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Chapter Four
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“Daddy.” A small hand reached up to pat Cormac’s chin. “Dad.”
He looked up from the open spreadsheet and turned his jaw into Daisy’s warm soft palm. “Yes, baby girl?” he answered, still distracted by the numbers he’d been studying.
“Dad,” she repeated firmly, forcing him to pay attention.
He looked down into her wide blue eyes. She’d been curled up on his lap watching TV while he read through a report, but she was determined to have his full attention now. “Yes, Daisy?”
“Where’s Momma?” Her dark brows pulled into a flat line, and her eyes, fringed by the longest, thickest lashes, narrowed in concentration. She’d been precocious at two, and was absolutely fierce at four.
He also adored her beyond words and couldn’t help the ache he felt every time she asked about her parents.
“Your mom’s in heaven,” he said. “She’s an angel now, watching over you. And your dad’s there, too. But they love you, and they will always love you—”
“No,” she interrupted impatiently. “The other one. My god-momma. The one who sent me the Periwinkle costume for my birthday.”
Oh.
Whitney.
He felt a different pang now. One tinged with guilt.
“Daisy’s god-momma,” she emphasized.
He smiled crookedly, pushing back a lock of silky dark brown hair from her face. It was strange how this little person could make him feel so much. He’d been accused of being cold and detached by his girlfriends at various points in the relationship. You’re selfish, Cormac. You’re the Ice Man, cold and heartless. But Daisy brought out the protector in him. Daisy made him care.
“Daisy’s god-momma,” he repeated, still enchanted by the way she’d speak of herself in the third person. She did it less and less now, but as a toddler it was her favorite way to communicate. Daisy wants this. Daisy needs that.
Daisy needs…
His smile slipped, aware that Daisy needed so much in her life…so much more than just him. The incident at her school had proven that.
She didn’t need a mother and a father rolled up in an independent bachelor. She needed a mother and a father. Two parents. She needed sisters and brothers. Cousins. Family.
“God-momma Whitney,” Daisy added, clasping his chin firmly to keep his attention.
“You remember her name.”
“Yes.” Daisy’s frown deepened. “Have I met her?”
“Many times when you were a baby and still living in Denver. Whitney and your mommy were best friends.”
“Where is Denver?”
“It’s in a state called Colorado. You have to fly to get there.”
“Is that why she doesn’t come see me? It’s too long a flight?”
His chest, already tight, squeezed into a hard knot. His conscience warred with him. “Would you want to see her?”
The little girl hesitated. “Does she like me?”
Again his conscience smote him. “Yes.” His voice dropped, roughening. “Whitney loves you.”
“Then why won’t she see me?”
He didn’t know how to explain to a four-year-old the complicated situation. He didn’t know how to unravel the messy tangled threads that tied him to Whitney. That tied them to Daisy. But then, he didn’t even know how to explain to himself how something that had once been so good, became so bad. “We just live really far apart. But maybe once we’re in Montana…maybe we can try to get you two together then.”
“Is Montana where Mack and Molly live?”
“Yes. And it’s where we’re going to be living in just a couple weeks.” He kissed the top of her head. “You know your mom was from Montana. I think she’d love it that you’re going to be raised there, too.”
“And Momma Whitney?”
“I think she’d like it, too.”
*
Cormac couldn’t sleep that night. His bed was large, the mattress new and ridiculously comfortable, his sheets and duvet equally luxurious and soft. His bedroom windows were open, welcoming the fresh sea air, carried in from the breeze off the Pacific Ocean. And yet he was restless. His mind wouldn’t shut off.
Frustrated, he yanked his pillow out from beneath his head and smashed it into a different shape. It was past midnight and he craved sleep—craved escape—but his thoughts raced, his conscience working away at him. Guilt. Sorrow. Regret.
Daisy was asking for Whitney again. She clearly missed Whitney, or at the very least, wondered about her.
It wasn’t the first time Daisy had asked about Whitney. Whitney came up every three or four months, usually whenever Whitney sent a gift or if Daisy played with the toy sent by Whitney.
Now he found himself wondering if Whitney was supposed to be in her life.
Not true.
He did know.
Whitney had been a huge part of Daisy’s life before April and Daryl died. She should have remained a huge part of her life even with them gone. But the logistics had been hellacious. Whitney there in Denver. He here in California. And the grief over the accident, as well as the constant guilt…
He’d escaped the accident. Whitney hadn’t. She’d still been in the limo when it was struck by the truck. In hindsight it was a blessing she’d been thrown from the limo, because it’s what allowed her to survive. Daryl and April had been trapped in the limo in the fire.
Cormac stretched his forearm over his face, shielding his eyes.
Remembering the accident still made him sick. Whenever he remembered Las Vegas he wanted to throw up.
And now he had Daisy, and even though he loved her, and even though he tried to be everything for her, he wasn’t enough. He’d never be enough.
He was hard. Ruthless. Selfish.
He hadn’t always been this way, though. His mother used to say that of all her boys, he was the sweetest. Cormac was her sugar and cinnamon spice. He’d blocked out a lot of memories of his childhood but he remembered loving to cuddle with her when he was small. He could still see himself nestled on her lap as she rocked him in the chair she kept in her sewing room.
He’d loved his mother so much that it had made his older brothers tease him. If they found him on Mom’s lap, they’d pull him off her lap and throw him down, wrestling him into submission. His brothers were rough. His dad was rough. He’d been born into a rugged ranching family in Paradise Valley, and as one of the younger brothers in a family of five boys, Cormac didn’t remember a time where he didn’t have to fight, or compete.
He was maybe six or seven when it finally dawned on him that if he didn’t want
to keep getting beat up, he needed to toughen up. He needed to stop going to Mom, and he needed to stop hiding with his books. He had to become strong like his brothers. So Cormac Monroe Sheenan decided he’d learn to fight, and he’d earn their respect.
It’d taken a long time—years—but by using his brain and his muscle he learned to hold his own. He discovered that his strength was strategy. Strategy allowed him to outwit the older brothers now and then, but that was enough. It gave him confidence. It also taught him that setting goals and working towards those goals—even if others mocked his goals—would pay off.
Over the years he carved out an identity for himself, an identity apart from the family name. In high school, people would say he was different from his brothers. Teachers said the same thing, too.
It didn’t hurt that he was the only fair Sheenan in the bunch. In fact, he was the first blonde Sheenan in four generations. As a kid, he’d hated being a towhead. His older brothers used to tell him he was the mailman’s kid, or that traveling preacher’s that Mom used to go listen to every summer when he came to town for his big revivals, but he never took the ribbing seriously. How could he? He looked exactly like his brothers—the same chiseled jaw, the same high cheekbones, the same big frame—except for the blonde hair.
It was somewhere in his early teens that he learned girls liked his blonde hair, and how it got extra gold highlights in summer. The girls were forever running their fingers through it, combing it back from his face as one leaned in for a kiss, or idly tugging on strands while deep in conversation.
And so he’d let them talk, and kiss, and it had all worked out. Up until they got serious. Eventually they all wanted to get serious. He didn’t.
There was no way in Hell he was going to settle down…marry a girl…have kids.
No way in Hell he’d get trapped, the way his mom and dad were trapped. The fighting. The tension. The sadness.
His mom had had her sadness.
His dad had had his anger.
Cormac’s most vivid memory of his father was his dad staring out the window towards the land, and the river that divided the Carrigan property from the Sheenan ranch. No love lost there, between the two families.
