Renegade Father by RaeAnne Thayne Page A

could tell she was wondering how hard he would fight her on this, then she sighed. “I’ll lie down because I know you’ll hound me about it all night if I don’t. But I can tell you right now, I’m not going to nod off.”
    Ten minutes later, she was as out of it as Dolly. He watched her for a long time, the rise and fall of her chest and the way her lips parted slightly with every breath she took.
    She looked delicate, ethereal, with milky-white skin and her fine-boned features, and he wished again that things might have turned out differently between them.
    If only he hadn’t run away from her all those years ago. If only he had stayed and fought for what he didn’t even dare admit to himself he wanted instead of lettingall the vast differences he saw between them chase him away.
    Now it was too late. Much, much too late.
    He knew he had nothing to offer her back then—she was the heiress to a vast, wealthy cattle ranch and he was the son of a drunk bully who was only able to support the family he menaced by the skin of his teeth and the benevolence of his employer.
    And what had changed in the past thirteen years? Now she was the owner of that cattle ranch and he was the owner of a prison record and precious little else, other than a pickup truck he still had fourteen payments on.
    By necessity, he had put his feelings for her away when he came back to Madison Valley, had shoved them way down deep in the recesses of his heart. What else could he do? She had married his brother—his brother, of all people—and had given birth to two children.
    But sometimes his feelings emerged. Sometimes they bubbled up like boiling water, until they were a hot, heavy ache in his chest. Guilt and love and betrayal all wrapped up in one messy package.
    He rubbed at the ache, willing it to subside. Annie could never be his. And if it took moving six hundred miles away to get that through his thick skull, that’s what he would have to do.
    Â 
    She awoke an hour before dawn.
    Disoriented, she blinked a few times, trying to figure out why she would have been stupid enough to fall asleep on the couch again instead of in her own comfortable bed upstairs.
    Her neck had a nasty kink and the room was cold.She twisted her neck back and forth trying to ease the tightness, then looked toward the woodstove to check the status of the fire.
    The sight she found there brought all the events of the previous night rushing back. Joe was sprawled out in the recliner, eyes closed and one hand on the fur of Dolly’s back.
    He probably dozed off petting her, she thought with a small, tender smile.
    The crisis seemed to be over. Dolly slept peacefully, her breathing deep and even. To reassure herself, Annie crossed the room and knelt beside the little collie, moving as slowly and quietly as she could so she didn’t wake either the man or the dog.
    She ran a quiet hand over Dolly’s fur. The dog snuffled in her sleep but didn’t awaken. All seemed to be fine, as far as she could tell. Dolly’s sides expanded and contracted evenly with each breath, with no sign at all of convulsions.
    Annie whispered a prayer of gratitude, fighting the urge to bury her face in Dolly’s fur. What would she have done if they hadn’t found her in time? If she hadn’t gone into the tack room or if Joe hadn’t been there to keep her calm or if Graham hadn’t been able to come so quickly to sedate her and lessen the seizure’s effects?
    Annie didn’t even want to think about it. She knew Dolly wouldn’t be around forever but she couldn’t bear the idea that the dog had suffered—and might have died—because of such a vicious, unconscionable act.
    Poison.
    She shivered at the thought. Graham had to be wrong. He had to be. Who would possibly want to poison an innocent dog? What could anyone hope to gain?
    It was exactly the kind of thing Charlie would havedone to teach her one of