Page 71 of Risking it for the Cowboy

“Okay,” she blurted out.

“What?”

She smiled at him.

Patted his heart again, nodding and swallowing. “Okay, you can come get her. I … trust you.”

Warmth filled him as Daisy cheered. Charlie trusted him. Quickly followed by a rancid taste he ignored. Because he still hadn’t told her about the one condition she’d put on them—

“Two thirty?” she asked, waiting so expectantly with those wide green eyes.

He nodded, grinning. “And you’ll bring your banjo?”

That trusting smile warmed his favorite mouth again. “Okay … let’s give it a shot, see if I can hang with you guys during your Friday night gig.”

He grabbed her face and kissed her hard, chuckling softly and grinning at her giggle as Seth rolled his eyes in his periphery and texted his dad again.

“Thank God, woman, you just saved my ass. Jack and Bo’ve been on my case about you for two weeks.”

She gave some documents to Tyler. Spoke something to him about Heart, but T.R.’s heart was thumping hard. As she stepped off the porch to leave, calling Daisy away from Seth and watching her daughter get in the back seat, he caught her wrist and relished that she not only didn’t flinch, but gazed expectantly at him.

“Quick question, baby,” he muttered under his breath. “What’s that judge’s first name? The one who keeps giving Jason a pass?”

Her brow furrowed, her smile falling an inch. “Calvin. Calvin Mitchell … why?”

The edge of happiness cooled.

That was what he’d been afraid of. “Just wondering.”

He watched her Rover rumble down the gravel drive.

Daisy waved out the window. “Bye, T. Rex!”

Charlie’s face in the sideview, gazing back at him, and he swore he saw … her smirk? He notched up his chin in question, but she only started laughing. What was she so proud of?

He hopped back down from the porch, sweeping up his gelding’s reins and leading him back to the stable. Ty wanted to meet with him about something at three but that was gonna have to wait. He finished untacking Beau, stabling him, and grabbed those old documents from his cabin.

As he pushed into the nineteenth-century farmhouse foyer he’d once scampered through as a boy with his sisters and cousins, lined with a century’s worth of family photographs, Charlie’s answer was burning through his thoughts.

Tyler, distracted, rustling around in his office, once a formal dining room where the family had gathered for Grams’s Sunday suppers, looked up from some papers he was slipping into a satchel. “Hey, T.R. You’re early. C’mon in, lemme find the paperwork—”

“Look I don’t know if you’re firing me all formal like, but I gotta ask, what do you know about a Judge Calvin Mitchell?” He slapped down his manilla folder he’d dug up the night before. “Because if that bastard hurts Charlie or Daisy…” He shook his head, that sense of urgency burning in him to hurry up to the police station and get that little girl here.

Tyler paused, the folder he was taking out of his satchel hanging in midair as he took in T.R’s documents.

Tyler slid the folder back in. “Who’d hurt her?”

“You remember I mentioned her ex being a bastard? Turns out, he showed up after I took her Rover back. Near beat down her door cussin’ her out, and … fuck, but the way they both turned white as sheets,” he gnashed out, shaking his head. “He done put his hands on her before.”

“And the little girl?” Tyler’s voice dropped softer and lower than the baritone it already was.

“Not yet but you know it’s only a matter of time.”

“This why I had to get the vitamins yesterday?” And at T.R.’s nod, Tyler took off his Stetson and slapped it down, scouring his face with his palm.

“I’ve heard you grumble about ‘Tyler havin’ to swoop in and flash his law degree around’ to fix everyone’s shit, so I won’t ask for much, but I gotta know about Mitchell.”

“Shut up about that, man.” Tyler waved him off, dropping into his office chair among his leather-bound volumes and woke up his computer. Began clicking around until he’d opened a couple files. Tyler eyed him, still standing, arms folded.