Page 16 of Forbidden Cowboy
“Just… Anna’s mother,” I admitted. “Eliana isn’t the epitome of a devoted mother, I guess.”
“Anna?” she asked. “Is that the little girl that was with you that first night?”
I looked at her, surprised. “Yes, didn’t I introduce you that night?”
“Uh, there was kind of a lot going on.”
“Yeah, I suppose there was…”
“So, her name’s Anna?” She pressed, pulling me back to the first question. “How old is she?”
“Uh, seven,” I replied. “She’s my daughter.”
If I hadn’t given Sierra her name, then I almost certainly hadn’t told her who Anna was to me.
I saw surprise write itself across her face.
“Your… daughter… wow, and uh, you mentioned Eliana. Is that—um, like,Eliana?”
“Eliana Davis from school? Yeah.”
“Holy shit,” Sierra cursed, and a smile quirked on my face. “I really didn’t see that one coming.”
“Yeah, neither did I,” I confessed.
“Are you two together, then?”
Was I imagining it, or was there some other emotion that crossed her face?
“No, um, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but we got divorced when we were twenty-two. Separated a couple years before that, though. It wasn’t much of a marriage.”
“I’m surprised Beau never mentioned it,” she said in awe. “I would have thought you getting married would be a big deal.”
“It really wasn’t,” I assured her. “We just made a mistake, and then did the whole cliche shotgun wedding so that Anna would have a nuclear family or something.”
“Huh,” she shook her head. “I guess things changed while I was gone.”
“I guess so,” I replied. “Oh, we’re here.”
We turned up the drive, and Sierra’s eyes widened as she took in the place that she used to spend every Saturday roaming around. The arch over the drive declared it to be ‘Valley View Ranch’, and the fencing following either side of the road held back the scattered cattle herds and the couple horses we had out to graze. It led up to the main house, which was wide but flat, only two stories high.
We climbed out of the truck in front of the door. Sierra looked like she was going to cry while looking up at the house.
“I’d forgotten,” she murmured, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or not.
“C’mon, let’s get to work,” I said, and walked up the steps.
She followed me through the house, and out to the back. We walked past the well-maintained, fenced-in garden and the gardener pruning bushes, and past the pool, until we were at the back gate. I pushed it open to find my gator parked right where I had left it.
“I haven’t ridden an ATV inyears,” she gasped delightedly, and slid onto the bench, “can I drive?”
“Uhh, maybe another time,” I said, eyeing her nervously, “we don’t really have the luxury of time to be getting lost or turned over today.”
She rolled her eyes, but scooted into the passenger seat, and as soon as I was in, we were off.
We stopped at the top of a hill, and I saw Greg, the young man working for me, already there, calling the cows with all the gusto he could manage. I knew it looked and sounded silly to the layman, but soon enough, cows started wandering over the hills, their great, lumbering gait keeping them slow.
We moved on to the dairy, and Sierra hopped out.