Lone Star Dad

“Well, fine.”

She straightened her shoulders and started across the leaf-covered patch of yard. It was better this way. The less she saw of Quinn, the safer her secret. She refused to let him upset her. She wasn’t the shy, aching teenager anymore who thought he’d hung the moon.

The cabin door opened behind her. Gena heard footsteps. She tensed and glanced over one shoulder. Quinn was coming her way, shrugging into a coat.

“I’ll get him and go,” she said. “No need to come out.”

Quinn kept right on walking. Sun shot gold through his hair and haloed his head, though he’d never been choir boy material. An amicable guy, but hardly perfect. Except in the looks department. He was still broad shouldered and built like an inverted wedge, a man women noticed. Time might have changed his personality but not his good looks and charisma.

Gena jerked her attention away. No matter how pretty he was, pretty is as pretty does.

She grabbed the wobbly shed handle and yanked, relieved when it didn’t fall off in her hand. Derrick was so grounded.

“Derrick, get in the...” At the sight before her, the words died in her throat unspoken. Her cranky, surly nephew who didn’t seem to care about anything at all these days sat cross-legged on the bare floor while a mother cat licked milk from his fingertips. Nestled around the black-and-white cat was a wad of brand-new baby kittens.

Derrick raised a rapt face. “She had babies. I watched.”

Gena went to her haunches. “How many?”

“Four. She’s really tired now.” He sounded vulnerable and sweet like the loving little boy he’d once been.

“I expect so.” She stroked a finger across the mother cat’s head. The animal seemed friendly. The big surprise to her was that Quinn Buchanon would own a cat. An attack-trained Rottweiler, yes. But a cat?

She looked up at the bewildering man standing inside the door. Had she misjudged him?

He was watching her. Not Derrick or the cats but her. For ten seconds their eyes held. Gena suffered a dozen conflicting emotions—completely unwanted attraction and a desire to know the man behind the haggard face and bent, scarred arm. Remembrance of who he’d once been, of what he’d done. Fear that he would learn the truth and hurt Derrick more. The last thought tugged her focus back to the boy.

“We should go. I have work to catch up on and you have homework for tomorrow.”

The sweet expression disappeared so fast she thought she’d imagined it. “I hate school.”

Big news. He said those same words every day. “Derrick...”

Quinn squatted beside her; the scent of wood smoke and cold air circled around him. To Derrick he said, his voice almost gentle, “Don’t worry about the kittens. They’ll be okay.”

Derrick’s pale eyes flashed to Quinn. He tried to appear nonchalant but Gena saw what she’d missed, what Quinn had seen. The boy had always had a soft spot for animals, but she’d thought it had disappeared along with the rest of his sweet nature.

“The mother knows what to do,” she said. “She’ll care for them.”

“But they can’t see. Their eyes are glued shut. What if they get too far away from her?”

“She’ll bring them back.” To prove the point, Quinn reached into the box and gently lifted a tiny kitten by the scruff, moving it slightly away from the mama. It mewed. Instantly, the mother cat rose to bring the kitten back with the others and gave it a rough-tongued lick for good measure.

“Oh.” Derrick swiped a sleeve over his nose and sniffed. “Dumb cats.”

Gena felt a smile coming on. Without intending to, she glanced at Quinn and saw his eyes spark, too.

Suddenly afraid, she scrambled to her feet. “Let’s go. We promised Mr. Buchanon to stay away from here.”

“You promised. I didn’t.”

The mulish attitude was back.

“You don’t get a say in this, kid. I’m the boss around here.” Quinn’s voice was casual but made of steel as he rose to his full and impressive height. What was he? Like six-five or something?

“But if you behave yourself, you can come back another time to see the kittens. And I won’t call the sheriff.”

Derrick’s shoulders relaxed the slightest bit. “Yeah?”

“No!” Gena shoved the shed door open, pulse thrumming. The bare wood slammed against the wall, ripping the gray morning.

Derrick was giving her heart trouble. At this rate, she’d be in cardiac arrest before her next birthday. “You can’t come here again. I’ve already told you that, but if you don’t argue, I’ll ground you from the computer for only two days.”

“That’s stupid,” he groused, but exited the well house and stomped across the frozen ground toward the SUV.

Gena sighed, aware that she’d won one battle but lost another. Derrick seemed to slip further away all the time. No matter what she did, he resented it.

Quinn came up beside her. She didn’t look at him, didn’t trust herself to look into his weary face and feel things that weren’t allowed. He was the enemy of all she held dear, and she’d do well to remember it.

“Has he always been this belligerent?”

“No.” Gena stared at the frozen ground, saw the gleam of ice that would soon melt away. If only problems would do the same. “He used to be the sweetest boy, the happy, cuddly kid who adored me.”

Back when she hadn’t been the boss. Back when Renae— She shut the door on the useless thought. She’d chosen this life for Renae’s sake, and she refused to regret the decision.

Without another word or glance, she strode to the SUV and drove away. Derrick simply could not come back to this place. Ever.

Chapter Three (#ulink_1aec9884-4100-5012-a000-387638d72137)

Two weeks passed, but Quinn knew he hadn’t seen the last of the troublesome neighbors. There was daily evidence that Derrick had snuck into the well house to see the kittens. He figured Gena didn’t know. Otherwise, why the secrecy?

This morning an opened but uneaten can of tuna was stashed in one dark corner of the shed. He’d smelled it the minute he’d opened the door.

Now at work inside the offices of Buchanon Construction, Quinn frowned at the sets of blueprints on his desk. His office was in the back of the warehouse, a quieter space than the front desks ruled by two of his sisters. Here he could work in peace and hang out with the coffeemaker. And wonder about his unexpected neighbors.

He refused to worry that the mother cat hadn’t been in the shed this morning. Or last night, for that matter. She came and went as she pleased. They weren’t his cats. He didn’t like cats.

But he wasn’t an ogre, either, contrary to popular opinion. He’d put a heating pad under the babies, turned to low like the internet said, to keep them warm. While he cleaned out the box and set up the heating pad, he’d put each kitten inside his zippered jacket, next to his warm skin. They were soft as down, and now that their eyes were squinted open, they were kind of cute.

“We missed you yesterday.” His brother Brady, the company’s manager and his closest sibling in age, propped a hip on the edge of his desk. As youths they’d been constant companions but after the accident that destroyed his throwing arm, Brady continued to play college football while Quinn was left behind to deal with surgeries and rehab and pain. Their lives had gone in separate directions, certainly not the direction he’d intended, and only in the last year had they intersected again. Brady didn’t know all he’d gone through in Dallas. Quinn didn’t want anybody to know.

He pretended to study the diagrams. “I was busy.”

“Yeah? Doing what?”

“Stuff.”

Brady barked a laugh. “You missed a good basketball game. The Mavericks beat the Thunder in OT.”