Read Online True-Blue Cowboy Christmas by Nicole Helm - Free Book Online

and had to hold on tighter. “You need me, right?”
    Delia cocked her head. “Do you want me to need you?”
    Summer blew out a breath. That was the thing with people—everyone seemed to be holding something back. Some secret. Some insecurity. A hope, a dream, a fear. Everyone had all of these emotions brimming under the surface that they didn’t or wouldn’t let anyone see. Including herself.
    She couldn’t seem to completely trust herself to let all her feelings go, or that her family would accept them. But if someone could need her, really need her to be here, then those hidden things wouldn’t matter. She released Delia’s hand and forced herself to smile. “I guess it’s just nice to be needed sometimes.”
    Delia contemplated her in one of those moments where it felt like they had more in common than either of them realized or wanted to expose. “It is. But you’ll come to find at some point that people needing you isn’t the same as… You have to come to need something yourself, and not be afraid of letting people see what that need is.”
    Summer smiled and nodded, pretending that made perfect sense, even though it didn’t make any at all. She’d survived by not needing anything from anyone and being whatever she could be to others.
    How could she let that approach go when it had gotten her this far?
    * * *
    Thack couldn’t believe he was wasting his afternoon doing this. He should be making sure he had Kate’s Halloween costume perfect. He should be lining up someone to fix the porch before the snow got impossible to work through. Hell, if he had half a brain at his disposal, he should be doing some early Christmas shopping.
    He should go to the grocery store or run his weekly errands in Bozeman. He should be doing anything but knocking on Mel Shaw’s door.
    And yet that’s exactly what he was doing.
    Mel opened the door. In every interaction Thack had had with her in running neighboring ranches, she’d seemed poised, put together, in charge of everything. Today she looked tired, her hair sticking half out of a ponytail, and she held a wriggling bundle of tiny baby in her arms.
    He barely remembered Kate as a baby, but the pang of those days, the ones so mired in grief, hit him with a force he didn’t know what to do with.
    â€œThack. Hi. Um. Can I…help you?”
    He had to take a deep breath to find some calm amid all the pain and fight to remember why he was here. “I would like you to tell me about your sister.”
    â€œMy sis… Oh, you mean Summer?”
    â€œDo you have another one?”
    She gave him one of those This is not the Thack Lane that Blue Valley knows looks, quickly followed by something worse. Pity.
    Because anyone who got the tail end of Thack’s temper was surprised, but then they remembered. Widower. Tragic. Poor Thack Lane. But it predated that. Really, it had started with Mom’s battle with cancer throughout high school, followed so quickly by everything else.
    So, since he’d been fourteen, everyone in town responded to him with surprise, then pity. The chorus of been through a lot followed him wherever he went, however much he smiled or didn’t.
    â€œFor some insane reason, my dad has seen fit to hire Summer as some kind of housekeeper-slash-assistant, and I need to know with absolute certainty that she will not pose a threat or be a bad influence on my daughter.”
    â€œOh. You’re worried about Summer?” When the baby in her arms began to fuss, Mel offered her a pacifier. She stepped back, gesturing Thack inside the kitchen with a nod of her head. “I wouldn’t be. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a girl more desperate to…” She stopped short as if reconsidering her words. “Summer has a really good heart. I’m not sure there’s a bad bone in that girl’s body.”
    â€œThat’s