A Daddy for Dillon by Stella Bagwell Page A

hungry.”
    “I am, too, partner.”
    After giving Leyla a hand down from the fence, he ushered the two of them over to a white pickup truck. After the three of them had climbed into the dusty cab, Leyla asked, “Where are we going? Back to the house to eat lunch?”
    “Not the house,” Laramie answered. “You and Dillon see plenty of that place. I have our lunch in the back of the truck in an insulated chest. The bunkhouse cook threw some things together for us.”
    Since she’d come to work on the ranch, the only people she’d met other than Laramie were Quint, Sassy and Reena. She had a natural curiosity about the crew that worked with Laramie, especially because she never heard him say a bad word about any of them. “That was very thoughtful of the cook. Especially since it’s Sunday.”
    “Ernesto is a good guy. Doing for others makes him happy.”
    “Have you known him for a long time?”
    Laramie started the engine and backed the truck away from the corral fence. “He was here on the ranch for a couple of years before I came.”
    His remark took her by surprise. “You’ve lived here on the ranch for that long?”
    “Nearly eighteen years.”
    As he set the truck in forward motion, she glanced across the bench seat at him. “You must have been very young when you moved here. What about the man who raised you? Didn’t you want to stay with him until you reached adulthood?”
    “Diego had diabetes in the worst kind of way. When his health began to really fail, he made me promise that once he died I would come here to the Chaparral and speak to Lewis about work. I was sixteen when Diego passed on. Just a kid, more or less. Lewis, that was Quint’s father, was still alive back then. And I was fortunate that he took me under his wing. He gave me a job and a place to stay in the bunkhouse.”
    Trying to picture Laramie at that young, vulnerable age, she asked, “Did you know how to do ranch work back then?”
    “Quite a bit. Diego had always had cattle and horses and goats. He’d taught me how to care for them and handle myself around livestock. So it wasn’t like I was a greenhorn. I had lots to learn, though. And over the years, I have.”
    Many times in the past Leyla had felt ignored and forsaken by her family. And when she was really having a pity party for herself, it felt like she didn’t have a family at all. Yet being estranged from her family was far different than not having any family at all. If she really wanted to see her folks, she could swallow her pride and go back to Farmington and stand up to her father. Laramie didn’t have even that option and that reality bothered her greatly.
    “So as a teenager you must have really taken to this place,” she said.
    “At first I missed Diego something awful. Besides that, the other ranch hands were quite a bit older than me, and that made me feel out of place. But they were all kind enough to put up with a wet-nosed kid and after a while it started feeling like home. Now, it is home.”
    “Do you ever get the urge to leave?” she asked. “To build a place of your own?”
    He frowned. “Why should I do that when I’m perfectly happy here?”
    There was a testy note in his voice, one that told Leyla he didn’t appreciate her question. She didn’t let it deter her, though. Not when Laramie didn’t think twice about plying her with personal questions.
    “Because you don’t own this place,” she answered. “It belongs to someone else. You work very hard and you’re so devoted to your job. Seems like you’d want your efforts to benefit you.”
    “Is that what’s important to you? Owning things?”
    “A home isn’t just a ‘thing,’” she said defensively.
    He slanted her an annoyed look. “Well, my home is here. I don’t care about the name on the deed.”
    The man was satisfied with what he was and where he was. And that was well and good for him, Leyla thought. As a teenager he’d lost his father and his home. He deserved