Anna didn’t understand. Surely, Cooper Braddock knew her full name. Surely, by mentioning the letters he would say something about their correspondence. Then Anna remembered Katie’s look of horror and jumbled words when her father walked in.
Realization hit her like a falling brick. Her too-many hopes fell. She’d made this perilous journey for nothing. She still had to worry if Dalton Jennings would somehow figure out where she was and follow her. Now there was no husband waiting, no man to marry, no one to help raise her daughter.
It was Katie who sent the letters. Katie who’d written of the need for a mother able to ride ponies and bake cookies for little Maisie. Katie who wrote with the unpracticed scrawl Anna had mistaken for an uneducated man’s handwriting. So many men in the area just didn’t have much schooling.
Tears burned in her eyes. She’d never felt at such a loss. She’d never felt so foolish.
“Lie still for a few hours more.” Cooper’s voice rumbled like thunder, but was gentle like spring sunshine. “Give yourself a chance to heal first. Then go to your daughter. She’s doing better.”
Better. Anna clung to those words.
Cooper sat down at the kitchen table and listened to the stillness of the house, of the night. He’d had a hell of a long day. Too damn long. And he was no closer to bringing down Corinthos.
He reached for the sugar jar to sweeten the cup of coffee he’d just poured when he heard the pad of little bare feet. “Katie, is that you?”
“Yes, Papa.” So sad.
“Wanna come keep me company?” He pulled out the chair next to him.
“I guess.” She dragged her feet.
“I’m a pretty good listener if you want to tell me what’s wrong.”
She plopped down on the chair, her hair disheveled, her nightgown wrinkled, her feet bare. A heavy sigh. “What about Mrs. Bauer?”
“She hurt her arm.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Probably.” He remembered the look on Katie’s face when Anna Bauer had fainted. “See what you get for trying to marry me off? It scares some women so bad they lose consciousness.”
“Oh, Papa.” Almost a smile. “It’s all my fault.”
“What is?” He tugged his chair around to face her. Something weighed mighty heavily on her conscience. “What did you do, Katie?”
“It’s my fault they’re hurt.” Another sniffle.
“Mrs. Bauer and her daughter? Why Katie, you didn’t rob the stage, did you?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t scare the horses that ran off with the coach, did you?”
“Papa, that’s not what I mean.” Exasperation blended with that sadness. “They’re all hurt because of me, and I can’t sleep.”
“Mrs. Potts said you didn’t eat anything for supper.
“I w-wasn’t hungry.” Sobs broke apart her words. “Oh, Papa, this is the baddest thing I’ve ever done.”
She flew into his arms before he could react, and he held her good and tight, relishing the rare moment. Katie never cried like this, always declaring herself too tough. Yet she felt frail, all bird-thin bones and heartbreak.
“You’re always in trouble, Katie,” he said lightly, his chest tight. He didn’t like his daughter hurting. “I bet it’s not so awful.”
“It is.” Her arms tightened around his neck. “You have to make it right, Papa.”
More soul-deep sobs rocked her body. “You gotta tell me what to do so it don’t hurt no more.”
His chest tightened. So many childhood troubles. He dug a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. “All this crying isn’t going to solve a thing.”
“Oh, Papa.” Katie blew, wiped, then refolded the hanky. “There’s only one thing to do.”
“Just one thing to fix the baddest thing you’ve ever done?” He tried to coax a smile from that serious mouth. And failed.
“You have to marry her.”
“Not that again.”
“But it’s the right thing!”
Cooper couldn’t imagine why she’d gotten all worked up over being without a stepmother. Katherine had been gone a long time, nearly half Katie’s life. They’d adjusted, moved on, tried to make a family with just the three of them. Katie knew he was never going to remarry. As a boy, he’d managed to endure being a stepchild, but his daughters would not be exposed to such a situation.
He swiped at two of Katie’s tears with his thumb. “How many times have we talked about this?”
“Probaby a million.” Another sob. “B-but Papa. It’s different now.”
“Why?” He brushed tear-wet curls from her brow.
“Because I wrote a letter and asked Mrs. Bauer to come here.”
“You what?”
“Maisie needs a mama. She needs one real bad.”
Cooper deposited Katie on the floor and bolted up from the chair. He hit the ground pacing. Anger flared. “Let me get this straight. You wrote a letter to a perfect stranger and asked her to come here?”
“To marry us.”
White-hot anger speared through him. “Katie, you’re right. This is the baddest thing you have ever done.”
Cooper spun at the back door and crossed the length of the room, fists jammed at his sides, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. Nice little girls didn’t do the things Katie did. They didn’t climb trees and play in mud and race ponies. Or propose to innocent strangers.
Maybe it was because those other little girls had mothers.
Katie burst into tears again. “They got hurt and Maisie still doesn’t have a m-mama!”
Frustration, rage, defeat. It all melded together in his midsection and churned.. He wanted to punish her. He wanted to comfort her. He wished to hell and back Katie would learn to embroider or something ladylike and stop with the wild harebrained schemes.
“It is your fault that Mrs. Bauer and her daughter were on that stage.” He managed to keep his voice calm.
Harder tears.
“But you couldn’t have known they would come to harm.”
“I d-didn’t.” True sorrow shone in those eyes, the same color as his.
Cooper stared at his reflection in the dark window. “How did you find Mrs. Bauer in the first place?”
“I bought a newspaper advertisement.”
“You did what?” Renewed fury roared through him. He would never understand his daughter. She was too flighty, too headstrong, too—He didn’t know what, but it wasn’t a good thing. Little girls were supposed to be demure and polite, cute and neat—not muddy and outrageous. “You placed a request for a mother in a newspaper?”
Katie’s eyes still brimmed with tears. “No. I pretended to be you.”
“Anna Bauer thinks that I—” His knees buckled. Speechless, he simply stared at his daughter. The pony rides, the trousers, the mud, the disobedience and now this. Katie didn’t need a mother, she needed a warden and steel bars on the window.
Cooper held out his hand. “There’s no need to cry.”
She