She’d never cared for horses. She didn’t love the wilderness and cowboys didn’t impress her. She told them to take as long as they wanted to rope a bull. They could just keep that up while she called PETA. She expected much amusement from that meeting and giggled just imagining it.

There was something about this one, though, that made her restless. He was hopeless at fatherhood; braids were beyond him, patience was not one of his virtues, and he had a mad right hook -- he had never quite lost that youthful anger. He was a walking, waiting disaster. He fascinated her the way a moth caught in a web might. She knew something bad was coming and she was helpless to put a stop to it.

She nearly didn’t help him in the end, falling back on ‘You live and learn or you live and regret.’ It was a lesson she’d learned through many years of her own in the system. It had taken him almost too long to realize what he had to lose, what she had seen from their first meeting. She told herself that the girls had suffered enough and that it was his earnest love for them that wore her down. She would never have left them in the care of someone who didn’t care at all. He was in their best interest. His smile seemed to be in hers.

When he invited her to dinner, she only accepted because he’d asked nicely and she was no one to ruin his victorious mood.

Anyway, she wasn’t impressed by cowboys, though family men made her look twice.