“You’re feeling better,” she said flatly. He was standing taller, but his color was still off. “And you can spend a day on the tractor.”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” Initiating confrontation still did not come easily to her—even after months of post-Greg affirmations and years of practice with her patients, who often did not want to do what they had to do in order to heal—but she was so much better at it than she’d been before.
His thick black eyebrows came together. Tim was not used to being challenged. He was used to living life alone, his own way.
Tough.
“I wouldn’t be going out if I wasn’t sure. I have work to do.” He grabbed his battered cowboy hat off the table and jammed it onto his head before stalking out the back door.
Liv let out a breath and then poured herself a cup of coffee, her movements automatic, mindless. Confrontation or concern? Which had her stomach in a knot?
She heard the tractor fire up as she took her first sip from the heavy ceramic mug. She had five days at home before she started seeing patients. Five days to keep a full-time eye on her father to make sure that he really was recovering and not just blowing smoke.
* * *
MATT CALLED WILLA at 6:00 a.m. to see if she’d made it safely to her new job and to find out if she was okay with him leaving Craig alone for the day while he went to his doctor’s appointment in Bozeman. The connection was awful, cutting in and out, and Willa had been on her way out the door—in fact she was late—but no, she didn’t have a problem with Crag spending the day alone. She’d hung up before Matt could ask about what day the kid would be leaving so he could make some plans.
The drive to Bozeman took almost two hours, which gave Matt a goodly amount of time to stew about the issues in his life while his knee stiffened up. His mom had called right after Willa had hung up, inviting him to a family dinner that Sunday. Matt had said yes, even though he hated formal family dinners, and mentioned that he might be bringing a guest. His mom had instantly gone on alert, assuming he meant a woman, and he’d had to tell her no. It was a kid. He was babysitting.
There’d been a strangely awkward silence after that and Matt had quickly filled her in, wondering what had made her go so quiet. Perhaps the fear that he’d fathered a kid, just as her husband had?
Except that Matt was pretty damned certain that his mom knew nothing about Ryan. It was a total fluke that he’d found out, and only because he hadn’t been where he was supposed to be on that fateful trip to Butte fifteen years ago.
Whatever the deal was, he and Craig would be having Sunday dinner on the ranch. Craig seemed okay with it, but then the kid seemed okay—no, he seemed beyond okay—with just about everything thrown his way. Dishes, housework, living with a cousin he barely knew—nothing seemed to bother him.
Matt wished he possessed that ability, but that wasn’t how he was wired. He had issues that needed resolving and he wanted them resolved now. His knee, his career, his horse. He had goals to meet, rodeos to win.
After dealing with the doctor, he was going to have to make another move in the horse game. He’d consulted with his lawyer and legally he didn’t have a leg to stand on, but morally Liv was in no better shape.
Maybe she hadn’t been aware of what Trena had been doing when she bought Beckett, but now that she did know...well, if their positions were reversed, Matt would like to think that he’d sell the horse back to Liv.
His knee was throbbing by the time he got out of the truck in Bozeman. He idly rubbed the sore area along the side, wondering if he was going to be in a brace permanently, or only for a while. A brace would slow him down, but it beat blowing his knee out altogether. The guy he was seeing was supposed to be good and was replacing Matt’s former doctor, who’d recently retired. Matt had fully expected the new doctor to warn him against using his knee too much, as the old doctor had,