The Cowboy's Holiday Blessing. Brenda Minton

and looked from Madeline to Jackson. “You were supposed to be different.”

       His smile dissolved. Madeline watched as he approached the girl who might possibly be his daughter. He sat down at the table and pointed for her to sit back down. He was used to girls, used to kids. He had been raised in a house with eleven other children. Now he had nieces and nephews.

       “Different than what?” he asked.

       “Different, that’s all.”

       “From?”

       “From my mom. I thought it would be—” she looked away “—better here.”

       Jackson whistled. “So far we haven’t made much of an impression, huh?”

       Madeline wanted to correct him, to tell him he hadn’t made a good impression. The girl claimed to be his. Madeline was just the unsuspecting stranger who had ended up with Jade on her doorstep. And she’d gotten tangled up in this.

       “No, you haven’t made a great impression.” Jade rubbed her eyes hard. Madeline pulled tissues out of a box on the counter and handed them to her. Jade took them with a watery smile and rubbed her nose and then her eyes.

       “Okay, let’s start over. Jade, I’m Jackson Cooper and I don’t know squat about raising teenage girls. Today one landed on my front porch and I’m trying like crazy to figure out what to do and to keep that from being a problem for both of us.” He glanced at Madeline. “And this isn’t her problem at all.”

       “I don’t like being called a problem,” the girl cried again.

       “Right, okay, you’re not a problem. But you are a situation that I need to figure out. And I need a little time to do that.”

       “Okay.”

       “So for now, you’ll go with Ms. Patton because that’s the best thing for us to do. And I’ll work at figuring something out.”

       “She can’t go with me yet,” Madeline interrupted. “I have to be at work. Now!”

       “Okay, so we’ll work this out. She stays with me for now while you go to work and later we figure something out.”

       “Jade, I’ll see you later.” Madeline leaned in to hug the girl.

       Jackson stood, probably to walk her to the door. She didn’t need that. She didn’t need any of this.

       “I’ll see myself out.”

       Jackson walked with her anyway. “You’ll be back?”

       “Yes, Jackson, I’ll be back.”

       He must have read her mind.

       “Thank you.” He grinned as he opened the front door for her. “Sorry if I haven’t been the best host. It isn’t every day that I get a wake-up call like this one.”

       She didn’t want to like Jackson Cooper. She didn’t want to let her guard down. But he had a way of easing into a person’s life, taking them by surprise.

       “I think we’ve both been taken by surprise today.”

       Maybe she had been the most surprised. She had formed opinions about Jackson. Now she had to rethink those opinions.

      Chapter Three

      Jackson couldn’t think of another reason to keep Madeline from leaving. He could think of several reasons why he wanted her to stay. She stood on his porch, brown hair, brown eyes, brown sweater and skirt. He couldn’t quite figure her out, and he felt pretty sure that’s what she planned when she camouflaged herself in brown. What she probably hadn’t expected with her disguise was the fact that she intrigued him.

       “I have to go.” She stepped away from him, tripping over that crazy dog of his.

       Jackson reached for her arm and steadied her. “Sorry about the dog. He can get in the way.”

       “Right, okay, I’ll see you later.”

       “Madeline, thank you. I’m sure getting mixed up in this mess wasn’t on your to-do list when you woke up this morning.”

       “No, it wasn’t. And I’m still not sure how I feel about this. I think you should call family services.”

       “It’s the right thing to do?” He smiled because he guessed she always went by the rules. “But then she’s in the system and my hands are tied. I’d like to figure this out and then I’ll make a phone call.”

       “She could be a runaway.”

       “I’m going to check into that. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on harboring a juvenile.”

       Madeline’s brows shot up. “I think you plan on letting me harbor said juvenile.”

       He grinned and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

       “If you go to jail, I’ll bail you out.”

       “Thank you, that’s very kind.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to go. Please think about calling your parents.”

       The urge to lean down and kiss her cheek didn’t come as a surprise. But today he had to think like Jackson the dad, not Jackson the guy who loved beautiful women. He smiled and promised her he’d think about calling his parents. But he’d already come to the conclusion that the last thing he needed was the entire Cooper clan descending on his house today.

       Madeline hurried down the steps and across the lawn to her little sedan. He couldn’t help but smile as she slammed the door, opened it and slammed it again before driving away. He remembered her doing that when he’d helped her pick up her groceries last week.

       When he walked back inside he found Jade on the sofa, a throw blanket pulled over her body. She blinked, and offered a little smile.

       “I guess you were up all night?” He eased down onto the desk chair he’d left in the middle of the room.

       “Yeah, pretty much.”

       Jackson rolled the chair closer to her. “I’m going to get some work done. You take a nap and later we’ll figure out what to do next.”

       “What’s next? I’m your kid and my mom is dead. What are you going to do, dump me on the side of the road somewhere?”

       “No, I’m not going to dump you. I do want to check all of the facts before we make any big plans.”

       “Fine.” She looked a little pale and her eyes were huge. “Do I have grandparents or something?”

       “Yeah, you have grandparents.”

       She closed her eyes, a little-girl smile on her face. After a few minutes he scooted in the other direction, back to the desk and his laptop. He flipped the top up and hit the power button, all the while watching a kid who really thought he could be her dad.

       He sighed and shook his head. First he checked his email because a certain bull he’d been after for a year had been put up for sale and he’d made an offer. Still nothing on that front.

       So where did he begin searching for Jade Baker’s story? And her mother’s? Death records, obituaries and telephone directories. Every search came up empty. He had another connection, a friend who had gone into law enforcement. He typed a short email asking for information on runaways—one specific runaway, actually.

       He sat back, trying to think of other avenues for finding Gloria Baker. But it wasn’t her name he typed in the search engine of the internet. He found himself doing a search for Madeline Patton.

       She’d been in the area for a year. She’d moved to a town where she didn’t have family. She’d bought a house connected to his land. The house had once belonged to his great-grandparents. It had been their original homestead, before oil and ranching paid off for the Coopers.