Operation Cowboy Daddy (21 page)

Colton Family Rescue

by Justine Davis

Chapter 1

“Y
ou made him smile again.”

Jolie Peters glanced up at Mandy Allen as she paused by her prep counter. The server never failed to pass on little tidbits like that, and it made her job—and the fillips she’d added to it of her own volition—worthwhile.

“Thanks, Mandy.”

It was a simple enough thing, an extra swirl of the house’s famous barbecue sauce on the rim of the plate was standard presentation, but it was Jolie who had had the idea of doing it in the initials of their regulars. And the staff was always careful to give the plate the right orientation so the customer couldn’t miss it.

“And Mrs. Sandoval really liked the monkfish. I told her you suggested it, because she likes lobster, and she said to pass along her thanks.”

Jolie’s smile widened. “Thanks. I really appreciate hearing that.”

And she did. It would have been easy enough for Mandy to have implied the suggestion was her own, but the woman was scrupulously honest.

“Peters!” She turned at the call from Martine Amaro, the woman responsible for keeping the back of the house running smoothly, which she did with the efficiency of a twenty-year drill sergeant. “Garza is here. You’re done.”

“With two minutes to spare,” she muttered as she headed to the employee room, pulling off and dropping the crisp white apron and cap into the laundry cart on the way. Because heaven forbid she should run into overtime.

She immediately apologized silently to the woman who was in charge of keeping things moving. Not only had she hired her when many wouldn’t, but Mrs. Amaro had been more than fair, had allowed her to adjust her hours to be in keeping with Emma’s day care, and when there were leftovers to be doled out, she made sure a portion was saved for Jolie even if she was off shift.

She wasn’t getting rich, but she was getting by. Her apartment was in an old building and not in the greatest area, but it had been renovated recently enough. Her car was a decade old but reliable. Most important, her daughter’s day care was close enough to walk to for lunch, well staffed and utterly trustworthy. Between the cost for it and her rent, she had little extra, but she was content. She had, after all, come a very long way.

“See you for a moment, Ms. Peters?”

Uh-oh.

The reaction to Mrs. Amaro’s words was instinctive. Things had been going well here, and she thought she was all right, but nothing in her life had ever stayed right for long, except Emma. Jolie had been here nearly a year, but she never took anything good for granted. She never expected anything good to last. Because in her experience, it never did.

As she walked toward the office, her mind was racing. If she lost this job, what would she do? She was finally at ease, if not happy with her life. It had been a long, difficult trek to get to that point. Was it now going to blow up in her face? She’d been honest about her past, so at least there was nothing there to come back and bite her. She—

“Sit down,” the older woman directed.

Jolie sat. She tried to fight down the tension rising in her, but it was hard. She’d spent so much of her life in one scrape or another that she couldn’t help thinking she had—unknowingly this time—wound up in another one.

“Relax,” Mrs. Amaro said, and smiled. She did it so rarely it took Jolie aback. It changed her entire face, made the stern, brusque woman seem kind and approachable.

Jolie let out a breath. “I was afraid I was in trouble.”

“Quite the opposite. You’re doing good work.”

The last of her tension drained away, replaced by a warm relief. “Thank you.”

“In fact,” her boss said, “you’re getting a raise.”

Jolie nearly gaped at her. This, she would never have expected.

“Courtesy—” Mrs. Amaro’s smile widened “—of the governor.”

She blinked. “What?”

“He appreciated that you put his initials and campaign logo on all the plates at his fund-raiser back in July. The head of catering staff told him it was something we did for our regulars. The governor promised us his next function, and suggested whoever had thought of it should get a raise.”

“I...wow.”

Although she admired the governor and appreciated his graciousness to the staff, she had volunteered to work the prep for that fund-raiser mainly because the extra money would pay for Emma’s day care for the rest of the month. True, it had taken some time and practice to get the logo right, but she had liked doing it. And she was surprised the busy man had even noticed, let alone taken the trouble to say something.

“Thank you,” Jolie said. “Thank you very much.”

Mrs. Amaro dismissed the gratitude with a palm-out gesture, but she was still smiling. “Thank the governor.”

Jolie couldn’t help smiling back. “I’ll just drop in this afternoon and tell him.” When the woman’s smile became a grin, she added, “But thank you, too. You’ve always been more than fair to me, and you’ve understood about Emma, and I appreciate it so much.”

The grin changed to a thoughtful expression. Then the older woman said softly, “I was where you were once. A young mother, alone, scared, trying to get myself off a wrong path.”

Jolie’s breath caught in her throat. It was hard to imagine Martine Amaro as anything other than in control. “I didn’t know.”

“Not something I advertise,” she said rather gruffly. “But you’re doing well. And I think you will continue that way. You know what’s important, setting an example for your little girl.”

“It’s the only way I know to show her how to be,” Jolie said, feeling her eyes begin to sting. She fought the tears. She would not break down, not now, when things were looking so rosy. Or perhaps that was why she was getting emotional.

“You’ve been fighting so long you don’t trust anything good. I get that, too.”

Someday she would love to hear this woman’s story, but she knew this wasn’t the time or the place. There was one thing she felt she had to know, though. “Your child?”

The smile Martine Amaro gave her then warmed her to the core. “He’s twenty-three and already a licensed contractor, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.”

“And he of you, I suspect,” Jolie said.

“As Emma will be of you. Now, get on with you. Go buy yourself something nice.”

Jolie laughed, warmed even more by the hope that those words would be prophetic.

Something nice?
she wondered as she headed out toward her car, pushing her dark hair back as the breeze tossed it. It had been a very long time since that possibility had been within reach. But maybe...something nice for her and Emma? The girl loved it when they wore matching things, so maybe something like that.

As she drove the short distance, she thought about taking Emma out for dinner to celebrate. They did it so rarely it was quite the treat for the little girl, and she always behaved immaculately; more than once Jolie had been complimented on the child’s behavior by total strangers.

She realized she was smiling. Realized with a jolt that what was making her smile was happiness. A feeling she normally didn’t experience unless she was with Emma.

The old alarms went off in her head.
Don’t trust it. Don’t trust anything.

She’d had a very short learning curve on trust. Except it had been more like a roller coaster since her parents had died, one with more downs than peaks. The first real peak had been Kevin Oberman, Emma’s father, who had convinced her he loved her and vanished the day after she’d told him about the plus sign on that little stick. The second had been the day she was hired at the Colton Ranch. Which had led to the third.

And that one, the biggest one, followed by the longest drop, she tried never to think about. And when she couldn’t stave off the memories, she let them come in the nature of a reminder, pounding home a lesson learned the hard way.

Don’t trust.

She’d trusted with all her heart just once. It had been the biggest mistake she’d ever made. Even bigger than Kevin, because at least that had resulted in the child who was the sole highlight of her misbegotten life. The one person she loved without reservation, and who loved her back unstintingly.

But those trusting, halcyon days on the Colton Ranch, when she’d briefly but so very sweetly let herself think she’d found the treasure she’d coveted since her own childhood, a real family, seemed long ago now.

But the lesson learned was harsh and close and real, and she would do well to keep it that way. And to remember not the sweetness she’d had so briefly but the bitter ending. In fact, she would do well not to think about T. C. Colton at all but to remember every vivid, painful moment of that last meeting with his parents. Whitney and Eldridge Colton had presented a united and brutal front, and she’d been helpless to stand against them.

Now, she thought with no small amount of pride, they might find her not quite so easy to push around. Setting that example Mrs. Amaro had talked about. She wanted Emma to be a different kind of woman, and the only way she could see to ensure that was to be what she wanted her daughter to become, to show her the way.

Showing Eldridge and Whitney Colton they’d been wrong about her was just a bonus.

And T.C.?

“No,” she muttered under her breath as she pulled in to the back of the day care, where it was easier to find a place to park. “Not going there.”

She never let herself think about that part, that he had let her go, hadn’t even come looking for her. True, she’d never answered his calls or texts—that had been part of the deal—but she’d thought he might at least be curious enough to look. And she knew him well enough to know that if he decided to look, he would find; he was not a man who gave up easily. Unless he wanted to.

He never even missed you. He’d probably replaced you by the end of the day.

The old lecture played like a worn-out loop in her head. She could accept that. What she couldn’t accept was how he had let Emma go, too. She would have sworn he loved her. He’d been hesitant at first, unused to babies, but tentatively, he had begun to interact with her. She would never, no matter how hard she tried, forget the look on his face the first time he’d lifted the child above him and made her break into a rain of delighted giggles. His smile had matched the baby’s, and in that moment she’d believed in forever.

I can take it
, she thought.
But how could anyone not miss a child as sweet as my Emma?

No, she knew she’d done the right thing. For all three of them. His actions—or lack of them—afterward had proved that. He’d probably been relieved, since he’d made no effort at all to change her mind.

She hastened inside the day care, greeted the administrator in the foyer with a nod and a smile, and headed for the pickup area in the front of the building. Her first sight of Emma, as always, drove all the negative thoughts out of her mind. The little girl shrieked with joy when she spotted her, and ran to her with arms raised.

“Mommy, Mommy! Look what I painted!”

The child waved a large piece of heavy paper at her. Jolie looked at it dutifully. After a second’s scrutiny of the splotch of green and blue, she smiled. “It’s the park,” she said.

Emma was delighted she recognized it. “See the tree?” she asked, pointing at the slightly crooked shape that leaned toward the water, rather isolated and alone.

“I do.”

That park was why she’d taken that apartment despite the neighborhood, even though it was a bit over her initial budget. Having the park with the pond right across the street was worth it. She didn’t have to drive to give Emma room to run and play, and what she saved in gas money probably evened it all out.

And now with the raise, they would be fine. She hadn’t thought of all the ramifications of that extra money coming in. She gave Emma an even wider smile and the girl giggled.

“What’s this?” Jolie asked, pointing to a blotch of several colors on what was apparently supposed to be a fluffy white cloud.

“A rainbow,” Emma said seriously. “It’s not borned yet.”

Emotion welled up and nearly spilled over at the child’s simple words and beautiful imagination. “I love you, Emma Peters.”

“Love you back, Mommy. Can we go now?”

“We can. I have a little treat in store for you tonight.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “Really?”

It tugged at Jolie’s heart that a treat was so rare it astonished the girl. Maybe it could be more often now, she thought as she took the girl’s hand and they headed back to where she’d parked. Emma clutched her painting as they stepped outside and the wind threatened to steal it. Visions of it blowing away with Emma in hot pursuit made her grimace. There wasn’t much traffic back here; the only person she saw was a woman on foot walking past the back door of the boutique shop next door, but you just never knew.

“Why don’t I hang on to that, and you go get in the car?” she suggested, hitting the button that unlocked the doors.

“’Kay.”

Jolie took the painting with her free hand, keeping her eyes on Emma as she ran to the passenger side of the car and pulled the back door open.

“Jolie? She forgot this.”

The call came from behind her and she turned her head to see one of the day-care monitors in the doorway, holding out Emma’s favorite headband, paint stained from being used to hold her hair back while she was creating. Jolie glanced back, saw Emma was safely in the car with the door closed. Just in case, she locked the doors before she walked back to take the headband. The woman smiled as she handed it over, and waved to Emma before going back inside. Jolie stuffed the headband into her pocket, wondering if the paint was there forever, or if it might wash—

Somewhere nearby, a car backfired, and she felt a split second of satisfaction at the maternal instinct that had told her not to assume cars wouldn’t be around.

Emma screamed.

Jolie whirled, running before she was completely turned around. She could see her. Could see that she was looking out the side window, staring at something in great distress.

There was no one else around. She reached the car. Saw that Emma was apparently unhurt. But still staring. Jolie turned around.