Stand-In Rancher Daddy. Renee Ryan
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taken his own gelding? What was he doing with his brother’s horse?
No one rode Thunder but CJ. The animal was too valuable to be mishandled and...
Molly had a terrible, awful feeling about this.
Please, Lord, let me be wrong. The evidence suggested otherwise. She should have seen this coming.
Why hadn’t she put the pieces together before now?
Ned had become increasingly morose in recent weeks, muttering things under his breath such as “What’s the use?” and “I can’t keep doing this.” Molly hadn’t thoroughly understood what he meant and she certainly hadn’t wanted to overstep her bounds. After all, she was helping out the Thorn family in a temporary capacity.
Another unsettling thought occurred. Surely Ned hadn’t left the twins alone in the house.
What if he had?
Molly wrapped her arms around Sadie’s neck. “Come on, old girl.” She gave a gentle kick to the mare’s ribs. “I need you to run faster than you ever have before.”
The horse responded with a burst of speed. Once they were on Thorn land, Molly urged Sadie to a trot, guiding her past the outbuildings, around the corral and on to the main house, a simple, one-story, whitewashed clapboard structure.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed smoke coming from the bunkhouse, a sure sign Cookie had already started making breakfast for the handful of ranch hands CJ employed.
Was CJ eating with the hands, as he did every morning? Was he even aware his brother had left the main house?
Molly pulled Sadie to a halt and scrambled off the horse’s back. She hurried onto the porch she and the girls had swept clean yesterday afternoon. Without bothering to knock, she rushed inside the house.
Thick gloom closed in around her. The silence was so heavy she decided the children were surely still asleep.
The children.
Molly must get to Anna and Sarah. She must ensure they were safe. She moved deeper into the house and froze when she caught a faint whiff of whiskey. Oh, Ned.
The situation was far worse than Molly had feared, and certainly explained Ned’s increasing unpredictability. Her friend’s husband had evidently turned to the bottle to swallow his grief. Unfortunately, consuming alcohol was not a wise solution.
Heart in her throat, Molly blinked through the darkness. Her vision slowly cleared, then locked on the tall silhouette of a familiar figure.
A ripple of longing flowed through her before she ruthlessly shut it down.
CJ Thorn stood before her, silent, his eyes on the piece of paper in his hand. His features were inscrutable in the dim light cast by the lamp on the table beside him, but Molly knew every line and curve by heart.
She knew every precious angle of his handsome face, the strong, square jaw and the dark eyebrows slashed over eyes the color of freshly brewed coffee. He was more than merely good-looking. He was a man of integrity and one who’d worked hard to keep his brother from following in their father’s footsteps.
Ned had taken to whiskey, anyway. CJ must be so disappointed.
“CJ?” She gently touched his sleeve.
He looked up. Blinked. Then blinked again, as if he hadn’t expected to find her standing so close.
“I saw Ned riding away from the ranch.” She waited a beat, then supplied the rest of the bad news. “He was on your horse.”
Surprise flared in his eyes. “Ned took Thunder?”
She nodded.
Anger replaced the earlier shock, followed by such sorrow Molly could actually feel the weight of the emotion in her own heart. The vulnerable expression made him more compelling than usual.
CJ Thorn was not a man who needed to be more compelling than usual.
The children, she told herself. Anna and Sarah must come first. With the twins in mind, Molly released CJ’s arm and stepped back.
* * *
In the predawn gloom, CJ tried to focus on the woman standing beside him. But his mind kept returning to Ned and the terrible choice his brother had made.
No matter how hard CJ fought to keep his breathing steady, his gut roiled with regret. This was the moment he’d been dreading for weeks, when his brother gave up completely.
Rage boiled into something CJ couldn’t begin to name. Ned had not only made his escape on CJ’s prize stallion, he’d not only abandoned his own children, but he’d left the girls alone in the house. Any number of things could have happened to them.
Even for Ned, that was an all-time low. What was next? Cattle rustling? Bank robbery?
For months, CJ had held out hope that the worst of Ned’s grief was behind him. He’d prayed that his younger brother was on the brink of returning to the man he’d been while Penelope was alive.
Obviously, that had been wishful thinking.
All the emotion CJ had been holding back threatened to spill over, filling him until he thought he might explode.
“Is that a note from Ned?” Molly’s voice seemed to come at him through a thick wall of water.
He gave a brief nod before returning his gaze to the hastily scrawled note. The handwriting was messy, the message even messier.
Ned had always preferred the easier tasks on the ranch, but he’d been a decent man at the core. Penelope had brought out the best in him. Since her death, Ned had slipped deeper and deeper into despair.
CJ thought he’d be able to save Ned, given time.
Time had just run out.
“CJ, did you hear me?”
He lifted his head and glanced once again at the woman he’d grown to rely on far more than he cared to admit. “Ned took off.”
“Yes, I know.”
His heart began to thump harder.
Five years peeled away and he was twenty-two again, meeting Molly for the first time. She’d been full of light and goodness back then, the same as now. Just being in her company made him wish for...more. But he knew he could never reach so far above his station in life. He’d learned that cruel lesson from another woman and her upright, proper parents.
“Talk to me. Tell me what’s happened.”
He handed her Ned’s note.
Feeling oddly nostalgic, he held silent while she read. During Ned and Penelope’s courtship, Molly had acted as chaperone. CJ had been attracted to her from the start. But he’d never let her know. Lillian’s harsh words had taught him a valuable lesson. No decent woman from a respectable family would have a man like him, a man with the last name Thorn.
Penelope had taken the risk and married Ned. Look how that had ended.
“Oh, Ned.” Molly’s hand flew to her mouth. “How could you?”
“I’ve been asking myself that same question.”
How could his brother surrender custody of his own daughters to CJ?
Eyes shadowed with sadness, Molly returned the piece of paper. Her fingertips grazed CJ’s knuckles. The touch was barely a whisper, yet he felt the impact like a blow to the gut.
He closed his fist around the words Ned had penned. In a quick, careless scrawl of ink across paper, his brother had become the man CJ feared was deep inside every Thorn. He shuddered to think what would become of Ned now that he’d given in to the dark side of his nature.
“I suppose I understand how he could give up on himself,” Molly said. “But how could he give up on his own children?”
CJ