Texas Strong

by Jean Brashear

  She was excruciatingly aware that there was no telling how many years they had left together. When Jake’s best friend, Bob Hunter, had died at fifty-two from a heart attack, the shock of it had made her resolve to stop putting off the adventures she and Jake had planned.

  But the effect on Jake had been different. That was when he’d closed his practice and switched to trauma. Begun working even harder.

  She was terrified of losing him, but when she brought up the subject, he reassured her that she’d be left a woman of means. He’d make sure she was taken care of.

  Idiot. She didn’t want money; she wanted him. Laughing together as they once had so often. Traveling the world or simply sitting on their deck in the moonlight, holding hands.

  She’d brought up the subject on numerous occasions, though careful not to nag. He spent so much time at home in a haze of exhaustion that she was loath to disrupt what peace he could find here. She kept searching for the wake-up call that would get through to him. To let him know how much she missed him.

  She could start that catering business friends urged her to consider, but while that would fill the hours alone, it would be only a half life, a diversion to deflect her from thoughts of what might have been.

  They’d been so smug about the infallibility of their love—could she ever have imagined they’d be this out of touch with each other?

  Jake Cameron, you lunkhead. She swiped at the tears she’d sworn not to shed. Get a clue.

  She walked into the dining room with a trash bag to set the room straight. She thought better when her hands were busy, and the mess he wasn’t here to see was driving her nuts.

  The doorbell rang. She set the bag down and went to answer it. The delivery guy was nearly invisible behind the explosion of roses.

  Her heart melted a little as she accepted them. Well-tipped, the messenger left, and Laura placed the bouquet on the foyer table. Opened the card. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll take care of everything. Love, Jake.

  “You’ll mean to,” she murmured. “Until you get called in again.” With dragging feet, she returned to the dining room and cleared away the debris.

  The roses were beautiful. Extravagant.

  Impersonal. Money was not a problem, thanks to the investments they’d made with the income from his former very lucrative practice.

  Roses were too easy. She could accept them, forgive him whenever he finally arrived home, let things rock on this way, as they most certainly would if she let them.

  But Laura wanted Jake back. Her Jake. Yearned for him to look at her, really look, not have his vision clouded by exhaustion or worry over his patients, by the blinding light of being the key player in the struggle to preserve life.

  What he was doing fell little short of a miracle at times, yes. He was proud of his work, and she was proud of him. She had no wish to rob his patients of his lifesaving skills.

  But he wasn’t the only physician on the planet, gifted as he was. He was carrying too much of the load on his shoulders, and she was losing him, a slow bleeding out as deadly as any patient’s.

  There had to be some compromise, but thus far, she was the only one yielding. Jake Cameron had been her world for years, but sometimes lately she felt she barely knew him.

  There had to be a road back for them. If she had to fight for him, then she would.

  Even if it meant fighting dirty.

  Inspiration hit. She raced through the cleanup and headed for her kitchen.

  Chrissy couldn’t believe how much more quickly their belongings were unloaded from the trailer and pickup bed than when she’d packed them. Everything she had struggled to carry while her children were sleeping this morning seemed to weigh nothing in this big man’s hands.

  Such a strong man should have thick meaty paws, but his were not. They were big, yes—the span of his fingers would wrap around Thad’s little chest—but they were long fingers and wide palms.

  She shivered a little looking at them, but not from fear. A man’s hands could be so sexy. Or such a turnoff.

  Tank’s were the former—not that it mattered. Even if she were in the market for a man, she’d been warned off this one. She kept a careful eye on him, watching his manner with her children.

  He wasn’t comfortable with them, no. He said little to any of them.

  But she noticed that he allowed Thad to carry things, seemed to understand that her son wanted to be considered bigger than the skinny little boy he was. Tank gave him no effusive praise, didn’t coddle him. Still, he treated the boy with respect, acting as though of course Thad could carry things, when other men might be shooing him away.

  Thad flowered under Tank’s regard.

  Becky, while still leery of the big man, also did her share, and he let her. He was gentle with her, but he didn’t belittle her or make her feel useless, either. He was choosing carefully what the children would carry, just as he discouraged Chrissy herself from trying to manage anything too heavy.

  But he also didn’t give them token burdens to carry, and once he even allowed Thad to help him move a table that had Thad huffing and straining to do his part. Thad’s glow at the end of it was glorious to see. His pride made Chrissy realize that too often she still babied him. He was her baby, of course, but he yearned to be considered big. Tank wasn’t affectionate, no, but at the same time, he accorded Thad the honor only a man can convey to a boy, that sense of being another man, if an unformed one, something no mother on earth could replicate.

  If he said next to nothing to any of them, still she was surprised at how comfortable his presence was. There had never been a man in their little family, not really, and certainly no one half as strong and powerful a presence.

  “Anything else I can help with before I go pick up your car?” he asked, clearly ready to go.

  “No. Thank you so much.” She hesitated, held back by his reserve. But right was right. “May I fix you supper as a thank you? It’s not enough, but—”

  His eyes met hers, clearly hesitating, probably unwilling.

  “Never mind. You must have better places to—”

  “I’d—that would be nice,” he admitted. “But you don’t have to.” He looked everywhere but at her.

  Why did people think he was so hard, so mean? All she could see was an endearing awkwardness.

  But she thought she saw interest, too. Maybe he didn’t get many home-cooked meals. She didn’t possess her sister’s genius in the kitchen, but she could manage the basics. Immediately she cast around for what she might have in the ice chest that would satisfy this big man who’d expended so much effort on her today. “I haven’t shopped, so it won’t be fancy. You don’t have to say yes, if you’d rather not.”

  He shifted on his feet. “It’s not necessary for you to cook for me.”

  “It’s very necessary,” she said firmly. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you. As it is, I have to find a way to return the trailer by morning or I’ll lose my deposit—”

  “I’ll take care of that and pick up another serpentine belt before I get the car.”

  “I don’t feel right about you doing the work.”

  “If you’d rather have a professional, Jonas does excellent work. I can drop off the car there.”

  Dismay suffused her as she contemplated her meager savings dwindling to pay for repairs. She needed more time to work and save. “It’s not—I just don’t want you to feel that you should—” She looked away because she didn’t want his pity. “If you really don’t mind bringing the car here, it doesn’t have to be repaired yet. I can walk to work, and the bus will pick up the kids for school.”

  “I know how to do the work. You should let me.” In his gaze she saw sympathy, yes, but not crippling pity.

  Jake and Laura would give her the money to repair her car anytime she asked. Jake had offered to buy her a new one, for that matter. But Laura hadn’t been the one to make Chrissy’s mistakes. She had never rebelled. She had no tattoos and no children with a dea
dbeat dad. She’d gotten an education, and she’d married a doctor. Raised three smart, beautiful children and created a home to envy.

  Chrissy had made every mistake in the book, but she wasn’t going to compound that by relying on charity. Her own smart, beautiful children would have a good example for a mother. They might not have all the toys and clothes and privileges Laura’s children had enjoyed, but they would have all the love in her heart, and they would see that there was nothing wrong with good, honest work. They witnessed their mother struggling, yes, but they never saw her take the easy way out. Not anymore.

  “I…this is hard. But yes, I’d really appreciate that. Now you have to let me start making it up to you by at least fixing supper.” She hated being in anyone’s debt.

  “That’s a lot of work.”

  Her gaze rose to his. “You’ve spent so much of your day already on helping us. It’s the least I can do.”

  He shrugged. “It sounds pretty great to me. I don’t get home-cooked meals very often, not if you don’t count Ruby’s. Her food is great, but…”

  He seemed to honestly mean it. Chrissy thought over the supplies she had. Thank goodness she’d bought the basics before they’d left Austin. Rapidly she calculated. “I can do it tonight.”

  “You must be tired.”

  She was, but when wasn’t she tired anymore? “I’m fine. is there anything you can’t or won’t eat?”

  She surprised a quick grin from him. He really did have a beautiful smile. “Nothing that doesn’t eat me first.”

  Thad giggled, and even Becky smiled. Chrissy smiled herself. “Let’s plan to eat at six, if that’s okay.”

  His grin vanished, but she couldn’t tell what was going on behind his eyes. “That sounds good.” Then he turned out and walked out the door with no further word.

  “He didn’t say goodbye, Mommy,” Becky noted.

  He probably wasn’t used to the social niceties. She didn’t think she’d ever met anyone more alone. “That’s not important, sweetie, especially not in light of all he’s done for us today.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Did you see how he felt my muscles?” Thad demanded. “He thinks I’m strong.”

  She saw Becky began to scoff but cast her a quelling glance.

  “You are strong. Thank you for helping, both of you. Now you get busy unpacking your rooms while I figure out what we’re having for supper.” She walked toward the kitchen but couldn’t resist one look back, seeing him close up the trailer and raise the tailgate on his truck. Then with a surprising grace for such a big man, he climbed into his pickup and with an ease she could never in a million years approximate, backed the trailer out of the driveway and drove off.

  But she thought she saw him glance back toward the house before he was out of sight.

  Tank drove the trailer to Johnson City, the closest rental place, and turned it in, then stopped by the parts house to get the belt. On his way back, he thought about everything else he had meant to accomplish today. His days off weren’t nearly enough for all he had going—the herd he was building, the constant need for repairs around the old place, to say nothing of the need for continual training as a fireman and his studies to be licensed as a paramedic. Added to that, he’d put in whatever time he could find on getting Bridger’s clinic ready—not that Bridger had asked him to help as he had Jackson and Ian and Mackey, but still, as a first responder, he understood the need. And like the others, he didn’t want Jackson simply paying for construction because he was rich. Mackey had a load of money, too, but Ian didn’t, and the two friends with ample funds understood Ian’s need to meet them on level ground.

  This was his community, too. His blood went back to the founders. His old man might have been a bastard, but from what the older folks said, that hadn’t been true of all Pattons.

  The same violence simmered in Tank’s blood, but he did his best to manage it. He wouldn’t risk passing it down to a new generation, but his sister’s children would inherit the Patton land and its legacy—the proud one, not the one of which Tank had spent his whole life ashamed.

  He might be tainted by his father’s evil, but Veronica was not. His sister had a pure heart and a loving soul. Whatever price he’d had to pay to shield her, it had been well worth the cost. His sister was a shining beacon of hope, and her children bore that same light inside. They would be what future generations remembered about the Pattons. He would spend the rest of his life erasing the dark stains his father had left.

  Ahead he spotted Chrissy’s pathetic excuse for a car. The small SUV was beat-up, missing hubcaps and had more than one dent. How on earth it had gotten her this far, he didn’t know.

  It had one real asset, though: it was one he could work on. Too many modern vehicles had so many sealed systems that there was no choice but to take them to a professional. Shade tree mechanics were an endangered species.

  First under duress, then out of necessity, he had learned how to do most any repair needed on the ranch trucks, as well as the battered vehicles Vernon Patton had deemed good enough for his family.

  Tank didn’t hold with wasting money, and self-reliance was a necessity for someone who avoided others as much as he did. His own truck, however, was what could kindly be called vintage, meaning it was of an age where he could still get to and repair most of its systems. Ditto the equipment around the ranch.

  Maybe he couldn’t fix everything that was wrong with this poor excuse for an automobile, but he could at least look it over to see what else needed work. To shoot it and put it out of its misery would be an act of mercy.

  But from what he’d seen, Chrissy didn’t have the resources to replace it.

  The belt wasn’t that hard to replace; it only required working in cramped spaces, for which his big hands weren’t ideal. But she needed a car, no matter what she said about walking and letting the kids ride the school bus.

  He’d take a look through all the systems once he’d gotten it back to her place. He carried enough tools in the tool chest on the back of his truck to go through the basics.

  You don’t have to do this. In his mind, strawberry blonde waves flew around her face, caught by her slender fingers as she earnestly worried over him helping out.

  He didn’t like people much, that was true. He was better off alone. His job in law enforcement was something different; there he had standards to meet and clear rules to apply.

  Outside of his job, he was still that boy who went to school in patched and mended clothes, too often hand-me-downs as clean and tidy as his mother could make them. But he didn’t trust people from an early age, and being ridiculed for his clothes hadn’t helped. He’d been stocky and awkward, a kid as likely to trip over his own feet as walk a straight line. Being in the same class with the golden boys, the Four Horsemen, had been a torture, always on the outside looking in.

  His one saving grace had come with football. He’d been big and strong, and he wasn’t afraid to take a hit or give one. No offensive lineman could exceed the power of Vernon Patton’s fists.

  So the girls had been scared of him, and the boys had respected him on the field but steered clear of him off the field.

  Alone was better. It always had been.

  So why in the hell was he spending his day with a sweet, fragile woman and two little kids?

  You’re really strong, Big Theo. The boy was a kick. Tank had to admit that how the boy chattered and poked his intensely curious nose into every last thing was refreshing. The boy wasn’t afraid of him, but the sister was. She was the smarter of the two.

  A few hours after he’d left, he pulled up in front of her little house and drove the towed car into her narrow drive. After he’d unhitched it, he opened the hood and poked around, then crawled beneath and perused.

  “What are you doing, Big Theo?” asked the boy. A little face peered beneath the car. “Can I look?”

  “Thad, get out of Deputy Patton’s way,” his mother said.

  “Aw, Mom…�
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  Tank debated on whether or not to intervene. “There’s nothing under here to hurt him, if he’ll keep his hands to himself,” he ventured.

  Slender legs bent, then her face appeared. “I don’t want him to get underfoot. What are you doing, anyway?”

  His grin surprised him. “Taking a nap?”

  She looked startled but quickly met his smile with one of her own. “Well, come inside to do that. We can find you a more comfortable surface to rest on.”

  Why did her smile make him want to seek out more?

  Why wasn’t she afraid of him or repelled by him like everyone else?

  He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out. He needed to be on his way, but—

  But there she was, even after her long day and lots of exertion, looking pretty as a patch of his mother’s flowers.

  The flowers his father would have just as soon stomped through. He sobered. Get back to the business at hand, idiot. “Tell me again what happened and what you heard before it stalled.”

  Her smile vanished.

  But the sweetness didn’t. She cast her eyes to the side, remembering. Telling him again.

  The sound of her voice was a kind of music, and it soothed him. Though it was wrong, he let himself relax for a few moments.

  Chrissy peered outside yet again, and he was still working on the car. Supper was nearly done, but he was doing her a favor, and she didn’t know if the timing was bad or not.

  Then ask him, idiot. Don’t stand here wringing your hands. It wasn’t that she was scared of him, not really. Despite the warnings she’d received, he’d been nothing but kind to her and her kids. Maybe the others didn’t understand him. Maybe he wasn’t who they thought.

  Or she could be the same idealistic fool she’d been too many times before.

  Regardless, he’d done her massive favors today, and she needed to focus only on beginning her repayment of the debt, so she squared her shoulders and stepped outside the back door. “Tank? The food is nearly ready. I’m sorry to interrupt, but—”