Page 16 of Second First Kiss

“You’re already pulling twelve-hour days,” Nolan said, hoping to God that it was just some invoice glitch. Everyone who worked at the lodge was like family, and he’d hate to have to fire someone he cared about. “Plus, it’s my job to keep people safe and accountable, this falls to me. I will figure out what’s going on.”

5

Someone was sucking on her toes.

“Five more minutes,” Kat mumbled, rolling over on her stomach and throwing the covers over her head.

Now she was being watched—she could feel it. Someone—or something—was in the room with her.

Kat pried open her lids to find Tiny Dancer staring at her. His chin was resting on the corner of the mattress, his thick lashes batting her way.

“You snuck out of your pen again, didn’t you?”

His answer was to snort.

“Well, I need five more minutes, or I take you to the glue factory.”

Neigh.

“Ugh!”

Kat was neither a night owl nor a morning person. She was a bona fide sleep connoisseur. So functioning on three hours’ sleep was going to be impossible without two or ten cups of coffee.It’d been after two when they’d finally arrived home.

Neigh!

Kat threw back the covers and sat up, rubbing her hand down her face. “Fine. Breakfast, then factory.”

She picked up her phone to see if she still had time to feed Tiny Dancer and then come back to bed when panic kicked her in the gut like a bucking bronco.

“Shit!” It was nearly eight thirty in the morning, which meant Tessa would be late for school—again.

Kat grabbed her robe—she wasn’t going to be accused of prancing around in her skimpy pj’s today, no sir—and ran down the hallway. She pounded on Tessa’s door. “We’re late. Train leaves in ten minutes. You’d better be on it.”

She raced into the kitchen and started the coffee—priorities—then opened the fridge to make Tessa lunch when the felon of the hour padded in.

Tessa’s hair was sticking up in the back, her eyes were puffy from crying, and there was a sheet mark on her cheek. She looked more like the kid sister from a year ago. The kid sister who loved school, loved life, and didn’t give a rat’s ass what boys thought of her. The kid sister who was forced to grow up too soon because of shitty parents. Something Kat could relate to.

By the time Tessa was seven, Tina Rhodes was MIA from her daughters’ lives. It was a pattern that had plagued their childhood. After the divorce, Tina would just disappear. To gamble, to travel, to date America’s least desirable men. Eventually she’d come back wanting to be Mom of the Year, only to disappear when the next butterfly blew past. But ten years later, Tina had yet to come home again.

While Tessa pretended she didn’t care about Tina, Kat knew that there was still a little girl inside her who wanted her mom to come home. For her mom to choose her. Hell, either parent to choose her.

Kat had the same little girl inside her.

While their dad might not have been a stable fixture in their lives, he’d been a constant fixture. At least until he’d injured himself and went from lumberjacking to driving a big rig. After being stuck in the small ski town of Sierra Vista for his entire fifty years, Abe loved the freedom that the open roads brought. Only that freedom came at a price.

It came at his daughters’ happiness and well-being.

Kat was all about the “You do you” mentality when it came to life, but there were a dozen other professions her dad could have chosen. And he’d picked the only one that affected everyone else in his life. Not only did Kat have to walk away from school, but she also walked away from her own dreams.

Okay, so there had been a little misunderstanding at MIT, but she was in the middle of fixing that when her dad had called to say he needed her at home to help out with Tessa. He’d promised her it would only be a semester, just until he got his new gig up and running. But that semester had turned into spring, then summer, and here she was, three years later still living someone else’s life in the town she’d tried so desperately to flee.

Instead of being some big cybersecurity expert, she spent her days as an IT manager for the county, which was pretty much like being the Geek Squad for the DMV. And was still struggling to pay off her college loans for a degree she’d didn’t finish. And to cover her sister’s needs and the mortgage on her dad’s house.

Abe had let the property taxes lapse a few years. It had been toward the end of his accident when he’d been injured and unemployed.

Kat wouldn’t go as far as to say her life was empty. She had the best group of friends a girl could ask for, but her tank was definitely running on fumes.

“Why are you still in your pj’s?” she asked her sister, who had slid onto a bar seat at the counter.

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