Page 16 of Cowboy's Christmas Wife

Daryl nodded. “It’ll be fine,” he said. They began by moving out Lily’s furniture: the room looked somehow smaller without the crib and changing table. Luckily, the carpet looked to be in fairly good working order, and Daryl didn’t see any indication of water anywhere but from the ceiling. They were already aware the roof would need to be mended—or maybe that the house would need a new roof altogether. “The baseboards will need to be replaced,” he said, pointing. “It looks like someone had a dog or something that chewed up a fair bit of it.”

“Okay.” A thought came to mind. “But can we leave one bit of it?”

Daryl looked at her, confused. “Why?”

She took his hand and pulled him over to the closet. On the molding on the door there was a growth chart that was notched into the wood. Each notch was labeled with a year. “My mama kept a growth chart for me,” she said and touched the molding gently. “I wasn’t sure it would still be here when I first moved in, but it hasn’t been touched.”

Daryl smiled, and she liked the softness of it. “So, we’ll save this,” he said with certainty. “Anything else you want left as it is?”

Laura shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. The memories she had of this place were what she wanted: good memories that Lily could have here, just like she had. She wanted to raise Lily in a home that was as warm and welcoming as she remembered her entire childhood being when her parents were still alive. “I do wish that old treehouse was still in the backyard. You remember that?”

He grinned. “I do,” he said. “I remember getting my very first kiss in that treehouse.”

“What? From who?” She definitely would have remembered if Daryl had kissed anybody in her backyard.

A guilty look washed over him. “The summer after you left, the house was just sitting here, right?”

Laura nodded. “Yeah. My grandfather didn’t rent it out for a long time. It was just empty.” Daryl winced, and it clicked in her head. “You snuck up to my treehouse? With a girl?”

Now, he looked even guiltier, and it would be funny if she didn’t have the most embarrassing bubble of jealousy in her stomach right now. “Not exactly. It’s just…I missed you,” he mumbled, “and Becky Stuart thought I was just so sweet.” He shrugged. “She found me in the treehouse, and when I told her I came up there to think sometimes, she kissed me.”

Laura laughed. “She really fell for a line like that?”

Daryl frowned. “What do you mean? A line?”

Laura scoffed and quirked her eyebrow up in disbelief. “Do you mean to tell me that you actually missed me enough to sneak up to my treehouse?” At his uncomfortable expression, Laura felt her heart soften all the more for this man. “Daryl—”

“I might have had a little crush on you, Laura Jo,” he told her with a little shrug.

“Seems like more than just alittlecrush,” she teased, and she delighted to see the tips of Daryl’s ears turning red. “I missed you, too, you know. You were a pretty cute kid,” she admitted, “and a really good friend.”

That got Daryl laughing. “Just what every guy wants to hear,” he said.

Laura stepped into him and kissed his cheek softly. “It’s sweet,” she told him.I could so fall in love with you, she thought, almost mournfully. She had to keep her emotions in check here. She couldn’t afford to give her heart away again. Not when it finally belonged to herself again. Lily deserved a mother who could show her what independence looked like. After they were able to access the trust, and she covered the mortgage on Daryl’s ranch like they’d agreed, this all had to come to an end. “Thank you for everything that you’re doing, Daryl. I don’t know where Lily and I would be if you hadn’t agreed to help.”

Daryl smiled and dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I think we can get this room painted today,” he said, “and maybe get some of the more damaged baseboards pulled up.”

She was a little taken aback by his sudden change of subject, but she nodded, and they got back to work. He removed the damaged baseboards, and she got everything clean before she began painting walls. They didn’t stop in Lily’s room: they moved on to her bedroom and the tiny bathroom at the end of the hallway. Luckily, the damage they found to the walls and floors was fairly minor. It looked like the big problems were the roof damage and the need to replace most of the electrical wiring. Beyond that, there was mostly normal wear-and-tear, plus some minor cosmetic damage, mostly from renters having dogs.I love puppies, she thought,but I think we’ll skip that for a while.

Daryl was in the bathroom, trying to figure out why the toilet wiggled whenever someone sat on it, when Laura’s stomach started to growl. “You hungry?” she called to him from where she was cleaning out her bedroom to prep the walls for paint.

He appeared in the doorway in an instant. “Was that your stomach I just heard?”

Laura threw a sock at him. “You didnothear my stomach!”

Daryl laughed. “It shook the wall!”

“It did not!” Her voice was high and indignant, but she bubbled with laughter. They were flirting, which was edging on dangerous ground again, but she so enjoyed it. “You say that again, and I’ll—”

He raised his eyebrow in challenge. “You’ll do what, Laura Jo?” She wasn’t sure if he meant for his voice to dip as low as it did, but it made her shiver. If she thought it had been a long time since she’d been kissed properly, it had been even longer for anything else. Clark had started off as a very attentive lover, but the time and attention devoted to their sex life had dropped off after the first year. She supposed that was when he started being attentive to someone else, not that she knew that at the time. They’d still slept together, of course, but it became less frequent and more perfunctory. He wasn’t concerned if she didn’t always get there, and he would get impatient if she wanted to be held after. Laura had learned not even to ask after a while, and he seemed all too happy about it. She had assumed that it was just another phase of their marriage—one that they’d get through together—until the moment she’d walked in to find him in the shower with another woman. “Laura Jo?”

She swallowed. “I remember you being ticklish, Daryl,” she said.

Daryl chuckled. “You really want to go there? You know I’m faster than you.”

They stared at each other for a split second, and then she shrieked as he started for her. Laura managed to get around him and headed for the living room, where he quickly caught her with an arm around her middle. She shrieked again when he lifted her from the floor and swung her around. She playfully smacked at his arm, but she was a little disappointed when he set her back on her feet instead of pressing his advantage. Though he didn’t fully let her go, she noticed, and she turned in the circle of his arms to face him. Their chests were pressed together; she wondered if he could feel the wild beating of her heart. “Daryl—” she breathed out.

“Yeah?”

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