have the judge take his daughter away from him?
He felt that muscle in his cheek twitch again.
“Look at her,” Kayla murmured, her tone neither pleading nor demanding, just daring him to see her side of things.
When he held his tongue, she added, “I’m not going anywhere, Sam. I’ll be here in town for the next six weeks, until the judge makes his decision. Let me stay at the ranch.”
He swallowed hard.
Okay, maybe that would be the best thing for Becky right now.
He wanted the best for his daughter, no matter what.
But there was no way he wanted to live in the same house with this woman. Not for any length of time.
“Let me stay,” she urged again. “For Becky’s sake.”
Chapter Six
In the backyard, Sam tossed another bag of feed into the metal storage shed he used for extra stock and wiped away the sweat running down his forehead. After a morning with Kayla Ward, he’d felt the need to come out here and work off some of his aggression. It had taken all afternoon, and he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded yet. Their showdown at the Double S had about pushed him to his limits.
Jack ambled over from the barn. “Tough day?”
Sam exhaled heavily. “You know it.”
“Looks like you’ve got yourself some company.”
“Yeah,” he growled. Briefly, he filled Jack in on what had happened in court that morning. “The woman refuses to take no for an answer. I shouldn’t have backed down. Wouldn’t have, if only she hadn’t played her trump card.”
“Becky.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Considering the situation…”
“No need to be roundabout with it, Jack. I’m stuck, all right.”
“Having her here might help your case in the long run. Buy you some time to get her to drop the idea of custody.”
“Yeah, I thought of that. And to find out just what lies Ronnie told her.” Ronnie had to be the one who’d convinced Kayla he wasn’t fit to be a father to his own child.
“You think your ex fed her a load of bull about you?”
Sam laughed bitterly. Jack hadn’t been around in Ronnie’s day. Even if he had been, Sam would have kept those kinds of troubles to himself. He hefted another bag of feed. “See this, Jack? A drop in the bucket compared to the amount of bull she slung around here.” He tossed the bag into the shed.
Maybe he could also buy enough time to defend himself against those lies. Although what Kayla thought about him, he didn’t much care.
What Ronnie had said to him—and didn’t say—bothered him a lot more. Not for the first time, he cursed her to hell and back. “She never even told me about the baby,” he muttered. “Being deaf?”
“Being born. Or even about her being pregnant before she left, for that matter.”
Jack’s jaw dropped.
Sam nodded grimly. What else was there to say?
He’d contacted Ronnie after she had left, but she’d turned down any of his last-ditch attempts to work things out. In these past two days, he’d realized why. She’d been more concerned about keeping him from finding out they were going to have a child. She’d succeeded in that, all right. And in making him what he was at this moment—a man who couldn’t talk to his own daughter.
A fact Kayla hadn’t hesitated to tell the judge that morning. He wondered why she hadn’t tossed in something about his not contacting the child.
The thought made him freeze in place. Of course. She believed he’d known about the baby all along. She would also believe whatever Ronnie had told her about why he’d never kept in touch.
Once again, his ex had twisted the truth to put him in a bad light.
Across the yard, the child played a game of her own with some empty wire spools and a couple pieces of twine.
He’d seen her joyful reaction to her reunion with Kayla, the even more ecstatic response to the idea of having her aunt come to stay. Both sights had driven a stake into his heart. Kayla’s words had hammered it home.
Let me stay. For Becky’s sake.
That did it. He hadn’t had it in him to go on refusing her.
“Sam?”
Hearing her voice again so unexpectedly felt like another whack at the stake. “Yeah,” he yelled. “Out back.” He dropped the last bag of feed onto the pile.
“So,” he said to Jack, “looks like I’ve got myself a houseguest. For a while.”
“Think I’ll head over to the bunkhouse.”
“Going lily-livered on me?”
They both laughed.
Jack had barely made his exit when Kayla appeared around the corner of the shed.
She