Chapter Three

      The truth echoed in Brandon’s head over and over as if he’d been sucker punched.

       Lucy was his.... Lucy was his.... He had a daughter....

       A daughter he’d never known about.

       Because Kim had kept it from him.

       The anguish and rage hit him so hard that Brandon staggered backward, then gripped the sofa edge to keep from reaching for Kim and shaking her. How could she have done this to him?

       For years he’d forced himself to accept the fact that he’d never have a family. Never have a son or daughter of his own because he was too afraid he’d pass on that horrific genetic disorder. Krabbe’s Leukodystrophy, the doctor called it. The bone marrow transplant had miraculously given her a few extra years, but she had still suffered.

       And for four years now, he’d had a living, breathing little girl who was his blood kin. A normal child.

       One he’d made with Kim.

       A child he would have loved and spoiled and been there for if only Kim had let him.

       Bitterness filled him, and he fisted his hands by his sides, his body trembling with the effort to control his anger.

       Kim cradled Lucy to her as if she sensed that rage, as if she feared he was going to snatch her away. But her eyes also flashed with resignation as if she’d known this moment would eventually come and had dreaded it.

       “Brandon—”

       Their gazes locked, the air vibrating with the cloying scent of lies. “She’s m—”

       Kim cut him off with a choked whisper. “Yes.”

       That one word ripped a hole in his heart. “How could you?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Why?”

       “You… We…” She nodded toward Lucy, her voice quavering. “This is not the time to discuss it, Brandon.”

       Dammit, it sure as hell was time to discuss it. It was past time. Fury surged through him, more powerful than he’d ever felt. He wanted to shout at Kim and demand to know how she could have left him in the dark about his own child.

       He wanted to pull Lucy into his arms and hug her and make up for lost time.

       But Lucy clawed at her mother in fear, and he forced himself to temper his reaction.

       Still, his heart was pounding, and he had to clear his throat twice to make it work. “You kept this from me all these years and now you don’t want to talk about it?”

       Even though he’d tried, his voice still sounded harsh and loud in the hollow silence, and Lucy whipped her little head around, her eyes startled, scared.

       His gut tightened with remorse. The poor little girl, his little girl, had been terrified of an intruder, and now he was adding to her fears.

       He took a step forward, aching to drag her in his arms and hold her, to assure her that he would never hurt her. That he hadn’t been around the past four years because he hadn’t known she was his. That he would love her and take care of her and tuck her into bed at night and teach her to ride, and be the father he should have been all along.

       If Kim hadn’t deprived him of it.

       Images of the years he’d missed crawled through his mind, a blinding haze of pictures of Lucy. Lucy as a newborn swaddled in a pink blanket, her first laugh, the day she’d learned to crawl, her first step, then birthdays and Christmases—all memories Kim had that he’d missed.

       God, what had she told Lucy about him?

       “Mommy?” Lucy said in a frightened whisper.

       Kim held her daughter tight, gently rocking Lucy in her arms. “It’s okay, sugar. This is Johnny’s friend Brandon. Remember, you watched him do trick riding at the rodeo and wanted to learn to ride like him?”

       Lucy nodded, but her wide-eyed look made Brandon feel like the worst kind of heel.

       And resurrected memories of how terrified his own sister had been of their father.

       He’d sworn that if he ever had a child, a family, they would never be afraid of him.

       But Lucy was.

       Nausea gripped him, and he tore himself away and strode out onto the front porch. Aching inside and calling himself a hundred kinds of a fool, he leaned against the porch rail and dragged in the fresh air, desperate to stem the bile clogging his throat.

       Was that the reason Kim had kept Lucy from him? Had she feared he’d be violent like his old man?

       He closed his eyes, the image of Kim’s tears the day he’d broken up with her haunting him. He’d loved her but decided he could learn to love Marty. Marty was his ticket to the big time, to raising himself from trailer trash to a respected ranch hand to eventually owning his own spread. He’d been stupid and chosen wrong because he thought Marty would give him his future.

       But in the end, he had been the one to lose.

       His future had been with Kim and the child she’d been carrying. Only he hadn’t known it.

       Her words taunted him. “This is Brandon, Uncle Johnny’s friend.”

       Hell, he was way more than Uncle Johnny’s friend.

       He was Lucy’s daddy. And now he knew about her, he would be a father to her.

       Even if he had to fight Kim to do so.

      KIM SANK ONTO THE SOFA hugging Lucy to her. She hated the devastation she’d seen in Brandon’s eyes. Pain she’d put there by her lies.

       But he had left her and married another woman. And she had tried to tell him about Lucy, but…

       “Mommy?” Lucy murmured. “I’m sweepy.”

       Lucy’s words jerked her back to the reality of the night and the break-in. She needed to put Lucy back to bed. They both needed rest.

       She listened for Brandon’s car engine and expected him to peel away in a fit of anger, but didn’t hear it. Instead her own breathing rattled, fraught with emotions.

       How would she sleep tonight knowing someone had been inside the cabin? That it might or might not have been Carter?

       Worse, how would Carter react if he thought Lucy was his child, showed up expecting to see her and discovered she wasn’t?

       Not that she’d ever given him any reason to believe Lucy was his daughter. In fact, after their last confrontation when she’d visited him in prison, she hadn’t had any communication with him.

       But if he’d seen their picture in the paper like Johnny said, he could have jumped to conclusions.

       Suddenly footsteps pounded the porch, and Brandon reappeared at the door. Lucy’s head shot up again, and she dug