2. Chapter 2
Cash
My daughter just walked away with a stranger.
I should probably be concerned about that. I am concerned about that. I’m also standing in a gravel driveway holding one tiny cowboy boot and zero of my available hats, watching a beautiful girl lead my kid into a barn like they’ve known each other for decades instead of forty-five seconds.
Lola doesn’t do that. Lola doesn’t do strangers. She hides behind my leg, buries her face in my neck, and treats new people the way cats treat water. With deep suspicion and a willingness to scratch.
But the girl with the tote bag crouched down in the gravel and handed Lola her stuffed horse and said “I think maybe he needs a bath” and Lola decided right then that this person was hers.
No hesitation. No screening process. Just tiny sticky fingers reaching for Cassie Benton’s hand like she’d been waiting for it.
I don’t know what to do with that.
Raiford is beside me. He’s got the expression he always has when he’s watching something he understands better than I do, which is most things.
“Go check on her,” he says. “Then let’s get your trailer sorted.”
We unload while Elise takes over in the barn. “The cabin’s ready,” he tells me, hopping into the truck. “Same one as last time.”
The guest cabin. My guest cabin, in the way that a hotel room is yours if you stay in it enough times.
I’ve used it on every visit for the last several years.
There’s a dent in the doorframe from the time I tripped carrying a saddle in the dark.
There’s a coffee ring on the kitchen counter that might be from two visits ago.
Evidence that Cash Wylde was here. Temporarily. Like always.
Except this time I brought a crib. And a car seat.
“How long are you staying?” Raiford asks. Not pushing.
“A while. If that’s okay.”
He nods. That’s enough for Raiford. He doesn’t need the whole story. He’ll get it eventually, because I can’t keep my mouth shut about anything, but he’s willing to wait.
The whole story is this: I have nowhere else to go.
Not in a sad, dramatic way. I’m not broke.
I was smart with my money during the rodeo years, which is apparently the one area of my life where I’m not a complete disaster.
I won enough buckles and purses to put something real away, and I didn’t blow it on trucks and parties the way some guys did. I’ve got savings. I’ve got options.
What I don’t have is a direction.
I was a bull rider. That’s not past tense because I stopped wanting it.
It’s past tense because a bull named Sidewinder decided to rearrange my left leg at the National Finals three and a half years ago.
Tore everything that could tear. Broke everything that could break.
Six surgeries. Six months of rehab. And at the end of it, a doctor who looked at me with sympathy and said, “You can walk. You can ride for pleasure. But competitive bull riding is done.”
Done. Just like that. Twelve years of getting on the back of two-thousand-pound animals and holding on for eight seconds, gone in one bad dismount.
I handled it great. By which I mean I handled it terribly. I drank too much. I drove too far. I took jobs on ranches I didn’t care about and left before anyone could ask me to stay. I was very good at being a charming guest and a terrible long-term investment.
Then Lola happened.
Her mama and I were together for a few months.
She was good and kind and we were wrong for each other in every way that matters.
When she told me she was pregnant, I did the right thing and tried to make it work.
When she told me six months after Lola was born that she couldn’t do this, I did the right thing again and told her I understood.
I don’t blame her. Raising a kid with a man who doesn’t know where he’s going is not what anyone signs up for.
So now it’s me and Lola. And Lola needs more than a truck and a trailer and a dad who’s still figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up. She needs a home. A real one. With walls that stay in the same place and people who show up on a schedule.
That’s why I’m here. Not because I need Raiford’s charity. Because this ranch is the one place that’s always felt like a landing spot, and my daughter deserves to land.
We finish unloading. I set up the crib in the cabin’s bedroom. I put Lola’s stuffed animals on the bed. I hang her three clean dresses in the closet and realize I should probably buy her more clothes. And matching socks. And maybe a hairbrush.
The list of things I’m bad at is long and getting longer.
I go back to the barn to collect my daughter.
She’s with Cassie. Still. They’re sitting on the ground near Birdie’s stall and Cassie is showing Lola her sketch notebook.
Lola is pointing at every drawing and saying “horsey” like she’s identified the one important thing in life and is sticking with it.
Cassie is laughing. She’s got her ponytail over one shoulder and her sundress is dusty from the gravel and she’s laughing at my daughter like Lola is the funniest person she’s ever met.
She might be. Lola is hilarious. But I’m biased.
“Daddy!” Lola sees me and abandons Cassie without ceremony. She runs to me and I scoop her up and she smashes both palms against my cheeks, which is her way of saying hello.
“Hey, baby girl. You making friends?”
“Cassie has horseys.” She points at the notebook. “In a book.”
“I heard.” I look at Cassie over Lola’s head. She’s standing now, brushing dust off her dress, her tote bag slung over one shoulder. She’s put-together in a way that makes me very aware that I am not. “Sorry she kidnapped you.”
“I went willingly.” She smiles. “She’s wonderful.”
“She’s a tornado.”
“A very charming tornado.”
“She gets that from me.”
Cassie’s eyebrow goes up. One eyebrow. “The charming part or the tornado part?”
“Both, unfortunately.”
The eyebrow stays up for another second. Then she laughs, short and surprised, like she didn’t mean to but couldn’t help it. I like that laugh. I like that I caused it. I like that she tried not to and failed.
I should not be noticing these things. I should be focusing on settling in, finding Lola’s other boot, figuring out what to feed her tonight that isn’t cereal.
I should not be cataloging the way Cassie Benton’s eyes sparkle when she laughs or the way she held my daughter’s hand like it was precious.
But I’m Cash Wylde. And I’ve never been good at should not.
She leaves an hour later. I watch her car pull away from the porch of the guest cabin while Lola eats yogurt in her high chair and smears it across her face like an artist.
“Cassie,” Lola says, watching the car disappear.
“Yeah.”
“More Cassie.”
“I know the feeling, kid.”
The next morning I take Lola into town because she needs clothes.
Actual clothes. Not the three stained dresses and handful of mismatched socks I packed.
She needs pants, shirts, shoes that fit, and probably a hairbrush, which I keep meaning to buy and keep forgetting because my brain has the organizational capacity of a kitchen junk drawer.
We park on Main Street. Lola is wearing the clean dress, the boots on the wrong feet, and a look of intense determination.
I get her clothes at the general store. The woman behind the counter helps me pick sizes while Lola tries to put a cowboy hat on a display mannequin.
We buy four outfits, a hairbrush, socks in a pack of twelve because I will lose at least eight of them, and a pair of sandals that Lola refuses to try on because they aren’t boots.
On the way back to the truck, we pass a bookstore. River Bend Books. The window display has a stack of children’s books and a hand-painted sign that says “Summer Reading for Little Adventurers.”
Lola stops dead. Points at the window.
“Horsey.”
I look closer. There, in the display, a book with an illustrated horse on the cover. “Barnaby the Brave Horse.” By Cassie Benton.
I stare at it for a second. Then I open the door.
The bookstore is the kind of place that smells like paper and coffee and good decisions. Shelves from floor to ceiling, a worn rug in the middle, a reading nook in the corner with cushions that look like they’ve been sat on by every kid in Wylde Mountain.
Cassie is behind the counter.
She looks different here than she did at the ranch.
More settled. This is her territory. She’s sorting a stack of books with the efficiency that I associate with people who have their lives together.
Her ponytail is over one shoulder and she’s wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon cat reading a book on it and she looks up when the bell chimes and her face does something I want to see again.
“Cassie!” Lola breaks free from my hand and charges the counter.
“Lola!” Cassie comes around and crouches down and Lola throws herself into Cassie’s arms like they haven’t seen each other in a year instead of eighteen hours. “Hey, sweet girl. I like your dress.”
“Horsey.” Lola points at the window display.
“That’s right! That’s my horsey. That’s Barnaby.”
“Bah-bee.”
I pick up one of the Barnaby books. The illustrations are beautiful. The horse has personality in every line. The story is simple and warm and exactly the kind of thing Lola would love.
I pick up all three. Cassie watches me stack them on the counter.
“You don’t have to buy all of them,” she says.
“My kid just learned your horse’s name. I’m buying all of them.” I pull out my wallet. “Actually, can I ask you something?”
“Depends on the question.”
I glance toward the counter. “You work here full time?”
“No. Mostly mornings. Why?”
“Because I need somebody a few afternoons a week.”
She blinks. “For what?”
“For this.” I nod toward Lola, who is currently trying to pull a bookmark out of a display with her teeth. “Elise helps me a lot, but she has an actual life and I’m starting to feel like I moved onto the ranch and handed her a toddler.”
“You need a babysitter.”
“I need someone Lola will willingly stay with.” I look down at my daughter. “Apparently she conducted interviews yesterday and you got the job.”
“Horsey,” Lola says.
“See? Glowing recommendation.”
She laughs.
I lean an elbow on the counter. “You said you usually work mornings. Would you be interested in coming out to the ranch a couple afternoons a week? I’ll pay you.”
“I have books to work on too.”
“Do that at the cabin. She naps. Sometimes.” I pause. “Whatever Harper pays you here, I’ll double it. Plus gas.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Absolutely not.”
“Triple?”
“Cash.”
“What? I’m negotiating.”
“You’re terrible at negotiating.”
“I used to make money getting on bulls. My financial instincts are unconventional.”
“That explains a lot.”
My grin slips a little. “I’m not kidding about needing help,” I say. “Raiford’s my cousin. Elise is his wife. They have work for me to do on the ranch. Elise has been helping with Lola when she can, but I can’t keep assuming she’ll be available.”
Cassie’s expression changes. Not dramatically. She just stops looking at me like I’m trying to talk my way into something and starts looking at me like she understands what I’m actually asking.
She glances down at Lola.
My daughter has abandoned the bookmark and is sitting on the floor with Barnaby open across her knees.
Upside down.
“What afternoons?” Cassie asks.
Relief hits so fast I almost grin again. “Whatever works for you.”
“That is not how schedules work.”
“I knew there was a reason I asked you.”
She gives me a look.
God, I like that look. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday?” I offer.
“I work here Friday afternoons.”
“Monday, Wednesday, Thursday?”
She goes quiet. I can practically see the calendar flipping behind her eyes. She’s considering it. Which means I have somehow gotten farther with this idea than I expected.
“Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,” she says finally. “One to five.”
My eyebrows lift. “Is that a yes?”
“It is a very conditional yes.”
“I accept all conditions.”
“You haven’t heard them yet.”
“I’m feeling optimistic.”
“You are paying me a normal babysitting rate. Not double what Harper pays me.”
“Fine.”
“Plus gas.”
“Obviously.”
“And if I have a book deadline, I may need to change a day.”
“Done.”
“And this is temporary. For now.”
The words land strangely. Temporary. That should be easy for me. Temporary is what I do. I move around. I stay a few weeks. A few months if I’m feeling ambitious. Then I find somewhere else before anybody starts expecting me to belong there.
“Temporary works for me,” I say lightly.
“Then we understand each other.”
“Perfectly.”
Lola looks up from the upside-down book. “Cassie?”
Cassie crouches a little. “Yes?”
“Horsey.”
I point at my daughter. “Your first client is extremely demanding.”
“I gathered that.”
“When can you start?”
“Monday.”
My grin comes back before I can stop it. “Monday,” I repeat. “One o’clock.”
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself.”
“I just solved a problem.”
“You hired a babysitter.”
“Same thing.”
She rings up the books. When she hands me the bag, our fingers brush. Neither of us moves for half a second. Then Cassie pulls her hand back.
I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything. I came in here to buy three horse books.
I’m leaving with those books, a babysitter, and three afternoons a week where Cassie Benton is going to be at my cabin.
That feels suspiciously like winning.