The Princess and the Cowboy. Lois Dyer Faye

taken a long time to get my life back on track. The last thing I want is to let Justin disrupt it again.

      Except—he’s Ava’s father.

      The thought brought her to a standstill, motionless in the center of the cozy living room, with a stuffed teddy bear in one hand and a doggie pull-toy in the other.

      What if he wants to take Ava? She’d never considered the possibility that Justin might want custody. But she’d recognized the smile he’d given Ava. She suspected she had that same love-struck expression when she looked at her daughter. Smitten, she thought. He’d looked hopelessly smitten.

      While she could understand why anyone would fall in love with her precious daughter, the possibility Justin had done so was not to be contemplated. His obvious interest in her little girl opened whole new vistas of worry.

      Not only was Justin wealthy in his own right, he also had access to power through his billionaire father.

      She dropped onto the sofa cushion, frowning unseeingly at the forgotten toys in her hand. She needed a professional opinion, she decided. She’d call her attorney first thing in the morning.

      Fighting the urge to pack her bags, bundle Ava into her car and flee Seattle, she rose and finished picking up the scattered toys before retreating to her workroom just off the kitchen. She spent the next few hours trying to focus on an exclusive design for a client in Hollywood.

      She thought she’d dealt successfully with Justin’s sudden reappearance in her life. But when she went to bed just after ten-thirty, she couldn’t fall asleep. She spent the next eight hours alternately turning, tossing and infrequently dozing.

      He was haunting her dreams once again.

      Justin drove home in a daze.

      He’d had to force himself to walk down the sidewalk and get in the SUV. Every instinct in him demanded he stay with Lily and the little girl she held in her arms.

      He had a daughter. The concept shook him to the core.

      He never would have guessed that one look at a dainty little female with her mama’s eyes and his own black hair would have knocked him off balance.

      “I’m a father.” Even spoken aloud, the words seemed surreal. He’d walked away from a relationship with Lily to keep from harming her, but he’d left her to have his baby alone. Bad move. Really bad move. I should have made sure she was okay, he thought, filled with self-anger and disgust. I should have protected her.

      He didn’t know a damn thing about kids, let alone babies. And he knew even less about being a father. His mother had hooked up with several men during the twelve years he’d lived with her. None of them had been interested in being a father-figure. At best, they’d ignored him. At worst, he’d earned curses and slaps. He’d learned early to avoid the ones who used their fists. They’d taught him plenty about survival but nothing about being a good parent.

      At least Harry had never hit him or his brothers, he thought. The Old Man had been absorbed with HuntCom, sometimes to the extent that Justin wondered if he remembered he had sons in the house. But he never purposely abused or neglected them. There was always food on the table, adults hired to keep track of them and clean clothing without holes.

      All in all, Harry hadn’t been such a bad father. Just…not really there.

      Harry. What the hell am I going to do about Harry and his rules for the Bride Hunt? The thought shocked him out of his musings, and he realized he’d driven from Ballard to downtown Seattle on autopilot. Seeing Lily with Ava had changed everything, he realized.

      Beyond talking to Lily in the morning, he wasn’t sure what his next step would be. One thing he did know—he had to put his part in the Bride Hunt on hold.

      The sun had set and streetlights winked on as he reached Second Avenue and turned south toward his penthouse apartment above a HuntCom building in Pioneer Square. The roar of a capacity crowd watching the Mariners play baseball in Safeco Field reminded him he’d left the quiet of his Idaho ranch behind.

      A half block from his building, he hit a button on the dash, and by the time he’d turned into the underground parking lot, the gates were open. They eased silently shut behind him. Moments later, he stepped off the elevator and into the company apartment he called home whenever he was in Seattle.

      He flicked on the television, removed his boots and dropped onto the sofa, propping his feet on the coffee table.

      The Seattle newscaster warned motorists about the usual traffic backup on Interstate 5. Justin switched channels, clicking absentmindedly through the cable offerings, barely registering them.

      He was unable to concentrate on anything beyond the mind-numbing news that he and Lily had a daughter. He turned off the TV and paced the high-ceilinged area of the big loft, but his mind continued to spin.

      He’d never planned to marry or have children for very good reasons. There was no way a man with his background would make a competent, solid husband or father. He’d never been exposed to normal family dynamics, and had no clue what to do to create them.

      That’s why he’d broken off his relationship with Lily in the first place. Justin slid open the glass doors and stepped out onto the wide deck that ran the length of the apartment. He walked past the hot tub and the teak patio table and chairs, all covered with white canvas. The summer night was balmy, and he sat on the wide brick balustrade.

      He couldn’t stop thinking about Lily and Ava.

      And about the unlikely odds that a man with his past wouldn’t end up harming them both.

      He’d come to live with Harry in Seattle when he was twelve, but Justin had always preferred the far-flung acres of the ranch in Idaho. He’d lived all over the world with his mother and an ever-changing series of her men friends until he was eight. Then she’d dumped him at the ranch with his grandfather, who was the foreman of the sprawling property. When the elderly man died four years later, his wife contacted Harry, and within twenty-four hours, the billionaire had arrived with his eldest son, Gray. Justin didn’t want to leave the only stable home he’d ever know, and when Harry told him to pack his belongings to return to Seattle, he’d disappeared into the mountains on horseback. He’d planned to outwait the businessman, but Harry sent Gray with a ranchhand to find him, making an offer he couldn’t refuse. He’d left Idaho for the Hunt family compound in the exclusive Seattle suburb of Medina with the guarantee that someday he’d own the ranch, free and clear.

      It was a promise Harry had kept—at least partially. Justin now owned sixty percent of the land he loved, having worked, invested and bought the acres from Harry.

      Harry’s sudden interest in marriage and grandkids didn’t make sense, especially since his own marriages had been disasters of near Biblical proportions. He’d married four beautiful women, and every one of them had turned out to be interested only in his money. Justin’s own mother had told him she’d married Harry because of his billions, and then purposely gotten pregnant. She’d planned to collect millions in return for granting Harry full custody, as his earlier wives had done. Unfortunately, Harry hadn’t believed she was pregnant, and after a furious argument, she’d walked out. She was so vengeful that she’d kept Justin’s existence a secret from Harry for twelve years. Long enough for his mother’s lifestyle of rich men and wild parties to leave an indelible mark on Justin’s life.

      None of which makes any difference now, Justin thought. Except, given Harry’s history with women who’d turned out to be disasters as wives and mothers, Justin couldn’t help wondering why his father would want any of his sons to marry.

      Not to mention the fact that Harry himself hadn’t been anyone’s candidate for father of the year, Justin thought. Running a software company that grew at the speed of light, coupled with the hours Harry spent developing software innovations, pretty much ate up the waking hours of each day. There had been no Beaver Cleaver family moments in the Hunt household, no