The Cowboy's Little Girl

Becoming a daddy to the daughter he never knew...

A Bent Creek Blessings romance

Tucker Wade’s life changes forever the moment Autumn Myers knocks at his door. Not only is Autumn the identical twin of his recently deceased wife, but she’s brought someone with her—the adorable five-year-old daughter Tucker didn’t know existed. Now this cowboy’s determined to prove himself as a daddy and keep his daughter...even if it means hurting the woman he’s falling for.

KAT BROOKES is an award-winning author and past Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® Award finalist. She is married to her childhood sweetheart and has been blessed with two beautiful daughters. She loves writing stories that can both make you smile and touch your heart. Kat is represented by Michelle Grajkowski with 3 Seas Literary Agency. Read more about Kat and her upcoming releases at katbrookes.com. Email her at katbrookes@comcast.net. Facebook: Kat Brookes.

Also By Kat Brookes

Bent Creek Blessings

The Cowboy’s Little Girl

Texas Sweethearts

Her Texas Hero

His Holiday Matchmaker

Their Second Chance Love

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Cowboy’s Little Girl

Kat Brookes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08438-3

THE COWBOY’S LITTLE GIRL

© 2018 Kimberly Duffy

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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It was the child’s eyes that caused his heart to lurch...

Those were his eyes. And that was undeniably the Wade family dimple that dipped into one side of Tucker’s daughter’s baby-soft cheeks.

His daughter. A barrage of emotions swept over Tucker as he stood looking down at her. He was a father. That revelation had his world tilting.

“Are you all right?” Autumn asked. “You look mighty pale.”

He gave a forced laugh. “I’m better than all right. I’m a daddy.”

“Tucker?” Autumn said, bringing him back to full awareness.

He blinked hard and then cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “This is a lot to take in.”

“Would you like to call someone?” she suggested. “One of your brothers perhaps?”

The only time he’d ever come close to passing out had been when he’d gotten bucked off Little Cyclone during the Pioneer Days Rodeo up in Lander several years back. However, the little bombshell Autumn Myers had dropped on him just moments before had nearly managed to do what Little Cyclone hadn’t been able to.

Bring this Montana-bred cowboy to his knees.

Nearly.

Dear Reader,

Life is filled with choices. Each and every one of those choices we make takes us down a different path. Tucker chose never to marry again after his first marriage failed, living a life he thought was fulfilling enough. It wasn’t until the Lord brought Autumn into his life with the daughter Tucker never knew existed that he found himself considering a new path, wanting something more than what he’d settled for. And in doing so, he found true happiness. I believe the Lord provides us with many opportunities to find our own happiness. We just have to be willing to go in a direction that we’d never considered, or, perhaps, were too afraid to.

I hope you’ve enjoyed sharing Tucker and Autumn’s journey. Be sure to look for Garrett’s and Jackson’s upcoming stories.

Kat

Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.

—2 Corinthians 9:15

I’d like to dedicate this book to my wonderful agent, Michelle Grajkowski, with 3 Seas Literary Agency. She has been so incredibly supportive with my writing endeavors, always believing in me. She’s also a dear friend. I feel so blessed to have her in my life, both professionally and in friendship.

I would like to extend my deepest thanks to Ryan Sankey from Sankey Pro Rodeo, who offered me a wealth of information when I was researching this rodeo-cowboy series. She was always willing to answer any questions I might have without hesitation. Sankey Pro Rodeo has four Saddle Bronc of the Year PRCA awards, twelve PRCA Stock Contractor of the Year nominations, as well as many PRCA and Montana Circuit awards. They’ve been featured on ESPN, USA TODAY, Western Horseman and CMT. More information on Sankey Pro Rodeo can be found at www.sankeyprorodeo.com.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Bible Verse

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

A persistent knocking at the front door of his ranch house had Tucker Wade setting the half-eaten grilled cheese he’d made himself for dinner back onto the plate beside him. Dropping his booted feet from the rough pine coffee table to the wood-planked floor, he stood to answer the door.

His first thought was that it was his oldest brother, Garrett, stopping by to shoot the breeze after returning from tending to Wilbur Davies’s sick cow. Garrett, the town’s only vet, had gotten called away, leaving Tucker and his other brother Jackson—older by just one year—to see to it the horses were fed and settled in for the evening. But his brothers rarely knocked. And if they did it was a loud, firm rap on the door, not the tentative tapping that had him moving into the front entryway. Not to mention it was near dark and they all followed an early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise routine.

Very little surprised Tucker, but nothing could have prepared him for the shock of opening the door to find his long-lost wife looking up at him. A woman he’d come to accept he would never see again. Didn’t care to see again, truth be told. But there she stood, in the fiery red-orange light of the setting sun, looking every bit as pretty as he remembered and yet so very different.

The wispy blonde ponytail Summer had always worn had been replaced by a short, smooth haircut that hung longer in front than in the back. A formfitting navy skirt and matching jacket replaced her well-worn jeans and usual T-shirt. And... Tucker’s gaze dropped lower, a dark brown brow lifting. Heels? The Summer he’d known would never have worn high heels, no matter how good they looked on her. Even her cowgirl boots had low heels. But then again, he’d only thought he’d known the girl he’d exchanged vows with six years before.

All the hurt, anger and confusion he had worked so hard to suppress after Summer took off without a word threatened to surface once again. Thickly lashed ice-blue eyes—eyes that had once held only warmth, now stared back at him with something akin to...mistrust? Him. The man she’d run out on.

“Tucker Wade?” his long-lost wife asked as if she wasn’t quite sure it was him.

A frown tightened the line of his mouth. While he’d admittedly filled out a good bit in terms of muscle, no longer the lanky, bull-riding twenty-four-year-old she’d exchanged vows with at the Laramie County Courthouse, he was pretty certain she knew it was him. What sort of game was his wife playing now?

“I’m sorry to show up unannounced this way,” she continued. “And this late in the day. But I had to meet with clients before setting out for Bent Creek.”

There it was, that same Texas twang that had drawn him to his wife in the first place. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

Undaunted by the glower he was sending her way, she met his gaze head-on. “I thought it would be best if you heard what I have to say in person, instead of over the phone.”

“Now you want to talk?” he said, anger writhing though him. “Well, this might come as a surprise to you, but I no longer have any interest in anything you have to say.”

“I can’t blame you for feeling the way you do,” she said softly, “but if you’ll just give me a chance to explain...”

“What are you doing here, Summer?” he cut in gruffly, not bothering to suppress the ire he felt toward her. He didn’t want explanations. It was far too late for that. In fact, he wanted nothing at all from his wife.

“I’m not Summer.” She looked away for a second as her voice filled with emotion. Then, looking up at him with those same silver-blue eyes he’d worked so hard to forget, she said, “I’m her sister Autumn.”

What? Tucker blinked back his surprise. First, his wife shows up out of the blue, with no warning whatsoever of her impending arrival, and then she starts spouting nonsense? Who was Summer going to pretend to be next? A sister named Spring, or maybe Fall since it was mid-October? If his wife had a sister, he surely would have known about it.

Dear Lord, give me strength, he prayed.

“I know it’s been a few years since we’ve crossed paths,” Tucker grumbled in irritation, “but I’m pretty sure I haven’t forgotten what my own wife looks like. Even with all that fancy polishing you’ve done to change your appearance.” Which he begrudgingly had to admit looked really good on her.

She stiffened. “It’s not polish. This is who I am.”

He gave a derisive snort. “You forget who it is you’re talking to. This,” he said, waving a hand from her designer heels to her pretty little head, “is who you are until you decide the life you’re living right now isn’t really what you want. Then you’ll just up and leave whoever it is who’s fool enough to care about you at that time, without so much as a goodbye, and start a whole new life for yourself somewhere else.” The jagged edge of the memory of what she’d done to him leaving the way she had all those years ago still cut deep.

She shifted uneasily. “She said you could be stubborn, but if you’ll just hear me out...”

He had no idea why his wife had to be told by someone else, whoever “she” was, about his stubbornness. Especially when she used to tease him about it when they were dating. Or had she blocked everything about him and their marriage from her mind?

“I don’t want your explanations,” he said through tightly gritted teeth. It was five years too late for that. “Go back to wherever it is you came from, Summer. You don’t have a place in my life anymore.”

To his surprise, his clipped words brought a swell of tears to his wife’s eyes. Her emotional response had him shifting uncomfortably where he stood. Maybe he had spoken a little harsher than he ought to have, but she’d done far worse to him all those years ago.

“I’m not Summer,” she insisted once more. “And she won’t be starting her life over,” she added, her lower lip quivering slightly with that announcement. “At least not here on earth. My sister’s gone.”

Had his wife suffered a head injury of some sort? Was that why she was claiming to be someone else? “Sweetheart,” he said, trying not to let the flood of emotions he felt at seeing her again show in his voice, “you’re standing right here.”

“Summer never told you about me, did she?” she asked as if she’d somehow been wronged. Then she shook her head and cast her gaze out across the yard. “No,” she said sadly, “of course she didn’t.” Turning her attention back to him, she said, “I’m Autumn Myers. Summer’s twin.”

He raised a skeptical brow. “Her twin?”

She gave a slight nod. “Yes.”

Tucker’s gaze zeroed in on her slender perfectly arched brows, to where they disappeared just beneath the much shorter strands of hair that now framed his wife’s heart-shaped face. “You have a scar,” he heard himself saying.

“What?”

“The scar above your brow,” he prompted with impatience.

“No,” she said, “I don’t.” Reaching up, she pushed the hair away from her face.

“Other side,” he muttered with a deepening frown. What kind of fool did she take him for? He’d been there when she’d gotten stitched up after her fall during one of her barrel races.

Without another word, she showed him her other brow. Even in the fading light of day, there was no denying the smooth expanse of skin where the scar had been.

Tucker struggled to drag in even the slightest of breaths. This woman standing before him was not his long-lost wife, no matter how much she resembled her. “Summer’s dead?” he said, the words soft and gritty as he tried to process that something like that could even be true. She was so young. And while he had harbored a ton of resentment toward his wife after she’d walked away from the life they’d started together, to the point where he never ever wanted to see her again, this was not the way he’d wanted that to happen. Tucker’s heart squeezed.

“Yes,” Summer’s twin replied. Never had one word been so filled with emotion.

“What happened?” he rasped out, finally accepting the truth for what it was. The woman that he’d once fancied himself in love with was dead. May she rest in peace.

“Summer took her horse out for a ride near our home in Cheyenne,” she began, tears shimmering in her eyes.

“Summer was living in Cheyenne?” he muttered in disbelief. That was where his wife had chosen to put down roots? Not back home in Texas, in whatever town it was she had grown up in, but in Cheyenne. In the very place they had exchanged their wedding vows. How had they never crossed paths? Not that he’d stuck around very long once things ended.

“Yes,” she began, the words catching as she looked up at him. “And if I had known about you...” She paused, shaking her head. “I’m afraid my sister didn’t always think things out the way she ought to.”

That was the Summer he remembered. But then that was another thing that had drawn him to her back then. They’d met at a rodeo, him a tough-as-grit bareback rider and her, a highly competitive barrel racer. They’d been young and reckless, looking to grab life by the horns and then hold on for wherever the ride might take them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Knowing she’d lived so close just took me by surprise.”

She nodded in understanding. “Summer was on her way back to the house when a rattlesnake spooked her horse and she was thrown.” A sob caught in her throat with the last of her explanation.

“You don’t have to say anything more,” he told her, regretting the pain his question had caused her. While he no longer felt what he once had for his wife, Autumn Myers was still dealing with the grief brought about by the loss of her sister. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how he would feel if he lost one of his brothers.

“It’s all right,” she assured him as she swiped a hand over her tear-dampened cheek. “As her husband, you have a right to know. My sister ruptured her spleen when she fell. They did emergency surgery to repair it, and she managed to hold on for a couple of days, but then infection set in and her body began shutting down.”

Tucker closed his eyes, saying a quick prayer for the woman he’d married.

“That’s when Summer opened up about the secrets she’d been keeping. You being one of them,” she told him with a sorrowful frown. “I forgave her. I only pray the Lord did, as well.”

Tucker dragged a splayed hand back through his thick chestnut hair, trying to digest everything she was telling him. It was hard to believe that the high-spirited, headstrong girl he’d once loved was gone.

“I’m sorry,” he managed, the words coming out strained. He stood there, a part of him longing to close the door and shut reality out, pretend this moment had never happened.

“No,” she mumbled despondently as her gaze shifted to the car she’d driven up in, which was parked a short distance from his house, “I’m sorry. You deserved to know the whole truth a long time ago. I pray that someday you’ll be able to forgive my sister for the choices she made, as well.”

“The whole truth?”

“There is something my sister should have told you about before walking away from your marriage,” she answered.

“I’m not so sure it matters anymore,” he told her. He was over any feelings he once had for his wife. There was nothing Autumn Myers could say to him that would change anything.

“You still should have the right to decide if it does one way or another,” she said, her face a mask of determination.

It was clear she wasn’t about to let things go, not until he’d heard her out. Tucker nodded. “If it will take some of the burden off your heart, then I’m willing to hear you out. Would you like to come inside and talk? I could fix you a glass of ice water or lemonade.”

She nodded, her gaze drifting back toward her car once more. “But there’s something I need to do first.” With that, she turned and walked away.

Tucker stepped out onto the porch as he watched Autumn make her way to her car. It was clear her sister’s death still weighed heavily on her, driving all the way across the bottom of Wyoming from Cheyenne to Bent Creek just to inform him in person of Summer’s passing. Oddly enough, he found himself wishing he could say something that might set her mind at ease about what her sister had done. Something to let her know that it wasn’t her burden to bear.

Her sister’s passing. Nausea stirred in Tucker’s gut at the very thought of it. Time and distance from the situation had made him realize how hastily he and Summer had gone into their marriage. They’d been too young and far too impulsive to place the proper amount of thought into what they were doing as they stood before the judge at the Laramie County Courthouse that day. And, yes, he’d been hurt, and more than a little confused, when she’d taken off the way she had. Anger had followed. It had taken a fair amount of praying and suffering months of inner turmoil trying to pinpoint exactly what it was that he’d done wrong to send Summer running before he’d finally come to accept that she’d made the right decision in ending their hasty marriage. Whatever her reason may have been.

Not that it had ended completely. Legally, they were still husband and wife, something he’d made no attempt to rectify. One failed marriage was enough for him. As long as he and Summer were still legally wed, he could never make the same mistake again. Giving his heart away to a woman and risking the possibility of it being trampled all over again was something he was determined to avoid at all cost. Only now Summer is gone, he thought with a pang of sorrow. And that made him a widower.

His attention shifted back to Autumn Myers’s retreating form, noting with some confusion that instead of settling herself behind the wheel of her bright yellow Mustang GT she circled around to the rear passenger side. A soft, somewhat sad smile moved across her face as she reached out to open the back door.

He lost sight of her for a moment as she leaned into the back of the brightly colored sports car. A second later, she took a step back from the vehicle and motioned to someone in the back seat. A tiny head with a mass of long curls hopped out to join her.

With the little girl’s hand tucked securely in her own, a now unsmiling Autumn held his gaze as she walked back to the porch. She has a daughter, he thought to himself. One she must have brought along to meet her uncle by marriage.

The fading rays of the afternoon sun glinted off the mass of curls that hung over the child’s downturned face as they crossed the yard. Chestnut curls. An unsettling sensation moved through him. Why that was, he had no idea. He looked questioningly to Autumn as she guided her young daughter up onto the porch.

“Tucker Wade,” she said before looking down at the little girl who now had her tiny face pressed into her mother’s skirt, “this is my niece, Blue Belle Wade. That’s Bell with an e,” she clarified.

Tucker’s thoughts scrambled to process the words she’d just spoken. Her niece.

“Blue,” she continued, “this is—”

“My daddy?” the little girl mumbled as she dared an inquisitive peek up at him through the protective barricade of her reddish-brown curls that served to hide most of her face.

“Her what?” he gasped as her name filtered through his mind. Blue Belle. Summer’s favorite flower. The same ones he’d given her a bouquet of when he’d asked her to marry him.

“Yes, sweetie,” she answered, her tone tender. “This is your daddy.” Autumn’s gaze lifted to meet his. “Tucker Wade, meet your daughter.”

His daughter. How was that possible? But her hair was the same reddish-brown shade as his own.

“Blue,” Autumn said, gently nudging her niece, “say hello to your daddy.”

His daughter’s little face turned slightly as she peeked up at him. “Hello,” she said timidly, burying her face once again in the soft fabric of her aunt’s skirt.

Autumn ran a soothing hand down over her niece’s curls. “Sweetie, we came all this way to meet your daddy. I think he deserves a chance to see that pretty smile of yours.”

His little girl pulled away ever so slightly and tipped her chin upward. And then she smiled. The long spiraling strands of her hair fell away to reveal a heart-shaped face very similar to Summer’s and Autumn’s. But it was Blue’s wide green eyes and the lone dimple that appeared when she smiled that caused his heart to lurch. Those were his eyes. And that was undeniably the Wade family dimple that dipped into one side of his daughter’s baby-soft cheeks.