Camilla
Chapter Nine
Victoria had just sat down at the table with Jarrod when they heard the door open and slam shut. "Sounds like Nick…" Jarrod started to say, only to find his jaw fall to the floor, as Heath walked in with one very dirty Camilla in one arm and a rope wrapped around his upper arms.
"What on earth is going on, Heath?" Victoria grinned, as she asked the question; she was doing her best not to laugh at the sight before her eyes. Jarrod was fighting laughter too.
"Camilla. Someone has to tell Nick that teaching her to rope is okay, as long as it's not her uncle!" Heath answered as he unwound himself from the rope.
"There was no need to slam the door just because she did that." Jarrod lost the battle and started laughing.
"That wasn't me!" Heath handed Camilla over to Laura, who had just returned from visiting her relatives and entered the house moments after he and Camilla had. "She," he said as he pointed to his niece as Laura took her out of the dining room to go clean her up, "Grabbed the door before I could and slammed it shut."
Victoria lifted her hand to her forehead and shook her head slightly. "When I said Nick needed a child just like him, I didn't know he'd be a widower and living here when it happened!" Both Jarrod and Heath smiled, but wisely kept their mouths shut on that subject. No, they simply changed the topic to something else.
While Victoria, Jarrod and Heath talked, Nick was just arriving back on the ranch; he'd traveled to Lodi on some necessary business. After unsaddling Coco and making sure the horse was comfortable in the stall, Nick headed for the house. As he drew near, Nick heard voices coming from one of the bedroom windows. He couldn't help but laugh as he heard Camilla yelling, "My spurs! They're mine!" His grin only grew wider when he heard a ranch hand who didn't realize just how good Nick's hearing was say to another man who had just been hired to work for the Barkleys, "They say she looks like her late mother, but let me tell you…she acts just like her father!" Nick saved the man the embarrassment of realizing he'd been overheard and headed into the house.
"DADDY!" Camilla, who had been put in a clean dress by her nanny, flew down the stairs and up into her father's open arms. "You're home!" The child, whose speech had improved drastically over the course of the past year, began looking through her father's shirt pocket. "Where is it?" That brought another smile to Nick's face. He knew what she was looking for, as all she'd talked about before he left, was her upcoming birthday.
"Yeah, I'm home little cowgirl, but don't look for your present yet. You still have another month." He set the disappointed child down and started for the washroom. However, he stopped in his tracks and burst out laughing after his daughter very bluntly asked why Nanny Laura had put her in a dress then and added the fact that her pants were just fine. Four year olds weren't supposed to act like this, were they?
"I see you're home." Victoria walked out of the dining room and gave Nick a hug.
"I could have stayed longer, but with Jarrod's wedding coming up I figured I'd best hightail it back home. Besides," he answered as he felt Camilla wrapped her legs and arms around his right leg, "I promised someone else I wouldn't be late." He looked down and winked at his daughter; she simply giggled and begged for a ride. He left his mother, and brothers, who had come out of the dining room, and walked the best he could down to the wash room. That wasn't so easy considering Camilla liked to bounce up and down hollering 'yee haw' most of the way.
While Nick washed up, Camilla was talking a mile a minute. She was more than eager to let her father know that Jarrod's intended, one Mary Vance, had been around the house more and more. She also told him that "Grandma and Miss Mary"were spending too much time together. That part had Nick fighting to keep a straight face. He was pretty sure his young daughter was just a tad bit jealous of the attention Jarrod's upcoming wedding was getting. Maybe it was a good thing Gene had eloped and was now living in New York. At least, it was one less chore to deal with. However, he stiffened and closed his eyes, as his daughter asked the one question he had known would be coming for years, he'd just hoped it would have been a bit longer in coming.
"Where's my mama? Ain't I got one?" Camilla did her best to look up at her father's face, he seemed ten feet tall to the young girl. Nick set the washcloth he'd been drying his hands with down on the sink, leaned over and picked his young daughter up.
"You mean to say; haven't I got one…" the moment the words were out of Nick's mouth he went into shock. Since when did he correct anyone's speech? He walked over to a nearby chair and sat down, setting his daughter on his left leg.
Nick looked at Camilla's hair; it had been black the day she'd arrived at the ranch and it remained black. Her face looked as if someone had shrunk her mother's and then given it to the child. He sighed and told her the simple basics; he didn't think she needed the whole story at her young age. "You're mother's in heaven."
Camilla's eyes clouded up for a moment then she asked, "Why? I need a mama."
Again, Nick wondered if his daughter was really only four years old. "Someday you might have one again, until then you have me and your grandma, along with your Uncles and Aunts."
Camilla didn't know exactly what someday meant, but she didn't ask. She slid off her father's lap, stopped asking about mothers, and ran out of the washroom and up to her bedroom. Nick wouldn't know until later that once she'd heard it wasn't her birthday yet, Camilla had gone to find her pants and spurs. Even at her age, she knew how she preferred to dress. It would be a battle that, in time, she would win; everyone said it was because she also inherited the Barkley stubbornness.
