Page 4 of Her Cowboy Baby Daddy
Nice going, Keller.
He resisted the temptation to check the mirror again and continued down the driveway. One showy maneuver per visit was his limit.
*
Hayley snuggled thedog under her chin as she watched Spence Keller abruptly change the trajectory of his truck. Thank goodness her gatepost was still standing.
She turned her back to the dust cloud settling on the driveway and started toward the gate that Vince would drive through. Had Spence reached for something when the truck drifted off course, or had he been looking at her in the rearview mirror?
Did it matter?
Yes, her small voice assured her.It does.
She was a different person than she’d been a decade ago, and when people like Spence Keller noticed the change—commented on it, even—it gave her a sense of achievement. The discomfort involved in confronting her issues had been worth it. Not that she needed affirmations. People were going to judge; that was a given. But she could accept or reject the judgement. Or ignore it. She could do whatever she wanted with it. She didn’t need to change or hide or dodge social events. She could be herself without apology.
For the most part.
She was, like everyone, a work in progress. Had been since she’d made the decision to do something about her shyness on her nineteenth birthday after Jerod, her stepfather du jour, had made yet another joke about her looks improving with age. Instead of swallowing the insult for the umpteenth time, her inner ranch girl—the one who worked shoulder to shoulder with her dad and had skills that stupid Jerod couldn’t begin to appreciate—made a surprise appearance and told the man to take a flying leap. Except that what she’d really said had been more colorful, and involved an act that was physically impossible. Hayley could still conjure up the stunned expressions on her mom’s and Jerod’s faces and the equally stunned silence that followed.
Even though she’d had trouble breathing after blurting out her retort, she hadn’t melted into a puddle. She hadn’t spontaneously combusted. She’d spoken her mind and she was still in one piece. Reaction had followed revelation, and she’d apologized, because that was what she did to make people back off, but she hadn’t meant a word of it.
That had been the second in a long string of realizations. Why say things that she didn’t mean just to be left alone? Why not stand up for herself and not back down?
Why look for approval from others?
Because she’d been conditioned to do that.
So she began to get unconditioned. She’d been shocked when her therapist suggested that her glamorous multi-wed mom might be insecure. At first, she’d laughed it off. Reba Summers? Insecure? Nonsense. This guy didn’t know her mother. If he did, he would be dazzled by her like everyone else.
But as the sessions continued, she began to understand what the counselor had been getting at. Began to see that her mom had been ill-equipped to be a parent and the wisest thing Hayley had ever done was to insist on moving in with her father at the age of eleven. The second wisest was to seek counseling.
Putting herself out there, risking rejection, accepting criticism, had been daunting, but when the need to retreat began to overwhelm her, she’d conjured up images of Jerod calling her mousy, and David, her stepfather before that, joking about inheriting the proverbial redheaded stepchild, a sentiment that had caused her to feel bad about her hair for years.
She loved her hair now.
She also felt tons more comfortable in her skin.
She smiled down at the little dog. “So you made a break for it, eh? I bet your new mom is worried about you.”
Vince Gilroy pulled the open-topped Jeep to a stop and bailed out over the closed door. “Is that Greta?” he asked before pushing up his wire-rimmed glasses, which tended to slip.
“It is.”
“Did they turn her in again?”
“I think she left of her own accord. Spence Keller found her near his place and dropped her off.”
Vince ruffled the fur on the dog’s neck and was rewarded with a few canine kisses. “What now?”
“I’ll call Whiskers and Paw Pals, the shelter in Marietta, and let them know what happened. They can handle the rest on their end.”
“Going to foster her in the meantime?”
Hayley gave a soft snort. “Of course.” She halfway wished she’d never let the little sweetheart go, but she had to in order to foster the next needy dog, who’d turned out to be an overgrown potbelly pig. Remy the Pig had been on the Lone Tree Ranch for two weeks and had claimed Vince as her own shortly after she arrived, nosing along behind him wherever he went.
A second later a loud squeal announced the black-and-white pig’s joy at seeing her soulmate. She trotted across the driveway, her curly tail wiggling as she made a beeline for Vince.
Vince, who had declared himself to be neither a cat nor dog man, was now a pig man, whether he liked it or not.
