Page 32 of Their Forever Daddy

“Need something?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Heard you get up and thought you might want some help.”

She wanted to be left alone but telling him so seemed a bit like cutting off her nose to spite her face since a new animal meant more work than usual, and despite the hit of caffeine earlier she was still exhausted from her sleepless night. “Sure. Luna and her new friend here need some fresh hay.”

To her surprise, he didn’t balk at the suggestion. After a bit of direction, he got the hang of what needed to be done pretty quickly and they worked side by side in what could almost be called a companionable silence.

Almost, because the longer she spent in his presence, the less ‘companionable’ she was feeling. There was a buzz under her skin, the kind she recognized as attraction, and with every ripple of his muscles beneath his ridiculously tight shirt, the worse the buzzing got. And no matter how much she silently berated herself for having the hots for her ex-girlfriend’s fiancé—Jesus, her life was a goddamn soap opera—she couldn’t shake the buzz.

By the time they got Luna and the not-a-llama out to the small pasture behind the barn, she wanted nothing more than to go back inside and hide herself away until her two unwelcome guests got the hint and took themselves back to California.

Grant, on the other hand, seemed to have other ideas. “How are you doing this morning?”

“Fine.” She bit off the word with a snarl and tried to ignore the way her stomach rolled. It didn’t matter to her one bit if he didn’t like her tone. He wasn’t her Daddy.

“Yeah, you sound completely fine.” By contrast, his delivery was dry and sarcastic, making her lips twitch with amusement despite her annoyance with the situation.

Dammit.

“I’ll be fine when you come to your senses and take her back to Hollywood where she belongs.”

One of his eyebrows rose in a look that was both warning and amusement. “Trust me, I would love nothing more than to do exactly that. But when Jesse sets her mind to something, she can be a bit…”

“Stubborn?” Edie provided when he trailed off.

“To say the least.” Flashing a quick, wicked grin that sent her heart galloping in her chest, Grant shrugged. “If I drag her back, she’ll just find a way to sneak off again. And she’ll keep coming back until she gets what she wants. I think we both know that.”

A headache was brewing, but she resisted the urge to rub at her temples. “What do you want me to do about that? She’s not my Little girl.” Her voice cracked a bit, and her hope that he wouldn’t notice was dashed by the way his expression softened.

“I know this isn’t easy for you. But…” He paused, clearly struggling with what he wanted to say next. “But I think it would be good for both of you if you could find a way to forgive her. So you can both move on.”

“I moved on ten years ago.”

Grant raised an eyebrow, and damn if her stomach didn’t clench in response. “If you’d moved on, you wouldn’t still be punishing her for what she did.”

“Moving on and forgiveness aren’t the same thing.”

“They are for Jesse. I would think you of all people would understand that.”

There went her stomach again, rolling to the point she had to clench her jaw to fight back a wave of nausea. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Where she was a mess of emotions threatening to boil over at any second, Grant was the opposite. The eye in the center of a storm as he watched her with that steady gaze. “You know exactly what I mean. This has obviously been eating at Jesse for a while, and she’s not going to be able to move past it until she feels forgiven.”

“That’s not my problem.”

But even as she said the words, guilt stabbed at her chest. Was she really going to cling to her anger for the sole purpose of making Jesse suffer?

The look Grant sent her was the very embodiment of ‘Disappointed Daddy’, and she fought not to squirm under his heated gaze. “You’re better than that, Edie.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He stepped toward her, closing the distance between them in a way that forced her to lean her head back in order to meet his gaze. Despite her size, it wasn’t often someone actually managed to make her feel small, not in the way he did with that one simple move. “I think I know you better than you realize,” he murmured, his soft tone sliding over her skin like a caress. “You’re strong because you’ve had to be. All your life, someone has depended on you for something. And you like it that way because you like taking care of the people you love. But you’re also dying for someone to take care of you for once. To take a bit of the burden you carry from your shoulders so you can fucking breathe for once in your life.”

The truth of it stuck in her throat, making it difficult to speak, so she simply stared at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of confirming his thoughts.

“Strong,” he repeated, the corner of his mouth kicking up in a wry smile. “And stubborn. But also compassionate. You’d have to be, to do what you do here at the farm. And to inspire the kind of loyalty I saw yesterday when I was trying to track Jesse down. This whole damn town fell in line and wouldn’t tell me a single thing about where she might be, all because you said so. Because they love you almost as much as Jesse does.”

“Did,” she whispered. “As much as Jesse did.”

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