A Rancher's Pride(56)

Nodding, Kayla repeated the sign. “Ball.”

After pointing to herself, Becky wiggled her hands, thumbs and pinkies extended. “Me, play.”

Kayla nodded again. Smiling, she watched Becky run off to join the crowd.

A few of the women drifted over to rest their elbows on the top of the fence separating the field from the yard. Kayla followed.

With the sun now lowering and caught behind one of the clouds, the air was cooler than it had been all day. A light breeze stirred the wild grass growing around the fence posts.

The kids had begun to pick sides for their game. As she waited, Kayla nearly forgot to breathe, feeling as nervous as any mother would to see her child waiting so hopefully to be chosen. Not to be left till last. To her relief, Becky didn’t stay on the sidelines for long. Soon, she was out there in the middle of the field, holding her own.

“She’s a feisty thing,” Ellamae said approvingly.

“How old is she?” asked one of the women.

“Four,” Kayla answered.

The woman had a child that age, too. A son. Idly keeping an eye on the kickball game, they shared funny stories and traded helpful hints about raising children, though the other woman did most of the talking.

Kayla knew a lot about Becky’s life, but the conversation proved how far she still had to go. What would it be like to know all the details about Becky, the way that woman knew about her son? To be with Becky every day and witness her joy at every new thing she learned?

What had it been like for Sam to miss all those years with her?

No wonder he couldn’t forgive Kayla for taking his daughter away.

No wonder he didn’t think of her now as anything but unpaid help—and a potential playmate.

Fighting a wave of hopelessness, she forced her attention back to the woman by her side.

Out in the field, the children laughed and shrieked. From the far end of the yard, horseshoes clanged again and again. On the steps of the bunkhouse, Jack sat strumming a guitar.

A loud yell suddenly interrupted the pleasant sounds.

“Hey, why didn’t ya look where you were going?” a boy shouted. “We told ya to get out of the way!”

The anger in his voice made Kayla and the other woman look over toward the field. Most of the kids had gathered into a ragged circle in the middle of the play area. A few stragglers ran up to join them.

In the gaps between the children’s legs, she could see someone sitting or lying on the ground. Just a brief glimpse of a child’s foot covered only by a white ankle sock.

Outside the edge of the circle lay a sneaker, all by itself.

A grass-stained sneaker. Decorated with purple stars.





Chapter Seventeen





If she had ever had any doubts about Sam’s genuine concern for his daughter, Kayla certainly didn’t hold a single one of them now. As soon as he learned Becky had fallen, he had come running, and he hadn’t left her side since.

She sported a scalp wound from her tumble, a minor scrape that bled superficially, nothing more serious than that. She sat in the kitchen for a while with an ice pack pressed against the side of her head, but she soon wanted to give that up in her eagerness to go back outside again.

“Play?” she signed to Kayla. “Me, play?”

The kickball game had ended, and the kids Becky’s age had turned their attention to the plastic horseshoes set up alongside the barn.

At Kayla’s nod, Becky ran from the room, banging the kitchen door behind her.

Kayla turned to Sam, who looked more upset than the child herself. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “Just a minor accident.”

“I realize that.” Looking puzzled, he shook his head. “But I don’t get it. You didn’t want her up on a horse—which is something she could learn to handle without having to say a word.” He gestured widely toward the door. “Yet it’s okay to have her out there on that field with a bunch of kids running around her, in a situation she can’t control.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

She frowned at him. “All kids learn to play with others, Sam. Sometimes the games are physical, and they’re rough. And sometimes the kids get knocked down or hurt in the process. You must know that—you were a kid once yourself. It’s natural.”

“Yeah? Well, out here, it’s natural to spend half your life on the back of a horse.” He followed in Becky’s wake, letting the screen door slam closed even more loudly than she had done.