Page 48 of Snowed in with the Rancher

A week later, Olivia stood in the doorway of her new office and sighed with satisfaction. She wasn't officially beginning until the next day, but she'd already come in two mornings in a row and organized the space to suit herself. The office was closed during the week between Christmas and New Year's, so she'd had the place to herself and could finally focus on cleaning out emails and files as well as reading background on the organization's recent projects and looking over the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Since moving in with Thomas and Lucy, things had become exponentially easier for Olivia and the girls. She felt guilty at how much help the older couple gave them, but both of them insisted it was the best thing that had happened to them in years. Olivia made sure to buy groceries and stock the refrigerator, and she and the girls got up early and cooked breakfast for the whole house most mornings. But Lucy and Thomas had kept the girls entertained, had taught them to do chores, taken them riding on the pony and shopping in town. Their help had freed Olivia up to come get her new office ready and make the extensive list of phone calls and arrangements necessary to prepare for the start of the second half of the school year and the repairs to her rental house.

Norene still hadn't agreed to upgrade all of the electrical wiring, but she'd replaced the ones that were the most potentially dangerous, and Olivia had gotten her to pay for a new stove and washer-dryer set, so it felt like a win. The little house was looking better each day, and Olivia hoped that within a couple of weeks, she and the girls could move in.

“Mommy!” Jackie yelled from the front room of the small office.

Olivia walked to the reception space, and both Jackie and Melissa ran to throw their arms around her legs. Lucy smiled as she stomped snow off her boots before she closed the door behind them.

“Did you have fun?” Olivia asked, looking down at two rosy faces.

“We got hot chocolates, and we learned how to scrape the snow off the window of the truck,” Jackie answered.

“They were so helpful,” Lucy said with a smile. “We went to the post office, and they put all the stamps on the letters, then we stopped at the coffee shop for hot chocolate, and when we came out and there was new snow on the truck, they used the long broom from the coffee shop to sweep it all off the window.”

“So Grandma could see to drive,” Melissa said earnestly.

At the girl's use of the name Grandma, Olivia saw Lucy's eyes light up. “You are both so helpful to Grandma,” the older woman gushed as she knelt and hugged both girls at once.

“Thank you for taking them this morning. I feel like I'm finally ready for the new job now. And I got all the paperwork to get them registered for their preschool done, too. They'll be starting when the other kids come back from winter break.”

Lucy said her goodbyes and left for an afternoon of knitting with some of her friends. Olivia began to gather her things so she could take the girls to the grocery store and then back to the ranch.

“Mommy?” Jackie asked. “Will Daddy be there when we get home?”

They probably knew the answer to that better than she did. Tate had spent time with the girls every morning when he came to work, and he'd stayed at the end of some days for pony rides and sledding, but Olivia hadn't talked to him other than in passing. The girls told her about spending time with him while he had his coffee in the mornings, and she watched as they all played in the snow in the afternoons, but she didn't get involved. Neither did she ask him to do anything for them. She was tired, and her heart hurt. For now, she would simply let things progress as they would.

“I don't know, hon. Why do you ask?”

Jackie shot a look at Melissa, who was drawing on a piece of paper she'd taken off the receptionist's desk.

Olivia took Jackie's hand and walked with her into her own office, sensing that Jackie didn't want her sister to hear the discussion.

Jackie climbed up on a chair and watched Olivia sit down at her desk. “Mommy, how come now that he knows about us, Daddy doesn't want to live with us?”

Olivia blinked, searching for an appropriate answer. “Well, not all moms and dads live together. You know that.”

“But we were living with Daddy.”

Olivia sighed. No, it seemed to her that they'd simply been existing in Tate's space. They'd never lived together.

“We were staying with him while our house was getting fixed, and now we're staying with Grandma and Grandpa. Once it's ready, we'll live in our own house, just the three of us, like we always have.”

“But I like Daddy,” Jackie said quietly.

Olivia couldn't tamp down the immediate response in her head—I do, too. Yes, she still liked him, even after he'd told her he couldn't be with her, even after she'd accepted that they weren't going to be a family the way she'd wanted.

The fact was, Olivia still lay awake in bed at night and remembered the feeling of his skin on hers, the taste of his lips, the words he'd whispered to her in the dark. She still remembered the man she'd fallen in love with on that ship, and the shadows of him she'd seen since coming to Montana.

“And Daddy likes you,” she told Jackie. “But he didn't know about us for a long time. And he had his life here. He's still figuring out how to fit us in, but it might not be in the same house with him.”

Before Jackie could answer, Olivia's phone chimed. She picked it up to see a text from Jake.

Can you come over to the house? We could use your input.

Olivia put aside her thoughts of Tate. This was her life. She had two kids to raise, a rental house to manage, and a new job to conquer. Maybe when the girls graduated from high school, she'd look for a man. Until then, her to-do list was full up.

TWENTY-ONE

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