was exactly the case, and that her quest for answers had just begun.
Chapter Three
Three evenings later, Josie stood in her own front doorway, chortling as Gabe reacted to her costume.
“You’re going to my mom and stepdad’s shindig as Doc Holliday?” he inquired through the screen.
His bewildered expression was priceless. When she’d told Gabe that she was going to tonight’s costume party as Wyatt Earp’s favorite sidekick, she’d known he’d make a big assumption. After all, the gunslinger’s third and favorite wife had been named Josephine Sarah, like her.
She might be laughing hardest at her own joke, but Gabe wasn’t exactly crying. His gaze had lingered a little too long on her flattened chest, and now he was growing an annoyingly large smirk.
“Gabe!” she scolded. “I’m dressed as a man!”
“So?”
“So stop staring at my chest!”
“Just wondering where you’d put ’em.”
She glanced down at her buttoned white shirt and vest. “I wore a tight body suit underneath, that’s all.”
The teasing glint in his baby blues warped his look of concern. “Does it hurt?”
“Of course not.”
“This party could go on until the wee hours. Who knows how you’ll feel after several hours of being squashed up like that? If you want me to help unbind or…”
“Gabe!”
“Fluff or reinflate anything later, I—”
Josie slammed the solid wood door shut between them.
Gabe promptly opened it. “Sheesh!” he said, shouldering his way inside. “Can’t a guy enjoy a good prank when it’s played on him?”
His Ropers clunked on the threshold, and the scent that wafted in ahead of him was a pleasing mixture of worn leather and expensive male cologne. “Are you really that mad?”
“I don’t get mad,” she insisted, then ignored his rude snort as they stood together in the entryway.
“Now that the shock has worn off, let me take a gander.” He waggled his index finger around in a circle.
Sucking her cheeks in, Josie bit down on them to exaggerate the famous dentist’s hollow cheeks. She turned slowly, allowing Gabe to see her full costume. She’d found a long, gray coat at the thrift store and scrounged a pair of ancient work boots from the attic. She hadn’t been able to get her hands on a wide-brimmed hat, so she’d parted and slicked down her hair in a masculine style.
Gabe shook his head. “You look like Doc Holliday.”
“Now you show me.”
Gabe’s pivot was smooth, but he added a healthy dose of male swagger. As well he should. Tall and tanned, he had magnificent muscle tone and a face that broke hearts on a regular basis. He could probably shave a labyrinth into his golden-brown curls, leave food fragments in his straight white teeth and trade clothes with his grungiest friend, and women would still offer him paper scraps with their phone numbers. The man was a bona fide hunk.
Another thing Josie would never tell him.
“Good job,” she said. “I especially like the vest and holster.” She reached up to yank at a few strands of his thick mustache. “This isn’t yours, is it?”
After slapping her hand away, he pressed a finger against the fake facial hair to keep it from peeling off. “Of course not. You saw me clean-shaven a couple of days ago.”
“Just checking,” she said, smiling as he worked to restick the edges.
He had to be sexier than the real Wyatt Earp. It might have been fun to play Josephine to his Wyatt tonight. To arrive at the party on the arm of a handsome good guy, to dance in his arms. Perhaps even enjoy a little old time smooching out behind the barn.
She couldn’t do that, of course.
Josie was no fool. Her longest intimate relationship had lasted eleven weeks. Her platonic connections were much more solid. She hung out with the guys over whichever sporting event was in season, and they swapped tales of work and romance wins and woes. She liked men, and her buddies were the best of the bunch.
She didn’t sleep with them, though. Sleeping with men led to departures of men. She wouldn’t lose a friend that way. Especially not Gabe.
“Really thought I’d dress as your wife, huh?” she asked as she crossed her living room.
“Would it be that bad?”
“Aw heck, Gabe. You want a wife? Just empty your pants pockets before you do your laundry.”
“Beg pardon?”
She laughed. “Dial the number on one of the business cards or napkin scraps you find in there.” She strode into the kitchen to grab a paper bag full of plastic-wrapped marshmallow and cereal treats. “Those women aren’t looking for job interviews, my friend,” she hollered back.
“I’m not looking for a wife and you know it,” he shouted. “I was merely surprised at your choice of costumes.”
“Just admit it, I got you.” She lowered her voice as she returned to Gabe to exit via the door behind him.
As if he were the real Wyatt Earp facing off some outlaw, Gabe remained in place, his hands low on his hips. “You about ready, then?” he asked when she finally stopped a short four inches from his chest.
Josie throttled a grin. She’d met Gabe when she was a college sophomore running the weekend registers at the hardware store and he was a hungry carpenter with a perpetual need for supplies. These days when the proud owner of Thomas Contracting landed jobs that required interior design work, he talked up her skills. Josie referred construction work to him.
She had a great deal of respect for Gabe’s talent and integrity, but he could be too serious. Too logical. When he was in an ornery mood, though, he was more fun than anyone.
Josie craved that distraction tonight. As she looked up into his gleaming eyes, she stepped squarely on his toe. “You’re the one who’s not moving.”
He yanked his boot from beneath hers, then swung around and offered her an elbow. She hooked a hand around it and they stepped outside. He waited on the porch while she locked her house, then offered his arm again as they approached the driveway.
Tonight should be a blast.
When Josie reached her truck, she stopped. Gabe kept going and nearly yanked her arm out of the socket.
“Ow!”
He mumbled an apology, but also untangled his arm and kept walking toward his pearl-white BMW, parked behind her truck in the drive. “We’re taking my car, kid.”
“Nope.” She lifted her keys to jingle them. “Move the overpriced status symbol. I’m driving.”
Gabe stopped and turned around near his car. He shoved his thumbs over his holster and leaned a hip against his fender, appearing as though he could wait all evening.
She sighed. He’d had that dang car just over a month. Every year when the new models came out, he traded up. She’d been driving the same Toyota pickup for ten years. It had heart, like her. Gabe’s cars were simply vehicles, and she told him so, often.
