Daddy Lessons

Kate smiled at her six-year-old son, the light of her life, who’d thankfully remembered his manners. Her divorce and Ed’s subsequent desertion had been especially hard on their son—not that Ed had ever been an involved parent. He’d never been the kind of father that Travis was already with his infant daughter, Marsha.

“Earth to Kate,” Travis said, interrupting her thoughts in the same way he had when they were children. He held out her plate. “If you’re not hungry…”

“Oh, no you don’t. I’ll take that right now.” When she’d lived the suburban lifestyle, she’d enjoyed all the trendy chain restaurants. Now she was happy with simpler fare…even if she did sometimes miss a good grilled chicken caesar salad.

“You folks need anything else?” Charlene asked.

“We’re great, thanks,” Travis said, and Kate smiled up at her while Jodie adjusted Marsha’s pacifier.

As Charlene moved away from the table, the sunlight flooding through the front window of the café made Kate squint. And then she noticed something that made her eyes open wide. Something she hadn’t seen in Ranger Springs in the two months she’d lived here.

The heavy blub-blub-blub of the motorcycle engine died as the bike came to a stop across the street, facing the gazebo in the middle of the town square. With the rider’s back to her, she worked her gaze up from his heavy boots to his faded, tight jeans, past the black leather jacket to the dark, too-long hair that blew in the cool breeze.

He threw his muscular leg over the seat and stepped away from the bike. Kate caught her breath. Wow.

“Kate! Do you want your lunch or not?”

She blinked, moving her focus from the scene outside the window to Travis. “Yes, I want…lunch,” she said in a slightly shaky voice. She absolutely did not want to stare at the bona-fide bad boy on the big motorcycle.

“Are you okay?” Jodie asked, placing a hand on Kate’s forearm.

“I’m fine. I just saw…I wonder who that is. He doesn’t exactly look like a local.”

“Who?”

Jodie and Travis both turned toward the window. Travis narrowed his eyes, a sure sign he was getting all protective. “No, he’s not local.”

“Like I would have missed him,” Jodie added, then smiled at Travis’s deepening frown.

Kate grinned. She loved the way her brother and sister-in-law teased each other, argued in a good-natured way and made up with lots of love. She and Ed—the lying, cheating rat—had never developed that type of relationship.

“Who, Mommy?” Eddie asked.

“Just some man on a motorcycle,” Kate replied casually, then looked back out the window. The man who’d just breezed into town didn’t resemble the local guys at all. They wore snap-front Western shirts, the softer, looser jeans made for riding horses, not Harleys, and cowboy or work boots. They definitely didn’t look like…that.

The man was walking toward the restaurant, as though he’d sensed her ogling him. Not that she was exactly ogling. She was a thirty-two-year-old divorced mother without a steady job or a permanent place to live. She owned a few pieces of furniture, a couple of suitcases of clothes and a few boxes of personal belongings. Until she found a job, hopefully teaching school, she was officially unemployed, although she did substitute teach whenever possible. She didn’t have the luxury of ogling strange men.

Still, her heart thumped as he opened the door of the café. The bell overhead tinkled, drawing the attention of everyone in the place. He brought in the crisp winter air and the smell of well-worn leather. Or perhaps she just imagined the leather. One thing she wasn’t imagining was her shocking appreciation for a one-hundred-percent male. No, make that one-hundred-percent off-limit male.

“Hey, Luke,” Hank McCauley called out from across the room. From the corner of her eye, Kate saw him rise from his booth and head toward the biker.

“Hank.” The man’s soft, deep voice fit his persona as well as his white T-shirt molded his pecs and abs. He walked right by them but didn’t look over. Didn’t politely smile or nod as most of the locals did. Didn’t even notice she’d been practically drooling, despite her mental efforts to curb her unexpected reaction.

The last thing she needed right now was an attraction to a man. She didn’t have the time, energy or confidence to start a relationship. And then there was Eddie. She needed to be both mother and father to him now that Ed was out of the picture. Now that their lives had been turned upside down.

“Your hamburger’s getting cold, sis,” Travis said in a warning tone.

Just then Charlene approached their table and mentioned, as she refilled their iced tea, “He’s Hank’s friend from California. Hank said he’d be in sometime around noon. Rode all the way to Texas on his Harley.”

“California?” Jodie asked. “I wonder where. I’ll have to find out.”

“It’s a big state,” Travis said in a slightly peeved tone. “Just because you’re from the same state doesn’t mean he’s your new best friend.”

“Jealous, darling?” she teased.

Travis snorted. “Of him? Hardly.”

“I think he’s a very attractive man,” Charlene added. “Not for me, of course. I mean in general. He looks like a movie star, but Hank said he’s a stuntman and a trainer.”

Personal or animal?

“Wow, a stuntman,” Eddie said. “I know what they do.”

Oh, great. Looked as though she was going to have a serious case of hero worship. That, combined with her own wandering thoughts, meant they’d all better avoid the newcomer. “I’m sure he’s just taking a short vacation.” Probably a vacation from all the gorgeous Hollywood women chasing after him.

“According to Hank, he’s bought 640 acres, an old ranch just out of town,” Charlene said, then grinned. “Travis, he’s your new neighbor!”

Neighbor? That would be bad. Very, very bad. Kate swallowed the lump in her throat with a big drink of iced tea, vowing to have a long talk with Eddie when they got home about how they needed to not bother their new neighbor, at least until he had time to get settled in. And they knew more about him. By then, maybe she could be objective. Maybe she’d even convince herself that she could tell a good guy from a bad one without spending years being married to him.

Eddie swiveled in his chair and watched the newcomer with way too much interest. Yes, she and Eddie both needed to stay away from their new neighbor. She only hoped she could follow her own advice.

Chapter One

Luke leaned against the sturdy new fence that defined the pasture for Lola and Lollipop, two cantankerous zebras; Spot and Potsy, two arthritic Shetland ponies; and Gordon the ill-tempered donkey. Beneath a row of hackberry trees near the driveway, two swayback snowy white horses stood side by side, lazily swishing their tails in unison.

He’d moved to this small town in the Texas Hill Country for just this reason—an affordable place with a good climate where he could provide a “retirement” home for unwanted animals. Where they—and he—could live in peace and quiet. Land in California had been too expensive. So he’d come back to Texas, to the town where his friend Hank McCauley lived, even though this particular place wasn’t Luke’s hometown, not that he thought of any particular place as home.

Besides, he didn’t need a hometown. He was a grown man who could take care of himself. These animals didn’t have anywhere to go except a slaughterhouse or rendering plant.

The sound of barking reminded him that he should feed the Jack Russell terriers in their run near the barn. But first he needed to make sure his inquisitive little neighbor got back through the fence—the one that divided his property from Travis Whitaker’s ranch.

Ever since the animals had begun arriving from California, Oklahoma and Colorado, Eddie Wooten had started visiting Luke’s property. He hid behind the newly painted barn, lurked behind shrubby Mesquite trees and sneaked between the hackberry trees in the fencerow. When he figured Luke wasn’t looking, he’d coax the animals to him with carrots and apples. The same scenario had occurred at least a half-dozen times, enough that Luke was now on the lookout for one little boy.

If Eddie stayed on his side of the fence, Luke wouldn’t worry. But the boy was fearless when it came to animals—especially Lola and Lollipop—and put himself in danger by walking into the pasture. Eddie could be accidentally bitten, stepped on or knocked down.

He tried to remember himself as a child, but the image wouldn’t form. Sometimes he thought he’d been born at age fourteen. Had he ever been as inquisitive as Eddie? As naive?

Luke winced at the memory of Kate Wooten arriving at his ranch the last time the boy had strayed over. She’d been tense and worried and yet more beautiful than he remembered from the first time he’d seen her. She’d held Eddie to her briefly, assured herself that he was uninjured, and then soundly chastised him for running off. She’d told him that he absolutely could not come here again, that he had to stay away from the animals. Then she’d turned those wide gray eyes on Luke and apologized for her son’s impulsive, inappropriate behavior.

He’d never heard childish curiosity called “inappropriate” behavior before. Only later had he discovered, through an innocent conversation with Gwendolyn McCauley at the local café, that Kate was an elementary school teacher. She was one classy lady, and obviously well educated. Her reserved attitude and the fact that she stuck around only long enough to retrieve her son made their differences real obvious.

He’d gruffly told her that her son should stay on his side of the fence because any animal could be dangerous, even one that looked perfectly harmless. She’d looked at him in horror for an endless moment, then bundled off Eddie without another word. Luke had barely seen her since. Certainly hadn’t spoken to her.

She apparently found him even more frightening than his animals.

Eddie cleared the fence and ran in the direction of the Whitaker house. Or more specifically, the Whitaker garage, where he lived in the apartment upstairs with his mother.

Luke didn’t want to dwell on the attractive but uptight sister of his coolly polite neighbor. Travis wasn’t hostile, but he seemed suspicious of Luke and the Last Chance Ranch. It really didn’t matter because Luke owned the land and was here to stay, regardless of what the locals thought or said.