Rodeo Father. Mary Sullivan
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them here? He had only his gut to rely on, and it was shouting a resounding yes.
In the old-fashioned kitchen, he unpacked his groceries and put them into the ancient fridge.
Upstairs, he chose the largest bedroom for himself and the new king-size bed he’d ordered. He’d slept in bunkhouses all his adult life. Now he owned a bed.
Soon it would be Samantha’s, and he’d be back in another bunkhouse somewhere.
His bags hit the floor with a solid clunk.
Walking back downstairs, he stared around. By the time Sammy and her boys arrived, he needed to turn this house into a home.
He had plenty of work ahead of him, in cleaning up the place and renovating. Floors needed sanding and walls painting.
He had no template to guide him. He would start with whatever needed fixing and then take inspiration from the many ranch wives who’d made homes and fed him and his fellow cowboys on too many ranches to count.
There was nothing inside him to draw on.
He had plenty of longing, but zero know-how.
Moving on was all he knew, and bunking with a dozen other men was his way of life.
Travis Read. Homeowner. A home meant obligation and duty, a millstone around a man’s neck...and he was damned tired of those.
* * *
RACHEL SAT ON the porch and watched her mother pull into the driveway and park her decked-out pickup truck beside Rachel’s old junker.
Cindy Hardy had no understanding of the notion less is more.
She had bought every chrome feature the local dealership could get its hands on.
Thank God Rachel had been able to talk her out of a lift kit.
Cindy mistakenly assumed that men drooled over her, when all they really wanted was her truck.
Too many of the men in town had known Cindy, as in known known, to want to have anything to do with her romantically.
To the people of Rodeo, Montana, Cindy had always been and would always be the girl from the trailer park—even if there was no park, only a trailer.
The second Cindy got Tori unbuckled, Rachel’s daughter jumped out of the truck, came running toward her mom and threw herself into her arms, squealing, “Mommy, Mommy.”
Rachel broke into a huge smile and hugged her little three-year-old bundle of joy. Cindy unloaded the bags. Rachel oohed and aahed over her daughter’s new purchases. Cindy had bought her a lot of fun stuff. Thank goodness it wasn’t all toys, but also new clothes. Another week of Cindy’s wages down the tubes.
Rachel should tell her to stop, but without Cindy buying Tori’s clothes, the child would have little to wear. Besides, how could she tell Tori’s only grandmother to stop spoiling her?
Nope. She didn’t have it in her heart to ruin Cindy’s fun, even if Cindy never had understood that it would have been better to have saved at least some of her money to improve her life’s situation than to wait for some man to come along and save her.
Rachel would never, not in a million years, depend on a man again where her finances were concerned. She planned to scrimp and save and work until her knuckles hurt, and then get her children into a stable, secure home life.
Tori chattered away, reminding her of what was at stake.
Davey’s parents had both died when he was in high school. Ironic that it had been a car crash.
Cindy was Tori’s only other relative apart from Rachel.
Maybe one day a week of being spoiled wasn’t so bad.
A sound from the road caught their attention. A truck turned into Abigail’s—correction, Travis’s—driveway.
Rachel brushed her fingers through Tori’s soft blond curls. Mother Nature had fashioned her daughter’s hair out of strands of pure sunlight.
She and Tori watched the activity across the road, Rodeo’s version of reality TV.
“That’s a big chruck, Mommy.”
“Truck,” Rachel corrected automatically. “It sure is, Tori-ori-o.”
With a pang of deep-seated regret, Rachel thought, My house belongs to someone else now.
“What’s going on over there?” Cindy asked.
Cindy Hardy wore full makeup, and styled and sprayed hair. She’d tucked a sparkly, faux-Western shirt into her favorite jeans, which in turn were tucked into polished gray snakeskin cowboy boots, boots that had never seen the inside of a barn. A big rodeo belt buckle, a gift from a former lover, accentuated a still-trim waist.
Rachel suspected the guy had probably had a bunch of buckles made up expressly to give to women like Cindy. No rodeo rider worth his salt would give his own buckle away.
“It sold, but we didn’t hear about it,” Rachel said, not bothering to update her mother on details. The thought of introducing her to Travis made Rachel antsy in a way she didn’t want to look at too closely.
Cindy was still young and attractive, even if her style wasn’t something that appealed to Rachel.
Two men got out of the truck. “Wonder if the new owner will paint,” Rachel murmured. “It needs to be freshened up.”
Cindy’s husky laugh mocked her. “It needs a heck of a lot more than a coat of paint.”
Resentment shot through Rachel. “I would have been happy to have done the work to fix it up.” A fixer-upper was the only kind of house she could ever hope to buy.
A commotion across the road snagged her attention, as the two burly men opened the rear doors of the truck.
Travis didn’t own much. The truck was less than half full. The men unloaded a large dresser and carried it into the house.
Tori marched her fingers up Rachel’s leg, singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
Rachel glanced down at her three-year-old daughter, gazing into eyes so blue they rivaled the cloudless sky, into Davey’s eyes, the first thing that had attracted Rachel to him. His brilliant, laughter-filled eyes.
She was struggling to replace his laughter in their lives.
The pair of movers came back for a big leather sofa. “Too masculine. That house needs comfortable, cozy sofas and armchairs. Shabby chic. Chintz.”
“Chins,” Tori whispered.
The furniture looked brand-new.
Travis came outside, all traces of leather gone. The cowboy she’d met this morning stood on the front porch.
He leaned against a veranda post, a rugged movie star in worn jeans, a snug white T-shirt, denim jacket, well-used cowboy boots and a black Stetson.
He should have looked out of place on Abigail’s old-fashioned veranda. He didn’t. He looked...perfect.
Cindy whistled. “Good-looking man. He bought that house? Wow. Who is he?”
Rachel didn’t fill her in. She had never, not once in her life, competed with her mom where men were concerned, but she felt a rivalry now with a raging fire.
“What does he need a whole house for?”
Good question. “I don’t know, Cindy.”
Rachel had had time to cool down. Contrary to what she’d thought earlier, Travis was not her enemy. He was only a man who’d somehow managed to do better in life than she had.
His glance swept the countryside, Cindy’s house, Rachel and Tori...and Cindy.
What good looks Rachel lacked, Cindy had in spades. Tori had inherited her blond curls from her grandmother, along with