The Rancher's Dance by Allison Leigh

But she couldn’t help glancing back along the hallway one more time.
    Beck’s door remained shut.

Chapter Five
    E ntering Shelby’s bedroom was like entering a fantasy world for a little girl.
    The furniture—from the canopy bed that was tucked into a sweet alcove just made for daydreaming, to the built-in bookshelves and cabinets lining two walls—was painted a cheerful, glossy white. The two wide windows that covered half of the third wall had deep, cushioned window seats and airy blue-and-white curtains that matched the cloud of pillows and comforter covering the bed.
    Lucy knew that Beck had designed and built the beautiful house because Sarah had mentioned it. But she wondered if he’d also decorated the room himself.
    If he had, he’d done a magnificent job.
    If he’d hired someone, they’d done a magnificent job.
    Either way, the man deserved a lot of credit for giving his daughter a wonderful space of her own.
    Shelby pulled her straight to the desk built into the centerof the shelves, which were loaded down with every item straight out of a little girl’s dreams. Toys. Games. Stuffed animals. And lots and lots of framed photographs, nearly all of which featured a woman with thick, curling auburn hair and pale brown eyes, the same shade as Shelby’s.
    As the girl dragged the shining white chair away from the desk and pushed aside Gertrude the rabbit to shuffle through a messy stack of oversized papers, Lucy picked up one of the photos. “Is this your mother, Shelby?”
    She barely glanced up from her papers. “Uh-huh. Her name was Harmony. That’s my middle name, too.” She held up one of her drawings. “See?”
    Lucy replaced the frame on the shelf above the desk and took the drawing. Even as childishly drawn as it was, she could immediately tell the two figures—one tall with yellow hair, one small with brown—were ballerinas complete with stiff pink tutus. And judging by the glance she got of the other papers, it was a consistent theme. “Very nice.” She perched on the side of the canopy bed. “Can I take it home and pin it on my refrigerator?”
    The golden-brown eyes widened. She nodded. “Grampa puts my pictures on our ’frigerator, too.”
    â€œI’ll bet he does.” Lucy glanced over the shelves again. As far as she could tell, the only thing missing from the A-Z collection was a tutu. “Tell me what kind of things you usually do at day camp.”
    Shelby swiveled her legs around on the chair and hung her arm over the back. “We play tetherball and hopscotch and run races. And sometimes we go on a field trip. Like to Braden for the swimming pool. And we watch a movie sometimes. They’re just baby movies, though. Not like when I go to real school. We’ll have big-kid movies then, I bet.”
    Lucy held back a grin. “Real” school, in Shelby’s vernacular, obviously meant first grade. “It sounds like a lot of fun.”
    Shelby nodded, then her expression fell a little.
    Lucy didn’t need to turn around to know that Beck had returned. She could feel the pinprick of nerves tingling at the back of her neck.
    â€œOkay, peanut,” he said. “You’ve shown your pictures to Ms. Buchanan and she’s probably got other things she wants to do today.”
    Shelby’s chin ducked a little and Lucy wanted badly to point out that she’d been with Shelby for only a few minutes. But she also knew that arguing with Beck in front of his tender daughter wasn’t likely to endear her any.
    So she pushed off the side of the bed. The rest of the summer stretched out in front of her and she had nothing but time on her hands. And one way or another, she hoped to see the child again. If only to give her a few of her old tutus that were stuffed in storage boxes in her bedroom.
    â€œI’m going to go right home and hang this up,” she told Shelby as