Do You Take This Maverick?

There had to be a way to fix all this. There just had to be.

* * *

“Grandpa, can I see you for a minute?” Claire asked, standing in the doorway of Gene’s cubbyhole of an office.

Gene rose to his feet. For the time being, what he was working on was temporarily forgotten.

“You, princess, can see me for a whole hour if you like,” he told her cheerfully. Joining them, he asked, “And how are my two best girls this morning?”

Claire thought of her run-in with Levi a few minutes ago. “Stunned and confused,” she told him.

Bushy eyebrows drew together, forming a squiggly line worthy of a fat caterpillar.

“Come again?” Gene asked. “Are you stunned and confused, peanut?” he asked Bekka.

Responding to the sound of his deep, resonant voice, the baby cooed at Gene, making him laugh with unabashed pleasure.

“Grandpa, she can’t talk,” Claire informed the older man flatly.

“Maybe you can’t understand her, but she can talk,” he assured Claire with a touch of whimsy. “Look at her expression,” he said pointedly. “That little girl is definitely trying to communicate.”

“And so am I,” Claire said to her grandfather in barely curbed exasperation.

Faced with this situation, Gene sobered slightly. “Go ahead, princess. I’m listening.”

Claire’s frown deepened. “Levi is staying here at the boarding house.”

He had a feeling that Claire knew she wasn’t telling him anything that he wasn’t already aware of. He didn’t bother feigning surprise at her news.

“Yes, I know.”

She stared at the older man in disbelief. How could he have betrayed her this way? Unless Levi was lying about this, too. She found herself fervently hoping that he was. Otherwise, this was really going to shake her faith in her grandfather.

“He said you rented him a room.” Maybe there was some other explanation for his being here.

The next moment her grandfather dashed that slim hope. He nodded his head. “I did.”

Her mouth all but dropped open. “Why?” Claire demanded.

“Well, I couldn’t very well not rent it to him,” Gene replied seriously. “That would be prejudicial.”

Claire’s big brown eyes widened. She couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you saying you were afraid he’d report you to the sheriff?”

Wide shoulders moved up and down in a vague shrug. He went with the excuse his granddaughter had unknowingly come up with.

“You never know,” he told her.

“Grandpa, this is Levi,” she reminded him. “He wouldn’t do that. Levi likes you.”

“He also likes you,” Gene told her. “A lot. And all he wants is a chance to prove it.”

Claire couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re taking his side, Grandpa?” she cried, appalled.

“Like I told your grandmother, I’m not taking any sides, I’m just making sure that both sides get a chance to be heard.”

“I don’t need to ‘hear’ anything,” his granddaughter informed him. “Besides,” she reminded the man, “weren’t you the one who once told me that actions speak louder than words?”

“I might have said that,” he allowed, then went on to remind her, “I’m also the one who said everyone deserves a second chance.”

“If you mean Levi, I gave him a second chance.” She was working herself up. “I gave him lots of second chances, and he blew them all.”

“He’s been skipping out on you to play poker on a regular basis?” Gene asked innocently.

“No,” she admitted reluctantly. As upset as she was about this situation, she wasn’t about to lie about it to her grandfather.

Her grandfather looked at her pointedly. “Then what?” he wanted to know.

She was referring to Levi going out of town for meetings and seminars as well as coming home late and falling asleep on the couch before she could get his dinner warmed up. But she had no intentions of going into all that now.

Besides, she had a feeling that her grandfather would be taking Levi’s side in that, saying he saw nothing wrong in a man trying to better his family’s lot by putting in all those long hours at work.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she informed her grandfather and with that, she turned on her heel and hurried away to find her grandmother.

At least her grandmother sided with her, Claire thought.

Or at least she hoped so.

Chapter Four (#ulink_5dd21a38-3f99-549a-b8a5-f0f926b83610)

Holding a fussing Bekka in her arms, Claire went in search of her grandmother. Between feeling betrayed by her grandfather and being subjected to her baby’s incessant crying, her nerves felt as if they were stretched as far as they could go. She was beyond stressed out.

“Come on, Bekka. Please stop,” she begged.

Bekka went on crying.

At her wit’s end, Claire finally found the object of her search in the kitchen. Melba was going over a menu change with the cook. Gina tapped the older woman on the shoulder and pointed behind her.

The moment she realized that her granddaughter was there, Melba paused, telling the cook, “We’ll talk later.” With that, she waited for Claire to join her.

“Is it true?” Claire asked without any preamble.

“Is what true?” Melba wanted to know, peering over the tops of her rimless glasses at her distressed granddaughter. And then she smiled, tickling Bekka under her chin. “Hi, peanut,” she cooed.

“I just found out that Grandpa rented out Jordyn Leigh’s old room to Levi,” Claire complained, referring to the young woman who’d moved out last month after marrying her longtime best friend, Will Clifton, a rancher from Thunder Canyon. They’d apparently tied the knot during the reception of the wedding she and Levi had attended last month.

“Yes, I know,” Melba replied matter-of-factly with a dismissive shrug. She wasn’t exactly happy at inviting this turmoil onto her home turf, but maybe Gene was right. Maybe Levi should be given another chance to make things right between him and Claire. Her granddaughter certainly wasn’t happy with the current state of her marriage.