A Bride For Liam Brand. Joanna Sims

the house, Callie, seemingly recovered from her outburst, gave him a big hug when he came into the kitchen to put his coffee cup in the sink and pick up his leftovers. This time when Callie asked him to dinner for the next night, he declined. He couldn’t keep on accepting the daughter’s invitation to be able to spend time with the mother.

      “I appreciate you letting me come on out tonight.” Liam put the containers in the front seat of his truck.

      “Callie invited you.”

      He shut the door to his truck and then stood in front of the trainer; her arms were crossed in front of her body.

      Liam chuckled. “I was waiting all day for you to uninvite me.”

      The half-moon was putting off enough light for him to see a fleeting expression of guilt flash across her face.

      “I wouldn’t do that.”

      Liam ducked his head, putting it just a little closer to hers. “Admit it, though. You thought about it.”

      Kate turned her face away from him, her lips pressed together as if she wanted to stop herself from admitting it. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.

      “I’m sorry.” She looked into his face then. “I’m not much on company.”

      He didn’t say anything, because he sensed she had more to say.

      “Callie wants me to start dating again...”

      Their eyes met and Liam felt a spark. He felt it, and he was pretty sure that Kate felt it too.

      “Are you saying I’m part of some evil plan to get you back into the dating game?”

      A nod.

      “Calico doesn’t know, then, that you’ve already turned me down once before?” he asked in a lowered, private voice.

      Kate took a small step back, but he wasn’t going to let her get off the hook that easily. He took a small step forward.

      “It’s not that I don’t like you, Liam.” Kate, usually so sure of herself, sounded off balance with a shake in her voice.

      “That’s good to know.”

      In that moment, in the soft moonlight, Liam acted on instinct instead of listening to his head. He reached out, took Kate’s face in his hands and kissed her on the lips.

      It was a short kiss—sweet, gentle, instead of romantic or sensual. But that kiss was a kiss full of promise. It was a kiss that could be his future.

      Surprised, Kate stepped backward again. His hands fell away from her face and they stood there, quietly, staring at each other.

      “That’s good to know,” he said again, “because I like you, Kate. A whole heck of a lot.”

       Chapter Three

      “He actually kissed me,” Kate whispered into the phone. She was in bed, but she wasn’t ready for sleep. She had brushed her teeth and then stood in the bathroom staring at the lips that Liam Brand had just kissed without any warning or invitation.

      “Good for him,” her friend Lorrie told her.

      Lorrie also had a child with Down syndrome, a little girl much younger than Callie. Lorrie had started an organization to connect parents in Gallatin County and ever since they had worked together to establish an annual, one-mile Buddy Walk in Bozeman to raise awareness and inclusion for people with DS.

      “Good?”

      “Yes,” Lorrie reiterated. “Good. He listened to my advice.”

      Now Kate sat upright in bed. “What advice was that?”

      Lorrie stopped to say something to one of her kids before answering. “He was here to give Dude and Max their shots. He might have mentioned that he was interested in you.”

      “And?”

      “And I told him that he’d have to be unconventional. That’s all.”

      Kate couldn’t think of a response right away. Her mouth popped open, and she shook her head before she said, “So, you encouraged him to assault me?”

      “Okay—now that’s way dramatic. All he did was give you a kiss. Tell me you didn’t enjoy it. Liam is handsome, smart, nice and he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in Montana.”

      “That’s not the point.” Kate flopped back into the pillows. “I have Callie and the ranch.”

      “I do know.” Lorrie said kindly. “I do. But, just because we have children with special needs doesn’t mean we can just put our lives on a shelf. Callie is an adult now, Kate. She needs your help—she’ll always need your help—but you’re going to have to find something else to do with your life other than focusing all of your attention on Callie. Why not shift some of that focus onto someone like Dr. Brand?”

      Quiet for a moment of thought, Kate couldn’t deny her friend’s logic. Had she been holding Callie back, in part, because her daughter had always been the center of her world? Was she holding Callie back for her own sake? Part of her, deep down, knew that it was, at least, possible.

      They talked for another twenty minutes before they hung up. Lorrie was one of the few people who genuinely understood her struggles with Callie, from fighting for services in the school system, accessing appropriate health care, and the feeling of isolation that could creep in with so many miles between families in a similar situation. She trusted Lorrie; they told each other the unvarnished truth. Her friend had a point. It was time for her to begin to find a new center of her life. Callie was growing up.

      * * *

      “Good morning, Kate.” Dawn from Dr. McGee’s office had called her out of the blue. “How are you today?”

      “I’m good. Just doing barn work, as usual.”

      “Well, I won’t be keepin’ you too long.” There was something in Dawn’s voice that signaled that this wasn’t going to be a positive call. “But I do have to share with you that Dr. McGee is going to be retiring.”

      Up until that point, Kate had been holding the phone between her shoulder and cheek while she continued to muck the stall she was working on. The news made Kate put her pitchfork down; she stood upright and held the phone to her ear with her hand as the receptionist continued.

      “He’s given me permission to tell all of his longtime clients that he’s having some serious health problems and he has to retire.”

      Kate felt her chest tighten—she loved Dr. McGee. She’d known him since she was a kid and had always assumed that he would keep on working until he took his last breath.

      “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

      “So are we.” The receptionist sounded as if she was choking back tears. “It’s a...shock.”

      After she hung up the phone, the weight of the phone call began to hit Kate. Beyond the sadness she was feeling in her heart, and the fact that she was going to have to break the news to Callie, who was crazy about Dr. McGee, what was she going to do about her horses? She had a huge barn to run and having a vet was essential to the health of the horses in her care.

      Kate finished mucking out the stall, pushed the cart away from the stall, dropped the pitchfork into the cart and then walked outside to think. It was a blue sky day, not one cloud, and it was warm, just how she liked it. Hands on her hips, Kate ran several ideas through her head before she finally landed on her first move.

      “I’ll be upstairs in the office if you need me,” Kate told two of her regular stable hands. Whenever she conducted business, she liked to sit at her desk in the office above the barn. Sitting at her desk now, with the view of the flat expanse of the pastures abutting the mountains in the background, Kate was always reminded that she