Dad by Design Read online

  Dad by Design

  Lone Star Dads Book 2

  Lori Wilde &

  Leigh Atwater

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Next in Series: Dad on Demand

  About the Authors

  1

  “How’s Sally?”

  “Fine. Her lamb’s up and running.” Clint Bolton leaned back against the fence and gazed into the distance. In Texas, the distance went a long, long way. All this was his and had been for five years, the massive acreage, the sheep that dotted the grass. It was a miracle.

  A few words went a long way too. Men friends like Jake Galloway were easy to be with. You didn’t even need to talk. With women, you had to say something, and that something had to be interesting. For him, that wasn’t easy.

  “Close one,” Jake said. “Glad they’re both okay. Well, there’s the mail truck.”

  Clint watched the truck for a second or two. “Better see what I got,” he said. He left Jake at the fence and ambled down to the end of the drive that led to his ranch house. He waved at the post…? Woman? Person? Sheila was new, and he hadn’t figured out what to call her. Probably mail carrier. That sounded right.

  She’d put a big bunch of stuff in his mailbox, so he hauled it out and started going through it on his way back to Jake. Darned catalogs. Politicos begging for money. The electric bill. He’d better rest a minute before he opened that one.

  Internal Revenue Service. What could that be about? He slid a finger under the back flap of the envelope, unfolded the papers inside and yelled, “GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  “What?” Jake yelled back and started running.

  “ACKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.” Clint moaned.

  Jake ran up beside him. “What? What? You’re not going to faint, are you?”

  “Maybe,” he whispered. “I’m being audited.”

  Martha took one look at Clint and started a pot of coffee. She was his right-hand person, cooked for the ranch hands, washed their filthy clothes, cleaned the house, and mothered all of them. Her right leg, deformed by an accident as a child, didn’t slow her down a bit.

  Clint and Jake sat down at the kitchen table, a little island of peace in a troubled world, a world that smelled like pot roast and whatever Martha had just baked. She said, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” as she handed them blistering hot cups of real coffee, straight from the grocery store, made in a percolator and strong as a mad bull.

  “Can’t be all that bad,” Jake finally said. “You’re not cheating on them, are you?”

  One sip of the brew brought Clint out of his black funk. “Of course not,” he snapped. “Business expenses. They want proof that I’m not padding my business expenses.”

  Jake tilted his chair back and looked up at the ceiling as if he might actually be thinking about something besides his own business. “You’ve been doing your own taxes, right?”

  “Right. And this is the first time the IRS has ever griped about my return.”

  “A CPA does mine. The taxes on my restaurant get complicated.”

  “I don’t need a professional accountant.”

  “Apparently, you do now,” Jake pointed out.

  “Why?” Clint knew he sounded like a sulky child who’d been scolded, but that’s exactly what he felt like.

  “To go over your books, figure out what you did to push an IRS hot button…”

  Clint sighed. “Who’s your guy?”

  “Woman. Name’s Daisy. Daisy Banks. You know, the mayor?”

  When Clint just shrugged, Jake groaned. “Her dad’s our state representative. You haven’t met her?”

  “I’ve met her,” Clint mumbled, “at Rafe’s house.” He’d been ranching in Falling Star for five years and knew about five adults besides Rafe and Jake. He’d been friends with them since they’d met as teens in juvenile detention. They were more like brothers than friends. Sharing tough times brought people together.

  “She’s real smart.” Martha put a plate of blueberry muffins on the table. “Got certified about a year ago and she’s already up to her ears in clients.”

  “Well…” Another thought struck him. “Martha, how is it you know everything? You almost never leave the house; I never see you on the phone…”

  “Of course I leave. How do you suppose groceries get into this house? Plus, I email and text,” Martha said, “just like almost everybody else in the world does.”

  He being the exception. He knew how, but he found it bothersome and irritating. People could find you any time of day or night. He was one of those people who liked to be the one to decide when to be found.

  “Hire her,” Martha said.

  “I’ll make an appointment for you,” Jake said. He grabbed a muffin, glanced at his watch, and said, “Gotta go. Rush hour at the restaurant is coming up. Want to come to town for dinner on the house? How’s a nice rib eye sound?”

  Jake’s Place was the best place to eat for miles around Falling Star, second only to Martha’s Place, his own kitchen, with his staff and ranch hands gathered around the enormous table. That was the best place to be. “Thanks, but I’d better…”

  “Get your books together. I’ll call you when the appointment’s set up.” Jake said that like a man with no worries on his mind, which is what he was.

  Jake had it easy. He was a people person. Clint wasn’t. He knew if he met with the accountant, she’d want to know everything about him. She’d be like all the other folks in town, curious about him. Curious as to why he stuck to himself, why he didn’t get involved in the community like his two friends Jake and Rafe.

  Clint didn’t want to be involved with anybody but Rafe and Jake and their ever-expanding families. “I don’t like meeting new people. I don’t trust them.”

  Jake sighed. “Daisy is a great person, and she’s been an excellent mayor. She and Lilah and Abbie are friends, and besides, unlike others I could mention”—the look Jake gave him was so intense, Clint felt pinned down—“she uses the most up-to-date software. In fact, Lilah and Abbie call her their ‘redheaded wizard.’ So why not give her a chance?”

  Lilah was their friend Rafe’s wife. Jake Galloway and his true love, Abbie, had bought a house, moved in together, and set a wedding date. Clint had learned to trust these women because his friends clearly did, but it hadn’t been easy.

  Still, he’d make a better impression if he presented the auditor with professional-looking records to back up the return, so he guessed he should listen up. He ground his teeth. “I’ll think about it.”

  “How long do you have to think?”

  Clint glanced at the letter. “Not very long. And I’m capable of making my own appointment.”

  Jake got up from the table. “Now that we’ve solved that,” he said cheerfully, “I’ll get back to my restaurant.”

  And about time, Clint thought. Personally, he needed to get back to his sheep. He’d do his best not to show the sheep how irritated he was. If he did, their fleece might lose both quality and quantity, and— He gave up that worst-case scenario. He was clearly going over the edge.

  Accompanied by her administrative assistant, the town clerk and the three council members, Mayor Daisy Banks stood in front of Falling Star’s historic town hall and launched into her pitch. “We’ve finished the main room; we have electricity and plumbing downstairs—and we’re out of money. We’ve bled the pockets of Falling Star down to the last pen
ny. But I have an idea that would raise at least enough to paint the outside.”

  “A government grant?” one of the council members asked hopefully.

  “We have one in the works, but it will be months before it comes through. And we need to paint. No, I’m thinking of a Winter Holiday Festival. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun?”

  She was greeted with blank stares. “Here’s how I see it,” she said, trying not to sound as enthusiastic as she had before, since she’d apparently scared them. “Come inside with me.”

  They trailed silently after her through the tall, creaky front doors and into the main room of the town hall. Once upon a time, it had echoed with the sounds of music and dancing as well as the monotonous drone of town meetings. The mayor and the town clerk had had their offices here. They held out when the telephone service came to Falling Star—what did they need with a telephone when people could just walk in?—but when electricity came in the 1940s, they moved into a room in the public library, the first building to be wired.

  Since then, the hall had fallen into a state of disrepair. Even when it was put on the National Register of Historic Places, former city officials had looked the other way, horrified at the expense of restoring it to its former glory. But not Daisy. Town hall had been her first priority when she’d been elected mayor. It was coming along, but not fast enough.

  She waved her arms around to encompass the huge space. “Look how big it is,” she said. “We could invite the best-known craftspeople in Texas—not just Falling Star—to set up their booths...” She paused to make outlines of imaginary booths. “No charge, but we’d ask for ten percent of their gross sales to go to the town hall restoration project.”

  That got a murmur out of them. She’d call it progress. “We’ll decorate for the holidays. A huge tree, garlands, candles. The room will be festive, and if we hang enough wreaths and lights outside, that will hide the fact that it looks horrid and will continue to look horrid”—she fixed a stern gaze on them—“until we paint.”

  They still seemed dubious, which Daisy took to mean they were thinking it over.

  “We could sell food, too,” her assistant, Amy Winfree, said shyly. “Mulled cider would be good, and it would make the room smell lovely.”

  “What a wonderful idea,” Daisy congratulated her. “Cider, wedges of apple pie, ginger cookies—gingerbread! All at reasonable prices, of course. Maybe some of you know someone who’d like to donate the food.”

  One of the three council members, Marjorie Latham, stared daggers at her male colleagues until they cleared their throats, coughed, or scraped their boots on the ground, and at last, one of them said, “Aggie’s gingerbread is sort of famous around here. I imagine she’d make a couple of pans.”

  Marjorie breathed out an exasperated sigh and pinned him down with one of her accusatory “chauvinist” glares.

  “I’d help her, of course,” the man said hastily. “I’m handy in the kitchen, and I can probably convince my kids to volunteer. We can make it a family affair.”

  “Polly would get a kick out of contributing some apple pies,” the other councilman said, “ but I can’t help because Polly won’t let anybody into her kitchen.”

  “So you’ll be available to help with the decorating,” Marjorie pointed out.

  “Thank you all,” Daisy said earnestly, hoping to avoid an argument breaking out. “Now, besides food and folks helping with the decorations, we have to have top-notch people exhibiting and hopefully selling their work.”

  To her surprise, her captive audience warmed to this idea, coming up with crafts and the names of the craftspeople—including woodworkers, knitters, crocheters, quilters, a group of rug-hookers who delighted in calling themselves The Hookers, and makers of holiday tree ornaments. Daisy was writing as fast as she could on a legal pad she’d kept clutched under her arm in case the council members segued from shock and rejection to cooperation.

  She’d gotten them on her side. That’s what a politician was, right? A persuader. But she’d made a vow to persuade only toward the best results for all concerned, the same vow her father had made, the same vow she knew her brother had made when he threw his hat into the ring of candidates for the governor of Texas.

  The Winter Holiday Festival would be good for Falling Star. It would bring the careers of the many Texas crafters into the limelight. They should be able to stir up a lot of interest between the press and social media.

  It was a good project. An honorable project. And she’d see it through to its satisfying conclusion: town hall, freshly painted.

  Clint was outside with his sheep, feeling gloomy. The sheep were fine—high-quality Merinos, carefully chosen, carefully bred, and religiously taken care of by Rafe, who was the local vet. Clint’s sheep were raised for wool and didn’t have a worry in the world. If only he had it as good as they did.

  He petted a hogget, a half-grown lamb, to make himself feel better. Last thing in the world he wanted to do was hand this audit over to a woman. Okay, so he sounded sexist, but he wasn’t. He just didn’t trust women, not really, and he felt that way for good reason. They were undependable. At least some of the ones he had known had been.

  What if he turned his books over to Daisy Banks and she found something she could hold over him in those carefully penned numbers? What if she moved out of town right in the middle of shaping up his books? What if she dug into his past?

  The hogget, who’d ducked her head under Clint’s hand to help him pet her in just the right places, said, “Baaa.”

  “Baaa, humbug?” he asked her. “I’m stupid to mistrust Daisy Banks? You women. You all stick together.” He looked down at her. “Come on, little girl, time to play with your cousins.”

  With a few deep breaths and some mental chest-pounding, he pulled himself together. He had to do it. The audit would be over and done with by the time he figured out how to load accounting software on his computer. Not to mention, he’d first have to figure out which software he needed, and then he’d have to learn how to use it. Just thinking of the steps necessary to produce the tidy reports he’d need for the audit made him tired.

  In his office, Clint stared at the phone awhile, then noticed the time was getting close to five o’clock. He made himself look up the number.

  “Mayor Banks’ office,” a cheerful female voice said.

  Clint actually preferred speaking to an office instead of to a person. “This is Clint Bolton,” he said gruffly. “I’d like to make an appointment with Ms. Banks. Tomorrow if possible.” Do it, get it over with, maybe she’ll say no, I’d be off the hook, well, off that hook.

  “Mr. Bolton.” The woman on the other end sounded nervous. “Um, let me check her schedule. What would the appointment be in regard to?”

  Clint stifled the “none of your business” retort that was on the tip of his tongue. “I’ll tell her when I see her,” he said instead, congratulating himself on being more tactful than Rafe would ever imagine he could be.

  “Just a minute, then,” she said timidly and apparently consulted a calendar. “I see she’s free tomorrow afternoon between three and four.”

  “Tomorrow at three,” Clint said and hung up the phone.

  “Tomorrow?” Daisy frowned at Amy, who looked thoroughly cowed. “What do you think he wants? Is it city business, or does he want accounting help?”

  “He said he’d tell you when he saw you, and I was too scared to pressure him,” Amy confessed. “You know, ask him ‘Is it town business or personal?’”

  “I’m familiar with Clint Bolton’s manner of speaking, and anyone would be scared to push him,” Daisy said to comfort her. “So we’ll see what he wants tomorrow at three. Don’t worry, Amy, I can handle him. Time for you to go home,” she said, checking the big wall clock. “I’ll see you—and Clint Bolton—tomorrow. If he brings a lamb with him, you can babysit.”

  “Whatever helps,” Amy said, still sounding desperate.

  The list of things Clint Bolton
could be lobbying for boggled Daisy’s mind. His ranch was five miles from the freeway. Even though most of the drivers who used the exit turned north to head to Jake’s Place in downtown Falling Star, he still might be coming in to complain about strangers on the road.

  Clint Bolton was the oddest man she’d ever met—not that she’d ever had a one-on-one conversation with him. He owned a substantial acreage, he raised sheep; he had two delightful friends she knew well, Rafe and Jake. People in town maintained the three men were closer than brothers.

  Daisy knew Rafe’s wife, Lilah, and Jake’s fiancée, Abbie, even better than she knew the men. But at the family dinners she’d been invited to and Clint had shown up for, he’d never spoken to her. He’d always directed his attention toward his friends and Rafe’s foster care boys, who for reasons she couldn’t imagine, seemed to be crazy about him. A soft spot—another oddity for a man so tightly wrapped into himself.

  It occurred to her that she’d been thinking negatively, imagining Clint was coming to make trouble. Why not try putting a positive spin on things?

  Town: he’d like to contribute some of his land to a worthy cause—a baseball field, a wildlife park, whatever might bring business to Falling Star, which was desperately in need of outside money. Its “hiding place” reputation had gone too far. Falling Star needed interlopers with cash in their pockets and something to spend it on.

  Business: that one stumped her. Clint Bolton was a businessman himself. What could he possibly want from her in that area?

  Personal: he wanted to ask her to go out with him.

  Her heart did a little quickstep. He was grumpy, almost a recluse—and yet, somehow, the most appealing man she’d encountered in Falling Star. He was tall and lean, a real Texas rancher type. His dark hair, dark eyes, and dark outlook on life touched her in a way she didn’t understand. Something was going on inside him, and she longed to know what it was.