Page 2 of Hero for the Holidays

What he hadn’t expected was the phone call he’d gotten six weeks earlier.

That Lila’s parents had been killed in a car accident eleven months ago. That she’d been in care ever since, because there was no family on either side. And that eventually someone had discovered that she had been adopted at birth, and had thought to look through information with the agency. That was where they’d found his name, along with his stated desire to be put in contact with his child if she ever wanted to find him.

It was irregular, they’d said. A miracle.

But if he could pass a home inspection, and a background check and other things required for fostering to adopt, he was first in line.

He hadn’t hesitated.

It had been like the sun had come out from behind the clouds for the first time in almost fourteen years. It had been like a sea change. It really had been a miracle.

A damned miracle wrapped in a shitty tragedy. Right then, he questioned himself a little bit. Because he wasn’t just taking on a kid, he was taking on a traumatized one.

But she was his.She was his.And now she was finally with him.

And he knew what love at first sight was.

There were a lot of other things he didn’t know. Like how to have a functional family, how to be a decent dad. His own dad was a narcissist straight from the depths of hell, his brothers were cagey assholes and he wasn’t any better. His sister... Well, thank God Arizona had a fifteen-year-old stepson, so probably had a little bit of wisdom on what to do when you ended up with a kid who was already a teenager. His brother-in-law, Micah, certainly knew a thing or two about being a good dad.

The King family was notoriously isolated in the context of the Four Corners Ranch family. The McClouds and the Garretts had always been thick as thieves, made closer still by marriage. And then, Alaina Sullivan had gone and married Gus McCloud and created an alliance there too.

The Kings didn’t have bridges, they had barricades.

“Did you like the pictures of the bedroom? I know it’s not decorated. It’s plain. Because I wanted to take you out shopping for whatever you wanted. I figured we’d do it while we were here. Because there are more places to shop in Portland than there are back in Pyrite Falls. I’m not going to lie to you, kid. There’s pretty much no shopping over there.”

“You’re really selling it.”

“I get it. It’s not like you were given a choice. I know what that’s like. Being a kid, the adults around you making all these decisions on your behalf.”

“Let me stay here, then.” She looked up at him, angling her head. “They think they’re going to find me a family. But they’re not. Jack and Melissa Gates were my parents. You’re just some guy. I don’t need another family. I had one.”

“Here’s the deal,” he said, fighting against a host of emotions he didn’t quite know how to sort through. He wasn’t idiot enough to think that a thirteen-year-old was going to fall to her knees and thank him for showing up to adopt her. He knew too much about thirteen-year-olds. He remembered being one too keenly. But hell, maybe part of him thought that she would see it for what it was. A damnedmiraclethat her biological father at least was able to reunite with her when she needed him.

Hell, it wasn’t even a reunion. This was his first time ever laying eyes on her.

He felt the connection. Like his heart had been ripped right through the front of his chest and was now...sitting right in front of him in a blue plastic chair. She didn’t feel anything. And that hurt a little more than he thought it would.

“Okay. You never have to think of me as family, then. But the thing is, I think of you as mine. I’ve been wanting to find you,” he said. “I didn’t want to disrupt your life, but the truth is, the way that they got in touch with me was that I contacted the adoption agency to give them my info. So that someday if you wanted to you could look me up.”

She tilted her chin up, looking stubborn as hell. “I never would have.”

“Good. I guess I’m glad of that. Because that means at least that you’ve been happy all this time.” He sighed and took his cowboy hat off. “This is where you were going to be raised. If I’d had my way. Four Corners Ranch. It’s a good place. Full of good people.”

“Like you said. I don’t really have a choice. They keep moving me around. From house to house. I can run away. I could live on the street. But what good would that do? I’m not really looking to go down the meth track. I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t have anyone in this world who loves me.”

I do.

He wanted to say it. But he had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to believe it now.

“You have someone who wants to take care of you. Very, very badly. And I’ll buy you whatever you want for your room. It’s your room. You can do whatever the hell you want with it. I will buy you fuchsia paint. And I will paint the walls my damn self.”

He’d refreshed a cabin on the property to be ready for them to move in. In six weeks, he had done a hell of a job. There was still more work to be done, but he knew he could no longer live in the main house. The rub was, he hadn’t really explained what was going on to his family. In fact, he’d just kind of done it. There would be some explaining to do when he got back. This was a chapter of his life that he never talked to anybody about.

Hell, only one other person on the planet knew about Lila.

“You’re trying to bribe me withstuff? Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t really have anything else.”

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