A Daddy for Dillon by Stella Bagwell

Author:Stella Bagwell [Bagwell, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-06-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

By the time Laramie and his crew finished the spring roundup and returned to the ranch, Dillon’s birthday had come and gone. Laramie felt badly about missing the boy’s important milestone. Especially after learning that no one but his mother and Sassy had been around to help the child celebrate.

Laramie had passed many a birthday without anyone around except Diego and he wanted things to be better for Dillon. Not that there was anything wrong with Diego. The old rancher had been a good man and a wonderful mentor to him, but Laramie had missed the softness a mother would have brought to his life. Yes, Dillon was missing out on a father’s touch, but at least when little Dillon grew to be a man he would know the woman who’d given birth to him. That was something Laramie would trade all the birthday parties in the world for.

Steering his truck through the busy Ruidoso traffic, Laramie darted a glance at the two boxes lying on the passenger seat. He’d paid the store clerk extra to have the items gift wrapped. Back at the ranch there was a pile of work waiting for his attention, but he’d not let any of it deter him from driving to town and buying Dillon a belated birthday gift.

The idea had Laramie mentally shaking his head. Finding a woman he could truly care about was something he’d given up on a long time ago. And he’d surely never pictured himself falling for a woman with a child. Hell, he was the furthest thing from a father that any man could be. But Dillon had become important to him. Along with his mother. Now he was asking himself just how deep he was willing to let his feelings keep growing.

Since the night she’d talked about her plans to become a nurse and buy a place of her own Laramie had been trying to tell himself he needed to put a whoa on his feelings for the woman. Jim wasn’t going to wear a cast on his leg forever. Soon Leyla and Dillon would be moving on and he’d be left alone. Laramie wasn’t a dreamer. He realized it was senseless to invest his heart in a relationship that couldn’t last. But his heart and his body refused to listen to logic. He wanted to be near Leyla, to touch and hold her, make love to her. Even more, he wanted to make her dreams and wishes come true.

If that meant that he’d already fallen in love with her, then he was in trouble. Unless he could somehow make her see that living on the Chaparral with him could be the home she was searching for.

* * *

That evening, Laramie purposely waited until after the three of them had eaten supper before he presented the gift boxes to Dillon.

“These are for you, Dillon. Happy Birthday, partner,” he said to the boy.

Wide-eyed, Dillon stared at the boxes sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, then quickly shook his head back and forth.

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