Chapter Twenty
Dinner done. Dishes done. The hour was late, and Daisy started her final days of summer school first thing in the morning. T.R. walked to the door.
“Don’t go, yet.” Daisy thudded toward him.
His wing girl collided with his thigh and hip, her face full of worry, and his throat knotted, to be reached for with such need. How the hell didn’t Jason want to give this little sprite the world?
He couldn’t walk out the door with her watching his back recede. She’d already seen one man turn his back on her. He pushed a smile on his face. God, those wide blue eyes were going to do him in.
“I didn’t give you your gift yet.”
His brows arched. “A gift?” For him?
She grabbed a purse by her backpack. Pastel rainbow, sparkly—with a pleather unicorn on it—and returned to him. Then slipped out a fold of construction paper and a wrapper—a card and a package of Reese’s Pieces.
“I got you more. Since I ate all the others.”
Charlie’s head popped out from the kitchen walkway.
“Where’d you get these, girlie?”
“The Boy Scouts were selling candy at the farm market this morning. Seth was there.” She smiled sheepishly at her mother.
Oh boy.
“I was gonna use my allowance, but Seth gave me a pack of ’em for free. May-maybe T. Rex will wanna come back if we give him a gift, Momma.”
The knot in his throat tightened. Sweet girl.
Charlie’s gaze contorted as she took in Daisy’s hopeful face.
“Maybe he’ll keep coming back if we’re real nice to him, don’tcha think, Momma?”
Shit. T.R.’s heart squeezed. Stinging pricked his eyes as Charlie reached out to brush back her wisps, her face twisting with emotion.
This girl, begging for a scrap of her dad’s attention through him instead.
“Hey, now.” He squatted down.
She pushed the wrapper and card into his palm—the telltale orange packaging of Reece’s Pieces. He opened the card. Unicorns. Three of them.
She pointed. “That one’s me, that one’s Momma, and-and that one’s you. And down there is Pumpkin and Artex.”
The knot only worsened.
He cleared it gruffly and swallowed. “Well now. Can’t remember the last time someone other than my sisters gave me a gift.” Couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so … welcomed with open arms instead of judged.
He kept his eyes glued to the paper to blink away the stinging. Little dots of orange and yellow and brown—candies—were floating into their mouths.
“That’s real special. I’ll put it on my fridge so I can look at it every day. Thanks.”
“You have sisters?”
“Mm-hmm.” He nodded. “Faith and Patience are my big sisses, and Charity and Temperance are my littles.”
“You got a kid too?”
T.R. nearly choked. Shook his head. Because when he looked at her, he suddenly wished she was his. And that this was a family portrait.
He cleared his throat again. “Naw. I guess I never been what a woman’s lookin’ for.”
“But my momma keeps your picture in her bedstand. She likes lookin’ at you.”
Charlie’s eyes connected with his and held.
Sweet blush crept across her cheeks as her teeth bit her lip. “Called out.”
Silence shrouded them. The house ticked and creaked, settling. The savory scent of the food teased his nose with veneers of home and facades of acceptance—
A smile grew on his lips.
“’S that a fact?” he said to Daisy, but kept his eyes locked up at those green gems.
Did he dare trust her with his secret? Should he come clean about his history? Would it dash it all? Something was starting here, and she deserved to know the full truth before it went any further.
*
“Say goodbye, Daze. We’ll see him soon, okay?” Charlie said, and Daisy threw her arms around him.
Thaddeus scooped her up as effortlessly as a dad who’d done it a hundred times. Daisy wrapped her legs about him. Charlie slipped the money he’d refused earlier in his pocket as he jostled her daughter.
He planted a kiss to Daisy’s crown and put her down, pasting on his insta-charm. “Get your tools organized. Remember? We got a chicken coop to build. I’m puttin’ my wing girl to work.”
God, T.R. better not promise this to Daisy and then flake.
“Yes!”
“Go get your PJs on and brush your teeth, Daisy,” she said.
Charlie followed him outside into the quiet night, to his truck, as he hoisted open the door, a steely edge returning to his pumping jaw, lurking beneath the reprieve of evening happiness. He climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked down the window. Fired up the engine.
Rested his wrist on his wheel so his hand dangled over it, his other elbow on the window frame as insects floated through the glow of his headlights.
Didn’t leave as he chewed his cheek and stared ahead of him. “Does Jason do this often? Come to your house and harass you?”
She shivered despite the heat outside. “Not always. Only when he’s drunk. When he’s sober, he has a million other things he’d rather do than be a dad.”
“He’s got red flags coming out the ass and ears,” T.R. pressed, working his cheek harder. He cleared his throat. “You’re gonna go, right? File that restraining order?”
She shrugged, jamming her hands in her overall pockets. Heart had texted earlier, asking her to take a bundle of documents out to Tyler for her. She had lessons to prepare. A paleobotany student arriving at noon to retake her final.
She exhaled. The weight of the world landing hard on her shoulders again. “I have to start preparing my lectures. And I have a student coming in tomorrow. But we’ll go down to the station tomorrow afternoon.”
“We’ll?” He remained stoic, staring into the distance as he flicked his stained fingernails to busy his hand resting over the wheel.
“I can’t leave Daisy here alone to go do it, and Auntie Heart is back in West Texas until she comes to her senses and realizes she’s in love with your cousin, else she would have swooped Daisy up, so I need to take Tyler a couple things on her behalf—”
“You’re comin’ to the farm?” His eyes darted to hers, as if an idea was brewing there.
She nodded.
He diverted his eyes again to the distance. “I don’t like y’all here alone,” he bit out, baritone laced with acid. Then leveled his blues on her. Frosty with steel. “Go in and lock the door, Charlie.”
His eyes burned, and yet, the steel edge to his jaw relaxed, his brow furrowing as he stared at her lips. Brushed his thumb over them.
She palmed his cheek, noting his rough inhale as his thumb pressed her lip harder, when he pulled her into his window, pressed his lips to hers. Firm, demanding, this wasn’t the kiss of the eager lover and tender soother. This was a statement, and a yearning.
He kissed her hard, gripping her nape as if he had the right.
He swallowed, his throat bobbing, his gaze bouncing back and forth between hers before he let go and motioned her inside, waiting to see her shut the door.
She turned the dead bolt and glanced down to grab her keys and beep her SUV lock …
there, on the stand by the door where she always dumped her car keys was…
She snatched up a fold of one-hundred-dollar bills. She fanned them apart like a deck of cards. Three of them. He’d fished them out of his pocket again.
“That man,” she breathed, yanking the door back open.
“Trouble!” she called, waving the money and starting down the step but he was craned over his shoulder, arm across the bench seat, reversing into the road.
“Only if you’re lucky, Flower Girl!” He kicked up a satisfied smile, rumbling away.