Home on the Ranch. Allison Leigh

      “I haven’t watched my child,” she said. “Since I’ve never even had one, that would be difficult.” Then she suddenly lifted her foot onto one of the kitchen chairs and whipped the stretchy black pants that flared over her shoes up past her knee. The scar was old. Faded. It snaked down from beyond the folds of her pants on the inside of her taut thigh, circled her knee and disappeared down her calf. “But I have dealt with it myself.”

      The water and aspirin he’d just chugged mixed uncomfortably with his lunch. Lucy’s healing surgical scars were bad. But when they healed, he knew they would look far better than Belle’s.

      “Not pretty,” Belle murmured, and pulled her pant leg back down. “My hip doesn’t look quite so bad.”

      “What happened?”

      It was hard to believe it, but her brown eyes looked even darker. “I thought you knew.”

      “I suppose that’s why you went into physical therapy,” he surmised grudgingly.

      “Yes.” She sucked in one corner of her soft lip for a moment. Her expression was oddly still. “I was with my dad that night, Cage. The night of the accident.”

      He’d been wrong. His nerves could get tighter. “I didn’t know you’d been hurt.” He couldn’t have known since her family had been living in Cheyenne at the time.

      She studied the crutches she held. “I was lying down in the back seat. I didn’t have on my seat belt, which my dad didn’t know. When…it…happened, I was thrown from the car. Metal and flesh and bone. Don’t mix well usually.” She lifted her shoulder slightly. “Which is something you know only too well, I’m afraid. I’m sorry. I thought you knew,” she said again then fell silent.

      She looked miserable. And damned if he could convince himself it was an act, though he wanted to.

      “Look, Cage, it’s not too late for me to go. I know Lucy knows about the accident between our parents and she doesn’t seem to hold it against my family. But everyone warned me this would be just one constant reminder after another.” Her gaze whispered over him, then went back to the crutches. “I can hold my own against those opinions.” Her voice was vaguely hoarse. “But if your feeling the same way gets in the path of Lucy’s progress then my efforts here will be for nothing. Are…are you sure you want me to stay?”

      No. He stared out the window. Lucy was sitting in her chair just outside the barn, Strudel half in her lap while they played tug with a stick. “Lucy still needs help.” His voice came from somewhere deep inside him.

      He heard Belle sigh a little. “I could talk to the people I worked with at Huffington. Maybe I could find someone willing to—”

      “No.” He couldn’t afford to bring someone else out to the ranch, to pay their full salary. Belle had been willing to agree for less than half what she deserved, and he knew it was only because of her fondness for his daughter. Something he’d deliberately capitalized on. The fact that she’d be able to provide the tutoring Lucy needed was even more of a bonus. “You came to help Lucy. I expect you to hold to your word.”

      “All right,” she said after a long moment. She tucked her arm through the center of the crutches and carried them to the door. Then paused. “I’m really sorry your father didn’t survive the accident, Cage.”

      “So am I,” he said stiffly. He’d lost both his parents that night, even though his mother had technically survived. Apparently, the only one to escape unscathed that winter night nearly fourteen years ago had been the man who’d caused the accident in the first place.

      Belle’s father.

      And even though he’d died a few years later, Belle was, after all, still his daughter.