A Rancher's Pride - By Barbara White Daille Page 0,25
her face even more animated. And, for the first time ever, he heard his little girl laugh. The high-pitched, trilling giggle jolted hard inside his chest and made him struggle to catch his breath.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to make Becky laugh like that.
His chest tightened another notch at the thought, which had turned into an almost-silent plea. The truth was, he couldn’t give her what she so obviously needed.
At least Kayla could talk to the child—as she hadn’t hesitated to rub in since the minute she’d set foot in the house. But she wouldn’t be here for very much longer.
He’d see to that. The six weeks would pass before they could blink, he’d satisfy the judge’s crazy requirements and Kayla would go back to Chicago.
Finally, he would have custody of Becky. And he would do what was best for his child.
He stood in the hallway, looking into the room.
An outsider in his own home.
After one last glance, he turned from the doorway, his steps surer now as he went downstairs and into the room he used as an office. Without pausing, he crossed to the old-fashioned rolltop desk in the corner and sat heavily in the swivel chair behind it.
The desk, broad and solid, had filled the corner of this room in the ranch house for four generations. The cheap, mass-produced stuff they made nowadays could never measure up to this. Most of the folks he knew agreed. No surprise then, that Manny had asked him to create the new sign for the café.
Sam never begrudged his good friend the time and effort it took to design and make the wooden plaque that now hung outside the Double S. But in his heart, he knew he’d have done the same for anyone in town. The job had given him satisfaction, an extra channel for his creative energy, a way to distract him from his problems.
It had let him make another check mark on the list of things he did to get right with the whole of Flagman’s Folly.
Though he did those things to satisfy himself, to make up for the time he’d run wild as a teen, he couldn’t help but wonder. Did the judge’s spies ever hurry back to him with news of any of the good things Sam had done?
He shoved the rolltop’s curved front panel up in its track, revealing pigeonholes overflowing with papers and pamphlets and bills.
Luckily, that panel had been closed earlier when Kayla had come in to use his computer.
He looked at the pile of information he’d accumulated and thought again of Becky. Only two days since she’d come home, and he’d spent a lot of that time thinking. Had unearthed a lot of research. Had retrieved reams of data from the computer.
All that involved facts and figures.
He weighed the load of dry but critical information against the living, breathing, laughing little girl he’d just left upstairs.
No, he couldn’t provide everything his little girl needed.
But he knew the first step he had to take toward finding someone who could.
He swiveled his chair around to face the computer on the table at his right elbow, opened his email program and started tapping the keys.
ALONE IN THE KITCHEN the next morning, Kayla paced the tiled floor.
Becky had gone outside to play on the back porch.
Sam had left the house early, even before she and Becky had woken. Downstairs, instead of the money she had expected to find, he’d left a note on the kitchen table.
Will meet you and Becky at the Double S at noon.
No, not what she had expected at all, from the stories Ronnie had told her about Sam’s self-imposed isolation. His unwillingness to go far from the ranch.
He was doing this to satisfy the judge. She had to remember that.
She’d left her cell phone on the counter. When it rang, she pounced on it. At the sight of Matt Lawrence’s number, her heart thumped erratically. She had talked to him the day before to give a rundown of what had happened in court. He’d had no news for her then. But now…
“Just checking in, Kayla. I’m sorry to say we don’t have anything to report yet.”
She didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. In a way, she almost hoped Matt wouldn’t track Ronnie down. What if she got it into her head to take Becky back again? Kayla couldn’t deal with seeing her precious niece sent back and forth across the country between parents who didn’t really want her.
“I