Suddenly Texan

by Victoria Chancellor

  After Myra walked out of the room and closed the door, silence fell again. “So, what happens now?” Leo asked to no one in particular.

  “I have no idea,” Troy said.

  “I guess there’s nothing else left to do,” Amanda said. “I did what I came here for. I’ve told you who I am. Whether you believe me or not…well, that’s beyond my control.” She sounded resigned. “The lawyer, Curtis Salter from Portland, will contact you tomorrow about the bequest and I’m sure you’ll need to prove who you are to him so you can get your money.” She rose from the chair. “I think I’d like to see the photos the ladies copied for me.”

  “But what will you do?” Christie asked. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to drive to Arkansas to visit my cousins. We aren’t real close, but I figured it might be nice to see them since I’m within a day’s drive. Then…I’m not so sure. I don’t have to go to New Hampshire to meet Troy any longer. I guess I’ll decide whether to go back to Portland or find a new place to live.”

  “Stay here,” Leo said suddenly, the words popping out before he could think about his reaction. “This is a good place to live.” Besides, I care about you. Really, I do.

  Amanda smiled sadly at him. “Yes, it is a great place to live, if I had a good reason to stay. But really, Leo, I don’t think I do. It’s best that I move on.”

  He stared at her as she made her way to the door of the study. Amanda seemed to pause for just a moment. Her shoulders lifted as if she were taking a deep breath. Then she opened the door and walked out, closing it gently behind her.

  Christie jumped up. “I’m going to make Amanda feel welcome. I, for one, believe her.”

  Leo believed her, too, and he’d already told her he wanted her to stay, at least twice.

  Besides, her decisions weren’t about him. They were about her brothers, her desire to be part of their family. Leo had heard the pain in her voice as she’d talked about growing up without a father, with a mother who was undependable at best. Amanda wanted to belong somewhere, but she didn’t feel that this was home. Especially since her brothers hadn’t exactly made her feel welcome. She didn’t want to stay here.

  But did he? Hadn’t he always thought he might move on someday? He’d owned the hardware store for five years—an eternity in his lifetime. At one time he hadn’t even had a permanent residence. He’d stayed in hotels around the world and visited Texas between tournaments and high-stakes games.

  Now he was a business owner, an investor, with his own place and more possessions than he’d ever imagined. He didn’t feel as if his life were weighing him down…yet. That would probably come, though. He expected it to come. So if he wanted to live someplace else, he could. He could give the Casale family trunk back to his parents, sell his condo and hardware store. He could come for visits, like Troy did. There was nothing wrong with that.

  Of course, Troy had moved to New Hampshire to marry Raven, the woman he loved.

  Leo wasn’t quite ready to make that sort of…what? Sacrifice? Commitment? He didn’t know how he felt about giving up his freedom.

  The one thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t let Amanda drive off into an uncertain future. He didn’t understand why, but he knew that when he thought about losing her, he felt empty inside.

  He needed a strategy.

  “So, Leo, how much did you know about this before Myra and Amanda told their stories?” Cal asked.

  “I made a complete ass out of myself,” he admitted, sinking down in the chair where Amanda had been sitting. “I listened to what Amanda said about her life and I learned what she was asking other people. I looked into her eyes, which are so much like yours that you should really look in a mirror, Cal, and I decided she must be Calvin Crawford’s illegitimate daughter.”

  “No way! Our father didn’t have an affair.”

  “Okay, it wasn’t like I was accusing him. At first I thought it might have been after your mother left, but then I did the math and discovered Amanda was older than that.”

  “She’s what, twenty-six?”

  “That’s right. I knew she was related in some way to you. When I brought up the subject, my timing sucked. That was Sunday night, after I fixed her dinner, and we’d talked, and…well, my assumption didn’t go over well. Amanda moved out of the condo unit very early Monday morning.”

  “She denied being related to us?” Troy asked.

  “No, she denied being your father’s illegitimate daughter. At the time, I thought she was just being private. I was wrong.”

  Cal rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know what to think. I can’t… I don’t know what to do now.”

  “I don’t, either,” Troy said. “It’s a huge change in our family. But I’ve got to admit, she knows things no one else would. And Myra supports her story. Myra may be cranky, but she has no reason to lie.”

  “No reason we know of,” Cal said.

  “Why are you so suspicious?” Leo asked. “Amanda isn’t asking one thing from you. She came here to let you know you had a sister. She’s telling you that you’re getting money. What’s so complicated about that?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Troy said. “What’s not complicated about this situation! And that includes your relationship with Amanda. Just exactly what do you want from her? Why do you want her to stay in town?”

  “I… What I want is irrelevant to your relationship to Amanda.”

  “Really? If she is our sister, and as I said, I’m leaning that way, then you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “What?” Leo’s jaw dropped.

  “What Troy means,” Cal said in his serious voice, “is that we want to know what your intentions are since you asked her to stay.”

  “My intentions are to help her out, have a good time, be her friend.” That’s what he’d been doing all along. And it was working out just fine until he’d pushed her for answers.

  “Friends?” Cal frowned. “I got the impression you’d gone beyond being just friends.”

  “Friends with benefits?” Leo answered, not sure the brothers would like his response.

  “So, you’re just messing around with her, and you don’t want her to leave because…” Troy prompted.

  “Because we were having a good time!” Leo felt completely frustrated. Why couldn’t he and Amanda keep on doing things together, including warming up the sheets of his bed? He really liked and admired her. He didn’t see any reason to change right now. Hell, she was five years younger than him, just getting out in the world. Why would she want to get leg-shackled any more than he would?

  “I don’t think she sees it that way,” Troy said.

  “I don’t claim to be an expert on women,” Cal added, “but Christie has taught me a lot. Having a good time is fine for casual dating, but when a man jumps up and asks a woman to stay in town and then can’t give her a good reason, it’s his problem, not hers.”

  “I do not have a problem with women,” Leo stated firmly.

  “No, you just have issues with one woman. And if Cal and I don’t decide who she really is to us and what that means, we’re going to have the same problem. She’s going to drive away from here and none of us will ever know what might have been if only we hadn’t been so hardheaded.” Troy crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Cal and Leo.

  Cal reached for the envelope Myra had left on the desk. “I want to see the letters Myra brought.”

  “Me, too,” Troy said.

  Leo just wanted to see Amanda, and if he didn’t know why, exactly, he figured that was everyone else’s problem.

  AMANDA SAT ON THE SECTIONAL sofa in the great room, surrounded by Bobbi Jean and Christie, with Clarissa, Venetia and Caroline nearby. Myra had gone home after eating several chocolate oatmeal drop cookies, and making Amanda promise that she would come and see her.

  The ladies had done a beautiful job with the photos. She now had a real album of her mother’s life in Texas, with pictures from the do
wntown as it was in the mid-1970s, when Luanna had first come to Brody’s Crossing. Despite feeling depressed over the less-than-storybook response of her brothers, Amanda smiled at the photo of her mother at a church social when she was young, with Farah Fawcett hair and blue eye shadow. Everyone had written their memories of Luanna, Cal and Troy. Ida Bell, who didn’t usually come to lunch, had created a scrapbook-style title page for the album: In Memory of Luanna.

  “Mom would have really liked this,” Amanda said, closing the last page. “I have a few other photos I can add when I get out the box of her memorabilia. I know now that some of the photos she had in her dresser when she died were sent by Myra.”

  She sighed. “Mom didn’t take much with her when she left, but there’s one special photo of herself, Cal and Troy.”

  “Is it this one?” the younger of her brothers said from the doorway. He picked up the framed photo from the built-in shelf near the fireplace and handed it to her.

  “Yes,” Amanda said, smiling at the familiar portrait. “She told me that was a happy day. She took you to Fort Worth to a photography studio, then went shopping for school clothes.” Amanda looked up at Troy. “Mom always said that you grew so fast she thought about sewing rows of calico on the bottom of your jeans.”

  Troy blinked, then drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, she told me that, too. I said I was sorry, but I needed to get to be as tall as Cal as quick as I could.”

  Amanda dabbed at her eyes. Sharing a memory of their mother was more than she’d hoped for half an hour ago. “Mom always said you were less like our father. She said Cal was his favorite. I guess that made you her favorite.”

  “I guess so.” He blinked again, put his hands on his hips and looked away, out the window into the night sky. “It really hurt when she left like that.”

  “I know. It hurt me every time she came to Arkansas for a visit, then returned to you and Cal. Like any little girl, I wanted my mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” Troy said softly. “I wish we could have all been a family.”

  “I do, too,” Amanda whispered.

  The ladies started sliding around the sectional. “It’s getting late,” Bobbi Jean said. “We’ll leave you to talk.” She gave Amanda a little hug and patted her back.

  Amanda felt emotionally exhausted and physically drained. She didn’t know if there was anything left to say. She pulled back slightly from Bobbi Jean’s embrace. “Thank you all so much for the wonderful album. When I came here, I just thought I wanted to see where my mother lived, meet some of the people who knew her and maybe find out why she made some of the choices that she did. This is so much more than I expected.”

  “We were glad to do it, sweetie,” Clarissa said, giving Amanda a big hug. “Now, don’t you forget to come by my salon.”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, remember?”

  “You take care,” Venetia said, patting her shoulder, which was probably as affectionate as Venetia ever got.

  “There’s no reason for you to rush off,” Christie said. “You just won Troy over. Cal won’t be far behind. He’s just slightly more stubborn and cautious.”

  Amanda tried to smile, but figured she failed when everyone just looked at her with sympathy.

  The older women made their way to the door with Christie following behind. Amanda stood in the wide hallway and watched them pick up their purses and get out their car keys.

  “Goodbye,” she said softly. “Thank you again. I’ll never forget you.”

  “You’ll be back,” Clarissa said with confidence. “I don’t think this is goodbye.”

  Amanda waved as Christie ushered the women out. She turned and sighed, leaning against the door. “I’m not letting you leave until you talk to Cal one more time.”

  “What I’d really like to do is see your children. I’d love to have a photo of them to take with me,” Amanda said.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to leave us, now that you finally told us who you are and what happened to our mother,” Troy said from behind her. “And I can’t believe that I have a sister. A little sister.”

  Amanda burst into tears. Troy caught her as she sagged against him. She felt so overwhelmed, so drained, that she had no resistance to the emotions running through her.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, stroking her hair as her mother used to do sometimes when Amanda had a bad day at school and her mother was having a good day. “It’s great that you found us, right? And I’m really glad that Leo sent me a ticket so I could get down here and meet you. He wouldn’t tell me why, but he told me that I had to come.”

  “Leo sent for you?” Why would he spend his own money to get Troy here from New Hampshire?

  “He called me. I was surprised, but not as surprised as when you told us you were our sister.”

  “Leo meddles in everything,” Amanda said. “And I think he likes being dramatic.”

  “You think? Yes, he might have a bit of the theatrical in him.”

  “He didn’t have any right to get involved in my life,” she said, still comforted by Troy.

  “Leo isn’t the kind of guy to ask permission. He takes charge and asks forgiveness later. Mostly, he always thinks he’s right.”

  Amanda sniffed and pulled back a little. “I’m sorry I cried all over you.”

  “Not the first time that’s happened to me.”

  “And thank you for listening. I’m sorry I complained about your friend.”

  Troy leaned back and smiled at her. “Hey, what’s a big brother for? This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to give my sister a little advice about a boy.”

  “What’s this about giving advice?” Cal asked from behind them. “I’m the oldest brother. You should be listening to my words of wisdom.” He walked up and put his arm around her and Troy.

  Amanda’s lip trembled and she started to cry all over again. This was what family felt like, this messy, exhausting, overwhelming feeling that there’s someone else out there who understands you.

  Christie was right. How could she leave now that she’d found her family?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Leo watched the group hug from the doorway, just inside the family room. Family. Christie walked over and they all hugged again.

  He wasn’t part of this. He had no right to hug Amanda or interfere with her joy at being accepted as a Crawford.

  He just wanted to make sure she wasn’t leaving town tonight or in the morning. They had to talk. This time, he wouldn’t make any assumptions. He’d leave everything wide-open and let her make up her mind.

  As long as she didn’t decide to drive away for parts unknown.

  He settled into a chair by the windows, not wanting to interrupt the Crawford family. He wondered if Amanda would change her name, or if she’d stay an Allen. Maybe the name on her birth certificate was already Crawford. Not that her last name mattered to him.

  Minutes later, the two smallest members of the family came down the stairs with their nanny, Darla, and Peter ran to Christie. They seemed a little cautious at seeing their father standing next to Amanda, but Peter was thrilled to see his uncle, and launched himself at Troy’s knees.

  They all hugged and talked some more. Christie took pictures with a camera Amanda handed her. Callie started to cry when Amanda held her. Leo could see the worried look on her face, as if she didn’t know whether to try to console the baby or hand her right back to her mother.

  Amanda had a lot to learn about babies before she got married and had any of her own, he thought with a smile. And then he wondered when Amanda might want to get married and have babies, and he frowned. Surely she wasn’t ready for anything like that.

  She needed to be carefree and single for quite a while. They could have a good time and then…

  Hell, the idea of Amanda getting married to another man and having his babies was just…wrong. Because she’s way too young to be thinking about such things, he told himself.

  “Hey, Leo, come and get in a photo,” Christ
ie called from the hallway. “That’s okay.”

  “No, seriously, get over here,” his business partner insisted.

  He pushed himself out of the comfortable chair and walked toward the siblings. Seeing them together, he wondered how anyone could have missed the fact that they were related. Maybe that’s what Burl Maxwell had sensed at the community center Saturday night when he’d said that Amanda looked familiar.

  He posed for several photos, getting as close to Amanda as her overbearing brothers would allow. You’d think they’d been protecting her all her life rather than the past hour. And what was that about asking his intentions? They were between him and Amanda. If the brothers would just butt out, maybe he could make some progress.

  He and Amanda could go back to the way things were before he screwed up by making an incorrect assumption. Okay, and maybe interfering a little too much in her business. How could he help himself, though, when she was so darn interesting and she needed a friend so badly?

  In a few minutes, Darla gathered up the kids. Amanda told them good-night and Cal and Christie promised to come up in a few minutes to tuck them in.

  Leo pulled Amanda aside, away from overprotective brother number two. “That was great, wasn’t it? You were really glowing. I know meeting your family and being accepted by them is what you wanted.”

  “Yes, it is, but I’m not sure I was ‘glowing,’” Amanda said with a questioning look on her face. “Isn’t that what people tell pregnant women?”

  Leo shrugged. “As I’ve said before, I wouldn’t know. I just meant you seem very happy.”

  She looked down at the floor. “I am. I’m very happy.”

  “This may sound old or clichéd or whatever, but I do want to talk to you. I still want you to stay, of course, and now you have a reason to.”

  “I—I suppose.”

  “Of course you do. You still need to meet Raven. I can fly her down if she can get away. And there are other people in town—”