The Rancher's Dance Read Online Free PDF

damn riding mower all over creation.
    He touched the corner of one of the large pages. “Can I see?”
    â€œI guess.” Shelby’s voice was only a shade above a whisper. But at least this wasn’t a habit she reserved only for him. Last year, her kindergarten teacher had repeatedly told him that she was trying to get Shelby to speak up in class.
    â€œIs that you?” He pointed at the stick figure in the center of the page that sported a shock of brown hair and a pink dress that was about ten times too wide for the body. There was a house behind her and an enormous sun taking up an upper corner of the page.
    â€œUh-huh.” Showing a little more animation, Shelby rested her elbows on the table, leaning forward.
    He got a whiff of baby shampoo and sweet little girl that made him hurt inside.
    â€œWe hadda draw what we wanna be when we’re growed up,” she confided. “Annie Pope only drew one picture, but I hadda draw three.”
    Annie was Shelby’s friend from kindergarten. And it was Annie’s mom who’d suggested that Shelby might enjoy going to the daily afternoon camp.
    â€œWhy three?”
    â€œâ€™Cause I don’t know what I wanna be yet.”
    â€œWell,” he considered that seriously, “that sounds fair to me.” He’d look at a hundred pictures a day if it kept his daughter talking to him. “So what are you in this picture?”
    She gave him a strange look, as if he ought to be able to decipher it for himself. “A mommy.” She jabbed her finger against the page. “I’m holding a baby. Can’t you see?”
    â€œOh. Right.” His daughter didn’t know how her words sent a pain through him. She’d been barely three when Harmony had died. “I see that now.”
    She pushed the paper aside, fussing with the other sheets of paper until they were just so. “Annie drew a horse,” she said under her breath. “She can’t grow up to be a horse.” She giggled.
    Beck smiled. His fingers grazed the ends of her hair where it lay in an untidy sheet down her back. It was still as soft as silk. He glanced from her face to the pages onthe table. “And this one?” He nudged one of the pages, sporting another stick figure with the same brown hair, this time accompanied by a dozen smaller stick figures.
    Again, he earned another “duh” sort of look that he figured he’d be receiving plenty of the older she got. “A teacher.”
    Meaning the mini-sticks were her students. “Okay.” He angled his head to get a better view of the last page.
    And for some reason, he knew straight off what that drawing was.
    Maybe it was the jagged-edged crown that sat atop the brown hair. Or maybe it was the stick arms that were thrown up above the crown. Or maybe it was because the thing Shelby liked pretending to be most was a ballerina.
    â€œA ballerina,” he murmured.
    â€œMmm-hmm.” Shelby leaned completely forward until her chin was resting on her hands atop the table, with her nose only an inch from the drawing. “That’s the best one. Grandpa says we’ll hang ’em on the ’frigerator so Nick can see ’em when he comes home.”
    â€œSounds like a plan.” Beck tousled her hair. He wondered what Shelby would think if she knew that a real ballerina was hobbling around right next door. Not that he intended to make a point of telling her. Shelby would just end up fascinated, and the dancer would just end up leaving to go back to her normal life. The last thing his daughter needed was anyone else leaving her. “Grandpa will have supper ready soon. Go wash up your hands.”
    â€œOkay.” She was back to a whisper and he stifled a sigh as she obediently slipped off her telephone books and chair, grabbed Gertrude, the hand-stitched rabbit that her mother had made before Shelby’s birth, and hurried out of the room.
    He