Christmas with the Mustang Man. Stella Bagwell

a guest in the house.

      “Thank you for the compliment, Hayley, but I’m just average-looking. I have two sisters who are much prettier than I am.”

      “Wow, you have two sisters?” she asked, then like a switch had been flipped, her expression turned glum. “I wish I had a sister or even a brother. But I guess all I’ll ever have is just me.”

      Dallas let out a silent groan. Babies. She just couldn’t get away from the subject tonight.

      “Your father is still young,” Dallas said with as much encouragement as she could muster. “He might marry again and have more children.”

      Shaking her head, Hayley leaned toward Dallas and lowered her voice. “Dad wouldn’t like it if he heard me talking about this kind of stuff. And I don’t ever—but you’re a grown-up woman and I don’t get to talk to anybody like you.”

      Dallas was perplexed. “What about your friends? Surely they have mothers you can talk with?”

      The girl wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t trust any of them. They’re all friends of my dad’s and whatever I said might get back to him. And then I’d be grounded for weeks.”

      “Oh. I see.” Dallas reached over and patted the girl’s hand. “Well, for what it’s worth, you can trust me. I’ll keep our conversation in confidence.”

      Sighing with relief, Hayley quickly leaned closer and lowered her voice another notch. “Well, the reason I don’t think I’ll ever get a brother or sister is ’cause Dad doesn’t want to ever get married again. Because my mother was so awful. And he says that so many years would be between me and a little brother or sister that we most likely wouldn’t be close. But I believe we would. Dad just uses that for an excuse. And it’s a dumb one.”

      Dallas ached for this young girl with sad brown eyes and a wish in her heart to belong to a whole family. “Do you see your mother often?”

      Hayley shot her a puzzled, almost comical look. “Often? Shoot, I never see her. Dad says I was three the last time she came around. But I don’t remember it.”

      Dazed by what she was hearing, Dallas hardly knew how to respond to this girl who seemed so hungry for female guidance. “I’m sorry, Hayley. That must be rough.”

      The girl shrugged one shoulder as though to say she wasn’t bothered by the fact. But Dallas could see that being abandoned by her mother had obviously had a profound effect on the child.

      Hayley said, “I don’t sweat it that much. I mean, I don’t remember her, so there’s not a lot for me to miss. Dad says she had psychological problems and had to live in a mental clinic for a while. Now I guess she’s well enough. She’s married to someone else. Once in a while I get a postcard from her. But that’s about it.”

      Oh, God, what kind of woman could simply walk away from her own daughter? A woman who had some sort of mental or emotional breakdown, Dallas realized. But if she’d gotten well enough to remarry, what was her reason for staying away from Hayley now? Boone? No. Dallas couldn’t imagine him keeping his ex-wife away from their daughter just for spiteful reasons.

      “So your mother didn’t have any more children?” Dallas asked while trying to tell herself she wasn’t prying. Hayley clearly needed to talk and it wasn’t like Dallas was going to take the information and spread it.

      Dropping her head in a guilty manner, Hayley mumbled, “No. Something happened after I was born and she couldn’t have more kids. That’s what my grandma Elsa told me once.” Turning a wistful expression on Dallas, she asked, “Do you have a nice mother?”

      Hayley’s ingenuous question caused tears to sting the back of Dallas’s eyes. “Yes. She’s a wonderful mother. Her name is Fiona. And my grandmother, Kate, lives with us, too. And I have three brothers, also.”

      “Boy, your house must be full of people.”

      “Most of the time it is.” Dallas reached for another cookie. “Your father said you baked these. They’re delicious.”

      Hayley shrugged again. “Cookies are no big deal. I’ve been making them for a long time. I’m learning to cook whole meals now. Dad says I’m doing good. But sometimes I burn things.”

      At Hayley’s age, Dallas had hated doing anything in the kitchen, and she still wasn’t all that good at putting a meal together. Clearly Hayley wasn’t nearly as much of a tomboy as Dallas had been.

      “You like to cook?” she asked the girl.

      “Sure. There’s not much else to do around here. And I like helping Dad. He works so hard. With the horses and all. And he never spends any money on himself. He’s saving it all for me. So that I can go to college. I wish he wouldn’t do that. But he won’t listen to me,” she said, ending her declaration with an exaggerated sigh. “I guess dads are just like that.”

      Yes, the good ones, Dallas thought. And she was beginning to see that Boone was one of the good ones. He might not understand all of Hayley’s feminine needs, but he obviously was making sure her home and future were secure.

      “My father worked hard and sacrificed for his children, too,” she told the girl.

      “What does he do?”

      “He’s mostly retired now. But he raises Thoroughbred horses and races them. Do you know what they are?”

      Her eyes suddenly glowing, Hayley bobbed her head and Dallas decided this was the first real excitement she’d seen on the girl’s face.

      “Oh, yeah! One time we went to Elko to the fair. They were having races and we went to the paddock and watched them saddle the Thoroughbreds. They were so big and beautiful and I told Dad we should get some. But he said we wouldn’t have any use for those kinds of horses on the ranch. He said they were only for running fast.” Hayley gave her eyes an impatient roll. “He should know that some of us like to run fast just for the fun of it. Don’t you?”

      Dallas found it impossible to hide her smile. Especially when she could easily recall how it was to be Hayley’s age, to swing upon a horse’s back and race across the open field with the wind blowing in her face and the rush of exhilaration humming through her. There had been countless occasions when her father, Doyle, had admonished Dallas for riding recklessly. But she’d been young and fierce then. Just the way she suspected Hayley was now.