Home on the Ranch. Allison Leigh

you’re not dancing at the moment?” Belle set the trophy back in its place. “You could sing.” She ignored Lucy’s soft snort. “Or play piano. I thought I remembered you telling me once that you took lessons.”

      “I did.”

      “But not now?”

      Lucy shrugged. Her shoulders were impossibly thin. Everything about her screamed “delicate” but Belle knew the girl was made of pretty stern stuff.

      “Yeah, I still take lessons. But it doesn’t matter. If I can’t dance then I don’t want to be in the contest. It’s stupid anyway. Just a bunch of schoolkids.”

      “I don’t know about stupid,” Belle countered easily. Most talented school kids from all over the state. “But we can focus on next year.” She took the towel from her shoulders and folded it, then sat on top of it on the end of Lucy’s bed. She leaned forward and touched the girl’s knee. The wicked scar marring Lucy’s skin was long and angry. “Don’t look so down, kiddo. People can do amazing things when they really want. Remember, I’ve seen you in action. And I already think you’re pretty amazing.”

      “Miss Day.”

      Belle jerked a little. Cage Buchanan was standing in the doorway again. She kept her smile in place, but it took some work. “You’d better start calling me Belle,” she suggested, deliberately cheerful. “Both of you. Or I’m not going to realize you’re talking to me.”

      “The students called you Miss Day during the school year,” he countered smoothly.

      “You’re not a student, Cage.” She pointedly used his name. More to prove that she could address the man directly than to disprove that whole ogre thing. The fact was, she knew he was deliberately focusing on her surname. And she knew why.

      She was a Day. And he hated the Day family.

      His eyes were impossible to read. Intensely blue but completely inscrutable. “I need a few minutes of your time. Then you can…settle in.”

      Belle hoped she imagined his hesitation before settle. Despite everything, she wasn’t prepared to be sent out on her ear before she’d even had a session with Lucy. For one thing, she really wanted to help the girl. For another, her ego hadn’t exactly recovered from its last professional blow.

      She was aware of Lucy watching her, a worried expression on her face. And she absolutely did not want to worry the girl. It wasn’t Lucy’s problem that she had a…slight…problem with the girl’s dad. “Sure.” She rose, taking the towel with her. “Then I’ll change into something dry, and you—” she gently tugged the end of Lucy’s braid “—and I can get started.”

      The girl’s expression was hardly a symphony of excitement. But she did eventually nod, and Belle was happy for that.

      She squeaked across the floor in her wet sneakers and, because Cage didn’t look as if he would be moving anytime this century, she slipped past him into the hall. He was tall and he was broad and she absolutely did not touch him, yet she still tamped down hard on a shiver.

      Darned nerves.

      “Kitchen,” he said.

      Ogre, she thought, then mentally kicked herself. He was a victim of circumstances far more than she was. And he had painted his bedroom pink for Lucy, for heaven’s sake. Was that the mark of an ogre?

      She turned into the kitchen.

      “Sit down.”

      There were three chairs around an old-fashioned table that—had it been in someone else’s home—would have been delightfully retro. Here, it obviously was original, rather than a decorating statement. She sat down on one of the chairs and folded her hands together atop the table, waiting expectantly. If he wanted to send her home already, then he would just have to say so because she wasn’t going to invite the words from him. She’d had enough of failure lately, thank you very much.

      But in the game of staring, she realized all too quickly that he was a master. And she…was not.

      So she bluffed. She lifted her eyebrows, doing the best imitation of her mother that she could summon, and said calmly, “Well?”

      Interfering, Cage thought, eying her oval face. Interfering, annoyingly superior, and—even wet and bedraggled—too disturbing for his peace of mind.

      But more than that, she’d managed to make him feel out of place. And Cage particularly didn’t like that feeling.

      But damned if that wasn’t just the way he felt standing there in his own kitchen, looking at the skinny, wet woman sitting at the breakfast table where he’d grown up eating his mother’s biscuits and sausage gravy. And it was nobody’s fault but his own that Miss Belle Day—with her imperiously raised eyebrows and waist-length brown hair—was there at all.

      He pulled out a chair, flipped it around and straddled it, then focused on the folder sitting on the table, rather than on Belle. This was about his daughter, and there wasn’t much in this world he wouldn’t do for Lucy. Including put up with a member of the Day family, who up until a few years ago had remained a comfortable distance away in Cheyenne.

      If only she wasn’t…disturbing. If only he hadn’t felt that way from the day they’d met half a year ago.

      Too many “if onlys.” Particularly for a man who’d been baptized in the art of dealing with reality for more years than he could remember.

      He flipped open the folder, reining in his thoughts. “Doctors’ reports.” He shoved a sheaf of papers toward her. “Notes from the last two PTs.” Two different physical therapists. Two failures. He was running out of patience, which he’d already admitted to her two weeks ago when he’d flatly told her why the other two hadn’t worked out; and he was definitely running out of money, which he had no intention of ever admitting to her.

      He watched Belle’s long fingers close over the papers as she drew them closer to read. He pinched the bridge of his nose before realizing he was even doing it. Maybe that’s what came from having a headache for so many months now.

      “Your last therapist—” Belle tilted her head, studying the writing, and a lock of tangled hair brushed the table, clinging wetly “—Annette Barrone. This was her schedule with Lucy?” She held up a report.

      “Yeah.”

      She shook her head slightly and kept reading. “It’s not a very aggressive plan.”

      “Lucy’s only twelve.”

      Belle’s gaze flicked up and met his, then flicked away. He wondered if she thought the same thing he’d thought. That Annette had been more interested in impressing her way into his bed than getting his daughter out of her wheelchair.

      But she didn’t comment on that. “Lucy’s not an ordinary twelve-year-old, though,” she murmured. The papers rustled in the silent kitchen as she turned one thin sheet to peruse the next. Her thumb tapped rhythmically against the corner of the folder.

      “My daughter is not abnormal.”

      Her thumb paused. She looked up again. Her eyes, as rich a brown as the thick lashes that surrounded them, narrowed. “Of course she’s not abnormal. I never suggested she was.” She moistened her lips, then suddenly closed the folder and rested her slender forearms on top of it, leaning toward him across the table. “What I am saying is that Lucy is highly athletic. Her ballet dancing. Her riding. School sports. She is only twelve, yes. But she’s still an athlete, and her therapy should reflect that, if there’s to be any hope of a full recovery. That’s what you want, right?” Her gaze never strayed from his.

      He eyed her. “You’re here.”

      She looked a little uneasy for a moment. “Right. Of course. You wouldn’t keep hunting up therapists who are willing to come all the way out here to the Lazy-B on a lark. But my point is that you could just drive her into town for sessions a few times