Lone Star Valentine (McCabe Multiples) (20 page)

“Daddy!”

He smiled suddenly as Amber came charging out of the playroom. “Hey, princess! How was school?”

“It was good. We gots to paint pictures of our favorite thing to do in winter.”

He knew what hers was, but he asked anyway. “And what did you paint?”

She twirled in a circle. “Skating!”

Quinn’s skating expertise was limited to hockey skates and a pond scrimmage now and again. This year Amber had wanted to learn, so for Christmas he’d bought her little white figure skates and signed her up for weekly lessons at the rink in town.

“Nice,” he commented, reaching for her backpack while she shoved her arms in her coat. “Come on, let’s go home and get some supper on.”

She was jamming her hat on her head as she peered up at him. “Can we go see Duke and Carrie? I want to show them my picture.”

“Maybe another time.” Quinn swallowed, thinking about Lacey being at the house by herself tonight. She’d looked sort of...lost, he thought. It didn’t really matter that he wasn’t overly fond of her. Losing your job was stressful, especially when you didn’t have a backup plan. She’d been making ends meet on a mediocre salary. He knew how upset he’d be if he lost his job and had Amber to support.

Maybe he was being too hard on Lacey.

“Please, Daddy? I haven’t seen Duke all week.” She pouted prettily as she took his hand and they walked to the door.

“Duke was still out in the pasture when I left. He might not even be back yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

He helped her buckle into her booster seat in the backseat of his truck and then got in and started the engine. “Hey, pumpkin? Do you remember Lacey, Duke’s sister? The one that was here for Thanksgiving and Christmas?”

He looked in the rearview mirror. Amber was nodding vigorously. “The pretty lady,” she announced. “With the long red hair. Like Ariel.”

Quinn blinked. He wasn’t sure that Lacey looked like Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
, but there was no question that she had gorgeous hair—when she didn’t have it all pulled off her face and shoved into a tail or bun or braid. He’d only seen it down once, but Amber had hit the nail on the head. Her hair was long and thick, a rich burnished color with just a hint of natural wave. Even disheveled in the morning, as he’d seen her on Christmas Eve, it was stunning.

“Daddy? What about her?”

He was pulled back from his musings. “Oh,” he replied, turning at a stop sign. “Just that she’s going to be staying at the big house for a while. I know I take you with me a lot, so when you’re there you’re going to have to be extra good. It’s not just you and me now.”

“But Lacey is nice. She played with me lots.”

“But she might not want to entertain you all the time, sweetheart. Do you understand?”

Amber shrugged. He could see the exaggerated movement in the rearview mirror and his heart gave a sad little thump again. The gesture was so like Marie. Amber had parts of Marie that she didn’t even realize, because her memories of her mother were already beginning to dim. They should have had Marie longer. She should have been here through all of this. They were like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. Pieces that could never be replaced.

“How about spaghetti for supper?” he asked, suggesting one of Amber’s favorites. There had to be at least one more container of frozen sauce in the freezer. It wouldn’t take long to thaw it and cook some noodles and throw some garlic bread in the oven. Cooking was something else he’d learned to do over the past year and a half.

“Spaghetti! Yum! I’ll help!”

He smiled then, pushing the maudlin thoughts aside. He might miss Marie, but he was still a lucky man. He had a job he loved, a roof over his head and a daughter he adored. They could muddle through the rest if they had each other.

Lacey, on the other hand, would be sitting at the ranch house tonight all alone. And for the first time, he truly felt sorry for her.

Copyright © 2015 by Donna Alward

ISBN-13: 9781460375938

Lone Star Valentine

Copyright © 2015 by Cathy Gillen Thacker

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