Lucky in Love (Southern Bride 4)

I tried for two-and-a-half years to make it work, for Liliana’s sake. But when I came home early from a girls’ trip and caught Tim in our bed with his secretary while our daughter was in her room napping, that was the end. I filed for divorce. Tim didn’t argue, said he didn’t want the life of a husband and father, especially with a woman who never gave him her heart. I, of course, threw it back at him, saying he never gave me his. That was when he told me he couldn’t give his heart to someone who pined for an old high school crush.

Tim really was an asshole. When he signed away his parental rights, I had to admit it felt like a punch in the gut. How in the world would I explain to my daughter that her dirty, rotten, low-life, cheating father didn’t want her?

I sighed as I let the memory of that day filter back in. Sitting in the law office, the papers slid over to me to sign. I had given eleven years to him. And he signed it all away without a single hesitation.

After I signed, our eyes met.

“You realize what you’re doing, right?” I asked.

He stared at me for a moment before he replied, “Yes.”

“From this moment on, you’ll never see Liliana.”

Something washed over his face: panic, regret, doubt, maybe?

“It’s for the best,” he said.

Once I packed up our things and had a mover bring the few possessions I was taking to my parents’, I loaded up my daughter in the car and set off for Boerne, Texas. A part of me couldn’t help feeling that Tim had signed Liliana away for a deeper reason.

What man walks away from his own child?

My father’s voice brought me back to the present. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out how Tim could give up his daughter so easily.”

Momma looked up, and my parents exchanged a brief look.

“What do y’all know?” I asked, placing the salad in the bowls Momma had set out, and then setting the large bowl on the table and crossing my arms.

“Well,” my mother said, giving Liliana a small piece of lasagna she had cut up into small pieces.

She handed Liliana a spoon, but my daughter’s fingers dove into the food instead. She shoved a handful of her favorite meal into her mouth, raised her brows and said, “Mmm.”

Momma smiled proudly, then focused back on putting slices of lasagna on each plate.

“Momma?” I repeated, my voice a bit more intense.

“Fine, I spoke with LouAnne when I was at my monthly quilting meeting.”

I rolled my eyes. “LouAnne? Tim’s cousin?”

“She’s some relation to the Ackermans. I never did like that last name, by the way. I’m so glad you went back to your maiden name.”

With my hands, I motioned for her to keep going.

“She told me that Tim was fixin’ to come into a large inheritance once his granddaddy died. He’s very sick and not likely to live more than a few months. By large, I mean, at least a million dollars. He was in oil and all.”

My mouth dropped open. “That bastard!”

“Told you so,” Daddy said as he poured all of us, except for Liliana, a glass of sweet tea.

“He didn’t want her to get any of it,” I said.

Momma gave a humorless laugh. “Baby girl, he didn’t want either one of y’all getting your hands on it. Little does he know, you’re to inherit a lot more money than that.”

My folks were well known and loved in Boerne. My granddaddy’s granddaddy founded one of the largest cattle ranches in the county. Daddy still runs it, although he does more than ranch the land. There is a small vineyard on the west side of the land, a pecan orchard on the south side, and cattle that roam the rest of it. My brother Ryan works the ranch, but also does a dude ranch in the fall. When we were younger, my father started the dude ranch as a favor for a few of his business friends in Austin and San Antonio. They wanted some place different for their team building retreats, and Daddy joked about having them come out and work our ranch for two weeks. And work it they did, along with having a bit of fun in the process as they pretended to be cowboys. In all, our family owned close to ten-thousand acres. The Ciblo Creek ran throughout the entire ranch, making it one of the prettiest places on Earth. One of my favorite spots was up on a hill that overlooked a pasture that had the creek running through it.

“I didn’t want his money, and Liliana doesn’t need it either!” I spat out.

“Tim probably thinks the ranch will go to your brother Ryan. That you won’t have any part in it.”