Home > Cowboy Daddy(2)

Cowboy Daddy(2)
Author: Daisy March

Two nights at a ranch. Far from home. Somewhere no one knew her. She could be herself for two nights. Hide in her room and wear her onesie and be a Little for a couple of days without anyone knowing.

Then get home and get her business going. Save up enough to get her own place. Then she could work on what she really wanted. A clothing store for Littles. Live the dream. Maybe meet a Daddy of her own someday.

Yeah, right. What man in their right mind would want a twenty-one year old obsessed with coloring and cartoons and acting like a little girl?

She glanced at the time. She’d been walking for nearly an hour. How had that happened? The sun had gone and she had to squint to see the trail at all in the gloom.

She turned around and headed back to the viewpoint. She almost wandered off the trail twice but somehow managed to get back to her car just as another vehicle pulled off the road to the viewpoint parking lot. It parked up across from her, engine still running.

She climbed into her own car and turned the key. It wouldn’t start. There was a dull thud, a cough then nothing. The car was dead.

The lights. She slapped herself in the forehead. She’d left her lights on while she’d been walking. They’d drained the battery. How could she have been so dumb?

She resisted an angry scream, instead punching the steering wheel which set off the horn. Across the way, the other car’s door opened.

Footsteps, heavy, steady, came toward her. A moment later her door opened, a flashlight shining right into her eyes.

“Need some help?” a deep voice asked. The flashlight turned off.

Alison looked into up into the face of the man she last expected to see, the man she hadn’t seen for three years, not since he’d walked out of her life without looking back.

 

 

2

 

 

Marcus

 

 

Marcus knew what he should do. Get in his car and peel out of the parking lot without looking back, get the hell out of there while he still could.

“Alison Beaumont?” he said, shining the flashlight at her again. “Is that you?”

“Hi, Marcus,” she replied, shielding her eyes from the light. “Long time no see.”

This was bad. This was very bad.

“Having some car trouble?” he asked, walking around to the hood. “Lift it up for me.”

Walk away.

He knew he should walk away. He looked up at the night sky above him, the stars twinkling in the dark. “You’ve got a funny sense of humor,” he muttered quietly before glancing around the hood at the windshield. “Try it now.”

“Try what?”

“Starting the engine.”

The cough that he’d heard from his car was a weaker wheeze this time. “Battery’s definitely dead,” he said. “I’ve jump cables back at the ranch. Come with me and we’ll go get them.”

“The ranch? You a farmer now, Marcus?”

“Been working on a ranch for a couple of years. Pays the bills. Look, we can play catch up on the way but it’s getting late. Got anything valuable in there?”

“Why? You going to rob me?”

“No but it might not be there when we get back here. Anything you don’t want to lose, bring it with you just in case.”

He shut the hood while she retrieved her suitcase from the trunk of her car.

He lit her up with the flashlight as she went. She looked hotter than last time. She still had those hips he’d wanted to curve his hands over so bad, that ass right there in her tight jeans, begging to be spanked.

He looked up at the heavens again. One hell of a sense of humor.

“Is it far to your place?” she asked, lugging the case over to his car.

“Not far. Where were you headed anyways?”

“Walker Ranch,” she said. “You heard of it?”

“You could say I’ve heard of it,” he replied, smiling to himself. “Gimme the case and get in the car.”

She handed the case over and as she did so, for the briefest of moments, their fingers touched. Her skin felt soft and warm. The touch sent a spark straight through him.

It wouldn’t happen again. He mustn’t let it.

She climbed into his car while he stowed the case.

A minute later they were heading out, making their way along the dark country roads, Alison glancing at him as he drove.

“So what’re you doing out here?” she asked. “Been stalking me?”

“Couple of things been going missing from the ranch. I was scouting the approach roads, looking for anything suspicious. Saw your car and thought I’d check it out.”

“Am I a suspect then?”

“You’re the right age but I don’t think you’d steal. Why would you need to? Your Dad’s still loaded, right?”

“That all you remember about me?”

“Pretty much,” he lied.

He thought back to the night of the argument. The night he’d walked away.

Derek’s voice yelling after him. “You’re one sick mother-fucker, Marcus. She’s young enough to be your daughter. My consent? Hell will freeze over before you get that, you son of a bitch. Get the hell out of here and don’t let me ever see you near her again.”

It was the first time Marcus had thought about killing since getting back from the war. He could just reach over and snap Derek’s neck. The douchebag was the same as he’d been in boot camp. All that yelling, all that over-reacting. Not willing to listen to reason.

He could end it all. Just reach out, one snap and then the yelling would stop for good.

The only thing that stopped him was knowing that Alison would never forgive him.

So he’d walked away. In his heart, he knew Derek was right. He was too old. Alison was young enough to be his daughter. It could never work.

He wasn’t even sure why he’d thought it could. He’d been a fool to mention it at all. Keep your heart hidden and your cards close to your chest, he told himself as he went.

“You must remember some things about me,” Alison said. “You were round at ours every time you were home on leave. Couldn’t get rid of you. Seriously saying you don’t remember anything about me?”

“I remember some things,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like that time you told me you had a crush on me.”

“You could have forgotten that. Or maybe pretended I didn’t make such a massive embarrassment of myself when I told you that?”

He smiled, thinking back again. He’d wanted to tell her he’d felt the same way when she told him. How if her father approved, he’d marry her and to hell with what anyone thought about the age difference between them.

She was eighteen then. He was thirty-six. Had it really been three years? The age difference hadn’t gotten any better in the intervening three years. Twenty-one and thirty-nine.

Nope, it was never going to work. She needed someone her age. Someone without the scars of battle in their soul and on their body. Someone happy being her partner, not someone who wanted to be her Daddy. It was all kinds of wrong.

He glanced at her. Already the feelings were coming back.

Not that they’d ever really gone away.

He’d gone away instead, tried to put her to the back of his mind, tried to forget how she’d made him feel.

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