The Third Daughter's Wish. Kaitlyn Rice

daughter? Well, he did. And right now she felt ignored, abandoned and outraged.

      She should have escaped when she could.

      “That little girl followed her mama around as if they were attached at the heart by a strand of Elly’s yarn,” Rick added. “How is she?”

      “You mean Isabel?” Josie prompted.

      “That’s right, Isabel,” he said. “I do love that name, and I got to choose it for her. What’s she doing?”

      “She married a Colorado law professor a couple of years ago. She and Trevor live near Boulder and have a one-year-old daughter named Darlene. Izzy works with kids at a wilderness camp, and also runs Blumecrafts. Remember their mother’s business?”

      “I do remember. Hard to believe the baby has a child now, too.”

      Josie was the baby, not Isabel. Why didn’t he mention her? She worked up the guts to ask. She should just say it. I don’t take after Ella physically, but I’m just as stubborn and I, too, inherited her artistic talent.

      If Rick had made the slightest indication that he knew about and was interested in her, she might have found the courage. Or if she wasn’t alone here to deal with an old man’s reaction to her news.

      Suddenly, she wished she’d invited Gabe. Maybe. She leaned on him enough already.

      “Do those girls want to meet me?” Rick asked.

      “Callie and Isabel?” Josie queried, clarifying for herself that he wasn’t speaking of all three of them now. That poor health or a mixture of medicines or nervous forgetfulness hadn’t caused him to omit mention of the third daughter.

      “Of course. Calliope and Isabel. My children.”

      The rock that had lodged in Josie’s chest earlier seemed to turn, piercing the tender flesh around her heart.

      He didn’t know about her. Or if he did, he’d forgotten or blocked out the memory.

      What would happen if she just got up and left now, and never told a soul about her trip to Woodbine today? The thought was tempting. But her father had asked her a question, and even now those cool gray eyes sought an answer.

      Did her sisters want to meet him?

      No. They had made it clear that they saw no advantage to meeting their father. Despite Josie’s arguments. Despite Lilly’s condition. Whenever the subject came up, they both said that Ella must have had good cause to warn against the contact.

      If Josie told her sisters about Rick’s apparent forgetfulness concerning the third baby, they might change their minds. They might want to meet him to support Josie.

      Yet to all appearances, Rick was harmless. He was just a quiet old man. And he had expressed a genuine interest, at least in them.

      “Maybe they’ll want to meet you,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll mention the idea to them.”

      “You do that,” he said, standing. He shuffled into the hallway and rummaged around in a glass candy dish. After pulling out a business card, he returned and handed it to Josie. “This card’s for Brenda’s dog-breeding outfit, but the phone number’s the same. Have your friends call me, er, Sarah? Sarah Thomas, didn’t you say?”

      She stared blankly at him until the dog cued her by trotting to the front door. “Sarah. Right,” Josie said. She stuck the card in her pocket and allowed her father to let her out, then waved from her truck window before she looped out of the drive.

      She hadn’t even talked about Lilly’s condition. She’d gotten hints that her father might not have a history of seizures, but she hadn’t asked.

      She’d learned a lot of other things today, however. Rick Blume was just an old man, either forgetful or ignorant of a few truths about his past. Thoughtful, in some ways. Introspective—like her sisters.

      Josie preferred action. People. Noise.

      The more she’d spoken to her father today, the more she’d been reminded of everyone but her. In a family of tortoises, she was the only hare.

      She wanted to think for a while, to figure out how or if she should return to discuss Lilly, and if she should break the other news to her father at all.

      Congratulations, you have a girl! She has brown hair and hazel eyes, and weighs a smidge over a hundred and thirty pounds.

      That wouldn’t be right. She also wanted to settle into her feelings before she told her sisters that she’d contacted Rick Blume. She wouldn’t risk inviting the man into their lives if doing so would harm her family.

      She wouldn’t breathe a word about this to Gabe, either. He’d probably just give her a hard time for not warning him about her trip to Woodbine today. And then he’d proceed to tell her exactly how she should have handled it and what she should do next. The man liked being in charge.

      But then, Gabe had strong ideas about a father’s role in a child’s life. Real strong ideas. She couldn’t fault him for feeling the way he did. His dad had been his hero.

      She simply wanted to handle this in her own time, and in her own way. Keeping the secret might be hard. Josie might have invited trouble by concealing her identity, but she hadn’t anticipated her father’s response, or the pain she’d feel when he hadn’t mentioned her.

      But perhaps Rick had left the family before Josie’s mother had told him about the pregnancy. Maybe there was more to their history than Josie and her sisters had realized.

      Right now, Josie sensed that that was exactly the case, and that her quest for answers had just begun.

      Chapter Three

      Three evenings later, Josie stood in her own front doorway, chortling as Gabe reacted to her costume.

      “You’re going to my mom and stepdad’s shindig as Doc Holliday?” he inquired through the screen.

      His bewildered expression was priceless. When she’d told Gabe that she was going to tonight’s costume party as Wyatt Earp’s favorite sidekick, she’d known he’d make a big assumption. After all, the gunslinger’s third and favorite wife had been named Josephine Sarah, like her.

      She might be laughing hardest at her own joke, but Gabe wasn’t exactly crying. His gaze had lingered a little too long on her flattened chest, and now he was growing an annoyingly large smirk.

      “Gabe!” she scolded. “I’m dressed as a man!”

      “So?”

      “So stop staring at my chest!”

      “Just wondering where you’d put ’em.”

      She glanced down at her buttoned white shirt and vest. “I wore a tight body suit underneath, that’s all.”

      The teasing glint in his baby blues warped his look of concern. “Does it hurt?”

      “Of course not.”

      “This party could go on until the wee hours. Who knows how you’ll feel after several hours of being squashed up like that? If you want me to help unbind or…”

      “Gabe!”

      “Fluff or reinflate anything later, I—”

      Josie slammed the solid wood door shut between them.

      Gabe promptly opened it. “Sheesh!” he said, shouldering his way inside. “Can’t a guy enjoy a good prank when it’s played on him?”

      His Ropers clunked on the threshold, and the scent that wafted in ahead of him was a pleasing mixture of worn leather and expensive male cologne. “Are you really that mad?”

      “I don’t get mad,” she insisted, then ignored his rude snort as they stood together in the entryway.

      “Now