Page 13 of Christmas with the Cowboy
“I…don’t know.”
“We dated for two years. We broke up when she went to college. It’s kind of common, you know, breaking up at that point in life.”
“I can see that, but you said it was a bad breakup.”
And now he wished he hadn’t done that.
“Itfeltbad. Believe it or not, emotions run high during the teen years.” Reed could say quite honestly that he didn’t like discussing his dating history with his daughter, but it beat her trying to finagle it out of him bit by bit, question by uncomfortable question. Best to get it over with now.
“So, you’re good with it.”
He let out a little snort. “Of course. We’re not kids anymore.”
“She seems okay,” Lex allowed. “She said ‘shit,’ and I didn’t expect that.”
Reed smiled. “She is okay in that regard.”
“I thought she looked kind of stuck up when she got here.”
“I don’t know what to say there.”
“You need to get to work?” Lex suggested.
“That’s it,” he said.
“Crazy that we just got here and you’re already working.”
“That’s life on the ranch.” He adjusted his hat. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
He let out a pent-up breath as he headed down the path, and hoped that this was the end of the Trenna interrogation. He’d answered the questions honestly, and now it was simply a matter of dodging the woman while they were at the place together because if he knew his daughter, she’d been watching them. Closely. Teenage curiosity and all that.
He hurried his steps across the driveway to where Henry had the tractor warming up. “Race you,” he said as he climbed into the side-by-side.
“Right,” Henry said dryly. “See you there.”
It was only while he was driving that he wondered why his inquisitive daughter hadn’t brought up the fact that Trenna was related to the man who’d just encroached on their property. Surely, she had some questions about that…unless they’d already been answered.
Reed swerved, barely missing a badger hole in the middle of the track, and focused back on his driving. There’d be more questions. He was sure of it.
His question was, why was it still so hard to talk about Trenna Hunt? And why did it feel like they had unfinished business?
Not a feeling that sat comfortably with him, and he hoped against hope that it was all in his head.
*
What was herdad up to?
Trenna bit her lip beneath the dust mask as she wrapped sandpaper around a wood block and then started removing paint from a kitchen cabinet door. Why was he messing with the Kellers?
And why, when she’d been looking for investment properties close to Marietta, hadn’t she bought the farmhouse on the other side of the valley? Then she wouldn’t feel like she was in the middle of whatever this was.
Easy. She liked this area better, and even though her dad had moved to the ranch months before she’d accepted the midyear job at the community college in Marietta, she’d assumed it was temporary. He’d moved back before, once for close to a year, but had always left again to spend months at his oceanside property on the Gulf Coast. Or at his second ranch near Santa Fe. Or the mountain home outside of Tahoe.
She’d never dreamed that he was in the process of selling off several of his properties and intended to make the Montana ranch where he’d grown up his permanent base. Like it or not, she and her dad were neighbors.
At least they were no longer in the bad place they’d been after she’d refused to follow the career path that he’d mapped out for her, and he’d subsequently cut off funds and communications early in her college career. She’d grown from the experience, and she and Carter had eventually made peace, thanks to Dawn, his wife of eight years. Dawn had encouraged visits long before Carter retired, and had coached her dad into more fatherlike behavior, the result being that she and Carter once again had a relationship of sorts, sans hero worship on her part and an expectation of blind obedience on his.
Her dad wasn’t going to change, and she was done twisting herself to fit his expectations, but for Dawn’s sake, and because her dad was her only relative, she maintained contact, made nice at holidays. Truth be told, she had more of a relationship with Dawn than with her dad, and that was why she had no idea what was going on with the Kellers.
