by A. J. Pine
She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. “Good night, Brody. Now shut your eyes.”
He pulled her closer and tangled his hands in her wet hair, pulling her to his body for a real kiss so hot and passionate that it left them both panting. He pulled away, his eyes still closed. “Now you can get dressed.”
He waited a few seconds before he opened his eyes. If possible, Lila was even more beautiful than she’d been when she was younger. Shapely legs and a small waist above the curve of rounded hips. She disappeared under the willow tree branches and when she reappeared, she was fully clothed.
“Your turn.” She raised her voice. “I’m being a good girl and not taking your clothes with me. I should because you opened your eyes.”
“Seems only fittin’ that I get a little glimpse of you since you got a full-frontal nude shot of me when I got into the water,” he said. “Did you like what you saw?”
“Did you?” she threw back at him.
“Oh, honey,” he groaned.
“Liking the way you look was never my problem,” she said. “Be seein’ you around, I’m sure.”
She disappeared into the night and he got out of the water, let the warm night air dry his body before he got dressed, and whistled all the way back to the house.
Chapter Ten
Four days.
She’d had four days to talk to the cats about the skinny-dipping event, to relive every word and feeling that she’d experienced sitting next to Brody with nothing but water between their naked bodies. For the next three days—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—she’d watched for him every single moment of the day. And that night she’d thought he might be at church but he wasn’t.
After services, she’d driven out to the cemetery and laid a wildflower bouquet wrapped with a bright red ribbon in front of her father’s tombstone. She removed her sandals, sat cross-legged on the grass, and ran her fingers over the engraving: BILLY HARRIS, 1962–1999.
“Happy Father’s Day, Daddy.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
She felt a presence before she got a whiff of Brody’s shaving lotion, but before she could turn around he’d sat down beside her. They were as close as they’d been when they were skinny-dipping out at Hope Springs. His bare skin wasn’t touching hers but the heat still flowed through his jeans and plaid shirt just as well as if it had been.
Brody took her hand in his and rested it on his knee. “I’ve missed seeing you, but we’ve been so busy on the ranch that I couldn’t even get away for an hour. Thought I could make it to church tonight but Sundance got out of his pen again. Sometimes I’m ready to let Jace turn him into dog food. I finally got things finished and remembered that it was Father’s Day. I didn’t bring flowers but I had to come see Dad and Gramps.”
“It’s been years since I got to visit my dad on his special day,” Lila said softly.
“I remember when he died in that oil rig accident. We were in the seventh grade and it was the first time any of us had lost a parent. I didn’t know what to say to you.” Brody’s sincere voice reached deep into her heart, making her forget the angst over the past four days. It had been like that when they were in high school. She was constantly watching for him, disappointed when he wasn’t around, and then when he was, everything was all right.
“You hugged me at the dinner they had at the church after the funeral. You didn’t say a word but that hug meant the world to me right then,” she said. “You must have been totally devastated to lose both your grandpa and your dad the same summer.”
“It was the toughest year of my life,” Brody said. “You left and then I lost them. Mama wanted me to go on to college that fall, but I couldn’t leave her and Granny both with big ranches to take care of. We had a foreman on both Prairie Rose and Hope Springs but…” He shrugged.
Lila waited a few seconds while he collected his thoughts. He swallowed hard several times before he said, “Even more than being tough, it was the loneliness that was horrible. I threw myself into the work and that was that.”
Lila nodded. “I did the same with college. Turned my DNA completely around and became more like Mama.”
He drew his brows down. “How’s that?”
“Mama was the stable one. Daddy was the fun parent. Probably because he was gone a lot of the time and we all wanted everything to be happy when he was home. When we moved, I made a complete switch and went from the fun Lila to a more serious girl. Looking back, it was a form of coping and escapism, I guess.”
Brody gently squeezed her hand. “Funny how that works, isn’t it?”
“I still miss him.” She swallowed hard and a lonely tear found its way down her cheek.
He let go of one hand and gently brushed it away. “I’m sorry if I brought back sad memories.”
Her mind flashed back to that day. She had come home from school and found her mother sitting on the sofa crying with her Sunday school friends surrounding her. There was already food everywhere, more than two people could use in a month. She knew before Daisy even stretched out her arms what had happened. She dropped to her knees and put her hands over her ears. If no one said the words, then it wouldn’t be true.
He took her hand back in his and made lazy circles on her palm with his thumb. “And right after that, y’all moved to the back of the café. My family was there on the first Sunday to eat dinner and you were helping by serving the drinks. It was the first time I ever really noticed how pretty you are.”
“I hated it,” she whispered. “It was like we left Daddy behind in that trailer. I knew he was dead but his spirit lived and we didn’t move it to the new place with us. He was back there with strangers. I used to sneak out at night and go sit in the backyard and pretend that he came outside to talk to me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Brody said.
She stared at the tombstone and visualized her father sitting beside her in those old metal lawn chairs in their postage-stamp-sized backyard. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all but if she had a problem concerning anything, from snotty girls to pre-algebra, they’d discuss it.
“Then we left him again when Mama made us move. I didn’t want to leave Happy. I even offered to not go to college and to help her run the café if she wouldn’t make me leave. It took a long time for me to forgive her.” Lila’s voice sounded hollow even to her own ears. “Her only sister was out there in Pennsylvania and she wanted to get me out of this atmosphere and for me to go to college. She was afraid I’d never get an education if we stayed here. She was probably right.”
He dropped her hands, wrapped both arms around her, and pulled her close to his chest. With an ear pressed right next to his heart, she could feel the steady rhythm of the beat—not just hear it, but actually feel him doing his best to ease the pain they both felt in remembering.
“This is always an emotional time of year for me too,” Brody whispered hoarsely.
Lila nodded and then repositioned the side of her face so that she could hear his heart again. “It was a bad summer for both of us, wasn’t it?”
“You leaving broke my heart, Lila.”
“Sure didn’t seem like it at the time.” She leaned back and their gazes met in the few inches separating their faces.
“Men don’t cry. Cowboys don’t cry. Boys don’t cry.”
“And that has to do with what?”
He gulped a couple of times. “I wanted to be with you that last night but I couldn’t bear to see you in tears again. When you told me you were moving away—well, like I said, boys don’t cry and I would have carried on like a little girl.”
“But I did cry, remember? When Mama said that we were moving in a week, I cried until my face hurt and your shirt was wet.” She looked even deeper into his eyes.
He nodded. “So did I when I got home but I couldn’t go through it again. So I went out with the guys and was miserable all night. I was going to apologize to you the next day but you wouldn’t roll down the window. Not that I blame you one bit.”
“I thought I would die just looking at you in the rearview mirror,” she said.
He buried his face in her hair. “I sat down behind the café, put my head in my hands, and thought the worst thing ever had happened. Then…” He hesitated again.
She wrapped both arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. If she’d lost her mother and Aunt Tina that summer in addition to leaving Brody behind, she might have truly stopped breathing. How Brody had survived was a mystery.
She had shared things with him that evening that she’d kept closed off from the therapist she’d started seeing last winter in Florida. Raw things that brought about pain and yet, there she was sitting in a cemetery telling Brody about them.
“Have you forgiven and forgotten?” he whispered.
“Who? You or Mama?”
“First, your mother.” He inhaled deeply. “I love the smell of your hair.”
“Forgiven.” She nodded. “She was only doing what she thought was best for me and she let me finish school here with my class. She’d wanted to be near her sister for a long time.”
Lila loved Aunt Tina and all her kids and grandkids. Thanksgiving and sometimes Christmas was fun at her house, but Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, would never be home, not like Happy, Texas. Not even if they moved her father’s body out there and she could visit him every week.
“And your dad’s family?” Brody asked.
“Dad was a foster child from the time he was about two years old. Thrown about from place to place until he was eighteen and then he went to work in the oil fields. He didn’t talk about his life but he did say that all those drunk driving tickets he hadn’t paid was the best luck he’d ever had.”
“How could unpaid tickets be lucky?” Brody asked.
“They put him in front of the judge, who said that he had a choice of six months in jail or he could join the service. He chose the army and got stationed over in Lawton, Oklahoma. A guy invited him to go home with him one weekend and it turned out the fellow was from Tulia. He was dating my aunt Tina and they introduced Dad to my mother. He and Mama married when he got out of the service and he moved here so he could work in the oil wells again. My aunt Tina didn’t marry that soldier but she did marry an oil man and moved back east the next year after Mama and Daddy married.”
“I can’t imagine going through those tough years without my dad. Thinking about losing him even now makes me so sad,” Brody said. “I should go and let you have your time alone.”
“Stay.” She held on to his hand when he started to pull it away.
They sat engulfed in their own memories for a long time before she finally said, “What happened to your grandpa?”
“Heart attack. Doctor said he was gone instantly. Granny ran the ranch until this spring. Then she turned it over to us.”
So much had happened between that last night out at Henry’s barn and that moment and she wanted to know everything. “Do you ever wish for one more hour with him to ask him important questions?”
“Oh, Lila,” Brody sighed. “Him and my dad both. Daddy died in a tractor accident. I couldn’t talk fast enough if I had another hour with either of them, especially right now. After he was gone, I threw myself into the ranch work. That’s all I know or ever wanted to do anyway. My folks and Granny both had huge places with plenty to do, so I never had to worry about a paycheck.”
“Lived with your folks all this time until you moved over to Hope Springs?”
“I moved into the bunkhouse when Grandpa died. When Jace graduated from college, he moved into it with me,” he said.
“So Jace went and you didn’t?”
“He’s kind of felt guilty about that but Mama and I insisted. And he’s really smart when it comes to agriculture business. What did you do after you graduated from college?”
“I took a job in Memphis for a couple of years, then moved over to Little Rock for a while and I’ve been in Panama City Beach since then.”
The therapist told her that she moved so often because she was searching for happiness but until she found peace within herself, happiness would always be a step ahead of her.
Happy, Texas. Maybe she wasn’t searching for the elusive euphoric happy but the place that was a tiny town in the panhandle of Texas.
“Come home with me,” Brody finally said after several minutes of silence. “It’s my night to read bedtime stories to the kids and I don’t want to miss it. It’s the second Father’s Day without Adam and you of all people understand. But I don’t want to leave you.”
“Not tonight, Brody. You go on and read to those babies. They need you.” She pushed away from him. “But for the record, I don’t want you to leave either.”
He kissed her on the forehead and straightened up. “Good night, Lila.”
“Night, Brody,” she said.
Was Kasey right? Could Lila really have both sides?
Brody sat in the middle of Rustin’s bed with Silas in his lap, Emma hugged up to his left side and Rustin leaning over his shoulder as he read Bedtime for Dogs. There were lots of pictures and only a few words on each page but it still took almost half an hour to get through the book. Rustin and Emma had dozens of questions about each page and Silas wanted to point to the dog and jabber about it.
Finally, Kasey rescued him and put Silas into his crib, tucked Rustin in, and led Emma to her bedroom. While she got them settled, Brody went to the kitchen and popped the tops on two beers. He carried them to the living room and set Kasey’s on the coffee table.
She plopped down on the other end of the sofa. “Thank you. I need this tonight. Father’s Day is tough on me. Even worse than Christmas and his birthday.” She took two long swallows before she set it aside. “I miss him so much, Brody.”
“It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” Losing Lila was one thing but she was still alive and able to come back. Kasey’s loss was final, down to standing in front of a closed casket.
“Hasn’t yet. After the initial shock wore off, I thought it would get better with the passing of time. It hasn’t,” she said. “Did you go see Grandpa and Daddy?”
“I did,” he answered. “Lila was there at her father’s grave. We talked.”
It wasn’t the first time that they’d held hands and talked for hours but in the past it had been either in the barn, under the willow tree, or in her bedroom. They’d talked about things that teenagers did in those days. Today had been different in so many ways and he’d used his words like Jace said. Not to banter or to tease, but emotionally.
“Argued or talked?” she asked.
“The latter. I can’t imagine what you’re going through but I know that I missed her horribly when she moved away. I’d finally given up on ever seeing her again when she came back to Happy.”
“I knew that you had a crush on her, but I had no idea that you missed her like that,” Kasey said. “Does she know?”
He shook his head. “There was chemistry between us back then that is still there but, Kasey—”
“When you get past everything that’s keeping you two apart, there will be no more buts. However, you’ve got to work on all those things. Like talking to her. Like not keeping secrets from Mama. Like not caring what Mama or Granny thinks or anyone else for that matter. You have to let the past go and dwell on the future.”
“That’s a lot to do in one summer,” he said.
“Yes, it is. We can’t bring back the water that’s already flowed under the bridge, can we? If we could, Adam would still be with me and I’d be in Lawton where folks treated me like I had a brain instead of looking down on me like I’m nothing but your kid sister,” she sighed.
“You miss that life, don’t you?” Brody asked.
“Yes, I do sometimes. I wasn’t the odd Dawson kid with red hair who wasn’t as pretty as all the Dawson girl cousins or even as her older brothers. I wasn’t the only one who got married right out of high school. I was Kasey McKay who could organize a picnic or take care of the Fourth of July party at the recreatio
n hall for the guys who stayed on base. And I was the woman in charge of ordering all the fireworks for the display,” she said.
“And then Adam was gone and you had to move right back here,” he said.
“Like Lila.” She nodded. “Only she’s come back where people remember her as that crazy kid who was always gettin’ into trouble, not the teacher with a responsible job. Neither of us knows who we are anymore. Difference is that she gets to leave at the end of summer. I’ve got nowhere to go and three kids who are better off on this ranch than anywhere else. What can I do? Flip burgers or check out customers at a grocery store?”
Brody slid over next to her and put his arm around her. “Kasey Dawson McKay, this ranch is your army base. Without you, Jace and I would be lost. You’re our rock. And as of right now, you can do whatever you want for a ranch picnic and fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Just don’t leave us, darlin’ sister. We’d be runnin’ around like chickens with their heads cut off without you.”
“I know you’re just sayin’ that to make me feel better, but thank you.” Kasey smiled, her eyes watery.
“It’s the truth. Cross my heart. When someone wanders onto the ranch and steals your heart, we’ll have to hire five women to replace you,” Brody said. “And I’m not whistlin’ Dixie, sister.”
“I don’t reckon you’ve got a thing to worry about there. It’d take a big man to sweep me off my feet and he’d have to love my kids. Not many men are willing to take on a ready-made family.”
“You never know,” Brody said. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that life has a way of surprising you sometimes.”
“Well, whatever comes our way—you, me, Lila—we’ll figure it out as we go.”
“Of course we will.” He grinned. “Want to watch a movie? I’ll even let you pick it out.”
“And you won’t bitch if it’s a romance?”
“Not tonight,” he answered.
He and Jace both had been protective of their little sister since the day their mama brought her home from the hospital. At three and five, they had no idea what to do with a girl baby but their mama said they had to watch out for her and they’d done their best. Now it was time for them to recognize that she wasn’t a kid anymore.
