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Page 30 of The Tycoon's Secret Child (Texas Cattleman's Club: Blackmail 1)

Lucy gave a nod of approval. “You’re raising her right.”

“As I was. It burned me inside, Mama, and it hurt John. He tries to not let it hurt, but it does. I don’t want our family to ever grow apart and careless like that.”

“We never could, darling.”

“But people get busy. You’re busy, Mama, with your home, your business. Caleb and Waylon are busy, and like you said, they’ll likely start families of their own and get busier yet. John and I, we’re busy raising the kids, with our business. And, Mama, twice a year, it’s not enough.”

She wandered as she spoke while Lucy watched and thought: my clever, restless girl.

“You made an apple stack cake,” Cora murmured.

“Of course I did. It’s John’s favorite.”

“I don’t know why things like an apple stack cake and flowers on the table mean more to me now than they did when I was a girl in this house, or why this house is more special to me now than it was when I was living in it.”

“You were looking ahead, and away, Cora.”

“And you let me. One day, Thea’s going to look away, so I understand what I didn’t, how much it costs to let a child live their own.”

“It costs,” Lucy agreed as she got the bowl and the buttermilk out of the refrigerator. “But it pays off so in pride of what you see that child become. And I’m so proud, Cora, of the life you’ve made, of the person you are. So proud.”

“I didn’t appreciate you enough when I was a child.”

“Oh, stop that.”

“I didn’t,” Cora insisted as she watched, as she had countless times before, her mother make a well in the flour and grated butter before pouring the buttermilk into it.

It made her smile, so she asked what she’d asked countless times before. “Why do you stir it with that wooden spoon fifteen times? Exactly.”

Their eyes met as Lucy smiled back, and answered as she had countless times before. “Because fourteen’s not enough, and sixteen’s too many.”

“I didn’t appreciate, Mama, how hard it was for you, especially after Daddy died. How hard you worked to keep it all going, to keep a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, to push your business on so you could. I didn’t appreciate it enough because you made it look—”

Cora shook her head as she wandered the big kitchen again.

“Not easy, not really easy—but natural. Like loving us was natural, and keeping the music playing, making sure we got our homework done, brushed our damn teeth, all of it, just natural, just life. Saving, like you and Daddy started, so we could go to college, just part of the whole.”

“Your daddy didn’t want his boys in the mines. He went down so they never would. He wanted—we wanted—our children to get a good education and have choices.”

Lucy dusted the counter with flour, turned the dough on it, dusted the top, then rubbed more on her old wooden rolling pin.

“Your choices, the lives you’re making with them, honor your daddy, and his sacrifices.”

“And yours, because you clearly made sacrifices, too. I see that, now. So twice a year isn’t enough, not for family.”

Lucy rolled the dough into a rectangle, then folded the short ends together and rolled once more. With a glance at her daughter, she did the same again.

“You’ve got a plan in there somewhere.”

“We do, John and I. We’d like to come down more. The Easter break at school, and Thanksgiving.”

Once again, Lucy’s hands stilled. “Cora, I’d be thrilled. And oh so grateful.”

“But that’s not all. We know it’s harder for you to travel. You have to have someone tend the animals, but if you could pick just one time to come up, even for a few days, or with Caleb in New York, maybe we could all go up there for a few days, or to Nashville to Waylon. And the kids, they love it here and those two weeks you give them means the world because that’s the start of the summer. We like to take them for a week at the beach before school starts again.”

“They love that week. I get lots of pictures and stories.”

After the last fold and roll, Lucy dipped her round cutter in flour and made her dough rounds.


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