the spittin’ image of your father.”
Kate shook her head. “I go by Kate Langsdon.” She gripped the woman’s hand with her free one. “Did you know my…Kyle Kendrick?” She still couldn’t manage to refer to him as her father. Throughout her life, her mother had told her that her father had died in a car wreck. Growing up without a father hadn’t given her any practice saying the word. And for the past four years, Lily had been without a father of her own.
“Know him? I worked for him until the day he was m—” The older woman’s eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry.” Her glance moved to Lily, and her hand fell to her side. “I worked for Mr. Kendrick until he passed. He was a good man.”
Kate bit her lip, wanting to refute Mrs. Henderson’s statement. What man would willingly walk away from his daughter and never have contact with her? In Kate’s mind, that didn’t make a good man.
“Thank you for coming to our rescue.” Kate smiled and turned to Ben. “Now, let’s get you inside and doctored up.”
The kitten Lily had been holding mewed.
An answering meow came from beneath the porch and a brightly colored calico cat stepped out of the shadows.
The kitten clawed at Lily.
“Ouch.” Lily held the kitten away from her shirt.
Kate pointed to the cat. “That must be the kitten’s mother.”
Lily hugged the fur ball to her, her brows pulling together in a mutinous frown. “Jazzy is my kitty.”
“Honey, you have to let her go to her mama.”
“But I want a kitten.”
“Jazzy will be your kitten, but you’ll have to let her be with her mama until she gets bigger.”
“I want her to come in the house and sleep in my bed.”
“When she doesn’t need her mother anymore. You can come and play with her outside until then.”
The kitten dug her claws into Lily, scrambling to get to her mother.
“See, she misses her mother.” Kate leaned Lily away from her. “How would you feel if someone wouldn’t let you come to your mother?”
Lily stared at the kitten and the calico mother cat, meowing over and over. “I’d feel sad.”
“And the kitten is sad because you won’t let her go to her mother.”
Lily wiggled in Kate’s arms, so she set her daughter on the ground.
Plucking the kitten’s claws from her shirt, Lily settled the animal on the ground.
As soon as she was loose, the kitten ran for her mother, curling in and around the cat’s long, sleek legs.
“See how happy Jazzy is?” Kate knelt beside her daughter.
“Can I play with her after lunch?”
“You sure can.” If the bikers weren’t back or an intruder wasn’t rummaging through the only home they had to go to. Kate’s chest tightened. “We’ll bring food out for Jazzy and her mother.”
Lily slipped her hand into Ben’s and one into her mother’s. “I’m hungry. Can we eat now?”
Kate almost laughed at how quickly Lily forgot the bad men on motorcycles, all her concentration on eating and getting back outside to play with her kitten. How simple to be a child and forget about all the horrible things adults could do to each other.
Ben glanced over the top of Lily’s head. “She’ll be all right.”
The biker’s warning echoed in Kate’s mind. “I hope so.”
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