Page 90 of The Cowgirl's Forever Love
“Hi, Dad. What’s up?”
“I was wondering where you were,” he said quietly.
“On a date. You knew that.”
A gentle sigh sounded on the other end of the line. “You’re not with him, so come and get me,” he ordered. “I want to talk to you.”
Great. First she ran out on a date and now she had to deal with her father.
There seemed to be no good reason to turn him down, so she swung past the bunkhouse where he was staying. Tamara and Caleb had offered him space in the house, but he’d insisted he’d be more comfortable letting them have their own space.
George Coleman climbed into the passenger side of her truck and sat there wordlessly.
This just got better and better. “Anywhere in particular we’re going?”
“Yeah. Your boyfriend’s,” he said sternly.
Oh hell,no. “Did Josiah call you?” she demanded.
“He’s called me a couple of times because we both have a lot of interest in horses and Caleb has spoken highly of Josiah’s skills,” her dad admitted. “Or are you talking about tonight?”
She wasn’t putting the truck in gear until she knew what was going on. “Tonight.”
George looked out the window as if sitting in a truck was a perfectly fine place to have a conversation. “He didn’t call me. I have a standing invitation to see his place. I thought I should take advantage of the opportunity before I head home.”
Dammit. First she didn’t know from one minute to the next what Josiah was going to do and now her dad was surprising her? She was losing her touch.
There seemed to be no plausible excuse she could make to not take him to Josiah’s house without having to offer up a confession she wasn’t ready for.
She kept her foot as light on the gas as possible, but they still made it to Josiah’s house faster than legally possible. And miracle of miracles, her father restrained himself from making any comments about women drivers. Huh.
There were no trucks parked outside—small mercies. She wasn’t ready to face Josiah yet.
Oh my God, he’d saidI love youand she’d walked out on him. What the hell had she been thinking?
Right. She hadn’t been thinking, she’d been panicking.
Her dad got out of the truck and completely ignored her, letting himself into the house and wandering around quietly.
Lisa had to admit she was totally lost.
Her dad even found the door to the silo stairs on his own and Lisa followed him up, trying not to look at all of the things and places that were already full of memories.
How could she have made so many memories in such a short time?
“I know how much you did to get the Coleman ranches back together.” Her father’s words came out of the blue. He was standing beside the bookcase, running his finger along the shelf, pausing on one of the spines.
Lisa blinked. She was tempted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming things up. “What did you say?”
He turned to face her. “The amalgamation. I didn’t see it at the time, but over the past while, every time someone made a comment, it hit home a little harder. You orchestrated that, didn’t you?”
Wow. This was not the conversation she expected to have with her father. Not tonight. Not any night, truthfully.
Maybe because her emotions had been stretched to the edge already, she simply confessed. “Yeah. I don’t get all the credit because I wasn’t the only one who saw that things needed to change. Lee did, as well, but considering he’s as young as I am, nobody was ever going to listen to the two of us.”
Her father had gone motionless. He was staring out the window, the sun drawing closer to the top of the mountains. “You’re probably right, but then again, not all my brothers are as stubborn or as stupid as I am.”
“Dad—” she chastised.
