Operation Cowboy Daddy. Carla Cassidy

blanket from the back of the sofa and spread it on the floor and then put the boy down with a few of his toys in front of him.

      “He doesn’t seem to miss Amy,” Tony said. Joey raised his head and looked at Tony, then grinned and released a string of jabber along with a bit of drool.

      “He also seems to have bonded pretty quickly to you.” She sat down next to him on the sofa. “What made you decide you didn’t want children?” she asked curiously. He was a young, vital man who appeared to have all the qualities that would make a wonderful father.

      “I don’t want to get married. That’s one reason why I never wanted kids. I also didn’t have a father when I was growing up, so I had no role model to know how to do it right. What about you? Are you close to your parents?”

      She had a feeling he’d changed the focus from him to her intentionally. “My mother died of breast cancer when I was eight and then my father was killed in a car accident when I was nine. Halena raised me and she’s been like a mother and a father to me.”

      “And now you’re raising her,” he replied.

      She laughed. “Don’t let her hear you say that.” She sobered. “It’s the way it’s supposed to be. Our parents teach us to use a spoon to eat and how to walk and as they age into their twilight years it’s our turn to help them use a spoon and to walk. It’s a circle of love.”

      He gazed back at Joey, a muscle ticking in his strong jawline. “He’s so small and helpless.”

      “He’s like a blank page waiting to be written on,” she said softly. “If you’re his father, then what will you write in his book of life?”

      Before he could reply, Halena came into the room and Joey fell back asleep for a quick nap. The rest of the evening passed quickly as Halena took center stage and entertained Tony with stories about her interactions with her blog readers.

      “People just get crazy when they go on social media,” she said. “They post pictures and say things they’d never talk about in real life. It’s quite a strange phenomenon.”

      “I don’t do social media,” Tony replied. “I don’t think any of us men at the ranch even own one of those smartphones. As far as I’m concerned, my phone is for calls and nothing else.” He frowned. “I wonder if Amy does social media.”

      “She used to have a Facebook page,” Mary replied. She got up from the sofa and grabbed her laptop from the top of the nearby small desk. She sat back down next to Tony and powered it on.

      As she logged in, he scooted closer to her side, so close that his thigh pressed against hers, so close that her heartbeat quickened and once again she felt as if she wasn’t getting quite enough oxygen.

      “Hopefully she’s posted something that will give us some answers as to where she might be now,” he said.

      Mary clicked on the site and then pulled up Amy’s page. There was the familiar picture of her friend, but there was also a notice that if she wanted to see any personal information about Amy she had to send a friend request.

      “She must have unfriended me at some point in time,” Mary said with a sigh of disappointment.

      “Why would she do that?” he asked, obvious frustration in his voice.

      Mary shut down her computer and rose once again, needing to distance herself from his intimate proximity. “She’s done it before in the past. Whenever she goes off the deep end and starts using drugs again, she cuts off all contact with me.”

      “Amy is by nature a people pleaser, and when she is doing things she knows Mary disapproves of, she hides,” Halena said.

      Tony stared down at Joey. “She told me to protect him from evil.”

      “Perhaps that evil is Amy herself,” Mary replied.

      “Drugs are the real evil that destroys people’s lives,” Halena replied. “She brought him to you because she obviously knew she wasn’t fit to have him.”

      “What am I going to do if she’s never fit, if she’s never in a place to be a healthy mother to him?” Tony looked at Halena and then at Mary.

      “Then you have to be the rock in his life. No matter what your feelings were about having children before, you have to step up and embrace your fatherhood,” Halena said as she stood from the chair. “A good warrior takes care of what is his. You have the beautiful hair of a warrior, but the real question is do you have a warrior’s heart? Now, I’m going to bed.”

      “Grandmother sometimes speaks in lectures,” Mary said once Halena had left the room.

      “It’s okay,” he assured her. “So did Cass Holiday. She used to say even grown men needed a lecture from a woman every once in a while.”

      “You miss her,” she said. She sank down in the chair Halena had vacated.

      “We all do. She was the mother none of us had ever had.”

      She wanted to ask him more questions. She’d like to know how he had come to be on the Holiday ranch, where his mother and father were and so much more. But he stood abruptly.

      “It’s getting late. I should probably head back to the ranch. Do you want me to give Joey another bottle or change him or anything before I go?”

      I’d like you to kiss me before you leave. The inappropriate thought stunned her as it unexpectedly leaped into her brain. She jumped up from the chair. “No, we’re fine. I can take it from here.”

      She suddenly wanted him gone. He needed to take his gorgeous self away from her. She didn’t want to smell the clean male scent of him, she didn’t want to fall into the depths of his beautiful dark eyes.

      This whole situation was crazy and something about Tony Nakni was making her more than just a little bit crazy. She walked him to the door, and when they reached it, he turned back to look at her. “Mary, I have to confess, I’m enjoying this time in your home.”

      His gaze held a spark of something forbidden, a heat that beckoned her to move closer to him. She consciously took a step backward. “That’s nice. Good night, Tony. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

      Whatever she’d seen in his eyes vanished, making her wonder if she’d really seen it at all. “Okay, then I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” he replied.

      She released a deep sigh and closed the door behind him. She leaned her head against the wood, momentarily overwhelmed with a piercing grief that felt new and raw even though she’d been through it before.

      You will never be a wife and you’ll never be a mother. Never again will you enjoy being held in a man’s arms and being kissed until you’re mindless. You can’t even be a man’s hit-it-and-quit-it kind of fling.

      The painful inner voice whispered the words to her, reminding her that even though there had been a hint of desire for her in Tony’s eyes, she would never be anything to him except a temporary babysitter. She would never be anything to any man.

      She was simply too damaged to repair.