Down Home Cowboy. Maisey Yates

his liking.

      He didn’t even know where to begin lecturing her.

      “Oh, I have just started to embarrass you.” He turned around and faced the group of teenagers that remained. “All of you go home. All of you. Before I call the police and have you arrested for underage drinking. And, just in case you didn’t know, I’m Violet Donnelly’s father. That’s right. I’m her dad,” he said, pointing to her. “So, if you intend to hang out with her, you have to contend with me. I’m sure most of you won’t, but I feel like she won’t have lost any good friends.”

      “Dad.” Violet pulled away from him, crossing her arms and walking out of the barn with her head down. She was scowling. He couldn’t see her face, but he sensed it. And he was glad. He was glad she was angry, he was even a little bit glad that none of these delinquents would probably ever speak to her again.

      He was angry, and he wasn’t thinking straight. She had scared the ever-loving hell out of him, and now that he had seen for himself she was safe, he was just mad.

      “We’ll ride in the back,” Liam said, hopping into the bed of the truck. Alex followed suit.

      He didn’t really know if they were doing it for his benefit or their own, but he was happy to go with it either way. Although, happy might be overstating it at this point. “Suit yourselves,” he said, opening the passenger side door and gesturing for Violet to get inside.

      She stumbled on her way in, crawling into the seat and groaning. And something in his heart twisted, something in his stomach tumbling right along with it. His daughter was drunk.

      He slammed the door shut and leaned against it for a second, pressing his hands to his forehead and counting to ten. Like he had done when she was a toddler and she was frustrating him. But she wasn’t a toddler. She was sixteen, and she was drunk. She had been making out with some guy. She had sneaked out. She had friends here, and he didn’t know who any of them were, but he had just yelled at all of them.

      “Damn you, Kathleen,” he said. “Damn you to hell.” He cursed his ex-wife as he rounded the front of the truck and made his way to the driver’s side. She had left him here to do this by himself. Had left both him and Violet in over their heads.

      He was angry. So angry. And he wasn’t sure he had fully realized how angry until this moment. He took a deep breath, then got into the truck. He and Violet were both silent until he turned out onto the main road.

      “What the hell were you thinking?”

      “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, the words petulant, and slightly slurred.

      “I don’t care,” he said, raising his voice slightly. “I didn’t want to have to come track you down in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to open your bedroom door to find you gone, with no idea where you might be. So right now, what you want is low on my list of priorities, Violet.”

      “I’m sorry, now you care where I am? Why? Just because you noticed I was gone? Do you really think that was the first time I sneaked out?”

      Her words cracked over him like a whip. Of course it wasn’t the first time she had sneaked out. He was an idiot. He was a damn idiot.

      “Why? Why didn’t you talk to me?”

      “We don’t talk,” she said. “Ever. So why are you acting like you care about who I hang out with or what I do?”

      “Of course I care. That’s a stupid thing to say.”

      “Maybe I’m stupid, then.”

      “Choose your words carefully, kid,” he said. “I’m not in the mood. And you’re giving me your phone.”

      “What the hell? Dad, that’s not fair.”

      “I don’t care what’s fair. It doesn’t have to be fair. You just have to do what I say.”

      “Yeah, that sounds about right. That’s how you uprooted my entire life and brought me out to this shithole!” She was getting shrill now to go with the slurring.

      “Because I am your father and I make the decisions about what happens in our lives. You do as I say, when I say it, because you don’t know what the hell to do with yourself. And if that was in question at all before, it isn’t now. I didn’t know where you were tonight, Violet. I went upstairs and you were gone.”

      “That was kind of the idea.”

      He was ready to explode, God help him. “Anything could have happened to you, don’t you understand that?”

      “Now nothing ever will. I think you scared Reed off forever.”

      “I hope I scared his punk ass. It will save me the trouble of killing him. He was drunk. You’re drunk. What the hell would have happened if I hadn’t showed up?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “That’s the problem,” he bit out. “You don’t know. I can think of a thousand things, Violet. Would he have tried to drive you home? Would he have stopped somewhere and tried to take things further?”

      “What?”

      “Sex, Violet. I’m not going to baby you. You’re out here doing this stuff, and you have to understand what it all might lead to.”

      Silence settled between them and heat prickled the back of his neck as he realized that he actually didn’t know if she’d had sex or not. He’d assumed not. She’d never had a boyfriend. But clearly there was a lot happening he didn’t know about.

      They’d kind of had The Talk a few years ago. He’d bought her a book and said if she’d had any questions, she could ask. And she hadn’t asked. Which in hindsight...yeah, he wouldn’t have asked any questions either in her position.

      Had he royally screwed this up? He didn’t know how to deal with this on his own. It would probably help her to have a woman to talk to and she didn’t have one. She had him. And he sucked.

      “I didn’t like the way he was touching you,” he said, his voice low, gravelly. His emotions were on edge and he didn’t know how to get hold of them again.

      “I did.”

      “You’re drunk.”

      “That doesn’t matter.”

      “The hell it doesn’t, Violet. It affects your decision-making ability. God knows it’s going to affect his. Especially when you’re both too young to be drinking. And when you’re in a position like that, you’re vulnerable. If he had decided to keep going, and you didn’t want him to...”

      “I can handle myself.” She curled up into a little ball and leaned against the passenger door, her cheek against the window.

      It reminded him of when she was little, and she’d fallen asleep like that in the truck on the way home from swimming in the river.

      Why couldn’t it be simple like that anymore?

      His chest tightened, every muscle tense.

      “No. That’s the thing, in a situation like that you couldn’t. I understand it feels good to think you could control it, but he’s stronger than you. And he’s also not my asshole kid, so I can’t yell at him, I can only yell at you. I’m scared,” he admitted finally. “I’m scared about what’s going to happen to you, and what might have happened to you tonight. And the only thing that scares me more is that you aren’t. At all. You think it was fine, and you know what? That’s why you need someone to tell you what to do. Because you aren’t old enough to understand the consequences of your damned actions.”

      She didn’t say anything. And when they pulled into the driveway and up to the house, he realized it was because she’d fallen asleep. The scowl that usually marred her brow was absent now, her cheek still pressed against the glass.

      His stomach twisted hard, his past and present colliding