She’d had that fear, too, that she wouldn’t get what she wanted. The day and summer camp for kids. The petting zoo. Brett thought they would be too much liability and too much work for a working cattle ranch.
And maybe he was right.
But that wasn’t going to stop her. Just like raising her babies alone would be a lot of work, but she wanted them more than anything else. And she would fight to give them the life she wanted for them. To make sure that they were happy.
* * *
Nolan stood athis office window watching Trish Dempsey’s truck drive away. She was going back to the Four Corners, back tothem.
And he couldn’t help but worry about her. Even though she was much stronger than she’d been when they’d first met, she was still vulnerable. And despite how people in her life had treated her, she was still too trusting.
That was something he would never be. Never again.
He’d learned his lesson, and he would make sure that nobody was ever able to hurt him again. But Trish…
She had too big a heart not to let more people into it. That was why she’d wanted children so badly. She wanted to love unconditionally and be loved unconditionally.
“Daddy!” Zoe shouted. “Daddy!”
Nolan ducked out of his office and ran back to the kitchen, to his baby, who’d called for him.
She sat in her booster seat, the plate in front of her piled high with broccoli. Tears pooled in her silvery blue eyes. “Daddy, they gave me all the veg-tub-alls.”
Hope’s and Xavier’s plates were curiously clean.
He sighed. “Not a real great job of hiding them, guys,” he said. Then he sighed again and pulled open the freezer. Ice cream was good for a person, had calcium and vitamin D. He wasn’t being a bad father by giving in.
He wasn’t a bad father anymore. But like Trish he regretted things he’d done or hadn’t done. Because of his career, he hadn’t always been there for his family like he should have been.
He was changing that now. He was going to be there forallof his family, whether they liked it or not.
CHAPTER NINE
She was back. Alone. Once Brett saw her truck pull into the driveway, the tension eased from his body…even before he noticed that no other person was in it with her and no other vehicle followed hers.
“Good, no sign of the snake,” Frankie remarked. She stood beside him at the window.
Brett must not have been the only one who’d worried that Stokes might return with her. But maybe he didn’t need to because he’d gotten what he wanted—for her to continue fighting the will.
“I hope he didn’t talk her out of settling,” Frankie said.
Trish didn’t jump out of her truck after she parked it. She sat behind the wheel for a while. And that concerned Brett. Was she okay?
She’d nearly fallen that morning. While he’d caught her, maybe something else was going on with her. Like maybe she was dizzy or something, like she’d seemed that first night she’d shown up at the ranch after driving for so long. And then she’d basically slept most of another day.
Maybe she’d just needed to recover from packing up all her stuff and driving. Or being as pregnant as she was, she could be having any number of medical issues. He didn’t need to be a doctor like his sister Livvy to know that.
He stepped back from the window, to move around Frankie and start toward the door, to make sure that Trish was all right, but then she stepped out of the truck. The wind tousled her curls, tumbling them around her face, which she lifted toward the sun. She seemed to take a deep breath and square her shoulders before she began to walk toward the house.
“Uh-oh.” Frankie voiced aloud the concern that hit Brett. “She looks like she’s bracing herself to tell us whatever she decided.”
“Or maybe she’s just bracing herself to deal with the two of you,” Blake said.
Brett turned to find his brother standing behind him, his arm around Maci’s shoulders.
“Or maybe she’s just going to put us off some more before telling us what she’s going to do,” Frankie said. She was as cynical as Brett had become.
Maci shook her head. “No. I don’t think that’s the case. Trish sent me a text a few minutes ago asking me to meet her here.” Clearly, she hadn’t known that Maci was already at the house.
