The Rancher's Secret Child. Brenda Minton

time the choice was hers and it would affect not only her life but Oliver’s. And Marcus’s.

      “Fine, I’ll stay. But I have conditions.”

      “Name your price.”

      She shook her head at the reference to money. “There is no price. I’m not after money. I’m after your time, Marcus. While we are here, you have to spend time with Oliver. And at some point we have to tell him that you’re his father.”

      “I don’t know how to be a father.”

      Of course he didn’t. But what man did? It happened to everyone. People decided to have children. They became parents. It wasn’t as if they knew how to do it beforehand. It was on-the-job training.

      “Maybe you don’t know how, but you’ll learn. I’ll be here and I can help.”

      A muscle ticked in his jaw. “That’s a lot to put on a man who, until you showed up, hadn’t planned on having a family. Ever.”

      “I understand. But you do have a son. He’s sitting in that waiting room and he thinks you’re the best thing ever.”

      “He’s a good kid,” Marcus said softly in his gruff way. She realized now it wasn’t that he was gruff. It was his voice.

      “Yes, he is.”

      She sighed, knowing the decision she had to make, and knowing that it meant eventually losing Oliver to this man, his father. “I have vacation time,” she told him. “I’ll give you three weeks to get this figured out. And I’ll help you as much as I can. But I don’t want to lose Oliver, either.” And she hoped that in the end she wouldn’t lose him, not completely.

      “I understand.”

      Her heart pounded hard against her ribs as she realized she’d just given this man a piece of her life. She’d given him a part of her heart. The part that belonged to a little boy.

      As she tried to process her emotions, he took her hand gently in his and held it briefly, before shaking it to seal the deal.

      That gentleness undid some of her fears and multiplied others. She’d come to Bluebonnet Springs thinking it would be easy to discount him as a parent. He would be the angry, difficult man that Sammy had described, and Lissa would have walked away with Oliver, thinking she had done her best.

      But he wasn’t that man. If the eyes were the mirror of the soul, then he wasn’t cruel and unfeeling. He wasn’t a monster. He had been wounded. Deeply. And he cared for his family. Very much.

       Chapter Four

      The rain continued to come down, and by Thursday, as Marcus made his way up the long gravel drive to Essie’s house, it looked as if the ponds had turned to lakes and the ditches were streams carrying debris all the way to the main road. They were in trouble. They all knew it. Farmers were moving cattle away from the spring that ran through town and the countryside. Roads were being closed left and right.