She hadn’t even dated anyone in that time, and no one around the ranch thought that was odd. Hope Eternal really was the best place for Emma, because she needed all the hope she could get. Maybe in another decade, once her daughter was an adult, Emma could consider letting a man into her life.
Until then, she simply had too many secrets she wasn’t willing to share with someone she was in a relationship with.
Ted’s eyes, intense and dark and full of questions, entered her mind. He’d want to know everything about her, and dang if she didn’t already want to tell him.
She wouldn’t, though. Emma hadn’t even told Ginger about her daughter, and she’d known the woman for thirteen years. She’d lived here at the ranch for ten, and her daughter would be eleven this winter.
A month later, Emma’s eleventh-year anniversary at Hope Eternal would be celebrated. Her mind flowed easily back to that time, and how incredibly difficult it had been to leave Missy behind that first time. Even now, when she went to visit on the weekends, sometimes Emma cried the whole way back to the ranch, despite the fact that Missy was whole and well and thriving.
You did what you had to do, she told herself as someone said her name.
She turned toward Jessica Morales, another woman who lived here in the West Wing with Emma and Ginger. “Right?” Jess asked.
Emma had missed the question entirely, and she shot a glance at Nick and Spencer, cowboys here at the ranch, who both looked at her expectantly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” Her pulse rippled. Did they know about her daughter?
“I said the dip has a ton of dairy in it,” Jess said, and Emma’s stomach stopped swooping. “Right? Nick says he thinks he’s lactose intolerant, but he’s downing that dip like it’s made of veggies.” She grinned at the young cowboy, and Emma laughed too.
The sound filled the air with happiness, though Emma didn’t feel any of it coursing through her. She’d worked so hard to cover up the darker side of her life for so long that it happened naturally now.
No one who knew her would ever say she had a ten-year-old daughter she was hiding from a crime lord. Not only that, but Robert Knight had also been the parent of one of her second graders eleven years ago.
She’d have lost her job if anyone had found out about the relationship and resulting pregnancy. Instead, she’d quit, left town, had the baby by herself without anyone in her life knowing, and then left Missy with a couple in San Antonio.
“Lots of dairy,” she confirmed. “Sour cream, milk, mayonnaise.” She didn’t actually know if mayo was in the dairy family or not. It was made from eggs, so maybe not. No matter what, the dill dip was definitely not lactose-free.
Nick scooped up another dollop of it with a stalk of celery. “I’m taking my chances.” He grinned and took a bite of the celery and dip while Spencer shook his head.
“You just have a dill addiction,” Jess teased Nick, and he shrugged, not denying it. Spencer said something about Jess’s hazelnut addition, and they laughed again. Jess did eat a Nutella and banana sandwich almost every morning for breakfast, claiming that it had fruit, and it was almost like having toast with her coffee.
She was still tall and lithe, because she literally walked twenty thousand steps each day, while Emma went to sit behind a desk for the majority of her working hours. She did work in the stables in the mornings and evenings with the new foals that had been born in the past couple of weeks.
Other than that, if Emma didn’t wear a smart watch, she could go hours without taking a single step. It was also because of this that Emma didn’t eat breakfast at all. Her intermittent fasting schedule had her first meal at noon, and she’d contributed her maintaining weight to the fasting.
Ted came out of the hallway, and he looked much more relaxed in a pair of fresh blue jeans and a white polo with blue and green stripes. She stared at him, because he commanded that she did.
Thankfully, she wasn’t the only one. Spencer had paused in his flirtations with Jess, and they both watched him step over to Ginger and Nate and say something.
Nate grinned and clapped the equally tall man on the shoulder. Then he turned away and picked up a black cowboy hat, handing it to Ted with his eyebrows raised.
Ted looked dubious, but after a few seconds where Nate said something Emma couldn’t hear across the room, Ted took the hat and settled it on his head.
Her breath seized in her lungs, because the cowboy hat only made him more desirable. Her blood heated to a point where she felt scalded from the inside out, and she quickly ducked her head and tucked her hair when Ted swung his head toward her.
Ginger called to Jess, and she said, “I’m up. I knew she was going to give him to me.”
“You’ve got this,” Spencer said, and Nick went with Jess too, as he’d just been assigned to the horse herd as well. Obviously, Ginger was going to have Ted join that crew, and Emma didn’t think Jess really minded. She was always asking for more help with the horses, and this way, she’d get it.
“When are you going to ask her out?” Emma asked, picking up a baby carrot. She swiped it through the dill dip and looked at Spencer.
He kept his eyes on the group across the room for another moment and then looked at Emma. “Who?”
“Jess, duh,” she said. “You’re flirting with her like crazy. And she does the same with you.”
Spencer smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Then you’re blind.”
Spencer sobered and looked back at Jess. “Do you think she’d say yes?”
“Yes, Spence, I think she’d say yes.”
He looked at her, surprise in his eyes. “Really?”
“Sure,” she said. “You’re a good-looking guy, Spence. And you work hard, and you’re smart. Why wouldn’t someone want to go out with you?” Just because they all worked crazy hours at the ranch didn’t mean he couldn’t sneak away and go to dinner with someone. It was hard to meet people on the ranch, Emma could acknowledge that. It was also why this job and life appealed to her so much. She rarely interacted with people she didn’t already know, and in a lot of ways, that provided an extra layer of protection from her past that she really craved.
“You didn’t want to,” he mumbled, and Emma’s heartbeat skipped over itself.
“That’s because of me, not you,” she said as casually as she could, focusing back on the group where Ted stood. Really, she just focused on Ted. If he asked her to dinner…Emma almost spontaneously combusted just thinking about it.
Of course, she wouldn’t go. She’d say no, just like she had to Spencer. They hadn’t met, and Emma didn’t date. The end.
She told herself that for the rest of the party, never more relieved than when the cowboys started heading out the door to get their evening chores done.
“I’ll show you your room,” Nate said, heading for the exit with Ted in tow. Emma stayed in the kitchen, because she mostly manned the kitchen too, and she’d start cleaning up before she wandered back into the office to finish…whatever she needed to do that day.
She didn’t know, because her mind blanked as Ted looked her way and their eyes met. He reached up with his left hand and touched the brim of that sexy cowboy hat, clearly saying good-bye to her without having to use his voice.