to stay still, Luc pushed up from the couch, his strides quickly covering the small cabin’s living room. He ended up at the back window that faced open ranchland, seeing the grass-covered hills in a new light. Yesterday it had been land passed down to Luc and his sisters when their parents had moved to a warmer climate in order to accommodate his mom’s health. Today a new generation existed. A little girl with silky hair and a nonstop mouth and adorable brown eyes who was his. His.
“I have to see her.” He crossed the space and rummaged for his keys in the kitchen junk drawer.
Gage followed him. “Don’t you think you should wait? Calm down first?”
Why did he have so many scraps of paper in this stupid drawer? Items tumbled over each other as he searched for the simple metal key ring. “I don’t see a real possibility of that happening in the very near future.”
“Guess not.” Gage nudged Luc to the side, then found the truck keys in a much calmer, more methodical manner.
But then again, Gage hadn’t just found out he was positively a father.
His friend offered up the keys on the palm of his hand. “Do you want me to go with you?”
Luc appreciated Gage’s support, but he needed some time to clear his head. Maybe the drive would help, though he wasn’t confident anything would at the moment. “Nah. Thanks, though.” He snatched the metal ring that held three keys and proceeded to the front door, snagging his boots.
“What are you going to do? About custody?”
He paused to glance at Gage after yanking on the first boot. “What do you mean? What can I do?”
“File for it.”
“I don’t know.” He couldn’t think beyond seeing Ruby right now. Couldn’t deal with logistics. “I’m angry, but I’m not sure that’s the answer.”
“You need to protect yourself. She’s already kept Ruby from you for years. Who’s to say she won’t take off and disappear to another state and you’ll never see your child again?”
Red flashed, and Luc pulled on the second boot with heated force. Cate wouldn’t...would she? But the same thought had entered his mind. When they’d readied to leave on Saturday, Luc had wondered if he’d ever see them again. Cate had written down her address and phone number, almost as though proving to him she wouldn’t do anything of the sort.
Still, how could he trust her after what she’d done?
“Do you want me to look into it? See what your options are? I know someone who deals with these situations. I can ask.”
Gage was the only man Luc knew who ranched as a later-in-life choice. He’d been a smarty lawyer at some big firm until he’d inherited a ranch from his uncle. Gage and his wife, Nicole, had moved to the nearby ranch just over a year and a half ago. And then Nicole had decided a different life looked better, and she’d been gone in a blink. Gage had been on his own ever since. He ran the ranch, very quietly helping the church or people in the community out with legal matters when they required it.
Luc just never imagined he’d be in need of that advice.
“I don’t know that I have any other choice.” A stampede of hooves vibrated inside his skull. “I’m not sure if I have any rights and if she can control letting me see Ruby. So, yeah. Check it out.”
“I will.”
“Good thing I have you on retainer.”
Gage chuckled. “You don’t. You couldn’t afford me. This friend business really works in your favor.”
“True.”
Luc grabbed the piece of paper with Cate’s address from the kitchen counter. He’d left it there as a reminder to pray for Ruby—not that the trigger had been necessary. The girl and her mother hadn’t left his thoughts all week.
He’d need the details if he planned to show up on Cate’s doorstep unannounced.
It wasn’t very considerate of him to plan to ambush her at their home. But then again, he hadn’t expected Cate to show up on his doorstep with a daughter he never knew he had.
Turnabout was fair play.
* * *
“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
