Page 1 of Hero for the Holidays

CHAPTER ONE

LANDRYKINGDIDN’Tbelieve in love at first sight. Hell, for years he hadn’t believed in love at all. But when he looked down at the girl sitting in the blue plastic chair, picking black fingernail polish off her thumbnail, swinging her black boot-clad feet back and forth in rhythm, and determinedly not looking up at him, he felt his world shift.

And he understood.

Broken hearts, audacious hope and the concept of being turned inside out by a feeling.

“Lila?” He’d said her name quite a lot over the past few weeks. Getting used to it. Praying it. It still felt new now.

Their surroundings were entirely bland. Government offices tended to be. He couldn’t quite believe this was happening, and it seemed like far too commonplace of a setting for this moment to be taking place. But he supposed this was commonplace enough.

Kids getting shuffled through a system. Moving through different homes.

It was the details of this particular situation that made it extraordinary.

It was the fact that, for the first time, he was looking at his daughter.

That made it extraordinary.

“I’m Landry King,” he said when she didn’t say anything.

She looked up at him. And the fiery expression on her face stopped him cold.

She was the most miraculous, incredible thing he’d ever seen.

“I know who you are. All the information was in that packet.”

“Well, I hope you like what you saw.”

“I don’t know about that. It looks like you live in the ass crack of nowhere.”

“That is true,” he said, thinking of Four Corners Ranch. “It is basically that.”

“I’m not going call youdad. I had a dad.”

He felt like he’d been stabbed through the heart, clean. It wasn’t the first time, though. So there was that.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “Though, the truth is, biologically I am your dad.” He’d even done a test to make absolutely sure they’d found the right kid. Because it hadn’t seemed real. It hadn’t seemed possible.

“Yeah. But I had a dad whochoseme. He didn’t give me away. And didn’t choose to die.”

“I know that,” said Landry, his voice rough. “For what it’s worth, I know this doesn’t take away from who your dad was to you. Or that your parents chose you, and loved you. That they were your mom and dad. But, I didn’tchooseto give you up.”

She frowned. “You didn’t?”

“No. It was out of my hands.” He shoved aside his anger. He shoved aside the painful memories. Lila didn’t need to have his stuff projected onto her. She’d been through enough.

He’d done his swearing and yelling these past few weeks. The past had been an open wound for a long time. And this had made it bleed. But this little girl had been through enough and she didn’t need a father mired in his own pain, his own anger.

She needed someone to take care of her.

She needed someone to love her.

And thank God they’d found him.

He’d sent his information over to the adoption agency several years ago, when he’d finally tracked the agency down. He’d had his information placed in the file so that someday, if his daughter ever wanted to contact him, she could. It was a closed adoption, and that meant that he was just going to have to wait for the day she reached out. If it ever came.

But some kids liked that information. They wanted to have the option. And so he made sure that it would be available to her.

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