“All right. That wasn’t too bad,” he said out loud. His phone buzzed with a text from Maria: Yee-haw. Ride ’em, cowboy.
Groaning, he tossed his phone on the desk, but he wasn’t too upset. Not with the prospect of seeing Shea again for an entire week.
Who knew what might happen?
Chapter Thirteen
“What time are you goin’ to the airport?” Patty set the bacon on some paper towels to drain, and Shea poured himself a cup of coffee. “I know you’ve been up since five. I heard you out back.”
Shea stared at his cup. “Their plane lands at one thirty. And sorry ’bout that. I wanted to give Rambo a good ridin’, since I don’t know how tied up I’ll be with them all. Plus make last-minute checks, seein’ to everythin’ before they arrive.”
With a smile, Patty motioned for him to sit, and she took a chair opposite him across the wide farm table. “It’ll sure be nice havin’ a young one around again. What’re you fixin’ for them to do while they’re here?”
Shea knew what he wanted. Jake under him or over him. Inside him, even. Getting his mind out of the gutter, he chewed a piece of bacon. “Well, Jake’s daughter loves animals, so I figure she’ll wanna go ridin’ every day. I’ll put her on the pony we got last month. He’s gentle as a kitten. Then there are the donkeys and bunnies to play with and the goats, and little pigs. She can go swimmin’ in the lake, and we can take her for boat rides. Look for frogs and see if we can spot the deer. Pick flowers and take hayrides. Lots to do and see, ’specially since she’s never been out of the city.”
“As long as someone from the ranch is with her. We don’t want a repeat of what happened to your friend.”
“Me, Craig, or Johnny will always be there. Don’t you worry.”
“Sounds like she’ll have a wonderful time. And she has a babysitter coming too?”
“Yeah. I’ve never met her, but Jake said she was a nurse, and that she’s around your age.”
They ate their breakfast, and then Shea stood to clean up the table.
“Sit for a minute, will you, honey? You got time ’fore you have to leave.”
He did as she asked, his gut churning. He knew what was coming.
“Are you and Jake seeing each other?”
He’d always had a close relationship with Patty, where he could tell her anything without judgment. Before he came out to his father, he spoke with her. So it would be no big deal to talk about Jake. If, in fact, he knew what the hell was going on in his head. Which he didn’t. From the first, Jake had turned him upside down.
“I dunno. I guess, maybe? We had a good time when we saw each other, but we never said anythin’ about the future. We’re takin’ it slow ’cause of his daughter.”
“And what’s wrong? She don’t speak at all?” Patty tsked and shook her head. “Such a shame.”
“Yeah…Jake said she was a regular chatterbox until two years or so ago. Then she stopped, and his husband walked out on them. Imagine doin’ that to your child. And she’s just the cutest thing with them big green eyes and curls.” Anger rose inside him at the thought of anyone abandoning their child.
“That’s a lot of responsibility for someone. Raising a child alone is hard enough; it’s gotta be doubly hard when she has special needs.”
Shea knew where Patty was headed with this conversation. It wasn’t anything he didn’t think about himself. Was he ready to be with a man who had a child he needed to dedicate so much of his time to, to the detriment of everything else?
But, Shea rationalized, that was what made Jake so special. Hard on the outside, the man was like a pouf of cotton candy when it came to his little girl, and he had Shea melting along with him whenever they were together.
Not to mention the white-hot sex they’d had that gave him the dirtiest dreams since he was a horny teenager. But the real Jake in his arms was a hundred times better than any dream Jake, and Shea was silly excited to see him.
He refocused on Patty’s question. “I wouldn’t say she’s special needs. They’ve been workin’ hard to find out why she stopped talkin’, but she understands everythin’ you say. Does real good in school too, according to Jake. And I can tell she loves her daddy.