Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 36960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
My heart skips a beat, and joy fills me. She has a child. A little one I can look after and spoil. I didn’t think life could get better than discovering my soulmate. But now I’m seeing she has a baby. The family I’ve always wanted is being handed right to me. I could fall on my knees in gratitude.
Missy takes a step back, and I realize I must have shifted and drawn attention to myself. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She relaxes when she sees it’s me, and I take that as a good sign. Even though she’s scared, she knows she can trust me on some level. “Don’t worry about it.”
She settles the little one in the backseat. I have a million questions about her and her child, but I don’t let myself pepper her with any of them. There will be time to get to know them, I remind myself.
It’s hard to be patient when I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Only this time, Santa brought me a family. Seems too good to be true.
She climbs into her car. It’s an aging piece of junk. I make a note to replace it soon. I won’t allow her and the little one to want for anything. It’s my job to take care of them now, and that’s what I plan to do.
I listen as she starts her car. The ignition turns over and over again, but nothing is happening. I swear under my breath. Yep, she definitely needs something reliable.
I rap on the window, hating the way she startles. When she rolls it down, I do my best to keep my voice soft. I don’t want to scare her any more than I already have tonight. “Do you and the little one want a lift?”
She doesn’t want to accept my offer. I can see it on her face plain as day, but then her baby lets out a wail. She looks back at the diner and says, more to herself than me, “Ernie and Lorna have already done so much for us. I’d hate to bother them with this.”
She’s out the door faster than I expect and is already opening the baby’s door. “I really appreciate this. Are you sure it’s not too much of a bother? I can walk.”
Courage County is safe enough for a person to walk after dark. But the thought of her wandering the streets alone has my blood pressure rising dangerously fast. “Folks around here help out their neighbors.”
I don’t have to convince her. She has the baby out and strapped into my truck before I can even offer help. She has the car cleared in less than sixty seconds, climbing into the passenger seat with the green diaper bag clutched tightly in her hand.
She rattles off an address at the edge of town as soon as I get in.
I nod and start the engine, glancing into the rearview mirror to see the little one sucking contentedly on a pacifier. I haven’t seen the baby clearly yet. “So, who do I have the pleasure of transporting tonight?”
“Daisy.” There’s no mistaking the warmth and tenderness in her voice when she calls her daughter’s name. She adjusts the knobs on the temperature control like I’ve driven her around a million times. “She’s six months old and has recently discovered the wonder of her toes.”
I stop at the one traffic light in the town and look at her in the mirror. “Excellent work, Daisy.”
“So…” Missy fiddles with the air vents, adjusting them once, then twice. She goes for the volume control next, turning down the soft country song that’s playing. “Did you grow up in Courage County?”
She moves to my dash next, moving the funny little magnets that Aunt Dorothy sent me. She straightens them, and something in me aches at how nervous she is. What has she been through that even being around me makes her so scared?
“I’ve been living in Courage since I was about ten. That’s when I came to live with my aunt,” I explain. I pause there, trying to decide what to say next. I don’t want to get into the full story of how I arrived here. That part of me will always be a little tender. “She was busy running her farm, so I spent a lot of time with Ernie and Lorna. They took me under their wing and looked out for me when I was a kid.”
“But you left,” she says in a tone that would make a suspect in a murder investigation sweat.
“Yep, I went to the police academy. I spent the next few years in the city, putting criminals behind bars.”
She stops with the magnets, her body going completely still. I notice and file that away. She’s running from something. Wanting to ease her fears, I say, “Now that I’m back in town, the most interesting thing I investigate is when the local teenagers tip the cows.”