Texas Dad (Fatherhood) Read Free

didn’t see her leave Mack’s house. She cried her heart out on the drive back to campus, but managed to harden it with help from her mother, who agreed to send back Mack’s ring. Skipping graduation, she’d grabbed the Paris opportunity and hadn’t looked back—until now.
    She made one last effort to change Donna’s mind. “What can we really know about the women who enter the contest? Who would want to meet a man that way? What’s to say a winner isn’t a gold digger, or...crazy?”
    Donna rolled her eyes. “You know we run background checks on the men we feature and on the readers we select to deliver the five-thousand-dollar check. And everyone signs a release.”
    “Out of curiosity, what is Mack Bannerman’s charity?”
    The director with the application answered. “He underwrites a steak-fry festival each year. Proceeds go to a Texas contractor who retrofits homes for disabled veterans.”
    Impressed against her will, J.J. felt the last of her barricades crumble. Meeting Donna’s steady gaze, J.J. murmured, “Fine. I’ll wrap up this layout and go to Texas next week.”
    As the room emptied, Donna kept J.J. behind for a minute. “If the article and photographs go smoothly, take an extra week to visit your mom. I’m going on vacation for two weeks myself. When we’re both back, I’ll help pick the reader we send to meet your Mr. Bannerman.”
    “Thanks. I guess I feel extra responsible because he lives in my home territory.”
    “Hmm. Is that all it is? I sensed it might be more.”
    “N-no,” J.J. stuttered. “I pulled up my Texas roots a long, long time ago.”
    The woman gave a crisp nod, squeezed J.J.’s arm and walked out of the room, calling to someone in the hall. J.J. was left feeling rattled. Damn it all, and damn Mack Bannerman for resurfacing from the rubble of her life and causing her to lie to a woman she admired—her boss, no less.
    Resolutely but by no means happily, J.J. flew across the country a week later. While in the air she decided how to handle this inconvenience professionally. Once she landed in Lubbock, she’d rent a vehicle, drive to La Mesa and meet Mack’s daughter, as prearranged by staff. She’d ask the necessary questions to write an article, take photos of him on a horse herding cows or whatever he did during his workday. She’d spend one night in town, then go back to Lubbock and visit her mom. Afterward she’d zap straight back to New York—with her heart intact.
    She had a plan, and she wasn’t prepared for it to go awry. But late that afternoon when she checked into the motel in La Mesa, her plan did just that. The clerk at the front desk handed her a phone message from Mack’s daughter, Zoey. The girl couldn’t meet J.J. as arranged, the note said, because her best friend’s mother couldn’t bring the kids to town today. The message instructed J.J. to meet the girls at the public library at ten the next day rather than going out to the ranch.
    Once in her room, J.J. stared out the window at the Western town that had grown little in the time she’d been gone. She admitted to being curious about the child Mack had with Faith. She hadn’t known Faith well. It was Mack who had included the thin, pale woman in their college group. Sparing a moment to reread the message, J.J. felt a niggling suspicion that Mack might not be aware that he was going to be displayed in a high-circulation women’s magazine. But she knew the staff had sent him a release to sign, so J.J. would meet the kids, then proceed. The staff of Her Own Woman, most of them mothers, had empathy for the motherless Zoey Bannerman. It hadn’t occurred to them that anything might be amiss with the kid’s nomination of her father. And maybe nothing was. This uneasiness in J.J.’s stomach could well be her own reservations over seeing Mackenzie again.
    Had she known of this delay earlier, she’d have phoned her mom and taken her to dinner. Too weary now to drive back to Lubbock, she