Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Jeff

“Dandelion,” I called from the base of the stairs. “We have to go.”

“Almost ready!” Katy yelled.

That was the fifth time she’d promised she was almost ready in the past thirty minutes. “Sixty seconds.”

“Coming!” Footsteps pounded overhead as she ran from the bathroom to her bedroom.

We were going to be late. I hated being late. But if there was a female in this world I’d wait for, it was Katy.

Abandoning the stairs, I went to the coat rack in the entryway, taking down my black Carhartt and shrugging it on. Then I patted my pockets, making sure I had my gloves and beanie. “Thirty seconds.”

“I’m hurrying, Daddy!” Her voice had that panicked shriek I’d heard every morning this week.

It was probably her hair. Again. Every day this week, she’d come down upset about her hair.

When I’d asked what was wrong, when I’d pressed for specifics, I’d just gotten muttered responses. Maybe it was the style. Maybe the cut. I didn’t have a damn clue. She just hated her hair .

I dragged a hand through my own thick, brown strands, wishing I’d taken the time to learn hair before she’d become a preteen.

There were dads who knew how to braid or make fancy twists or wield a curling iron. If I could turn back the clock to when she was three, when it was just me to tame her wispy dark-blond strands, I wouldn’t have just combed it out and sent her on her way to daycare. I should have learned how to do the braids.

Did twelve-year-old girls wear braids? Even if the answer was yes, we didn’t have time.

“Fifteen sec—”

“I’m ready.” Katy’s boots pounded on the steps as she came flying down the staircase. Tucked under her arm was the diary I’d given her for her birthday. I’d picked it because of the dandelion on the cover, the white puff with seeds flying.

“Coat and gloves.” I took the backpack from her shoulder when she hit the entryway, holding it as she snagged her magenta coat from a hook. “Grab a hat too.”

She stilled, her eyes widening. One arm was in her coat, the other frozen midair. “Do I need a hat?”

“Um…” Damn . This was a trap, wasn’t it? Yes, she needed a hat. It was freezing outside. But if I told her to wear a hat, would she think it was because of her hair? “You don’t need a hat.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I hate my hair.”

“I love your hair.” I reached out and tugged at one of the long, fine strands.

“Hailee called it mousy brown.”

“Okay,” I drawled. “Is that bad?”

“That’s an ugly color.”

“It’s not an ugly color.”

Katy’s hair fell nearly to her waist. It was fine and soft and as straight as wheat stalks, nearly the same shade too.

“You have to say that.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re my dad.”

“It’s not an ugly color.”

“Yes, it is.” She huffed and pulled on her coat, then stuffed her diary into her backpack.

Wasn’t twelve too early for shit like this? The drama with other girls. The self-conscious thoughts about a hair color. “I thought Hailee was your friend.”

“She is.”

“But she called your hair ugly.”

“No, she just said it was mousy brown.”

So where the hell did she derive ugly? We didn’t have time for that question, so I reached for the door, holding it open for her to step outside first. A blast of icy cold swept into the house before I closed the door and shuffled Katy down the sidewalk to my truck parked against the curb.

I’d scraped the Silverado’s windows already and started it ten minutes ago so the cab would warm up. But parking outside was not ideal, especially in these cold months.

“I really need to get the garage cleared out,” I muttered, more to myself than my daughter.

“You say that every day.”

“Do I?” I opened the passenger door for her, waiting until she was inside before I handed over her backpack.

“Yeah, Dad. You do.”

“Want to do it for me?”

She shook her head. “No way.”

“Even for an allowance boost?”

“Have you even seen the garage?”

“Touché.” I groaned and closed her door, rounding the hood for the driver’s side.

The garage was a clusterfuck. My own fault.

I’d spent the past five years remodeling the interior of the house. The detached garage had been my staging area for tools and supplies. There was enough sawdust on the floor to fill a fifty-pound flour sack. There were wood scraps and power tools scattered from wall to wall.

The remodeling was done. Just last month, I’d finished the dining room, replacing the old carpet with the same white oak hardwood flooring I’d put throughout the rest of the house. But I had yet to haul the nasty carpet roll to the dump, so it was shoved against the garage’s overhead door.

By the time I cleaned everything out, spring would be here. Maybe next winter, I wouldn’t have to scrape ice from the truck’s windshield.

“Can I dye my hair?” Katy asked as I pulled away from the curb.

“No.” Hard no. “You’re twelve.”

“Then when can I dye it?”

“When you’re thirty. The same time you can date.”

“Dad.” She gave me a flat look.

I was getting that look a lot these days. It came with this newfound sass. My baby girl, the light of my life, was growing up too fast. “Tell me what you don’t like about your hair. Not what Hailee said. You. What don’t you like?”

She drew in a long breath, her frame slumping as she exhaled. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want to cut it? Get a different style?”

Katy lifted a shoulder. “Not really. I like it long.”

“So it’s just the color you don’t like.”

“I guess.”

I reached across the cab to put my hand on her shoulder. “You’re too young to dye your hair, Dandelion. Your hair is beautiful. I love how it flies behind you whenever you run. I love how it shines like strands of gold when the sun hits it just right. And I hope you can put Hailee’s comment aside and realize just how beautiful you are. Mousy isn’t an ugly color, baby. It’s just a color.”

Her chin fell, nearly to her chest, as she stared at her lap. “What does homely mean?”

Homely? “What the fuck?”

Katy gasped, her face whipping to mine. “Don’t cuss.”

“Sorry.” That would be a dollar in the cuss jar tonight. “Where did you hear homely?”

“Hailee.”

Time to reevaluate our friendship with Hailee. “Did she call you homely?”

“Not me. She said it about Samantha.”

Yep, Hailee needed to go. Of Katy’s friends, Samantha was the one I actually liked best. “Samantha is not homely.”

The girl just had a long, skinny face and a prominent nose sprinkled with freckles. But she was cute. Not nearly as pretty as Katy, but certainly not homely.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s not nice,” I told her. Fucking Hailee. A twelve-year-old mean girl. Was this what Katy had to look forward to for the rest of middle school? “We’re done listening to Hailee.”

“But—”

“Done, Katy.” I shook my head. “Your hair is beautiful. It’s dark blond. And Samantha is a nice and lovely girl, okay?”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“Hey.” I tugged on her ear.

“What?”

“Who loves you the most?”

“You,” she whispered.

“Trust me?”

Katy nodded.

“Today, spend less time with Hailee. See how you feel at the end of the day.” I had a hunch she’d be in a happy mood when I came to pick her up this afternoon. And my girl was smart. She’d put it together. “Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

She glanced over, giving me a tiny smile. “Can you do something for me?”

“Depends. What is it?”

“Guess.”

“Hmm.” I turned down the road that would lead us to the school. “Ice cream for dinner?”

“Nope.”

“Good. It’s too cold for that.” We’d had snow on the ground in Bozeman for months and it showed no signs of melting anytime soon. This was the coldest winter in Montana I could remember.

The indigo mountains in the distance stood proud and beautiful, their caps dusted in white. The local skiers were overjoyed that we’d been getting daily fresh powder. But I was ready for some sunshine and green grass.

“Next guess?” Katy asked.

“The dog.”

Katy had been begging for a puppy for months, ever since Hailee—the new bane of my existence—had gotten a golden retriever for Christmas.

It wasn’t that I was entirely opposed to the idea of a dog, but spring and summer were my busiest times of year. My life was about to go from hectic to chaotic. I didn’t need a puppy keeping me up all night. I didn’t need another ball to juggle when I already had ten in the air.

“Just think about it.” She clasped her hands beneath her chin. “Pretty please?”

“I’ll think about it.”

That seemed to be enough to pacify Katy. She relaxed in her seat, eyes aimed on the road as we drove to school.

I managed to make up a couple minutes, but that was where my luck stopped. A block from school, we hit the drop-off line, twice as long as normal. “Shit.”

“Don’t cuss,” Katy scolded.

“Shoot.”

She rolled her eyes. “With all the money you put in the cuss jar, I can just buy my own puppy.”

Hell, she could buy two puppies.

“We’re going to be late, huh?” she asked.

“We’re cutting it close today.”

But the line moved quicker than I’d expected, and as the SUV ahead of us pulled away from the curb, I stopped and leaned across the cab to kiss Katy’s cheek. “Have a good day. See you after school.”

“Bye, Daddy.” She hopped out, slinging her backpack over her shoulders, then waved before racing off to join a group of girls standing beside the flagpole.

Hailee was in the mix. I shot her a glare, then headed across town for work.

Alcott Landscaping was located on the outskirts of Bozeman, past the expensive neighborhoods where the homes were four or five times larger than my simple three-bedroom cottage. Turning off the paved highway, I rolled down the gravel lane toward headquarters.

My boss, Hans Barton, had owned Alcott for the past ten years. When he’d decided to relocate our shop and headquarters to this acreage for more equipment and supply storage space, he’d asked me to make this property a showcase.

Bordered by a wooden, split-rail fence, the driveway veered past open fields currently buried beneath snow. But in the spring, they’d be a lush green and teeming with wildflowers.

The office building was simple with brown and gray barnwood siding. Its plethora of windows offered clients and staff a view of the surrounding gardens and pathways. The showcase. From fountains to native grasses to flower beds packed with colorful blooms in the spring and summer, it had taken me years to finish.

When I’d been hired on at Alcott Landscaping all those years ago, I hadn’t planned on it becoming my career. All I’d cared about was a decent paycheck to fund my court battle with Rosalie.

The owner at the time had been Finn Alcott. He’d hired me for hard labor, and damn, I had worked hard. This job had become my escape. Any chance to make an extra dollar, I’d raised my hand.

Still, even working my ass off, it had been almost impossible to keep up on bills plus pay my smarmy lawyer. But Finn hadn’t just been my boss. He’d tossed me a life raft when I’d been drowning. When he’d learned of my custody battle with Rosalie, he’d given me the name of his own attorney, a man who’d agreed to represent me pro bono.

Thanks to them both, I hadn’t lost my daughter.

Not long after my divorce, Finn had sold Alcott Landscaping to Hans. And while I hadn’t seen Finn in years, he’d always have a special place in my heart. The same was true for Hans.

In the past ten years, I’d come to admire and respect Hans. He’d once had a landscaping company in California but had sold it to retire in Montana. Anyone who knew Hans knew why his retirement hadn’t lasted. The man couldn’t sit still. So he’d approached Finn and bought Alcott.

Hans had kept the company name—smart, because of its reputation. And he’d retained the employees who’d wanted to stay, including me.

When I’d outgrown laying sod and plowing snow, the foreman had given me other jobs, like irrigation and operating the larger equipment. After two seasons, I’d decided it was time to get some education.

The weeks when Katy had been with Rosalie, I’d filled my time with studying. And after a few years, I’d earned my degree in environmental horticulture with a landscape design emphasis from Montana State.

From lawn mower to Alcott’s head designer and general manager, I rolled into the office some days and still couldn’t believe the titles on my business card.

The parking lot was half full this morning, mostly office staff. The outdoor crew was light at the moment and would be until spring. There were a couple of trucks outside the massive steel shop building this morning, each fitted with a plow blade on front. We’d beefed up the winter employees in the past few years to offer snow removal to more clients around town, but still, it was quiet.

That quiet would be short-lived. In two months, once the May projects started, the yard would be chaos from sunrise to sunset.

Parking in my usual space, I headed inside. The scent of donuts and coffee greeted me as I pushed through the door.

“Morning,” I called.

Korbyn, my assistant, poked his head out of the break room, his cheeks bulging and his hand clasped around a maple bar.

“Save one for me,” I said.

He grinned, still chewing, and saluted me with the donut as I headed down the hallway for my office.

At six three, Korbyn and I were the same height, but I had at least fifty pounds of muscle to fill out my frame. Hans called him String Bean—not to Korbyn’s face. Hans didn’t spend much time in the office these days and had struggled to remember the newer employees. That, and he was horrible with names—it had taken him nearly three years to call me Jeff instead of Big Guy. Rather than try to remember the constantly changing faces, he mostly avoided the crews these days.

Not that he needed to interact with them much. Not when I was running Alcott.

“Morning, Jeff,” Rachel said as I passed her office.

“Good morning.” I dipped my chin, then ducked into my office across the hall from hers.

She gave me enough time to hang up my coat and shake the mouse on my computer before she swept through my door, her arms overloaded with papers and an iPad. “I need help.”

“You got it. Just let me grab a cup of—”

Korbyn strode in carrying a steaming mug and a maple bar on a plate.

“Coffee,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You got it, Jeff. Anything else?”

I picked up the cup, blowing on the black liquid before taking a careful sip. “No, thanks.”

Korbyn winked at Rachel, the two clearly having planned this ambush for the moment I got here. Smart. If you didn’t catch me in the morning, chances were, I’d get busy and the day would run away from me.

“Ready?” Rachel asked.

“Am I?”

She adjusted her thick-framed, tortoise-shell glasses. “Every single one of my bids is falling apart.”

“They were fine yesterday.”

“A lot has changed since yesterday.”

I took another sip of coffee, then leaned my forearms on the desk. “All right. Then let’s put them back together.”

Two hours later, she returned to her own office, projects back on track. And I opened my inbox to a slew of new emails. When I finally looked away from the monitor’s screen, my stomach was growling.

“Lunch.” I scanned the office, then groaned. I’d been so worried about getting Katy out the door, I’d forgotten my lunch in the fridge at home. So I picked up my phone, about to order a sandwich when it vibrated in my hand, the school’s name flashing on the screen.

“Hello,” I answered, standing from my chair and ready to grab my coat if Katy was sick.

“Mr. Dawson?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, this is Della Adler. Katy’s English teacher.”

Miss Adler. Katy’s favorite. “Hi. Is everything okay?”

“Well, not exactly. Normally, I’d hand disciplinary matters over to Vice Principal Jones, but in Katy’s case, since this is the first time we’ve had an incident, I wanted to talk with you about it directly.”

“Hold up.” I plucked my coat from its hook. “Did you say disciplinary matters?”

“Um. Yes. Would you be able to come to the school? I’ve got Katy in my classroom for lunch.”

“On my way.” I ended the call and strode from my office. “Korbyn, I’ve got to take off. Would you clear my calendar this afternoon?”

“On it,” he said as I breezed past his desk in the lobby and pushed out into the cold.

Disciplinary incident? What the hell was going on? Katy had never, ever gotten in trouble with a teacher. Not once. This had to be a misunderstanding, right? Or maybe another kid had caused some trouble and tried to blame it on Katy?

I tore across town to the middle school, parking in the guest lot. Children laughed at recess as I hustled inside, checking in at the office and getting directions to Miss Adler’s classroom.

My footsteps were too loud in the hallway, echoing off the lockers, but the bell rang, drowning them out. Doors opened and kids flooded from classrooms, some carrying lunch bags and all with coats. The noise was intense as they headed in the opposite direction, probably for the cafeteria.

I waded through the sea of little faces, making my way to a classroom with its door propped open. My only visits inside the middle school had been to the gymnasium for an awards assembly and a Christmas choir concert.

Rosalie had insisted on attending the parent-teacher night at the beginning of the school year and subsequent conferences, so I hadn’t met any of Katy’s teachers. Maybe that had been a mistake.

Was this about Hailee? If that little shit had done something to get Katy in trouble…

My hands balled into fists as I strode into the classroom.

The woman seated behind the desk made my steps falter.

Damn . That was Katy’s teacher?

Her dark hair was pinned into a messy updo. She wore a pair of baggy tan overalls with a fitted white shirt beneath and a plaid scarf around her throat. A stack of rainbow beaded bracelets decorated her left wrist.

Katy was always talking about Miss Adler’s clothes. How she dressed like a cool kid, not a stuffy teacher. In my head, I’d pictured an older woman, not a woman in her late twenties.

And I certainly hadn’t pictured a woman so, well… damn . She was beautiful.

She turned toward the door, her caramel eyes taking me in as she stood and extended a hand. “Mr. Dawson.”

“Jeff,” I corrected, taking her delicate hand in mine. “Nice to meet you, Miss Adler.”

“Likewise. And it’s Della.” She shook my hand, then gestured toward the desks.

Where my beautiful daughter was seated in the front row. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Dandelion.” I crossed the room, propping on the edge of the desk beside hers. “What’s going on?”

Katy’s gaze flicked to Miss Adler.

Mine followed.

She’d returned to her chair, her arms crossed. Her posture screamed disapproval, but her expression was gentle as she looked at my daughter. “This is the third day in a row where Katy has caused a disruption in my classroom.”

“Katy.” I pointed to her head, looking between the two of them. “This Katy?”

Della nodded.

The Katy in question pulled her lips in, like she was fighting a smile. Wait. Did she think this was funny?

“What kind of disruption?” I asked.

“She has been cursing in class.”

“Cursing?” No way. Not my kid.

“She’s used a few colorful words, mostly under her breath,” Della said. “But loud enough that other students have overheard and either snickered or brought it to my attention. Today’s was the f word.”

The f word. My daughter had said the f word? I blinked, then turned to Katy.

Guilt was etched on her face, but she still looked like she was about to laugh.

“What the fuck?”