Page 59 of Mistletoe Cowboy

“How are you?” he asked.

She moved one shoulder. “Teddie and I are getting along better than we ever have,” she said noncommittally.

“We heard that your lawyer friend left tracks heading out of town, he was in such a hurry.”

“Too little, too late,” she said stiffly. “I expect to spend years making it all up to Teddie.”

He moved a step closer. “You won’t look at me, Katy?”

She bit her lower lip. Tears stung her eyes. “I’m . . . too ashamed.”

“Oh, baby.” He pulled her into his arms and folded her against him, enveloped her in the scents of buckskin and smoke and fir trees. He rocked her while she cried, his lips in her hair.

“I turned against my own daughter,” she choked. “Against you. I agreed to let a greedy man almost put down a horse to save myself legal problems. I hate myself!”

He drew in a deep breath. “We have disagreements. We get over them.”

“Not always.”

“I have a regrettable temper,” he said after a minute, aware that Teddie and Drum were deliberately paying attention to the calf and not the two people down the aisle. “I’m sorry, too. I never should have blocked your number. That was low.”

“I deserved it,” she whispered. “I was horrible to you.”

“I was horrible back.”

She lifted her head. Her eyes were red and wet.

He bent and kissed the tears away. Which, of course, prompted even more tears.

“You aren’t really going back to Montana, are you?” she choked out.

He laughed softly, delightedly. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

She looked up at him with wonder. He was saying something without saying it.

“I’d love to have a ten-year-old daughter of my own,” he said solemnly. “I’d buy her pets, and drive her to parties, and take care of her horse. I’d take care of her mother, too, you understand. I mean, that would have to be part of the deal.”

Her eyes widened and then she laughed as she realized what he was saying.

He understood what her eyes were saying, as well. “I’d like a son, too,” he said softly, touching her hair. “Boys run in my family. Not a girl in the bunch, which is why yours would be so treasured.”

“I like little boys, too,” she whispered.

He bent and touched his mouth gently to hers. “We could get married. I mean, so people wouldn’t gossip about us. We wouldn’t want to embarrass Teddie. It’s a small community, after all.”

She reached up and kissed him with her whole heart. He kissed her back with all of his.

There was a loud clearing of a throat and a giggle. They hadn’t heard the first cough, or the first giggle.

They drew apart, a little flushed, and stared down into a child’s dancing eyes.

“Are you going to be my daddy now, Parker?” Teddie asked him.

He bent and opened his arms.

She ran into them and hugged him and kissed him and hugged him some more. “You’ll be the best daddy in the whole world, next to the daddy I lost,” she said against his shoulder.

“And you’ll be my little girl as long as you live, even when you’re married with kids of your own,” he said huskily. “You won’t mind, if your mom and I get married?”

---