“I was trying to install a new air conditioner. Had my back to the door . . . ,” he said. He bent down and started picking up the broken pieces. Holly squatted down to help.
“It was totally my fault,” Holly said. “I’m really sorry, Mr. . . .”
“Rob Lee,” he said, eyes on the floor. “Rob Lee Benton. You’re at the right address. My sister, Cady, asked me to come help you get settled in.”
Rachel, who was still standing near the door, crossed her arms over her chest. “We’ve been waiting for half an hour. Where is the furniture? My daughter was promised that this place would come completely furnished.”
“Furniture’s in my truck,” he said, tilting his head toward the window. “The last tenant pretty well ruined everything, so I brought some better stuff in from the ranch. Sorry I’m late, ma’am. I lost track of the time.”
Rachel looked him over from hat to heel.
“Boy, you’re right out of central casting, aren’t you? Cowboy hat, boots, faded jeans, and a big ol’ belt buckle. And now you’re ‘ma’aming’ me?” She shook her head. “Does everybody around here have two names? Jim-Bob? Billy-Joe? Rob Lee?”
“Mom!” Holly hissed.
Rob Lee stood up and faced Rachel, hooking a thumb over his belt.
“Some do. My daddy’s name was Jack Benny. My momma’s name was Lydia Dale. She raised me to be polite to every lady I meet.” He stared at her for a long moment, looking her over, hat to heel. “Whether they deserve the title or not.”
Rachel narrowed her eyes and glared at him with an expression that Holly knew well, the “cobra preparing to strike” face. But before she could speak, he turned his back on her and went back to work, talking as he did.
“As I was saying, here in Texas, some of us have two first names,” he said, grunting slightly as he used his legs to lift the heavy air conditioner onto the windowsill. “Some don’t. Most of us like Mexican food, country music, football, and minding our own business. But not everybody. Nobody’s playing a part here. We don’t apologize for who we are.”
He straightened up, wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, and turned to face Rachel.
“So if you’re thinking of staying here, you’ll have to live with that. We’re not planning to change.”
“Oh, believe me!” Rachel spat. “I won’t linger in this godforsaken town one minute more than I have to. Holly might have to stay, poor thing, but I’ll be out of here first thing in the morning.”
“Well, then . . . guess that’ll be our loss.”
He turned to Holly. “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I’ll start bringing in your furniture.”
After he left, Rachel spun around to face her daughter.
“Have you ever in your life met anyone so incredibly arrogant? So rude?”
“Almost never,” said Holly and clamped her lips tight to keep from smiling.
CHAPTER 11
Within two weeks of returning to the ranch, Rob Lee moved out of the house and into the barn. There were several reasons for this, nearly all having to do with his family.
First off, Grandma Taffy’s grasp on reality was intermittent. Sometimes she was completely sane and knew exactly who he was; other times she was as crazy as a soup sandwich and thought he was one of her old boyfriends from back in the day. Sounded like there’d been a lot of them.
One night, after consuming a half-pint of whiskey and finally getting to sleep, he woke with a shout to find Grandma Taffy in his bed. That wasn’t just creepy; it was dangerous. Before he realized what was going on, he had his hands around her throat. Thank God he came to himself before he’d hurt her. After that, he and Cady agreed that it’d be better and safer for everybody if he slept in the tack room.
The move came as a relief, and not just because of the incident with Taffy. Sometimes, when she didn’t think he was looking, he’d catch Cady staring at him. He was sure that she was looking at him, wondering why he was here and Nick wasn’t. It made him feel guilty and sad and angry all at once.
And then there was Linne. She was a cute kid but needy. And horse-crazy.
She constantly talked about horses, drew pictures of horses, read books about horses, and watched movies about horses. Her favorite was National Velvet, the old Elizabeth Taylor version. She watched it so often that she wore out the DVD. What she didn’t do was ride horses. There was no one to teach her how.
The ranch hands were too busy with their work to take Linne riding, and Taffy, even had she been in her right mind, was too old. Cady had been thrown when she was nine while trying to mount a horse that she’d been warned was far too wild for her and had been scared to ride ever after.
Apparently Nick, on a rare stretch home between deployments, had promised Linne that he’d teach her when she was older. She’d only been three at the time but she hadn’t forgotten. Now that Nick was dead, she somehow expected Rob Lee to make good on that promise, to step into her dad’s shoes.
Rob Lee couldn’t do it. Nor could he explain to her why he couldn’t. How just the sight of her made his heart close like a fist and his throat tighten to the point where he hardly dared speak or even breathe because, if he did, he might start to scream and the vibrations of those screams would become like shrapnel, tearing apart what he was trying so hard to hold together.
He couldn’t say that to a six-year-old. He couldn’t say that to anybody, because if he did, they’d think he was as crazy as Grandma Taffy. Who knew? Maybe he was.
It was better this way, living in the tack room, keeping to himself. Better for everyone. Safer for everyone. Himself most of all.
Another good reason for sleeping in the tack room was because he could hear people coming. The door and floors creaked and the chickens would cluck and flutter when people walked into the barn, which was good. He didn’t like people sneaking up on him. His response could be embarrassing, like it had been when he dropped and broke the new tenant’s air conditioner.
But even without a creaky door and floors, there was no chance of Linne and Howard sneaking up on him. Linne was too much of a chatterbox for that, and, like a lot of six-year-olds, she hadn’t yet embraced the concept of an “inside voice,” especially when she was excited about something. She seemed to be very excited at the moment, talking to Howard.
Rob Lee was sitting on the edge of his bed, buttoning up his shirt, when they came into his room.
“Hey, Joe! Whaddaya know?” Howard beamed and embraced him tightly.
“Not much,” he said. “Cady told me you were coming down for the weekend. How you doin’, Hoss?”
That was a joke between them. For their tenth birthday, their late grandpa Dutch had given them a boxed set of Bonanza episodes. They loved watching that show, especially in the company of their grandpa, who knew every episode by heart. Soon, they started calling each other by the character names, cracking each other up by calling Howard, who stood only five foot three, Hoss, after the beefy character played by Dan Blocker, and Rob Lee, who stood a head taller than his cousin, Little Joe, after the shorter character played by Michael Landon. After a while, Howard dropped the “Little” and called his cousin just “Joe.”
“Fine.” Howard shrugged, then frowned. “Miss my girlfriend. A lot. Momma wouldn’t let me stay at Jenna’s while she went to Connecticut. Made me come here instead.”
“That’s rough, Hoss. But it’s just for a couple of days, right? And, anyway, I’m glad to see you.”
“Me too,” Howard said, his face suddenly somber. “I’m glad you didn’t get blowed up in Afghanistan.”
Rob Lee looked away, discomfited by the direct, guileless way Howard had of saying what was on his mind. He’d seen his cousin four or five times since returning from combat, and every time, Howard said the same thing. He wished Howard would forget about it.
“Yeah, well . . . I’m here.” Rob Lee sat back down and pulled his boots out from underneath the bed.
Linne, who had been humming to hersel
f and swishing her blue skirt from left to right while they talked, piped up, “Rob Lee, can you take us riding? Howard wants to go.”
“Can’t,” Rob Lee said, looking down as he pulled on his boots. “I’ve got work to do.”
“But that’s what you said last Saturday,” Linne moaned.
“And it’s still true. I’ve got stock to feed and water. There’s no days off on a ranch. Maybe next week.”
Linne stuck out her lower lip and kicked the dirt floor with the toe of her blue boot. Howard frowned, looking from Linne to Rob Lee.
“We could help with the chores,” Howard suggested. “Then you’d get done faster and have time for a ride.”
Rob Lee gave a quick shake of his head. “Can’t,” he said again.
“Why not?” Linne demanded.
Rob Lee cleared his throat, sniffed, and stood up. “Because. I’ve got to go into town and deliver some more furniture to the rental place, mow the lawn, and . . . stuff.”
“Can I come?” Linne asked hopefully. “I like doing stuff.”
“Sorry, kiddo. You’d be in the way. Anyway, aren’t you supposed to go in and help your momma at the quilt shop?”
“Not until ten.”
“I’ll be gone before then. So you’d better get going.”
Linne stuck out her lip even further. Rob Lee, feeling guilty, reached over to ruffle her hair, but she jerked her head away and skulked off toward the house.
“Can I come with you?” Howard asked. “I don’t want to go to the quilt shop. Everybody will ask me about Momma and I don’t want to talk about her. I’m mad at her.”
Rob Lee was genuinely surprised by his cousin’s statement. Mary Dell adored Howard and the feeling was mutual. But Howard’s stormy expression made it clear that he meant what he said. Well, why not? Howard was normally pretty easygoing, but he was entitled to his feelings and frustrations, just like anybody else. And while Rob Lee had always loved his aunt, she could be a little smothering at times. No grown man wanted his mother telling him what he could and couldn’t do.
“Sure, Hoss,” Rob Lee said. “Help me feed the stock and then we’ll get going.”
Howard’s customary smile returned. “Okay, Joe. You got it!”
During the drive, Howard poured out his complaints.
“She won’t let me grow up. I’m almost thirty! I want to get on with my life.”
“I hear that,” Rob Lee said.
Rob Lee had been twenty-two years old when he enlisted. Back then, when he pictured himself as an old man of thirty, which wasn’t often, he figured he’d have his life completely pulled together.
That was one of the reasons he’d joined the Marines, because he wanted to jump-start his life, grow up, and find a purpose. For a while, it felt like he had. He was proud to be part of something bigger than himself, to work shoulder to shoulder with men he respected, to face difficult, sometimes dangerous, challenges, proud to be part of something that mattered.
And now here he was, nearly thirty and completely rudderless. At least Howard had a plan. That was more than he could say.
“I don’t want to live on the ranch,” Howard declared. “And I don’t want to leave my friends in Dallas.”
“Especially Jenna?” Rob Lee asked.
Howard bobbed his head. “I love her. Someday, I might want to marry her.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. That’s what you do when you’re in love. Don’t tell Momma I said that. I don’t think she likes Jenna anymore. Rob Lee, have you ever been in love?”
Rob Lee mentally cataloged his relationships up to this point.
“Not really. There’s a lot of girls I’ve liked. And a few girls I’ve . . .” He shrugged. “Never mind.”
“Slept with? Is that what you were going to say? I know about sex.” Howard gave him a slightly chiding glance. “But if you feel that way about a girl, you ought to marry her.”
“Is that why you want to marry Jenna?”
“Not just that. But I think about it a lot,” Howard admitted.
“Most guys do.”
“But it’s not just because of that. I just like to be with Jenna,” Howard said, a smile coming into his voice and eyes. “She is so beautiful and creative. She’s a very good painter. We laugh all the time. Someday maybe we will get married. Not yet, though. I don’t want to be alone forever, but right now, I want to be on my own.”
“Makes sense,” Rob Lee said.
“Momma doesn’t think so,” Howard said glumly.
“Give her some time,” Rob Lee advised. “She probably doesn’t want to be alone forever either.”
“I was thinking about that,” Howard said in a practical tone. “Momma should get married. Hub-Jay likes her. She likes him too.”
Rob Lee smiled. “Yeah. I don’t think it’s quite that easy, Hoss.”
When they pulled up in front of the cottage, Rob Lee got out of the truck first.
“Howard, knock on the door and let her know we’re going to do some work in the yard. I’ll unload the mower.”
“What’s her name?”
Rob Lee shrugged. “I didn’t ask. Just let her know we’re here, then come back and give me a hand, okay?”
Howard went through the rusty garden gate, climbed the steps to the porch, and knocked on the door. Rob Lee, busy manhandling the mowing equipment and hauling it around to the side yard, didn’t see him talking to the woman or going inside the cottage.
Ten minutes later, Rob Lee took a loop around the yard, looking for Howard. When he didn’t find him, Rob Lee figured he must still be inside, talking to the renter. You couldn’t fault him for that.
She was beautiful, the kind of girl who, a couple of years back, might have driven him to despair, knowing she was way out of his league. That was one good thing about life as it was now; having concluded that he was better off on his own, he didn’t agonize about beautiful, unattainable women. Of course, that didn’t mean he didn’t notice them when they came along. He might not have gotten that girl’s name, but he sure enough remembered what she looked like. A face and body like that were hard to forget. So was that mother of hers. What a piece of work! But the girl was fine. No two ways about it.
He smiled to himself as he mounted the porch steps. Yeah. No wonder Howard was taking his time.
Before Rob Lee had a chance to knock, Howard opened the door.
“I’m going to be a while,” he said. “I’ve got to help this lady fix her sewing machine. She’s got the bobbin so tangled up it made her cry.”
Rob Lee rolled his eyes. “Another one? What is it about this town? Attracts quilters like flies.”
“She’s not a quilter,” Howard informed him. “But she has to learn. Fast. Her name is Holly. She’s my replacement.”
“Your replacement?” Rob Lee frowned. It took a moment for Howard’s meaning to register.
“You mean . . . on TV? But she doesn’t know how to quilt?”
“Don’t tell Momma,” Howard said seriously. “If she finds out that Holly can’t quilt, she might not let her take my place.”
The woman, Holly, walked up to the door and stood behind Howard. His cousin was right; she’d been crying. There was mascara smeared under her eyes. Why did women wear that stuff anyway? A couple of tears and they ended up looking like a raccoon with a hangover. No, Holly Whatever-Her-Name definitely didn’t look as good to him as she had the last time he’d seen her, which was kind of a relief.
“Hi again.” She gave a sheepish little wave.
“Hi.”
“So . . . Howard is Mary Dell Templeton’s son? And you’re her nephew? Oh. This is kind of awkward. Especially now that you know I can’t quilt.” She let out a little sputter of disgust. “Leave it to me. I could have rented any house in town, but no. I had to pick this one.”
“Hey,” Rob Lee replied, “there’s only about five places for rent in the whole town, so it’s not like you had long odds. I won’t say anything to my aunt, but .
. . you seriously don’t know how to quilt? Not at all?”
Holly shook her head.
“Huh. Then why’d they hire you? Just because of your looks?”
Holly’s lips became a line. A fiery little flash came into her eyes, a look that Rob Lee recognized from his encounter with her mother.
“None of my business,” he said quickly. “Anyway . . . you start filming after the holidays, right? Howard, think you can teach her how to quilt by then?”
Howard shook his head. “I’m only here for the weekend. We need to find her a real quilt teacher.”
Rob Lee pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans.
Holly, who had started biting her nails during this exchange, pulled her fingers away from her mouth. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the quilt shop.”
Holly swallowed hard. “Your aunt’s quilt shop?”
“She’s in Connecticut for the weekend. I’m calling my sister,” he said, and then held the phone up to his ear.
“Cady? Yeah, I’m over at the rental. We’ve got ourselves kind of a situation. Any chance you can come over here?”
CHAPTER 12
Mary Dell lay flat on the bed in an upstairs suite at the Beecher Cottage Inn, a throw pillow clutched to her chest, staring at the ceiling and feeling despondent. It was an emotion that was almost entirely unfamiliar to her, especially considering her current surroundings.
Mary Dell had been looking forward to her pilgrimage to New Bern, Connecticut, for weeks. The annual quilting getaway was normally a highlight of her year, partly because she so rarely had time to simply quilt for her own pleasure instead of for business, but mostly because she got to spend time with her dear friend Evelyn Dixon.
Evelyn and Mary Dell had been neighbors in Dallas. Evelyn had helped Mary Dell adjust to life in the city, and Mary Dell had helped Evelyn through a painful divorce. When Evelyn left Dallas for Connecticut to begin a new life and open a quilt shop, the two women maintained their friendship through phone calls, e-mail, and occasional visits, including the annual Cobbled Court Quilt Circle retreat, always held at the Beecher Cottage Inn. Over the years, Mary Dell had fostered friendships with the members of the circle, but Evelyn was the real reason she returned to Connecticut year after year. Even though they lived so far apart, Evelyn was her best friend.
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