Jesse by C H Admirand Page A

him. He was starting to sound like an old woman. With one last look over his shoulder, he rode out, ready to tackle the first of the day’s jobs. Tyler would catch up and they’d plow through their never-ending list. One thing was certain—come four o’clock that afternoon, he would be driving into town.
    ***
    â€œMommy, when’s he coming?”
    Danielle sighed and finished combing Lacy’s hair. “I’m not sure, sweetie, but you know he’s a busy man, with so many longhorns to look after.”
    Lacy’s mouth was set in a firm line. Recognizing the look, Danielle tried to dig deeper for the patience to deal with the fallout of one more sweet-talking cowboy who hadn’t kept his word.
    â€œBut he was ’sposed to pick us up yesterday.” Lacy was pouting, and Danielle didn’t blame her daughter.
    â€œI know it’s hard to understand, Lacy,” she soothed, digging deeply to find the patience to come up with an explanation for why Jesse had stood them up. “But sometimes grown-ups have to do things they don’t want to do in order to make the time to do the things they want to do.”
    â€œI ’member. You said that when Daddy left.”
    Danielle’s heart clenched and a wave of cold swept up from the tips of her toes. “That’s right, sweet pea. He left us, but I’m still here.”
    Lacy reached out and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck. “I love you.”
    Tears burned the back of her eyes, but Danielle blinked them away. “I love you back.”
    Letting go, Lacy spun around and clomped toward the doorway. “Can we have pie for breakfast?”
    This time, Danielle laughed out loud. “Maybe a sliver, you little rascal.”
    Lacy danced out the door and down the hallway. Danielle could hear her daughter singing to herself, just slightly off key, and the words hit home—hard. “Save a horse, ride a cowboy.”
    Thank goodness her little girl had no idea what those words really meant; she just liked the tune and the beat that accompanied it—well, that and it was about Lacy’s favorite thing in the whole world… cowboys.
    Following along behind, she hoped she’d be able to keep her daughter busy enough over at the diner to have her forgetting about a certain dark-eyed cowboy for the rest of the morning. Danielle had thought Jesse would have kept his word. He seemed so down to earth, so connected, not superficial. Maybe something had come up. But he hadn’t called or left her a note.
    By the time they were cleaning up from the lunch shift, she knew it was going to be difficult to interest Lacy in anything else. Her daughter talked to everyone who came into the diner, pleased to be Uncle Jimmy’s little June bug and setting the napkins rolled around utensils at every table. Her daughter’s voice always increased in volume when she was excited, so it was easy to keep track of the conversations her little one was having with the patrons of Sullivan’s Diner. Every one started or ended with her tale of being rescued by the biggest cowboy she’d ever seen.
    The people in Pleasure were as friendly as she remembered, from her times visiting as a child, and treated Lacy as if she were someone special. There were quite a few long looks in her direction when they thought Danielle was too busy to notice, but she noticed all right. She’d heard from her uncle that the speculation was already running high as far as Jesse Garahan and Danielle were concerned.
    A sliver of awareness raced up her spine. He was a man worth getting to know, but if he didn’t show up, how could she? Then another worry took hold: when he got here, would he want to stick around?
    Once they’d bid the last customer good-bye, they got to work cleaning up and setting up for tomorrow morning. It was hard, honest work—a lot harder than her office job had been. That had only taxed her