A Cowgirl's Secret by Laura Marie Altom

soiled as Henry had made her, she didn’t deserve to be with a man as good as Luke.
    With Luke out of town, Daisy had managed to get her office cleared of clutter and mostly functioning, as well as getting Kolt enrolled for his upcoming year at Weed Gulch Elementary. School documents had never been an issue at his private academy. Here, however, Daisy had received more than a few weighty stares from one old crone in the office whom she was pretty sure had been working as a lunch lady when she had started kindergarten.
    Most days Daisy felt as if the whole town were judging her. Condemning her for keeping Kolt from Luke. If they only knew her other dark secret, gossipy tongues would really be wagging. Everyone loved Henry. Would her family and Luke even believe her when she told them what the kindly man had done?
    â€œReady?” Kolt, dressed in brand-spanking-new Western wear purchased for him by his Uncle Cash, practically danced in front of the sofa where Daisy had been flipping through a real-estate magazine.
    â€œGrandma’s still on the phone.” Patting the empty spot next to her, Daisy asked, “Do your boots feel okay? Nothing ruins a rodeo faster than tight or rubbing boots.”
    â€œThey’re good,” he said, demonstrating by wiggling his feet in front of him. “Wonder what my old friends would think?”
    â€œâ€™Bout what?” She smoothed the cowlick in his dark hair. For a moment, she felt as if her breath had been knocked out of her. How had she never before noticed the way Kolt’s hair stuck out at the same crazy angles as his father’s?
    â€œMy cowboy boots and hat and jeans. No one wears stuff like this at home.”
    â€œThis is your home now, and I promise, if you showed up at the summer rodeo wearing expensive high-tops, shorts and a T-shirt, you’d look like an alien from another planet.” She tickled his stomach. His laugh never failed to brighten her spirits.
    â€œSorry about that,” Georgina said, slipping on a silver-and-turquoise bracelet on her way into the living room. “Unavoidable damage control with loose-lipped Frieda Hilliard.”
    â€œWhat’s that mean?” Kolt asked.
    â€œNone of your nosy beeswax.” Kolt’s grandmother clamped her hands over his ears while kissing the top of his head. Daisy guessed her mother had been handling more fallout in regard to her. “Did your brother and Josie already leave?”
    Daisy nodded. “The girls were bouncing off the walls.”
    â€œThey are a handful,” her mother noted.
    â€œMore like crazy,” Kolt said, on his feet and practicing quick draws with his plastic revolver. In San Francisco, he’d been all about video games and not much else. Daisy loved how he’d once again started using his imagination since coming to the ranch. “Bonnie tried piercing my ears. Her mom caught her just before I died from that psycho girl stabbing me to death with a safety pin.”
    â€œThat’s awful.” His grandmother pulled him into a hug.
    â€œI know,” Kolt said, aiming for the stuffed moosehead mounted above the fireplace. “That’s why I wanted to ride with you and Mom and Aunt Wren and Robin. That baby bites, but usually I’m fast enough to get away.”
    â€œExcellent decision.” Daisy grabbed her purse and keys. She’d dressed in a long, full skirt made of lightweight crinkled brown cotton. Her white cotton tank top was ultra-feminine with lacing at the neckline. She wore it over the skirt, topped with a concho belt hanging low at her hips. Her alligator boots were the ones her father had bought her for middle-school graduation. In deference to the inevitable heat, she’d braided her long hair, securing it at the tips with beaded ponytail holders she’d borrowed from the twins. “Cash put Robin’s carrier in my car before he left this morning, so as soon as we grab her and Wren,