Suddenly, Annie's Father

SUDDENLY ANNIE’S FATHER

Don’t miss this all-time favorite story about finding happiness in unexpected places from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods

Slade Sutton never really thought of himself as a father, but his motherless young daughter was proof to the contrary. So when Annie was suddenly dropped into his lap, Slade knew he needed help. And he'd take it from anyone—except, that is, the infuriatingly flirtatious Val Harding. Why, if Slade wasn't careful, that little lady would have him roped and tied before he knew it.

Sure, Val knew a challenge when she saw one—and ex-rodeo star Slade clearly qualified. But somehow she saw through his tough demeanor to the irresistible cowboy at heart. Now if she could just convince Slade that they were all meant to be together...

Sherryl Woods

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Copyright

Chapter One

Slade Sutton knew a whole lot about horses, but he didn’t know a blasted thing about females. The only woman with whom he’d ever risked his heart had damn near killed him in a car crash, then divorced him when he could not longer win rodeo championships. Worse, she’d left him with a daughter who was a total mystery to him.

Annie was ten-going-on-thirty, wise beyond her years, clever as the dickens and the prettiest little girl he’d ever seen, even if he was a mite biased on the subject. While he’d been on the circuit, they’d been apart more than they’d been together, which had left both of them as wary as if they’d been strangers.

Ever since the accident and Suzanne’s desertion, Annie had been living with his parents, but he knew the time was fast approaching when he would no longer be able to shirk his responsibilities. He’d begun dreading every phone call, knowing that most spelled trouble. Annie had a knack for it, and his parents’ level of tolerance was slipping. He could hear it in their tired voices. He’d been making excuses for weeks now for not going home for a visit. He’d half feared they’d sneak Annie into his truck on his way out of town. Every night he prayed she’d stay out of mischief just a little longer, just until he could get his bearings in this new job.

Of course, he’d been working for Harlan and Cody Adams for nearly a year now at White Pines, caring for their horses, setting up a breeding program, breaking the yearlings. He could hardly claim he was still getting settled, but he dreaded the day when his parents called him on it.

He studied the picture of Annie that he kept on his bedside table and shook his head in wonder. How had he had any part in producing a child so beautiful, so delicately feminine? He lived in a rough-and-tumble world. She looked like a fairy-tale princess, a little angel.

Judging from the reports he’d been receiving, however, looks could be deceiving. Annie was as spirited as any bronco he’d ever ridden. She charged at life full throttle and, like him, she didn’t know the meaning of fear.

The phone on the bunkhouse wall rang, cutting into his wandering thoughts. Hardy Jones grabbed for it. Hardy had more women chasing after him than a Hollywood movie star. It had become a joke around the ranch. No one saw much use to Hardy’s pretense of living in the bunkhouse, when he never spent a night in his bed there. And no one besides Hardy ever jumped for the phone.

“Hey, Slade, it’s for you,” the cowboy called out, looking disappointed.

Trepidation stirred in Slade’s gut as he crossed the room. It had to be trouble. Annie had been too much on his mind today. That was a surefire sign that something was going on over in Wilder’s Glen, Texas.

Sure enough, it was his father, sounding grim.

“Dadgumit, Slade, you’re going to have to come and get your daughter,” Harold Sutton decreed without wasting much time on idle chitchat.

Much as he wanted to ignore it, even Slade could hear the desperation in his father’s voice. He sighed. “What’s Annie done now?”

“Aside from falling out of a tree and breaking her wrist, climbing on the roof and darn near bringing down the chimney, I suppose you could say she’s having a right peaceful summer,” his father said. “But she’s a handful, Son, and your mama and I just can’t cope with her anymore. We’ve been talking it over for a while now. We’re too dadgum old for this. We don’t have the kind of energy it takes to keep up with her.”

Slade’s father was an ex-marine and had his own garage. He put in ten hours a day there and played golf every chance he got. His mother gardened, canned vegetables, made quilts and belonged to every single organization in Wilder’s Glen. Slade wasn’t buying the idea that they couldn’t keep up with a ten-year-old. Annie had just stretched their patience, that was all. It had to be.

“Look, whatever she’s done, I’m sure she didn’t mean to. I’ll talk to her, get her to settle down a little.”

“This isn’t just about settling her down,” his father countered. “She needs you.”

The last thing Slade wanted was to be needed by anyone, especially a ten-year-old girl. Between the aches and pains that reminded him every second of the accident that had cost him his career and very nearly his life, and the anger at the woman responsible, it was all he could do to get through the day on his own. He was grateful every single minute of it, though, that his parents had been willing to take Annie in when he hadn’t been up to it. She’d been better off with them than she would have been with him. He’d been too bitter, too filled with resentment toward her mama to be any kind of example for an impressionable kid.

“You know I’m grateful,” he began.

“We don’t want your thanks,” his father said, cutting him off. “We love Annie and we love you. We know the jam you were in after the accident. We understood you needed some time to get back on your feet.”

“But—”

“Let me finish now. Your mama and I aren’t up to raising Annie the way the girl ought to be raised. We had a houseful of boys. Girls just aren’t the same, even though Annie seems bent on being the toughest little tomboy in the whole town. Besides that, times have changed since you and your brothers were kids. The world’s a different place.”

“Not in Wilder’s Glen,” Slade protested. “It’s perfect for Annie. It’s a small town. She’ll be as safe there as she could be anywhere.”

“Her safety’s not the only issue. Even if it were, she’ll be just as safe in Los Piños. No, indeed, there’s a more important issue, and you know it. She misses you. She belongs with you. We were glad enough to fill in for a while, but it’s time for you to take over now and that’s that. Otherwise the child will be scarred for life, thinking that her own daddy didn’t want her any more than her mama did.”

“But—”

“No buts, and you can forget coming after her. We’ll bring her to you this weekend,” Harold announced decisively, as if he no longer trusted Slade to show up for her.

Slade sighed heavily. The sorry truth was he wouldn’t have, not even with a deadline staring him in the face. He would have called at the last minute with some excuse or another, and counted on his parents to hang in with Annie a little longer.

Hearing a date and time for assuming responsibility for his daughter all but made Slade’s skin crawl. Much as he loved Annie, he wasn’t cut out to be a parent to her. His experience with her mother was pretty much evidence of his lack of understanding of the female mind. He was also flat-out terrified that the resentment he felt toward Suzanne would carry over to their daughter in some way he wouldn’t be able to control. No kid deserved that.

Annie was the spitting image of his ex-wife in every way, from her gloriously thick hair to her green-as-emerald eyes, from the dusting of freckles on her nose to her stubborn chin. Apparently she had her mama’s wicked ways about her, too. She’d caused more trouble in the last year than any child he’d ever known. She’d topped his own imaginative forms of rebellion by a mile and she hadn’t even hit puberty yet. What on earth would her teenage years hold? To be fair, he couldn’t blame his parents for not wanting to find out.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his own voice desperate now. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea for her to come here. She’s comfortable there with you. She’s starting to think of that as home. She spent the school year there. She’s made friends. Uprooting her all over again won’t be good for her. Besides that, the Adamses don’t even know I have a daughter. I’m living in a bunkhouse. Some days I don’t get to bed till midnight and I’m back up again at dawn.”

He’d ticked off a half-dozen excuses before he was done, most of them flat-out lies. He knew that a staunch family man like Harlan Adams would never object to Slade bringing his daughter to the ranch. If anything, he’d be furious Slade hadn’t brought her to be with him before now.

As for the living arrangements, Harlan Adams would make adjustments for that, too. It had been Slade’s choice to live in the bunkhouse, rather than one of the other homes dotted across Adams land. He’d wanted to stay close to the horses that were his responsibility. Horses were something he understood.

He tried one last panicked ploy. “I could get you some help,” he offered. “Maybe a housekeeper.”

“This isn’t about cooking and cleaning,” his father scoffed. “It’s about a little girl needing her daddy. We’re coming Sunday and that’s that.”

There was a finality to his tone with which Slade was all too familiar. Just to emphasize his point, Harold hung up before Slade could think of a single argument to convince him to keep Annie with them.

“Looks like it’s time to face the music, bud,” he muttered under his breath. Way past time, some would say.

Resigned to his fate, first thing in the morning he arranged to sit down with Cody Adams to discuss his housing situation.

“If there’s no place available, I can call my folks back and tell them to give me more time to work it out,” he told Cody, praying for a reprieve.

“Absolutely not,” Cody said at once, then grinned at Slade’s heavy sigh. “Uh-oh, were you counting on me to bail you out of this?”

“I suppose I was,” Slade admitted. “Annie and I haven’t spent a lot of time together. I’m not sure how good I’ll be at this parent thing.”

“Then you’re lucky you’re here. Anytime you’re at a loss, just ask one of us for help.” The rancher’s expression turned sly. “I know one woman who’d be glad to step in and do a little mothering if Annie needs it.”

An image of Val Harding came to mind without Cody even having to mention her name. A petite whirlwind with a nonstop mouth, she had set her sights on Slade during a visit to the ranch a few months back. She hadn’t let up since. Thankfully, she was in Nashville right now with her boss, country music superstar Laurie Jensen, who was married to Cody’s son.

“Thanks all the same,” Slade said curtly. “Last I heard Val was out of town.”

Cody’s grin spread. “Got back last night. The way I hear it from Harlan Patrick, Laurie’s going to take a break for a while. She’ll be working on the songs for her next album. Val should have plenty of time on her hands.”

“I just hope she finds a way to spend it besides pestering me,” Slade muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Thankfully, Cody let the subject drop. He held out a key. “Check out that house down by the creek. It’s been vacant since Joe and his wife left. It’s probably a little dusty, but it should be fine for the two of you once it’s aired out and had a good cleaning. If it needs anything—dishes, extra blankets, whatever—let me know. I’ll get somebody to handle the horses today. You get the place ready. Call up to the main house. One of Maritza’s helpers can come down to give you a hand.”

“No need,” Slade said. “I’ll take care of whatever needs to be done. Thanks, Cody. I owe you.”

Cody regarded him speculatively. “Family counts for a lot around here. We’ll welcome Annie as if she were one of us. You can rest easy on that score.”

Slade knew he meant it, too. The Adamses were good people. Maybe they would be able to make up for whatever he lacked.

He took the key Cody offered and headed toward the small house made of rough-hewn wood. It wasn’t fancy, but there was a certain charm to it, he supposed. Pots of bright red geraniums bloomed on the porch and a big old cottonwood tree shaded the yard. The creek flowed past just beyond.

The house had been closed up since the last tenant had left, a married hand who’d retired and moved to Arizona. A cursory glance around the small rooms told Slade it had everything he and Annie could need, including a small TV that had been hooked up to cable. The kitchen was well stocked with dishes and pots and pans. Fortunately, the refrigerator had a good-size freezer, big enough to accommodate all the prepared meals he and Annie were likely to consume. His cooking skills ran to cold cereal and boiled eggs.

The closets revealed a supply of linens for the beds, a small one in what would be Annie’s room, and a big brass bed with a feather mattress in what was clearly the master bedroom. Staring at that mattress was disconcerting. All sorts of wicked images came to mind, images of being tangled up with a woman again. One particular woman, he conceded with some dismay. He could all but feel her breath on his chest and sense the weight of her head tucked under his chin. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy, much less the reality.

“Quite a bed, isn’t it?” an all-too-familiar voice inquired with a seductive purr.

Slade scowled at the intrusion by the pesky woman whose image had just flitted through his mind. “You ever heard of knocking?” he asked.

Val didn’t flinch at his impatient tone. “I wasn’t sure anyone was in here. Nobody’s been living here and the front door was standing open. I was afraid someone had broken in.”

Slade regarded her incredulously. “So you decided to do what—wander in and talk them to death? Didn’t it occur to you that if a robber was in here, you could get hurt?”

She grinned, looking smug. “Worried about me, cowboy? That’s progress.”

She slipped past him into the room, leaving a cloud of perfume in her wake. Slade tried not to let the scent stir him the way it usually did. Sometimes he thought he smelled that soft, flowery aroma in the middle of the night. Those were the nights he tossed and turned till dawn and cursed the day Val had come to live at White Pines and taken an interest in him.

“Nice view,” she observed, gazing out at the creek. “What are you doing here, by the way?”

“Moving in,” he said, backing out of the room before his body could get any ideas about tossing her onto that feather mattress to see if it—and she—were as soft as he imagined.

She turned slowly. “Alone?”

“No.”

Something that might have been disappointment flared briefly in her eyes. “I see.”

Guilt over that look had him admitting the truth. “My daughter’s coming to stay with me.” He tested the words aloud and found they didn’t cause quite so much panic since his talk with Cody. Knowing he’d have backup had eased his mind. Maybe Annie could survive having a father as inept as him, after all.

Val’s expression brightened with curiosity. She seized on the tidbit as if he’d tossed her the hottest piece of gossip since the world had discovered that singer Laurie Jensen had a secret baby by the man who was now her husband.

“You have a daughter?” she asked. “How old? What’s she like? Where’s she been all this time? What about her mother?”

Slade grinned despite himself. “You care to try those one at a time?”

“Oh, just tell me everything and save us both the aggravation,” she retorted. “I wouldn’t have to pester you so if you’d open up in the first place.”

“Is that so? And here I thought you enjoyed pestering me.”

“Getting you to talk is a challenge,” she admitted. “And you know how we women react to a challenge.”

He regarded her intently. “So, if I just blab away, you’ll go away eventually?”

She grinned. “Maybe. Try it and see.”

“Sorry. I’m too busy right now. Maybe another time.”

The dismissal didn’t even faze her. “Busy doing what? Looked to me like you were daydreaming when I came in.”

“Which is why it’s all the more important for me to get started with the work around here now,” he said, and headed for the kitchen again. He’d seen cleaning supplies in there on his first stop. He snatched up a broom, a vacuum, dust cloths and furniture polish. He figured he could give the place a decent once-over in an hour and be back on the job before noon.

Val reached for the broom. “Give me that. I’ll help.”

Slade held tight. “There’s no need. You’ll ruin your clothes.”

The woman always dressed as if she were about to meet with the press or go out for cocktails. He doubted she owned a pair of jeans or sneakers, much less boots. In fact, today was one of the rare occasions when she wasn’t wearing those ridiculous high heels she paraded around in. He had to admit those shoes did a lot for her legs. It was almost a disappointment when she traded them for flats, as she had today.

In flats, she barely came up to his chin, reminding him of just how fragile and utterly feminine a creature she was. It brought out the protective instincts in him, despite the fact that there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Val Harding could look out for herself. Heaven knew, she protected Laurie with a ferocity that was daunting. No one got anywhere close to the singer without Val’s approval. Slade secretly admired that kind of loyalty. Too bad Suzanne hadn’t possessed even a quarter as much. They might have stayed married.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, give me the broom,” Val said. “A little dust never hurt anything. You’ll get finished that much sooner if you let me help. Otherwise, I’ll just trail around after you asking more questions you don’t want to answer.”

She had a point about that. It wasn’t likely she’d respond to his dismissal and just go away. Reluctantly, Slade relinquished the broom and watched as she went to work with a vengeance on the wide-plank oak floors in the living room. She attacked the job with the same cheerfulness and efficiency with which she ran Laurie’s professional life.

When she glanced up and caught Slade staring at her, she grinned. “Get to work. I said I’d help, not do the whole job.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said at once, and turned on the vacuum. As he ran it over the carpet in the bedrooms, he could hear her singing with wildly off-key enthusiasm. He wondered if Laurie had ever heard one of her country music hits murdered quite the way Val was doing it.

With her help, he had the house tidied up in no time. Fresh air was drifting through the rooms and filling them with the sweet scent of recently cut grass and a hint of Janet’s roses from the gardens at the main house.

An odd sensation came over him as he stood in the living room and gazed about, listening to Val stirring around in the kitchen. The place felt like home, like some place a man could put down roots. For a man who’d spent most of his adult life on the road, it was a terrifying sensation.

* * *

Slade Sutton was the most exasperating, frustrating man on the face of the earth. Val watched him take off without so much as a thank-you. He looked as if he were being chased by demons as he fled the house. The limp from his accident was more exaggerated as he tried to move quickly. She knew his expression, if she’d been able to see his face, would be filled with annoyance over his ungainly gait and, most of all, over her.

Of course, he had that look a lot when he was trying to get away from her, she admitted with a sigh. It had been months since she’d first met him, and she could honestly say that she didn’t know him one bit better now than she had when she’d paid her first visit to White Pines.

No, that wasn’t quite true. Today she’d learned he had a daughter. Amazing. How could anyone keep a secret like that, especially around the Adamses, who made her look like an amateur when it came to nosing into other people’s lives? Laurie had tried to keep Harlan Patrick’s baby a secret from him and that had lasted less than six months. Of course, the tabloids had had a hand in leaking that news and sending Harlan Patrick chasing after Laurie.

A lot of women would have given up if they’d had the same reception from Slade that Val had had. Why go through the torment of rejection after rejection? Why poke and prod and get nothing but a shrug or a grunted acknowledgment for her persistence? She’d asked herself that a hundred times while she’d been in Nashville this last time. She’d hoped that a little distance from the ranch would give her some perspective, maybe dull the attraction she felt for him. After all, Slade Sutton wasn’t the last man on earth.

But he was the only one in years who’d intrigued her, the only one who hadn’t been using her to get closer to Laurie. In fact, he was the only man she knew who barely spared a glance for the gorgeous superstar. Val had caught him looking at her, though, sneaking glances when he thought she wasn’t aware of him. Maybe that hint of interest, reluctant as it was, was what kept her going.

Or maybe it had something to do with how incredibly male he was. Handsome as sin, a little rough around the edges, he had eyes a woman could drown in. She’d discovered that when he finally took off his sunglasses long enough to allow anyone to catch a glimpse of them. A dimple flirted at the corner of his mouth on the rare occasions when he smiled. His jaw looked as if it had been carved from granite. In fact, he was all hard angles and solid muscle, the kind of man whose strength wasn’t obtained in a gym, but just from living.

Bottom line? He made her mouth water. She sometimes thought that if he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to have to take matters into her own hands.

Then again, she preferred to think she wasn’t quite so shallow. That it wasn’t all about lust and sex. Maybe she just liked a good mystery.

Slade was certainly that. He’d told the Adamses no more than he had to to get hired. He’d told her even less. There’d been times in the last six months when she’d found that so thoroughly frustrating she’d been tempted to hire a private investigator to fill in the gaps, but that would have spoiled the game. She wanted to unearth his secrets all on her own. It was turning out to be a time-consuming task. At the rate of one revelation every few months, she’d be at it for a lifetime.

It was a good thing her daddy had taught her about grit. Nobody on the face of the earth was more determined or more persistent than she was. She’d used those lessons to get the job she wanted in Nashville, pestering Laurie’s agent until he’d made the introduction just to get her out of his office. Now she was personal assistant to the hottest country music star in the country. Those same lessons made her the best at what she did.