Falling for the Cowboy Dad Read online

  “What’s that?” Poppy asked, looking at the box and ignoring his question. “Can I have one?”

  Billy chuckled and shot Grace a grin. “Figured we could all use a little extra blood sugar.”

  “That works for me,” Grace said, and when he opened the box, he scooped out her favorite—a Boston cream—and handed it over. “Thank you.”

  Poppy lost herself in a jelly donut, sugar powdering her mouth and chin, and Billy came over to sit on the corner of Grace’s desk.

  “You remembered my Boston cream fetish,” she said, taking a bite of the pastry.

  “Of course.” He shot her a quizzical look. “I’m not the one who went silent, am I?”

  Grace felt her cheeks heat. “Relationships change, Billy.”

  “All too many do,” he agreed. “But the good ones should grow, not disappear on you.”

  “The good ones?”

  “We were good together,” Billy said softly.

  “We were only friends,” she countered.

  “And that friendship meant a whole lot to me,” he said. “Maybe that was one-sided, but...” He took a bite of his donut, and Grace was left without an answer.

  It had been one-sided for them both in different ways. She’d been in love with him, and that was one-sided. He wanted a best friend who was everything to him that his lover couldn’t cover, and that was one-sided, too.

  They finished their treat in silence. When Grace had wiped her fingers on a tissue from her desk, she sucked in a breath. “Should we get started?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Billy licked his lips and glanced down at the manila envelope that Grace picked up. “I’m not making any promises, though.”

  “I am,” she countered. “Stop talking yourself out of this before we even start. I can teach you to read, Billy. Just trust me.”

  “Can I help, too?” Poppy asked hopefully.

  “Well, let me show your dad a few things first,” Grace said. “You remember how you didn’t like it when Sarah S. was watching you tie your shoes? It’s the same kind of thing. Sometimes it’s harder when someone is watching.”

  “Oh.” Poppy nodded. “Okay.”

  “I have a word search for you to do, Poppy,” Grace said. “It’s a super hard one. There are words that even go backward. And diagonally.”

  “Oh?” Poppy’s eyes lit up.

  “And there are really long words, too.”

  “Oh!” Poppy was invested, and Grace picked up the word search and brought it over to a little table. When Grace returned, she found Billy looking inside the envelope, his expression grim.

  “This is kid stuff,” he said.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s what I have access to. So...forgive the kid approach, but this works.”

  Billy eyed her silently, and Grace sucked in a breath.

  “Now, with dyslexia, it’s harder to learn sight words—the words we don’t have to sound out but just know what they are. That’s what helps us to read faster. So I’m going to start with some common sight words, and we’ll look at them really closely so that you can see how they work—how they’re put together.”

  She pulled out a card with the word look written in large letters. The o’s had little googly eyes inside them.

  “Do you know this word?” she asked.

  Billy was silent, but his knee started to jiggle, and she could see the crimson rising in his cheeks. He hated this—she could feel it. But if she could give him a win, he might decide it was worth it, after all.

  “I don’t need eyeballs on things to amuse me,” he said.

  “That’s not for amusement,” she replied with a shake of her head. “We tell kids that this makes it fun, but that’s not really why we do it. Some brains work well in one ‘language,’ shall we call it. With sight. Image. Squiggles on a page. But other brains use more than one language at once. They need color, texture, context... They aren’t satisfied with one way of viewing things. It can make regular reading hard, but if we use more than one ‘language’ to teach these basics, then these more complicated brains lock on to it.”

  “Like googly eyes,” he said.

  “Let’s look at one letter at a time,” she said, touching his wrist. His jiggling leg stilled, and she smiled over at him. “Give me a chance, Billy.”

  Over the next few minutes, Grace introduced Billy to the word look. She pointed out the shape of the letters, the double o’s and the way the word itself looked like a curious face. She covered the card and brought it back again, asking him to repeat the word aloud. Then she moved on to the next word—this one spelled out with a sandpaper line that he could follow with his fingers. After a while, he’d memorized the cards and knew which word was which.

  “Now, I’m going to write one of these words on this paper,” Grace said. “And I want you to tell me which one it is.”

  She wrote the word look in big, bold letters with a marker.

  “That’s look,” Billy said.

  Grace shot him a grin and nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Big deal. It’s the one with the two o’s. The googly eyes. That’s not reading.”

  “Yes, it is!” she said. “Billy, that’s what we all do—we see a word we know because of whatever association we have with it. We aren’t sounding out every word we read. We recognize them. Just like you did now.”

  Billy frowned. “Give me another one.”

  Grace wrote another word on the page.

  “At,” he said. “From the sandpaper.”

  She wrote another one.

  “The.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense when you look at it, but the shape is like a chair...and...” Billy’s breath was coming faster now. “Give me another one—”

  Grace wrote the last word on the page.

  “Bed. It’s shaped like a bed. Like the drawing.”

  Grace put a finger under each word as he read the sentence back to her.

  “Look at the bed.” Billy stared at Grace, shocked.

  “You just read a sentence,” she said quietly, and she felt tears mist her eyes. “Twenty minutes in, and you just read your first sentence.”

  Poppy had slipped out of her seat at the table, and she was watching her father with an expression of awe.

  “Wait—” Billy swallowed “—but I’m not going to remember that.”

  “That’s where the practice comes in,” Grace said. “And we work with large letters right now to make it easier. They don’t jumble up so much when they’re big and well-spaced. Do you see?”

  “Grace...you are really something,” Billy breathed, and he raised his gaze to meet hers.

  “I’m a teacher,” she said with a weak shrug. “This is what we do.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had teachers before, but...” He licked his lips.

  “Daddy?” Poppy had sidled up next to her dad and looked down at the page in front of him.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Billy said, sliding an arm around her.

  “Good job.” Poppy gave him a big smile. “You deserve a sticker.”

  “Hold on,” Grace said, pulling out a simple book. It had been photocopied and laminated at a school office, and Grace handed it to Billy.

  He opened the first page, and he stared down at the page for a long moment. Did it work? Or had those letters all jumbled up again? For a moment, her heart sank. It was okay. They’d keep practicing. The point was that he could learn this, with a slightly different technique. And she felt a rush of pride at what he’d accomplished today. She’d known how intimidated he was at the prospect of even trying...

  “That might be too much for today,” she conceded, reaching for the book, but then Billy put his finger down on the page.

  “Look...at...the...bed,” he read, his voice low and deep. He looked to the next page. “Look...at...
the...” He frowned.

  “Table,” Poppy said quietly.

  “Table,” Billy repeated. He turned the page slowly, almost reverently. “Look...at...the...”

  “Truck.” Poppy slipped onto her father’s knee. She was tiny, propped up there, drumming her indoor shoes against his cowboy boot.

  “Truck. Yeah. That’s truck?” He looked over at Poppy. “The picture looks more like a cube van to me.”

  “It says truck,” she confirmed, and father and daughter exchanged a solemn look before Billy turned back to the book.

  “Look...at...the...” He stopped again.

  “House.” Poppy looked more confident now, too, and she pointed out the letters. “H-o-u-s-e. House.”

  “House.” Billy nodded. “I’ve got to learn those words.” He looked up at Grace hopefully. “Will you... I mean, can I...”

  “We’ll learn them,” Grace said, trying to push back a wave of emotion. “We’ve only just started. If I had more time...” She swallowed hard against the tightening in her throat, and she saw the flicker of sadness in Billy’s eyes, too.

  “There are literacy programs here in town,” she suggested.

  “Not yet,” he said gruffly, then looked down at his daughter, turning the little book over in his hands. “Not much of a story, is it, kiddo?”

  “You read it right, Daddy,” Poppy said with a decisive nod.

  “Yeah.” His voice was thick, and he cleared his throat. “Mostly.”

  “I’m going to finish my word search, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, and Poppy squirmed off her father’s lap and headed back to the table. Then he slowly shook his head.

  “What?” Grace murmured.

  “I just read a book, Grace.” He met her gaze, and she saw tears moistening those dark eyes. “Granted, it was pretty small, and Poppy helped some, but I never thought I’d do that...”

  “I had no doubt,” Grace replied.

  “Are you just that good of a teacher?” His lips turned up in a half smile.

  Grace might pride herself on her teaching skills, but it wasn’t that. She knew this cowboy—his determination, his heart, his willingness to do anything it took to get a job done right. And now he was funneling all that into being a dad, and he was determined to be the best dad Poppy could possibly ask for. He didn’t want to let that child down.

  “I just know...you,” she said quietly.

  She’d always seen the man he was—capable, resilient, intelligent. And she was proud of him—prouder than she’d ever been. She wanted to slide closer to him, slip her hand into his, squeeze that muscular arm of his the way she used to do...

  But she wouldn’t.

  She reached for a second manila envelope.

  “Let’s make the most of the time we’ve got. You ready for another few words?”

  * * *

  THAT EVENING, BILLY glanced into Poppy’s bedroom and saw that she was asleep, spread-eagle across her bed. She’d kicked off her quilt, and her pajama bottoms pushed up to her knees. She was so little—just this tiny girl with a personality twice as big as she was. He’d never understood what parents meant when they said that watching their children sleep filled them with love. It hadn’t made a whole lot of sense until now, when he had a little girl of his own. She was a live wire all day, and when she finally crashed, she looked...smaller, younger, more vulnerable. He crept into her room and pulled the quilt over her again. These January nights got cold fast.

  Billy tiptoed back out of her bedroom, leaving the door open a crack. Poppy hated a shut door, so this way she could see light from the living room if she woke up.

  He was still a little buzzed from his lesson with Grace that afternoon. They’d gone through another envelope of words, and he’d reviewed the first words again, going over them intently. He couldn’t afford to forget this...to lose it. Grace had given him a gift that seemed almost magical, and now that he’d gotten a taste, he wasn’t willing to let up. He’d study every free second, if that was what it took, but he was learning to read!

  Billy glanced at his watch. His mom had called a few minutes ago, saying she wanted to stop by. It was past Poppy’s bedtime, but maybe that was for the best. He had stuff to talk over with his mother.

  At a knock at the door, Billy headed over to open it. His mother stood on the porch, wearing a brown faux-leather coat, a pink scarf wrapped around her neck and a bulging shopping bag clutched in one hand.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Heather said, stamping her boots on the mat, then stepping inside. “Wow. Cold night!”

  “Yeah, it sure is,” he agreed, and he waited while she put down the bag and took off her outerwear.

  “So where’s my granddaughter?” she asked, looking around.

  “In bed. Asleep.”

  “Oh. Right.” She smiled sheepishly. “It’s been a while since I had a four-year-old. You forget.”

  “Did I even have a bedtime?” he asked.

  “Sort of.” She winced. “You fell asleep on the couch to Jeopardy!, and I carried you to bed. Until you got too big to carry. It worked for us. I got to snuggle you on the couch.”

  Billy could vaguely remember that—the cozy feeling of Jeopardy! music, the smell of his mother’s perfume, and the feeling of her cool fingers running over his forehead as his eyes got heavier and heavier... To this day, Jeopardy! made him sleepy.

  Heather bent down and picked up the shopping bag. She handed it over to him with a smile. “For Poppy.”

  Billy peered inside.

  “I got her a few different sizes—kids grow faster than you’d think,” his mother said. “One day the clothes fit, and the next you’ve got an inch of wrist showing. So I picked up some pants, some shirts, a couple of packs of underwear and socks. Oh, and this is my favorite...” Heather pulled out a long-sleeved shirt with gold lettering. “Cute, right?”

  Billy looked at it, and his stomach sank. Obviously he couldn’t read it. The letters seemed to clump together, and even if they didn’t... All he could see was something that looked like a biker tattoo pattern in the center of it all. He had no idea what it said, or why his mother would have bought something with a biker tattoo for his daughter. He forced a smile.

  “Yeah, cute,” he said.

  “I thought so.” She dropped it back into the bag. “If you need anything, son, just tell me. I’ve got a granddaughter to spoil now, and I intend to make good on that!”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he replied.

  “Well, not literally spoil...” Heather’s smile faltered. “I just meant...” She didn’t finish.

  “Come on in, Mom,” he said. “You want a Coke or something?”

  “Sure.”

  She followed him inside and Billy fetched the soda and a tall glass, then handed them both to his mother. She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sank into it. She didn’t open the can of Coke, though.

  “What did I ever do that was so terrible?” she asked after a moment, looking up at him with tears in her eyes.

  “Mom—”

  “I did my best!” she interrupted. “I loved you. Don’t you remember that part? We used to go to the mall together and make up stories about the people we saw. And I’d buy you a small ice cream cone, and you’d try to make it last as long as possible.”

  “Yeah, I remember that.” Billy’s heart clenched. “You promised to take me every week, but what about the times that you had some guy who asked you out?”

  “Sweetie, we have to be flexible,” she said.

  “That’s what you always told me,” he said. “I had to be flexible—not whatever guy you were dating.”

  “That isn’t true!” she snapped.

  “Look, Mom, I don’t want to fight about it,” Billy said. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Well, apparently it’s serious enoug
h for you to hold my granddaughter away from me,” she retorted.

  “We were just at your place!” he shot back.

  His mother sighed and popped open the can of cola. She poured it into her glass with a practiced hand, barely any foam fizzing up.

  “Then let’s not fight,” she said, putting the empty can down on the tabletop. “How was your day?”

  Billy looked at his mom from across the table—her familiar face, the lines around her eyes that got more pronounced every year. She looked vulnerable, too, and he didn’t want to hurt her. He was mad at the ways she’d let him down during his childhood, but that anger was rooted in how much he loved her. She’d been his imperfect, beautiful world.

  “Good,” he said after a beat of silence. “I started learning how to read.”

  “Har, har,” his mother said with a wry smile. “Come on, son. I’m serious. I can tell you about my day, if you want—”

  “I am serious,” he replied, cutting her off. “Grace got some reading tools together to help me start.”

  “Learning to read what?” his mother asked with a shake of her head. “Computer code, or something?”

  “English. Words. Books.”

  Heather stared at him, and he watched her lips twitch as she was about to speak, but then stopped. She frowned slightly, then met his gaze in confusion.

  “What?” she said.

  “I never learned.”

  “Yes, you did! You took the first grade with everyone else!” she shot back.

  “I never learned, Mom,” he repeated. “I’m dyslexic, Grace says. When I look at words on a page, they all just jumble together, and I can’t make sense of them.”

  His mother reached for a cereal box on the counter, and put it down in front of him. “Read that.”

  “Mom, stop it.” He pushed the box aside. “I’m not making this up. I never did well in school.”

  “Neither did I,” she snapped. “Not everyone is an intellectual.”

  “I was pushed along with everyone else, but I didn’t know how to read,” Billy said. “It was easier to be the rebel and pretend I didn’t care than to tell anyone the truth. I’d have been laughed out of school.”