Hero for the Holidays, page 1
Hero for the Holidays
Maisey Yates
To all the readers who have been patiently waiting for this story—Fia and Landry’s happy ending is your present from me this year.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
LANDRY KING DIDN’T believe in love at first sight. Hell, for years he hadn’t believed in love at all. But when he looked down at the girl sitting in the blue plastic chair, picking black fingernail polish off her thumbnail, swinging her black boot-clad feet back and forth in rhythm, and determinedly not looking up at him, he felt his world shift.
And he understood.
Broken hearts, audacious hope and the concept of being turned inside out by a feeling.
“Lila?” He’d said her name quite a lot over the past few weeks. Getting used to it. Praying it. It still felt new now.
Their surroundings were entirely bland. Government offices tended to be. He couldn’t quite believe this was happening, and it seemed like far too commonplace of a setting for this moment to be taking place. But he supposed this was commonplace enough.
Kids getting shuffled through a system. Moving through different homes.
It was the details of this particular situation that made it extraordinary.
It was the fact that, for the first time, he was looking at his daughter.
That made it extraordinary.
“I’m Landry King,” he said when she didn’t say anything.
She looked up at him. And the fiery expression on her face stopped him cold.
She was the most miraculous, incredible thing he’d ever seen.
“I know who you are. All the information was in that packet.”
“Well, I hope you like what you saw.”
“I don’t know about that. It looks like you live in the ass crack of nowhere.”
“That is true,” he said, thinking of Four Corners Ranch. “It is basically that.”
“I’m not going call you dad. I had a dad.”
He felt like he’d been stabbed through the heart, clean. It wasn’t the first time, though. So there was that.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Though, the truth is, biologically I am your dad.” He’d even done a test to make absolutely sure they’d found the right kid. Because it hadn’t seemed real. It hadn’t seemed possible.
“Yeah. But I had a dad who chose me. He didn’t give me away. And didn’t choose to die.”
“I know that,” said Landry, his voice rough. “For what it’s worth, I know this doesn’t take away from who your dad was to you. Or that your parents chose you, and loved you. That they were your mom and dad. But, I didn’t choose to give you up.”
She frowned. “You didn’t?”
“No. It was out of my hands.” He shoved aside his anger. He shoved aside the painful memories. Lila didn’t need to have his stuff projected onto her. She’d been through enough.
He’d done his swearing and yelling these past few weeks. The past had been an open wound for a long time. And this had made it bleed. But this little girl had been through enough and she didn’t need a father mired in his own pain, his own anger.
She needed someone to take care of her.
She needed someone to love her.
And thank God they’d found him.
He’d sent his information over to the adoption agency several years ago, when he’d finally tracked the agency down. He’d had his information placed in the file so that someday, if his daughter ever wanted to contact him, she could. It was a closed adoption, and that meant that he was just going to have to wait for the day she reached out. If it ever came.
But some kids liked that information. They wanted to have the option. And so he made sure that it would be available to her.
What he hadn’t expected was the phone call he’d gotten six weeks earlier.
That Lila’s parents had been killed in a car accident eleven months ago. That she’d been in care ever since, because there was no family on either side. And that eventually someone had discovered that she had been adopted at birth, and had thought to look through information with the agency. That was where they’d found his name, along with his stated desire to be put in contact with his child if she ever wanted to find him.
It was irregular, they’d said. A miracle.
But if he could pass a home inspection, and a background check and other things required for fostering to adopt, he was first in line.
He hadn’t hesitated.
It had been like the sun had come out from behind the clouds for the first time in almost fourteen years. It had been like a sea change. It really had been a miracle.
A damned miracle wrapped in a shitty tragedy. Right then, he questioned himself a little bit. Because he wasn’t just taking on a kid, he was taking on a traumatized one.
But she was his. She was his. And now she was finally with him.
And he knew what love at first sight was.
There were a lot of other things he didn’t know. Like how to have a functional family, how to be a decent dad. His own dad was a narcissist straight from the depths of hell, his brothers were cagey assholes and he wasn’t any better. His sister... Well, thank God Arizona had a fifteen-year-old stepson, so probably had a little bit of wisdom on what to do when you ended up with a kid who was already a teenager. His brother-in-law, Micah, certainly knew a thing or two about being a good dad.
The King family was notoriously isolated in the context of the Four Corners Ranch family. The McClouds and the Garretts had always been thick as thieves, made closer still by marriage. And then, Alaina Sullivan had gone and married Gus McCloud and created an alliance there too.
The Kings didn’t have bridges, they had barricades.
“Did you like the pictures of the bedroom? I know it’s not decorated. It’s plain. Because I wanted to take you out shopping for whatever you wanted. I figured we’d do it while we were here. Because there are more places to shop in Portland than there are back in Pyrite Falls. I’m not going to lie to you, kid. There’s pretty much no shopping over there.”
“You’re really selling it.”
“I get it. It’s not like you were given a choice. I know what that’s like. Being a kid, the adults around you making all these decisions on your behalf.”
“Let me stay here, then.” She looked up at him, angling her head. “They think they’re going to find me a family. But they’re not. Jack and Melissa Gates were my parents. You’re just some guy. I don’t need another family. I had one.”
“Here’s the deal,” he said, fighting against a host of emotions he didn’t quite know how to sort through. He wasn’t idiot enough to think that a thirteen-year-old was going to fall to her knees and thank him for showing up to adopt her. He knew too much about thirteen-year-olds. He remembered being one too keenly. But hell, maybe part of him thought that she would see it for what it was. A damned miracle that her biological father at least was able to reunite with her when she needed him.
Hell, it wasn’t even a reunion. This was his first time ever laying eyes on her.
He felt the connection. Like his heart had been ripped right through the front of his chest and was now...sitting right in front of him in a blue plastic chair. She didn’t feel anything. And that hurt a little more than he thought it would.
“Okay. You never have to think of me as family, then. But the thing is, I think of you as mine. I’ve been wanting to find you,” he said. “I didn’t want to disrupt your life, but the truth is, the way that they got in touch with me was that I contacted the adoption agency to give them my info. So that someday if you wanted to you could look me up.”
She tilted her chin up, looking stubborn as hell. “I never would have.”
“Good. I guess I’m glad of that. Because that means at least that you’ve been happy all this time.” He sighed and took his cowboy hat off. “This is where you were going to be raised. If I’d had my way. Four Corners Ranch. It’s a good place. Full of good people.”
“Like you said. I don’t really have a choice. They keep moving me around. From house to house. I can run away. I could live on the street. But what good would that do? I’m not really looking to go down the meth track. I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t have anyone in this world who loves me.”
I do.
He wanted to say it. But he had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to believe it now.
“You have someone who wants to take care of you. Very, very badly. And I’ll buy you whatever you want for your room. It’s your room. You can do whatever the he
He’d refreshed a cabin on the property to be ready for them to move in. In six weeks, he had done a hell of a job. There was still more work to be done, but he knew he could no longer live in the main house. The rub was, he hadn’t really explained what was going on to his family. In fact, he’d just kind of done it. There would be some explaining to do when he got back. This was a chapter of his life that he never talked to anybody about.
Hell, only one other person on the planet knew about Lila.
“You’re trying to bribe me with stuff? Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t really have anything else.”
“It’s better than nothing I guess.”
He really felt for the kid. She had nothing but a host of bad options, from her perspective. She could keep getting bounced around foster homes for the next five years. She could run away, like she’d said. He wasn’t Jack and Melissa. He wasn’t going to be.
But he wasn’t the system either.
“On the ranch you’re going to have tons of room to run around. I’ve got horses and—”
“Horses?”
“Yeah.” He thought he might’ve found a little bit of an in there. “Lots of horses. You can have one. Just for you.”
“Do you have Wi-Fi?”
“Hell yeah. We aren’t animals.” He figured he should probably watch his language a little bit around a kid. “Sorry.”
“So what happens after this?”
“Well, they tell me they’re going to send a caseworker out to check on you in two weeks. I’ve already passed all kinds of checks. I’m approved like any of the foster families you stayed with before. My house is approved. And if you hate it, you can tell them that. And maybe they’ll take you away. But I hope you won’t.”
“I guess I just don’t understand what you’re doing.” She frowned. “Why you showed up. Why you... You’re really young.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lila, I was seventeen when you were born.”
She looked shocked by that. “You were?”
“Yeah. We were too young. Okay? It wasn’t... It wasn’t that I didn’t want you. It was never that. The choice got taken away from me. But... I’m your father. And it doesn’t matter whether you think of me that way or not, I think of you as my daughter. I have this whole time. So whether or not you ever feel it, I do. I do.”
Her social worker had given them some space to meet alone, but right after that, the woman, Angela Carter, came into the room. “What do you think, Lila?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Not entirely. But Mr. King passes muster for me, if that helps. If he didn’t, you wouldn’t be leaving this office.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Because wherever I go my parents are dead.”
“That’s true,” said Landry. “But you know, I have brothers. And a sister. So you will have uncles and an aunt. And a cousin.”
“A cousin?” she asked.
“Yeah. My sister, Arizona, has a stepson. He’s just a little older than you. And she’s expecting a baby, actually. So more cousins.”
And he’d found it. He knew. Something that got underneath that armor she was wearing. Family. She might not be able to see him as her dad. But he had more family than just himself. He had quite a lot of family, in fact.
“I didn’t have any uncles or aunts.”
He’d known that. Because no one who was part of her adoptive family had taken her, so he’d assumed there was an estrangement, or no one. In that sense, he was offering her something totally new. Horses and aunts and uncles.
“I got a vacation rental in the city tonight,” he said. “You’ll have your own room. I figure we can go shopping for some stuff and get some dinner. And then we’ll head back to Four Corners.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even nod. But Angela Carter handed him a case file. “We’ll see you in two weeks, Mr. King. I hope everything goes well. She’s a good kid.”
“I already know that.”
They went from there to the mall, where he had a feeling that he’d had been soundly taken advantage of. Because he bought that little girl every single thing she asked for.
He hadn’t known what to expect, but apparently stuffed animals that looked like their skeletons were showing were big with the teenage girl set.
He bought countless bottles of nail polish shaped like skulls, a bed set that was black with mushrooms and frogs. He learned what boba tea was, and they both had some with cotton candy on the top. He was deeply suspicious of the entire thing.
They amassed shopping bag after shopping bag. A giant fuzzy beanbag that looked like someone had skinned a Muppet and repurposed it, string lights, and the pièce de résistance was that he had been roped into buying the kid a gecko, which included a terrarium, heat lights, a spray bottle for moisture, and crickets. A box full of crickets.
So when he drove back to Four Corners the next day, he had about twenty bags full of merchandise in the back of his truck, and had a lizard in the back seat. And a kid in the front.
Well, one thing was for certain. His family was sure as hell going to be surprised.
He and Lila took the drive in relative silence. He let her have the aux cable and choose the music, which made her less full of hate and gave him a headache, but he felt like he was trying at least.
It wasn’t the nice getting-to-know-you ride he’d wanted. But he wasn’t sure if he knew how to get to know another person. It was a hell of a bad time to realize that.
But thankfully, they made it back quickly enough, and when they turned onto the long dirt road that would take them to King’s Crest, the King family ranch, Lila straightened a little, looked out the window.
“This is it,” he said.
The King house was full as usual.
Landry could fully admit that they were an unconventional family. He’d heard of something once called a trauma bond, and he thought that maybe they might all have it. Their mom had left when they were young—because their father had been difficult at best, and a gaslighting narcissist on days ending in y.
He had been cold and distant. And cruel. Unless he was love-bombing them and making them question their sanity. Good times.
When his sister, Arizona, had gotten in a terrible car accident, their dad had blamed her. He’d shamed her. Made her feel worthless. He’d seen her pain as weakness, and he’d exploited it.
But the thing about their dad was that he had four sons. And there was a point where Denver had had enough.
His oldest brother was a mean son of a bitch when he had to be. But he was straight up. He didn’t go in for any of the manipulation tactics of the senior King, and Landry had always strived to emulate Denver.
He felt like Daughtry and Justice did the same. They worked the land together. Hell, until recently they’d all still shared a house. But Landry would be moving into his own place now.
Even with all that, he didn’t feel like they were especially close. They worked alongside each other; they were that kind of close. They had common goals. But they didn’t share things about their lives.
But Denver always seemed to be trying to outrun their father’s legacy. And when it came to doing good, his brother did his best.
He had a hard time softening. A hard time showing any kind of caring, but the doing was there.
Justice seemed connected largely to his friend Rue, who put up with him in spite of the fact that he was... Well. One of them.
And Daughtry was impenetrable. He kept his cards close to his vest, and always seemed prepared to burn the whole hand if anyone got too close. And again, Landry knew he wasn’t any better. He was the one showing up to dinner with a secret kid.
Nothing like family secrets.
But then, they all had their secrets, he supposed. Denver had done his part to bring the family together, and they all got along great. The way they’d been raised had made it hard for them to talk to each other. To talk to anyone, really.
Their dad had liked to foster rivalry between the boys to make them tougher. Which mainly meant telling Denver and Daughtry they were his right-hand men, while making Landry and Justice feel like they didn’t measure up.
