“Wait—” Mackey began. “You and Veronica were—?”
“How did we not know?” Ian blurted. “I was your best friend. Did David know?”
“I don’t know what—it doesn’t matter. She chose him.”
“Wait—” Ian began.
But just then, Rissa’s pickup roared up, and she barreled out one side, headed straight for Jackson. Penny descended from the passenger seat.
Rissa yanked open the door on Jackson’s side. Her face was a study in fury and hurt. “Jackson, you—” She socked him in the shoulder again.
Then she burst into tears.
And the next second, he slid from his seat and had his arms full of weeping women.
He’d forgotten what it was like, all this emotion, these females who were part of him. Who made life crazy and wild and chaotic.
All this love.
Jackson closed his eyes and, for the first time in years, let his heart open. Let himself feel.
It hurt.
It filled him up.
He hadn’t realized how empty he was. “I’m sorry.” He pressed a kiss to the red hair. “I’m sorry, Clary.”
She stiffened. “Mama called me that. I’m Rissa now, but…I guess you can call me whatever you want.” She lifted tearful brown eyes to him. “You bastard. How could you leave me with him?” Her face crumpled, and she hugged him harder, sobbing into his shoulder.
“You were there from the first,” Penny said, all the sorrow in the world in her tone. “And then I had to learn to live without you.”
He met her gaze squarely, noted the lines of strain on her face. “I kept up with you. I’m proud of you.”
She looked stricken. “You might not be.” She looked away.
Her distress was evident. “Tell me what happened. Let me help.”
“I don’t want to talk about it now.” She gripped him tightly. “You won’t disappear again, will you?”
Cla—Rissa’s head rose at that. “I won’t let you. I know you’re alive now. I will hunt you down, Jackson. Count on it.”
He couldn’t help smiling at his fierce little sister. “When did you get to be such a warrior?”
Her eyes filled. “When you left me to deal with…everything.” In that moment he could see the little girl he’d left behind. He’d never stopped to think about the impact on her.
“I couldn’t stay. I was so messed up, I didn’t realize…” He felt sick. “I am so very sorry.” He looked over at Penny. “I shouldn’t have stayed away from you, either of you. I just didn’t—” He swallowed. “I was a scared kid, and it took a long time to find my way. He threw me out with nothing, and…” He shook his head. “I should have found a way, but by the time I started to get my feet under me, I didn’t know how to reach out.” He swore. “But I was wrong. I see that now. It was just…it would have killed me in those early days, to let myself remember. I was barely hanging on. But still…”
He’d never felt so empty. So lost. All his money, his company, what he’d accomplished…none of that mattered in the face of the devastation he now realized he’d visited upon these two women who meant so much to him.
“Sock me again,” he murmured to Rissa. “Maybe we’ll both feel better.”
A watery chuckle greeted him. “I’d rather make you crawl.”
He had to smile. “Mackey know you’re so bloodthirsty?”
She lifted her head. “Freak you out that we’re together?”
“A little,” he admitted. “Don’t even tell me you’ve had sex.” He shuddered dramatically. “I’ll have to beat his ass.”
She smiled, mischief in her eyes. “I could provide details.”
“Find some other way to torment me, would you? You’re my baby sister.” Another shudder. “Stop. I’ll have nightmares…or I’ll have to kill him.”
She grinned even as tears fell once more. “He’s wonderful to me. I love him so much. And he’s so great with Eric—you’ll come to Eric’s surprise birthday party tonight, right?”
“Eric?”
“Our son—at least he will be. Long story.”
His baby sister as a mom. “Wow. How did that happen?”
“Like I said. Long story. You can buy me breakfast—oh, crap!”
“What? What is it?”
“I have to finish his cake! I tore out of the house before I frosted it. I gotta go!” She rose to her toes and kissed his cheek. “Don’t you dare leave town. There’s no place for you to hide if you try.” One more smacking kiss, and a glance to Penny. “Come help me?”
Penny shook her head. “The only cook worse than you is me. Scarlett said she’d help.”
Rissa’s jaw went tight. “I said I’d make his cake myself, and I’m going to. Mackey?” she shouted as she charged toward her truck. “Give Ian your keys. I need you!”
“She’s a nervous wreck about that stupid cake,” Penny said. “But she adores that boy. She saved his life, and he worships the ground she walks on. But she could face a firing squad easier than cook. She’s been up for hours, but I’m not sure it’s safe to eat, actually, and the kitchen is a wreck.” His sister chuckled. “Still, she’s one plucky soul.”
The underlying sorrow in her tone made him turn before Rissa roared off. “Talk to me. Tell me what hurts.”
“Not yet, okay? I…I just need some time to figure things out.”
“Promise me you’ll talk to me when you’re ready? Penny, I know I’ve done you wrong, intentional or not, but you never left me. We share a heart, you know that.”
“I do.” But she looked so defeated.
“Then will you let me take you to Ruby’s for breakfast at least?”
“I guess.”
It was a place to start. They turned and walked toward Ian. “Let’s go meet your woman.”
Chapter Four
Ruby Gallagher paused in her cooking to look over the pass-through, assessing the preparations for tonight’s surprise birthday party for Eric Bronson, soon to be Eric Mackey—though how soon was still at issue.
Mackey would see to it that the legal wheels turned as quickly as possible, she was positive. He had many high-powered contacts from his career as the most sought-after stuntman in Hollywood. After a serious injury several months back, he was moving more into being a stunt coordinator and second unit director, whatever the dickens that was.
He and her great-niece Rissa also had a lot of plans to put in order for Rissa’s horse training enterprise. Her reputation was growing, and he was helping her expand it via his many contacts in Hollywood.
But Eric’s welfare came first for them, and the poor child deserved that sort of care. He’d been raised by a spineless mother who drifted from one man to another until the last one killed her. Heaven only knew what the poor child had seen and experienced in his life—or what would have become of him if he hadn’t sought refuge in Rissa’s barn one fateful day.
“Ruby?” a quiet voice spoke. Her young waitress Brenda, who went by what surely wasn’t her real last name, Jones. Brenda quite obviously had a story, based on the bruises she’d been sporting when Ruby had found her, but she was opening up, bit by bit, and Ruby wasn’t going to press her.
“Yes, honey?”
A shy smile and almost a meeting of the eyes. “I was wondering…” Her fingers twisted together.
“What is it?” Ruby prompted gently.
“I just…” A slight shrug of one thin shoulder. The girl probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. “I was wondering about balloons. Do you think Eric would like them?”
Bless her sweet heart. “Lordy, where is my head? I should have thought of that, but looky here—I didn’t have to because I have you. That’s an excellent idea. I believe I have some in the storeroom, up high on a shelf to the right. Let Henry get them for you.”
The girl’s gaze flicked to hers. “I can do it.”
Her battered pride needed a shot of confidence.
“Of course you can. It’s only that Henry’s t
aller, and that shelf is hard to reach.”
“For you, maybe.” An unusual display of grit. “I’m not four foot ten.”
Ruby snorted. “Watch yourself, young lady.” She softened it with a smile. “I’ll have you know I am one whole inch over five feet.” Slight as Brenda was, she seemed tiny, but she was indeed taller by a few inches. No news there—except for her granddaughter Scarlett, everyone but small children was taller than Ruby.
“Ruby, I was just thinking—” Henry Jansen rounded the corner from the dining room and screeched to a halt. “Brenda.” The quiet, always reliable young busboy blushed, as he did so often around the girl.
“Just the man I wanted. Remember those balloons we stuck up high in the storeroom after Harley’s birthday?”
“Yes, ma’am.” At last he dragged his gaze from the girl. “Oh—want me to get them?”
“If you would.”
“I’m on it.” He headed that way.
Brenda made as if to follow.
Ruby delayed her with one hand on her arm. “You know if you ever need to talk, I want to listen, right?” The girl’s skittishness had eased some in the months she’d been here, but she’d never fully lost it.
Brenda’s eyes shone. “I do.”
“We protect folks around here. Just think about Eric and how everyone has rallied around him, how Rissa and Mackey took him in after his mama died and left him an orphan.” She gave the girl a reassuring smile. “We don’t have orphans here in Sweetgrass. Not even grown ones.”
She heard Henry’s footsteps. “Henry, the balloons were Brenda’s idea and a good one. You help her blow them up, all right?”
“Sure thing. We got a bunch of them here,” he said to Brenda. “We’d best get started.”
Ruby watched them go and smiled at the gawky young man with a heart of gold.
And a terrible crush on Brenda.
Then she remembered the cake that still hadn’t arrived. “Scarlett—” she called out. “You hear anything from Rissa about that cake?”
Scarlett looked over the pass-through on tiptoe, just as Ruby had to do. “Cousin Crankypants called and said she and Mackey were on their way.” She gave an inelegant snort as she returned to the food prep she’d left long enough to exchange insults with their head waitress Jeanette. “Bet you money they’re playing kissy-face and lost track of time.”
“Unlike someone we know who was playing kissy-face with Ian McLaren earlier and nearly let the onions scorch?”
Her granddaughter cast her a sassy grin. “But they didn’t scorch, now did they? My sense of food timing is impeccable, after all these years in kitchens.” A professional chef before she’d come to Sweetgrass looking to solve the mystery of her mother’s past, Scarlett’s culinary background was indeed impressive. Ruby still marveled that she’d convinced her granddaughter to give up New York for Sweetgrass Springs.
Well, Ian McLaren had had a little something to do with it.
“If you’d make potato salad like a normal person, scorched onions wouldn’t be a worry.”
“But Eric likes my abnormal potato salad. So do you, Nana. I’m working on an upscale version to serve at the new place.”
The new place. The decommissioned courthouse across the street, the landmark of Sweetgrass Springs.
And The Lady, the spirit who haunted the spring next to it.
The spirit who deserved some peace—which she would get, if Ruby had her way, now that Jackson was back in town…
“You have that conniving look again, Nana. What are you up to now?”
“Me?” She hadn’t told anyone that she’d summoned her great-nephew Jackson. No one but Jackson’s father had ever known that she had been in touch with him all this time. She’d offered his contact information to James, going against Jackson’s specific condition for what she’d believed was his best interests—only to have James flatly refuse to accept it.
Jackson’s daddy had always been a hard man, but after his wife Mary’s death he’d turned to solid stone. She could not understand him. If she’d had one tiny clue where to find her missing daughter Georgia all those years, she would have hunted her down—and not missed all of Scarlett’s growing up.
James, you are a fool. My child is dead, but yours is alive.
And such a good man.
“I’m not conniving.” Ruby was the only other person in Sweetgrass who knew about Jackson and Veronica’s teenage love affair.
The only person who was almost certain that Ben Butler was not David Butler’s biological child.
The two of them had to find peace. The Lady needed peace. Sweetgrass needed to thrive.
Jackson Gallagher held the keys to all of that.
“Nana, you are so plotting something. What is it?”
Ruby looked at the granddaughter who was her dream come to life, the legacy she thought she’d lost when her daughter vanished years ago, and she was just about to open her mouth and tell her about Jackson—
The front door opened, and a cheer went up in the dining room as Rissa and Mackey—bearing a cake that she could only imagine the horse-mad, non-cooking Rissa had sweated bullets over—walked in the door.
“It’s about time!” Scarlett yelled.
“Bite me,” her cousin Rissa answered as she approached the kitchen, taking the cake from Mackey’s hands. “Not one word, you hear me?” The normally unflappable Rissa was a study in misery.
Ruby peered down as Rissa opened the box. Bit her tongue not to chuckle.
“It could be worse,” Scarlett said.
Rissa actually wrung her hands. “It’s awful. I should never have tried, but I wanted—” She turned to Ruby. “What am I going to do?”
“That cake is just fine, honey. He will love it.”
“He will, Rissa,” Scarlett said loyally. The two fought like cats and dogs, but Scarlett was thrilled to have family and only fought because Rissa liked the duel. “I think you did a good job.”
Rissa’s eyes went to slits. “You do not.”
Scarlett put her hands on her hips. “Is this your first cake?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“You want to know what my first cake looked like? It was two layers covered with runny icing, and the top layer slid off halfway, then when I tried to fix it, it just got worse. You didn’t do that. Am I the expert or not?”
“Just ’cause you were trained in Paris doesn’t make you an expert,” Rissa grumbled.
“Do I try to tell you how to train horses?”
“You would if I let you.”
“What’s wrong with that cake?”
“It doesn’t look like the picture.” Rissa crossed her arms over her chest, but her eyes were not so defiant as her pose. They were a study in furious embarrassment.
“Do you know what gyrations they go through to take those pictures? You think that’s real food? Those have been sprayed with oil, and the cakes are usually only frosting over a form, not an actual cake. How did the batter taste?”
“It tasted awesome,” said a deep voice from the doorway. Mackey uncoiled himself and crossed to stand behind Rissa, his hands on her shoulders, a smile on his handsome face but worry in his eyes. “I told you, Ris, that picture was that fancy frosting, that stuff that’s rolled out in a sheet.”
“Fondant,” Scarlett said. “You didn’t try making fondant your first time, did you? Rissa, it takes forever to perfect that.”
“No, this was different. Eric loves fudge, so Celia gave me a recipe for a fudge icing.”
“I bet she said it looked fine, didn’t she?” Scarlett asked.
“Yeah, but—”
Mackey kneaded her shoulders. “I told you. It’s a kickass cake, babe.”
“I just—”
“Wanted it to be perfect,” Scarlett finished for her. “Because you love Eric and want to make up for the awful life he’s had.”
“Yeah.”
“You think Eric won’t realize you don’t cook, yet you worried yours
elf sick to make him a cake? You did, didn’t you?”
Reluctantly Rissa nodded. “I’d rather tame a mustang than try that again.”
“But it’ll be easier next time. And if you want, I’ll teach you fondant.”
Rissa visibly shuddered. “No, thank you. I’m done.”
“My birthday’s coming up,” Mackey said. “I don’t get a cake?”
“Get real, Hollywood.” But her stiff frame had relaxed.
“Even if I beg?” Mackey drew her out of the kitchen but paused first to shoot Scarlett a grateful glance.
Scarlett nodded back.
Rissa slipped her arm around Mackey’s waist as they walked away, arguing. He picked her up and laid a smacking big kiss on her, and Ruby and Scarlett chuckled as she shoved at his shoulder.
“Who knew someone could tame Cousin Crankypants?” Scarlett murmured as they turned back to their cooking.
“Miracles do happen,” Ruby murmured.
She wanted one for Veronica and Jackson.
“Mommy, please can we go watch for Eric?” begged Abby Butler at the cafe that evening. Her quieter twin, Beth, said nothing, but her eyes glowed with the same excitement. They were friends of Eric’s best buddy Samantha and now petite mother hens to Eric himself.
Veronica smiled. “From inside, okay? You won’t ruin the surprise, right, Miss Abigail? And you’ll stay where I can see you?”
Abby rolled her eyes. “I’m not a baby.”
“Ben?” Veronica glanced up to ask her son to help, but she saw him watching Ian and Mackey with longing. He missed his father so much. He and David had been two peas in a pod.
When her son turned, she simply nodded and said, “Go ahead. I’ll be fine here.”
“Are you sure, Mom? I could stay.”
He’d become her fiercest protector, but she wasn’t his responsibility, however much he believed otherwise. “I’m going to visit with Scarlett and Ruby.” She turned back to the girls. “I’m counting on you, Beth, to keep your sister out of trouble.”
“Good luck with that.” Ben snorted while Abby huffed.
“Mommy…”
Veronica laughed and hugged them both. “Just kidding.” She tapped the tips of each nose. “All right. You go be sentries and let us know when you see Eric arriving. But do not run out that door, do you hear me, young lady?”
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