The Rancher's Surprise Daughter

“Mommy, will you play the cupcake game with me?” Ruby stood before Cate with a well-loved game in her hand that still boasted the reduced thrift-store sticker price.

Before Ruby, Cate had never stepped foot in a secondhand store. She’d never struggled for money growing up. But love and attention? Those had been harder to find.

It wasn’t as if her parents had been abusive in any way. She’d just been more...overlooked. They were simply too caught up in themselves to notice anyone around them—including the little girl left in the wake of their selfishness.

Growing up, her parents never saw eye to eye on anything, but on the subject of her pregnancy, they’d instantly been in agreement. They’d advised her that having Ruby would ruin her life. That it would be too hard. That it would crumple any chance of her being successful and she’d have to scramble to make ends meet. They’d told Cate that if she kept the baby, there’d be no help from them. Money or otherwise. Probably hoping to sway her decision. It hadn’t worked. But it had left them estranged.

They’d been right. Cate had hustled. Finished school early on an accelerated path. She’d scrounged for work, taking anything and everything she could find. Raising Ruby was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.

But her parents had also been so very, very wrong. Because the adorable munchkin standing in front of Cate hopping up and down—game pieces rattling inside the box as though agreeing with her impatience—was by far the best thing she’d ever accomplished. Worth every second of her energy and love.

“Please, Mommy?”

“Okay, Rubes. I’ll play.” After a couple of games Ruby would have a little more playtime and then Cate would read to her before bed. She still went down early—partly for Cate’s sanity and partly because she often worked the evening hours until falling into bed herself.

Removing the charcoal-framed glasses she wore for computer work, Cate set them next to her Mac computer on the desk that occupied one corner of the living room in their tiny, two-bedroom apartment.

The screen in front of her went dark as it fell asleep, but she knew what lurked behind the curtain of black. A project with a looming deadline. She was close, but she couldn’t quite get the branding package for the local cupcake shop just right. And she needed it to be perfect, because she needed the next freelance job after this. Cate loved her career as a graphic designer and the freedom it allowed her to work from home and cart Ruby to and from the small in-home day care she went to.

A majority of Cate’s jobs came from a firm in Denver who hired her as a subcontractor, and she filled in the extra income they needed with side work.

They moved over to the sofa, and Ruby set up the game while Cate covered a yawn and considered making a cup of tea. Twenty-four years old and this was what she’d come to on a Friday night. But then, getting pregnant at twenty had put a damper on any wild and adventurous life plans.

Ruby chose a blue base and began building a cupcake. She never really followed the game cards, instead creating whatever combination suited her fancy at the moment.

“Your turn, Mommy.”

Cate picked the yellow holder, choosing to add a plastic layer of chocolate, wishing, not for the first time, that this game consisted of real cupcakes and she could inhale the chocolate one in her hand...after adding a layer of buttercream frosting.

Her mouth watered just as a knock sounded at their door, causing her to jump like a popcorn kernel in sizzling oil.

Who would be at their door on a Friday night? Was it her nosy neighbor again? Millie Hintz wasn’t the landlord, but she’d appointed herself as the head of the building’s nonexistent neighborhood watch program. A spry eighty-year-old with white hair who seemed to be shrinking in height over time, her unexpected pop-overs were unnerving because she always scanned the apartment from the doorway like she was going to catch Cate with a hidden mountain lion or other unapproved item.

But even though Millie considered it her job to know what was happening in everyone’s lives, she was kindhearted. Cate had decided the visits were more about loneliness than anything else. And if anyone understood that, it was her. Talking to Millie wouldn’t cost her more than a few minutes of time.

“You go,” she told Ruby, pushing up from the sofa and crossing the few steps to the door. Sometimes Millie brought them cookies. The monster ones with M&M’s and chocolate chips. Yum.

Cate pressed her face against the peephole, squeaking in surprise when it wasn’t shrinking Millie on the other side of the door, but Luc.

What was he doing here?

All week he’d been on her mind, her thoughts zipping into overdrive... Had she done the right thing telling him about Ruby? She hoped so. It had taken all of her strength to share her daughter with him. They’d done the DNA testing earlier this week, and she’d let him know about Ruby’s procedure date, but other than that, she hadn’t heard from him. What was he thinking showing up at their apartment like this? Didn’t the man know how to use a phone?

And more important, did he know she was home and did she have to answer? Her pulse bumped along like her car had on the gravel road that led to the Wilder ranch. And of course she was in old, black, faded-to-gray yoga pants and a yellow V-neck T-shirt, her hair in a disheveled low ponytail.

Quite the package.

Frustration leaked out in a disgruntled huff. “So much for cookies.” She’d take Millie over Luc any day.

“I can hear you through the door, Cate.”

She jumped to the side as if he had X-ray vision and could also see her through the barrier.

“You really know how to creep a girl out.” Cate quickly redid the tie that held her hair and swiped under her eyes for runaway makeup.

“Are you going to open the door or are we going to keep talking through it?”

Ruby appeared next to Cate. “Is that my friend Luc?”

Ever since they’d been to the ranch, Ruby hadn’t stopped chattering about “my friend Luc.” It was all Cate could do to keep from plugging her ears, because she didn’t have a clue what was going on in Luc’s head since she’d shown up and royally flipped his life upside down.

She both wanted and didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

What he thought of her.

“Yep, it is.” Cate undid two locks with shaking fingers—not that the security mattered so much now that she knew how flimsy her door was—and twisted the knob.

Luc practically took up the whole frame. What was it about him that always made her feel like his presence sucked the oxygen out of the room? He wasn’t that tall. Maybe an inch under six foot.

His eyebrow quirked. “Can I come in?”

Was answering no a legitimate option? Ruby nudged past Cate, latched on to Luc’s hand and pulled him inside. The scent of the outdoors came with him.

“Come on. I want to show you my room and my new doll and my ponies and my pink lamp. Me and Mommy were playing a game. You can play with us if you want.”

The adoration for Ruby written on Luc’s face was enough to make Cate’s knees go swirly. Though none of it was directed at her.

An annoyed meow sounded from the top of the couch. Princess Prim rose from her favorite resting place and stretched her spine as if their ruckus had woken her and she was not pleased about it. Narrowed eyes dissected Luc, naming him an intruder in one fell swoop. Good kitty. Cate silently promised her a treat for later.

“I thought you couldn’t have pets.” Luc’s head swung from the feline to Cate.

“We can’t have dogs, but Prim is more royalty than pet. She runs the place. Ruby and I are just her lowly servants.”

Ruby giggled and gave Luc’s hand—which she hadn’t let go of—a determined tug. She yanked him across the small apartment living room and past their dining table. But at the threshold to her bedroom, Luc paused.

“You okay if she shows me her room?”

A dried biscuit had somehow gotten lodged in her throat. Considerate of him to ask, but Luc had as much of a right to Ruby as she did.

That was what scared her the most.

Cate managed a nod, and the two of them disappeared inside. She heard Ruby’s continuous chatter and Luc’s low voice rumbling back questions or answers. The whole thing made her drop to the couch and hold her head in her hands. What had she done?

God, You’d better be right. Protect her. And me. Please. You know I didn’t want to do this.

Princess Prim burrowed onto her lap, tilting her head in a way that asked questions. The royalty wanted answers Cate didn’t have.

“What are you? The press?” She scrubbed hands into the soft fur behind Prim’s ears. “I just don’t want her to get hurt. And I’m afraid of losing her.” The whisper came out forlorn, and Prim purred in sympathetic response.