Mistletoe Daddy Read online

  “Now if I could just find a way to persuade Wyatt to come on staff,” Tanner murmured before he held out his plate for seconds.

  Sophie dished up another piece of pie then turned to Ellie. “Maybe you could talk to Wyatt for us, tell him how much we’d love to have him working here on the ranch.”

  “Me?” Ellie shook her head. “I barely know the man.”

  “That’s easily rectified,” Sophie pointed out.

  “Don’t go there, Sophie,” Ellie warned. “I’m glad you and Tanner found each other and that you’re happy together. But I learned the hard way that romance isn’t for me.”

  “But—” Sophie stopped when Ellie shook her head.

  “I made a bad mistake when I let myself fall in love with Eddie. If I’d known him as well as I thought, I’d have known he’d change after he inherited that money, that he wouldn’t want to be saddled with being a father to Gracie.” A wiggle of pain still festered inside. “But I didn’t really know him because I was too busy thinking that my silly dream of a big, happy family was finally coming true.”

  “Nothing silly about that dream, girlie,” Moses piped up. “God gave us families.”

  “I know. And I have Gracie. That’s enough.” She saw Sophie was about to speak and shook her head. “Listen, when I got involved with Eddie I took my focus off parenting Gracie, and she almost paid for it. We were only a few weeks away from getting married when he suggested I put her in boarding school.” The memory still made her flinch. “I don’t need to repeat my mistakes. God’s given me the job of raising my daughter and I’ll focus on that. I guess I’m like Wyatt in that way. My child comes first.”

  Later, as Ellie drove home with Gracie sleeping in the backseat, her brain revived a mental image of Wyatt Wright. He was good-looking, interesting and seemed to be a great parent, but he wasn’t for her.

  Gracie was just going to have to ask God for something else, because Ellie had no intention of including Wyatt, or his very cute son, in their lives. Her broken engagement had proven that being a single mom had to be her number-one priority. Maybe someday, when Gracie was grown up and on her own, maybe then Ellie could consider a relationship.

  Maybe.

  But not now.

  Copyright © 2016 by Lois M. Richer

  ISBN-13: 9781488007637

  Mistletoe Daddy

  Copyright © 2016 by Debra Kastner

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