Read Online Destined To Be A Dad (Welcome To Destiny Book 9) by Christyne Butler - Free Book Online Page B

how...what the right answer would have been for us back then.” She sighed and dropped her hand. “Perhaps that was the logic behind my father’s deceit.”
    She had a point, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t deserved to know the truth. “You two could have come back to Destiny.”
    “And what then? I would have followed you from rodeo to rodeo with a baby in my arms?”
    “I wasn’t only a cowboy back then. I earned my electrician’s license after you left and worked for my father around my training and the rodeo competitions.” Her attitude bugged him, even though they were talking about a past they couldn’t change. “But your parents thought Stanford Dobbs was a better catch.”
    “I suppose they did.” Missy took a step back, again folding her arms. “His family was in the same social circles as mine. He’d graduated from Oxford that same spring as Casey was born and was working at his father’s investment firm by the time we married.”
    “A proper match for a proper English girl.” A thought came to Liam. “Did he know the truth? Did your father ever tell your husband that Casey wasn’t his daughter?”
    “No.” Her response was quick and firm, but then she caught her bottom lip with her teeth for a moment. “I don’t think so...my goodness, it never occurred me to ask my mother that.”
    “Was he good to Casey?”
Good to you?
Liam wanted to say that second part, but he managed to hold back the words.
    “He was, even though he wasn’t very involved with her daily care. Stanford worked long hours to provide for us. As he moved up in the company the busier he became and the more he traveled.”
    “So you were a full-time mother?”
    She nodded. “Until Casey started school, which happened to be right about the time of Stanford’s death. Casey and I moved back in with my parents and I was able to earn my degree in three years.”
    Liam added the years in his head. “I was getting my master’s degree at the same time.”
    “Hmm, yes, I know. Casey showed me the write-up in the rodeo program about you. She read to me about both your rodeo career and your time with the family business. I’ll admit I was surprised to learn you only competed professionally for three years.”
    Liam reached inside his open shirt and rubbed at his left shoulder. The phantom burning sensation was in his head—he knew that—but sometimes he’d swear he could still feel the lightning-hot pain.
    Even after all this time. Especially now.
    “Not even. I was halfway through my third season, holding tight to the number-one ranking, when I shattered my left arm, from the shoulder down past the elbow, after getting thrown by a horse named Destiny Changer, of all things. Sure changed things for me.”
    “And you never rode again?”
    “Not as a saddle bronc rider.” He pushed his cotton shirt off his shoulder, baring the rigid scarring to the moonlight. To her. “Took me almost a year just to get full use of my arm again.”
    A soft gasp escaped past Missy’s lips as her gaze flittered over his skin, taking in the evidence of his injury. “Oh, my. It’s...it’s not what I expected.”
    “That’s one way to put it.”
    “No.” Her eyes flew up to meet his. “I’m sorry, I was talking about your tattoo.”
    “Oh, that.” Liam glanced down at the black silhouette design that covered most of his left pectoral—an image of a saddle bronc rider, right in the middle of the craziness during the eight seconds of a cowboy trying to stay astride the horse. He righted his shirt and closed a couple of the buttons. “Yeah, I got that a few years afterward. I was tired of seeing nothing but scars every time I looked in the mirror.”
    “But the location—” She paused. “I mean, it’s right over your heart.”
    “Yeah, well, being a cowboy was all I had, all I loved at the time. Even if it was lost to me forever.”
    It hurt to say the words, but it had been the truth at the time.
    That first year in