Page 22 of The Cowboy's Miracle Baby

“That Westley was the Dread Pirate Roberts?”

Gus laughed and tickled her, and she shrieked with laughter. “Yes. That’s what I was thinking. And that you’re a lot like Buttercup.”

“I am?” She beamed a smile at him.

“Sure. You’re smart and pretty and adventurous. And someday, some boy named Westley or Brian or Joe is going to fall madly in love with you. Before that, you’ll go away to college and… I’ll miss you. I’ll miss this.” He kissed her on the top of her head.

“I won’t ever leave you, Daddy.” She hugged him tightly.

“Not yet. But someday. And that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Then you’d be lonely,” she said, and he could hear a hitch in her voice.

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve got all my animals. All the horses and cattle I take care of. And Luke will be around and—”

“Tell me the story of Mommy again,” she interrupted, making it clear that his brand of gaslighting wasn’t going to work forever. “The one about how you met.”

She’d heard it a hundred times before and he was only now starting to notice that she asked for that story or some other vignette of his old life with Lissa whenever he mentioned loneliness in any form.

“You sure you want to hear that one again?”

She nodded, taking the framed photo of Lissa holding her as a baby off her bedside table to study it.

He leaned his head back against the headboard again. “Okay. The day we met, I was walking across campus on this wide, brick sidewalk that crisscrossed the grassy quad. I was in a big hurry to get to my class because I was late. It was just spring that day and all the trees had started turning green and flowers were blooming everywhere. And up ahead, blocking my way, I saw this big group of people—mostly women—standing on the sidewalk carrying homemade protest signs.”

“What did her sign say?” Ella prodded.

“There were a lot of signs about the movement. The women’s movement. But her sign said, SHENEEDED AHERO, SOSHEBECAMEONE.”

“Why did women need a movement?” Ella asked in all seriousness.Thiswas a new question.

“Sometimes… people need to stand up for the things they believe in. And… women, a lot of women, decided to do just that.”

“Hmm. And then you saw her looking at you,” Ella said, prompting him to go on.

“And then, through this crowd of people that had started to move toward me, I saw her. She was looking right at me and when our eyes met—your mom had the prettiest golden-brown eyes—I suddenly forgot where I was going. About my class and the test I was about to miss. Everything. I nearly got trampled by the protesters as they walked past me. But when she finally reached me, she stopped and said, ‘Hey. Don’t I know you?’”

“And you said,maybe?” Eloise loved to recount this part.

“Right. Even though I knew we’d never met. I told her. ‘My name is Gus.’ And she said, ‘I’m Lissa.’ And she just smiled at me—with a smile just like yours—and she asked if I wanted to join her. And of course, I said yes. How could I not? And, from that moment on, we were together.”

Ella snuggled against his chest. “And you loved her.”

“I loved her,” he said quietly. “And she loved you.”

“And you miss her? Like I miss her?”

“Yes, I do. I do miss her. She misses us, too, I think.” This conversation, they’d also had many times. About how Lissa was watching over Ella, but she was never going to be able to come back to them the way they both wished she could.

It had taken him almost two years just to accept her death himself. He’d quit the practice he’d become a partner in, packed up their lives and fell into this itinerant fill-in practice routine that had eventually brought them here, to Marietta, to fill in for Dr. Anders.

“Daddy,” Ella said after a long pause. “Do you think Mommy would mind very much if you loved someone else?”

Gus turned to stare at her. “What do you mean?”

“So that you wouldn’t be lonely?”

His heart caught. “Do you think I’m lonely?”

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