It Happened One Night

He wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to repair the damage he had caused to their relationship. But the one thing he did know for certain was that he had to try. If he didn’t, he knew as surely as the sun rose in the east each morning, he would regret it every second of every day for the rest of his life.

Ten

Two days before Christmas, Kiley sat in her living room watching Emmie play with the pony castle her grandparents had given her the night Kiley and Josh went to the Christmas Ball. She had spent a miserable few days wondering how she could have handled the situation with Josh any differently. After going over everything time and again, she had come to the conclusion that she couldn’t.

Telling him about her suspicions before she had concrete evidence would have definitely made it appear as if she had some sort of agenda to use Emmie to keep the day care center open, as well as made her look utterly foolish if it had turned out he wasn’t. Or he might have even thought she was somehow trying to extort money from him to support a child who wasn’t his.

Sighing, she rose from the chair and walked into the kitchen to put her coffee cup in the dishwasher. To a point, she could understand Josh’s angry reaction. Learning that he had a two-year-old child had to have been a huge shock. But that was no reason not to give her explanation serious consideration.

And then there was his promise to give the day care center a fair evaluation. Why hadn’t he reported his observations and then excused himself from the vote for the additional funds for the facility? He knew that was the only chance the day care center had to survive. The only reasons she could think of to explain his actions were either he hadn’t been impressed with the services she was providing to the children of the TCC members or he was retaliating against her for not telling him about Emmie. And that hurt almost as much as his unwillingness to listen to her.

Lost in thought, she jumped when the phone rang. It was probably her parents, asking her what time she thought she and Emmie would be arriving Christmas day to exchange gifts. But when she checked, the Texas Cattleman’s Club number was displayed on the caller ID.

“Kiley, I’m sorry to bother you, but we need you here at the clubhouse,” Gil Addison said when she answered.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. Now that Beau Hacket’s son had been dealt with over the vandalism and was scheduled to attend a military school in central Texas immediately after the first of the year, she hoped nothing else had happened to the day care center.

“No,” he assured her. “We just need to talk to you about your future employment here at the club.”

Great, on top of everything else, they were going to fire her two days before Christmas. “I’ll be there?” she glanced at the clock “?in about an hour.”

“That will be great,” he said, sounding cheerful. “We’ll see you then.”

When he hung up, she stared at the phone. She had thought Gil was quite happy with the job she was doing. Now it appeared he was happy to be rid of her.

Getting herself and Emmie ready to face the inevitable, she wondered why the TCC had decided to terminate her contract early, instead of waiting until it closed the day care center in the spring. “Your daddy probably had something to do with that,” she said without thinking.

“Daddy?” Emmie asked, clearly confused. She looked around the room as if searching for something.

“No, sweetie,” Kiley said, mentally chiding herself as they left the house and she strapped Emmie into her car seat. Two-year-olds tended to parrot everything they heard and since he hadn’t come around them in the past few days, she had no idea if Josh intended to be a real father to Emmie or not. “Mommy made a mistake.”

Twenty minutes later when she drove into the clubhouse parking lot, she recognized several cars and couldn’t help but wonder why Piper and Ryan were at the club. She thought they were busy making final wedding arrangements. In fact, she thought everyone would be busy with last-minute shopping or traveling to spend the holidays with family.

“We might as well get this over with, Emmie,” she said, lifting her daughter from the car seat to walk up to the front door.

The door opened before she could reach for the handle. “I’m glad you were able to make it on short notice,” Piper said, grinning.

Kiley frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“They’ve called an emergency meeting of the funding committee,” Piper said, hurrying her down the hall to the ballroom. “I’m here to give you moral support.”

Before they entered the room, Kiley set Emmie on her feet to remove their coats. “Ryan isn’t on the committee,” she commented as she straightened. “What’s really going on, Piper?”