Page 91 of The Cowgirl's Chosen Love
“What, I’m not supposed to call myself stupid? I mean, when the boot fits.” He took a deep breath. “I wish I’d been smart enough to see it, but I wish a whole hell of a lot more that I’d been the kind of father that you felt you could come to. So I could’ve…”
His words trailed off and a rush of frustration hit. “So you could’ve been proud?”
His gaze snapped to hers “Oh, don’t you do that. I havealwaysbeen proud of you. You and both of your sisters. It’s never been about your skills.”
“But it sure as hell felt like it, Dad. And I don’t want to flog a dead horse, but it sure felt that if we’d been sons, things would’ve been a whole lot different.”
“Of course it would’ve been.”
Her stomach fell. Of all the things—he wasn’t supposed to saythat.
But then he went on and exploded her world into a million pieces.
“Do you remember how your mother died? The stories you were told?” He stepped forward and grabbed her hands, trapping her so she couldn’t escape. “She wasn’t supposed to be on that tractor, I was. But I was late, and she knew she could do it. She’d done it a million times before, but the axle broke and the angle of the hill was wrong and all the things the investigators told us. Doesn’t matter, though, that they figured out how it happened. In the end, she was dead, and I didn’t have her and neither did you girls. She was gone and it was my fault.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lisa began, but he cut her off.
“Is it? They said if there’d been more weight in the seat, the tractor would’ve stayed upright, but she was too light. If your mom hadn’t gone out to do my job that day, she’d still be alive.”
The guilt in his voice nearly took Lisa’s knees out. “You don’t know that.”
“I know it in my gut,” he insisted. “And it changed the way I treated you girls down the road when you started to want to help around the ranch. I felt so terribly guilty that your mom was gone and so afraid. I didn’t see that until Caleb told me he was doing the same damn thing to Tamara.”
Lisa jerked upright. So that’s what had triggered the apology the other day. “Caleb’s a good man.”
Her father nodded. “He is. But when he told me what he’d caught himself doing, overprotecting Tamara, my first instinct was to smack him upside the head because none of you girls deserve to be treated like that. Not by the men who care about you and love you. But I was doing the same damn thing. I was so scared every time you girls walked outside, I would do anything to keep you safe. And after a while, it was just easier to try and box you in and keep you where nothing could hurt you.”
His confession explained so many things. “You can’t protect somebody like that,” she said softly.
His laugh was brittle. “I sure tried. And when ordering you not to do it didn’t work, I tried to humiliate you into stopping. That backfired in other ways. Tamara left the ranch and got her training as a nurse—and didn’t that give me just as many nightmares.”
Lisa stood silently, watching the sun closing in on the top of the mountains.
“I wanted to keep you safe. I figured if you weren’t doing tasks out on the ranch, but working in the house, nothing could harm you.” Her father squeezed her fingers to let her go, pacing toward the wall of windows and staring out. “Caleb was the one who put it into words, but the fact I was so scared when we heard Tamara had gone into labour—hell, that’s as womanly a task as you can get and I still couldn’t protect her.”
Oh my God. The hurt and sadness in his voice wrapped around Lisa, knocking away any smart-ass comments she might have regardingwomanly tasks.
She stepped up and wrapped her arm around her father, leaning her head against his shoulder. “We don’t need you to protect us, Dad. We need you to love us.”
He nodded. “I know that now. Like I said, I’m working on being how you need me to be.” He turned to face her, smiling. “Which is why I’m about to give you some fatherly advice, and I hope you don’t just dismiss it because of all the stupid mistakes I’ve made in the past.”
“I’m listening.”
“Whatever spooked you today with Josiah—” He held up his hand when she would’ve spoken. “I didn’t lie earlier. He didn’t call me, he called the house, trying to track you down. And yes, I finagled this get-together to force you over here. But, sweetheart, the years I had with your mom were the best. You never actually got a chance to know her, but she was wonderful and I miss her every single day. Except, and now I sound like a fool, but the week I had with Julia’s mom had that same kind of perfection to it. It wasn’t long enough and it wasn’t deep enough, and if I could have another minute with either of them, I would jump on that opportunity and grab it with both hands.”
Lisa stayed motionless for a moment, staring up at his earnest expression. “I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.
“Truly? Or are you not certain ofallyou want?” he asked softly. “Because there’s nothing wrong with grabbing the part you do know while you’re figuring out the rest of it.”
And then, stubborn man, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and walked away.
She stood and stared out the window, watching as the sun slid into the distant notch.
No matter how much it pained her to admit it, her father was right. She totally knew part of what she wanted. She just didn’t see how she could have Josiahandeverything else.
After all her years of coordinating behind the scenes sneaking and teasing people into doing things her way—the way that was best for the most people—she had no idea what came next.
She kept staring at the sky. At the sky’s pinks and purples, streaks of dark clouds gathering as the wind moved the clouds like in quick-motion reel.
