AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Baby, you have to listen to Mama at the stables.”
“I know.” Charlotte’s voice sounded like she’d inhaled helium.
“You can’t cry out there, and you can’t cry the whole way home.”
“I know.”
“If you can’t do it, I’ll have to take you to work with me.” He didn’t want that to be a punishment, but it really was. He had nothing for little girls to do for ten hours each day.
Charlotte sniffled in his arms, and Hunter stroked her soft hair. “Tell me what happened.”
“I just wanted to ride Brownie, and Mama wouldn’t let me.”
“Honey, Brownie is a therapy horse. Only the equine therapy students ride her.”
“She’s so pretty. I asked if I could feed her, but Mama said she’d already eaten.”
“Then she’d already eaten.”
“I didn’t want a sandwich for dinner.”
“Then you can go to bed right now.”
Charlotte started to cry again, a soft sniffle that broke Hunter’s heart. “Sh, sh, sh,” he said. “Stop crying, Char. If you don’t want to eat, you can just sit with us, okay? But you can’t argue with your mother about it. She has to feed all of us every night—every morning and every day for lunch too—and sometimes, you just get a sandwich. You can’t throw a fit about it.”
Charlotte had always been the most sensitive of his kids, and Hunter glanced into the kitchen to check on the other kids. They’d all opened their sandwiches just fine, and everyone had chips the way he’d asked. No one would clean up after themselves without being asked, but Hunter would ask them.
Lisa looked over, and Hunter smiled at her. She smiled back, and he noted how good her heart was. She loved her little sister, and out of all of them, she couldn’t stand the contention the most.
“Do you want to at least try the sandwich?” he asked Charlotte.
“Okay,” she said.
He let her slide off his lap and then he tucked her hair behind her ears and lifted her chin until she looked him in the face. “Baby, you have to apologize to your mother.”
Charlotte’s chin wobbled, but she nodded her head. “Okay, Daddy.”
“The moment she walks in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good girl. Give me a hug and a kiss right here.” He tapped his cheek, his smile growing. Charlotte wrapped her spindly arms around him and hugged him, and then she gave him a smacking kiss on his cheek. They both laughed, and Hunter let her go into the kitchen and sit down at the table next to Lisa before he got up.
He took his seat at the head of the table and started to unwrap his sandwich. He didn’t want to call Ryder out in front of his sisters, but they were all going fishing tomorrow too. “Ry, your mama says she can’t find you sometimes around the farm.” He took a bite of his sandwich and looked at his fourteen-year-old.
Sometimes he didn’t feel old enough to have a fourteen-year-old, and sometimes his body felt creaky and quite old enough to have a fourteen-year-old, thank you very much.
Ryder’s face turned a violent shade of red, which Hunter had not been expecting. He chewed slowly while his son sat there silently.
Hunter swallowed and asked, “Where are you?”
“Just around,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna fly with me, young man,” Hunter said in a much harsher voice than he’d just used on Charlotte. “You make her late to leave to come home, and it’s stressing her out that she doesn’t know where you are.”
“I know where he is,” Lisa said.
“Lisa,” Ryder hissed. “Shut up.”
