Lone Star Dad. Linda Goodnight
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“Were you as good as they say you were?”
Quinn snorted and avoided the kid’s probing gaze. “Too long ago to remember.”
“A guy doesn’t forget stuff like that.”
He was right about that. Some things hurt forever. “Doesn’t matter now. I got work to do. Go home.”
Quinn spun away from the shed, the cats, the kid and the memories and stomped back to the house, ice cracking underfoot. His boots sounded like thunder on the hollow porch.
To his relief, Derrick didn’t follow. He didn’t even turn around. Instead he stepped inside the shed and shut the door.
Quinn blew out a hard sigh. The kid needed to learn two things: obedience and respect.
He went inside the house, warm now that the logs had caught and burned brightly, and tried to remember where he’d put his phone. After a five-minute search, he found it, battery dead, under a stack of blueprints. Most of the time, he left it turned off. Service was spotty anyway. If he wanted to speak to someone, he’d call them—a rare event.
The practice drove his family crazy.
He plugged in the charger and called Information for Gena Satterfield’s number and wasn’t surprised to discover she had a landline. Cell phones worked when they wanted to and in her profession, effective communication was probably requisite.
He punched in the number, and when she answered in her smooth-as-silk, professional voice, he ignored the quiver in his belly to say, “Derrick’s at my house again. Come get him before I call the sheriff.”
* * *
Gena fumed all the way down the twisty, bumpy trail that passed for sections of road between her house and the old hunting cabin on the river. She couldn’t decide who irritated her most, Derrick or Quinn.
Derrick had been curled up under his covers when she’d looked in earlier. At least, she’d thought he had been. She’d let him sleep late this Sunday morning, not in the mood to fight with him about going to church. She didn’t like to miss services but she had paperwork and dictation to catch up on anyway. The Lord knew and understood her schedule. She couldn’t always attend services, but she never forgot her faith.
At the corner, she slowed the red SUV and tried to remember exactly how to access the cabin. She hadn’t been there since the last time she and Renae had spent the summer with Nana and Papa. She and her sister had been into photography that summer. Somewhere she still had the pictures they’d taken, including shots of the abandoned hunter’s cabin. She couldn’t imagine anyone living in the ramshackle structure, but Quinn came from a construction family. He could fix whatever was broken.
This morning was a photographer’s dream, and a desire to revisit the old hobby curled upward in her thoughts. Though the roads were mostly clear and the puddles of ice easily cracked beneath her wheels, the grass and trees sparkled in the sun like diamonds. By midmorning, the beauty would be melted away.
She drove toward the river, invisible from here because of the thick trees, and spotted chimney smoke. In minutes, she funneled through a tunnel of trees that parted like the Red Sea in front of the cabin. The house didn’t look much better than it had when she was a teenager.
She slammed out of the now-dirty red Xterra and, careful on the ice-encrusted grass, made her way to Quinn’s door. He opened it before she could pound her fist on the wall in frustration.
Her breath caught. He looked tired or maybe ill, his hazel-green eyes circled with fatigue and his mouth pinched with lines of something that to her expert observation appeared to be pain. But he still took a woman’s breath. A foolish woman.
“Are you all right?” Her profession kicked in even when she didn’t want it to.
He blinked, clearly surprised at the question. “Why?”
This wasn’t her business. “Never mind. Where’s Derrick?”
Quinn motioned toward a small unpainted building to the left of the house.
“You locked him in a shed?” she asked, horrified.
Quinn snorted. His eyes, so tired before, lit with wry amusement. “I didn’t think of that or I would have. Maybe you should try it.”
He was joking. He had to be. “What’s he doing out there?”
“Go see for yourself.” He slammed the door in her face.
Gena stared at the peeling front door. The friendly, smiling young Quinn who could charm the spots off a leopard was now a snarly, moody recluse.
“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