Texas Redeemed

by Isla Bennet

  Once they were both outfitted with wraps and gloves, Diego gestured to the speed bag. “First you learn hand-eye coordination. Watch my boy here.”

  Peyton’s hesitation at training with someone from Battle Creek must’ve shown because Will said, “We don’t judge here. It gets in the way of a good workout.”

  Diego slapped Peyton’s shoulder. “Let’s focus on getting your mind in the right place.” Then he issued an ear-splitting whistle. “Dejen de perder el tiempo. Vamos a trabajar.”

  Stop wasting time. Let’s work.

  WITH JOURNEY PLAYING on the battery-operated radio she blared every afternoon during barn chores, Valerie sat bent over on a stool as her hand worked a cow’s udder to relax it for its second milking. She could smell the spicy cologne she’d committed to memory before she even heard Peyton’s footsteps approaching behind her.

  He’d arrived to take Lucy out for the rest of the day—a weekend routine they’d fallen into after Christmas, when confirmation had come from Austin that the application for Lucy’s amended birth certificate was official.

  “Dinah took her to a scrapbooking class at Snip-Snap, that little hobby shop on Old Towne. They’re not back yet,” Valerie said, not intending to be short with him, but struggling to focus on milking the cow without giving in to the distraction of his scent. “It’s cutting in on your time with her. Sorry. It’s just that she hasn’t been herself lately.”

  “Tantrums?”

  “I wish. More of the sulk-in-silence stuff. Not much interest in riding or drawing or even Ichabod, that llama she begged for.” His silence spoke volumes, and she regretted even broaching the subject. Already he was concerned that Lucy wasn’t just a troublemaker acting out for attention, that she was in need of rescuing. Valerie didn’t like the idea that he thought he knew their daughter better than she did. Lucy and Anna were the best part of Valerie; no one would ever know them as well as she did. “Peyton, don’t make this thing with Lucy into something that it’s not. Dinah suggested a new hobby, and I think it might do the trick.”

  “If it does, then thank God for paper and glue.” He slid the toe of his boot under a low stool, dragged it over and sat.

  Boot. “Are those actual boots, Peyton? Not Italian loafers or European—”

  “Just all-American boots. Can’t a man try out different footwear?”

  “Certainly.” She smiled in triumph as she wrapped her hand around the cow’s teat and squeezed, producing a short squirt of milk that shot into a bucket. “I can hardly live without them. I do everything in boots.”

  While his still had that newish look, hers were creased and scuffed. “So are you morphing into a cowboy now, or what?”

  “How’d you end up with that conclusion out of what I’ve got on my feet?” Peyton braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, ready for a real response.

  The cow made a half sigh, half moan, and continued nibbling on the spread of grass and hay in front of it as Valerie steadily milked.

  “It’s not just the boots. You’ve been hanging out at Bull’s-Eye with Will Aturro and guys from the Culpeppers’ ranch. And Lucy said you tried out one of the palominos the other week—and almost fell.”

  “Falling off a horse isn’t a rare thing, Val. Neither is getting back on.”

  She snorted. “Depends on how hurt you get when you fall.” Taking hold of another of the cow’s teats, she milked with both hands.

  Peyton touched her arm, just a graze of his fingertips on her skin, but she didn’t slow her pace. “Okay. Now we’re talking about something else here. We’re talking about you and me.”

  You and me. Why did that sound so good to her ears, but pierce a tender spot in her heart? Right, because it was a fantasy that wasn’t allowed to come true. Because she had to uphold boundaries between them. “It’s not that simple. Rowena Bruin told Dinah you were at an A.A. meeting on New Year’s Eve. Did you let Marin back in?”

  “She’s my mother.”

  “The mother who’s hurt you countless times. This town won’t even let you live down what her choices drove you to, and here she is to take another crack at you.” Valerie wanted to give him the entire truth, but the moment she told him what he didn’t know about his mother would be the moment it backfired against her. She’d made a misstep in the name of friendship, so how could she point the finger at Marin when some of the blame was hers?

  “Val, my whole world changed when I left town. It changed again when I found out about Anna and Lucy. People do change. My mother has.” His fingers brushed her again. “Hey. Lucy’s not a part of this. Marin knows to keep away from her.”

  But for how long? Valerie wondered. “What about you, Peyton? Way down deep you’re still the little boy waiting for his mama’s love. I understand that. I did everything I could to have Uncle Rhys’s approval, until I figured out it wouldn’t happen. By that time I had something better to count on.”

  “What was that?”

  “Your friendship.” She looked up, found him watching her. “I had you.”

  “You have me now.” Peyton’s voice dropped. “Is this disagreement about Marin an excuse to keep you and me from getting closer?”

  Partly. “How much closer can we get? Besides sex.”

  “Sex?”

  “Yes.” Valerie let go of the cow and turned off the radio sitting on the floor nearby. “You want me. Even sitting here this second, I can tell you do. I want you, too.” His pupils dilated and she continued, “But it stops at sex.”

  “Valerie—”

  “We can’t leave all this open-ended between us. That impossible-to-stop moment you talked about at your grandfather’s party? It’s not going to happen, and I don’t want to waste my time waiting for it. So we choose either yes or no. Wait-and-see’s not an option.”

  Peyton’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Can you hear yourself, Valerie? Do you know what you’re offering?”

  “As if you aren’t all for booty calls.”

  “Not from you. You don’t do things like this.”

  “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think, Peyton.”

  “What the hell made you this way? Your body’s fair game, but the rest of you’s off limits?”

  “Nothing ‘made’ me any way. Just like you’re not the guy you used to be, well, I’m not the old Valerie. She didn’t know how to control her life, how to set up boundaries and make the right choices.”

  “Sleeping with a random man just for the sake of sex is the right choice?”

  You’re not random. You’re the father of my children. You’re the man in my dreams. But he was also only a version of the man he once was, practically a stranger. Unfamiliar territory. “Look, it’s no big deal. A simple choice, really, to take me or not. Sounds like your answer’s no.”

  “My answer is this.” Peyton dipped his head, almost, almost drawing his lips over her temple. “Put me down for wait and see. There’s no point in rushing anything.”

  “There is if you’re leaving.” She missed his closeness when he eased back. “If you’re going back to your real life of world-traveling hero, not your try-on life of menswear heir or cowboy daddy.”

  Peyton tensed, just a slight tic in his jaw, but she noticed it nevertheless. “I’ve been in Night Sky for three months.”

  “Yup, so your time’s probably about up.” And when he did leave, she’d breathe again knowing that her business and home and daughter were safe and hers to keep.

  She expected him to protest, to insist she was wrong. Instead he said, “This whole ‘pilot your own life’ idea, this ‘everyone has their own self to blame when shit hits the fan’ philosophy of yours—is it because of Rhys, or me? Or Anna?”

  “Great, now you’re on some psychoanalysis trip, too.” How many nerves had he hit by mentioning Rhys’s abuse, his own abandonment and Anna’s death in one fell swoop? “Gotta say, it’s not a turn-on. In fact, I don’t even want to sleep with you.”

  His hand settled on her knee,
and she felt his heat through the denim. “I didn’t say I don’t want you. I want all of you.”

  “No. I can’t give you that.”

  “You won’t,” he clarified, and when his hand withdrew she felt at a loss. “I’m going outside to wait for Lucy. For the record, my answer’s still wait and see.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FREEZING RAIN HAD been predicted for this part of Texas, but the general public hadn’t put much stock in it since any truly wintry weather didn’t normally touch the area. Valerie had though, and spent much of the previous night surfing news programs, weather channels and radio stations, gathering information about the harsh winter advisory that would hit as a result of brutal blizzards pushing down from northern states.

  Now, twenty-four hours later, the cold, needlelike rain had arrived, shooting out of a sky thick and dark with overcast. It had hit suddenly, and hadn’t reached its peak yet.

  Flicking off the radio in the barn, she grabbed her flashlight and aimed it around the interior, taking a head count of the barn cats she’d come to think of as her pets.

  Coldness bit into her fingers and the tip of her nose. “Will, is the generator in shape, in case we lose electricity tonight?”

  The man adjusted the hood on his jacket. “Good to go. Everyone accounted for?”

  “In here, yes. Inside the house, yes.” Peyton had come over to take Lucy to a museum in Meridien, but the weather had killed those plans, and now he was helping Dinah herd Mimas and Titania into the main house. “I need to do a count in the stables. Double-check the pens, will you?” Will strode off, his shoulders hunched against the assault of the freezing rain, and Valerie shut the barn doors and hustled to the stables.

  All the stalls were filled, except one.

  Brute.

  “Will!” Valerie whirled around, squinting into the night that was still too dark to see through despite the outdoor lighting near the stables. But he was gone, too far away to hear her over the howl of wind.

  She took off toward the bunkhouse, furious enough to fire Coop on the spot for not only taking the gelding out again after her strict orders not to, but for doing it on an unusual night of sleet and ice and dangerous winds.

  Halfway there she saw him, flailing his arms and hollering her name. The horse was nowhere in sight.

  “Where’s Brute?”

  “She never brought him back.” There was something strange in his voice. Panic.

  “She?” It dawned then that Lucy hadn’t joined the others to help secure the ranch and check on the animals. She didn’t consider that her daughter might not be in the house. The icy fear seemed to pierce right through her. “Lucy?”

  “Cordelia.”

  “Cordelia took Brute out? When?”

  “Over an hour ago.”

  “Oh, God.” Valerie’s stomach roiled. “Why did she take him? I was going to.”

  Coop cursed. “She left before the weather took a turn, said the sky looked good and she’d do you a favor, since you were tied up with other chores. She swore up and down she could handle that horse. The two of you are the same that way, stubborn as the devil about doin’ stuff how you see fit.”

  Valerie shivered, changing direction and heading for the stables. “I’m going out to find her then. There’s no one else to do it. Only Will could make it over tonight, and I don’t want you riding out in this weather, Coop. And yes, it’s because you’re too old and I can’t worry about both you and Cordelia.”

  “Jack ain’t coming till tomorrow, right?”

  “Right.” Jack. How would he react once he found out what Cordelia had done? “I have to find her, and I will.”

  Coop managed to keep up with her determined strides. “What about the doc? Let him come with you, Val. What if Rhys’s girl is hurt or somethin’?”

  Valerie didn’t want to entertain the thought, but knew it was a strong possibility. Chances were Cordelia hadn’t gotten turned around and lost with Brute. But there was one problem with Coop’s suggestion. “Peyton’s no good on a horse.”

  “Not as good as you and me, but he’s learned how to stay upright on one and that’s well enough.”

  Within twenty minutes Valerie and Peyton were on horseback, drawing near the trail that parted the dense, sloping wood that climbed into the mountains. In some patches the ground was already coated with ice and hard as concrete, making it unsafe for the horses to move faster than a walk. The trail felt unfamiliar now—pitch-black, loud with quivering tree branches and the cry of brutal wind and sleet, coated with slick danger underfoot.

  Despite her gloves, Valerie’s fingers felt frozen to a state of nearly total numbness. She held the reins in one hand and a flashlight in the other. She led the way, desperate to quicken her horse’s speed but afraid to take the risk.

  She doubted Peyton could handle anything faster than the cautious walk. Behind her, he gripped his horse’s reins with both hands as the animal navigated through bitter-cold darkness that was, in the light of a clear day, scenic with wildflowers and yucca and trees that seemed as high as heaven.

  “Are you holding up okay?” she called behind her as the horse panted, its breath rising like twin shots of smoke into the cloudy night.

  In answer, Peyton swore viciously and then there was a thud and a splash and the sound of branches snapping.

  Valerie turned her head so quickly that her neck pulled. Wincing, she angled her horse around and saw that Peyton had lost his seating.

  “Stop!” she shouted at his horse, springing down from her saddle. With the reins of both horses and the flashlight in hand, she went to Peyton and found him sprawled on his back in a bed of mud and foliage. “You hurt?”

  “Maybe a bruised ass,” he grunted, shifting to all fours. His entire backside was coated in wet grime. Mud had splashed across his chest and splattered his face on impact. “Which makes me look forward to getting in that saddle again.”

  “Do you want to walk?”

  “We’re riding. Even going at a slow pace, the horses can get us to Cordelia faster.”

  They returned to the horses and continued another mile, calling out Cordelia’s name but getting no response. Then, finally, from somewhere up ahead on the mountainside came a moan. Slumped against a pine, shivering and cradling her belly, was Cordelia.

  Valerie dismounted quickly, almost dropping her flashlight. She passed the light over her cousin, seeing smudges of dirt but no blood. “What the hell happened? Can you speak?”

  “Brute,” she whispered with chattering teeth. She sniffled into her sleeve and fresh tears mingled with the dried tracks on her cheeks. “Got spooked. Th-threw me and ran. My baby.”

  Peyton crouched beside them. “We can’t get back to the ranch on horseback. I need to have a look at you, Cordelia, okay?” He jerked his head at Valerie. “Do you have a satellite phone?”

  “Damn it. No.” In her rush to search for her cousin she’d forgotten to bring along the phone. “I have my cell.”

  “See if you can get reception to call an ambulance. If not, I’ll drive her to the ER myself.”

  The surroundings combined with the harsh weather made it impossible for her to get a call through to anyone. “This thing’s useless in this area. We should start heading down the trail, but … is it safe to move her?”

  “Give me the flashlight,” he said, and when he passed the beam over Cordelia’s face, paying special attention to her eyes’ reaction to the light, he braced his free arm around her shoulders. “I need to check you, Cordelia. Lie back, but tell me if it hurts too much.”

  Valerie waited, grasping the reins with her breath held, unable to look away from the sight of her cousin so frightened and small.

  Peyton proceeded gently, searching for signs of bleeding while asking Cordelia a series of questions about headaches and nausea. “Probably a fractured rib,” he deduced, when he found a particularly painful spot on her torso.

  “I can walk,” she said when he suggested carrying her to the r
anch.

  “No!” Peyton and Valerie objected.

  “There’s a difference between being brave and being stupid, Cordelia,” Valerie went on, ignoring her cousin’s shocked, combative expression. “I know this isn’t the best time to say this, and I know you think I’m being shitty. But I don’t care. When I told everyone on the ranch to leave Brute in my care, that included you. But you took him out on this trail, tonight of all nights. You’re not invincible, and it’s not just your life you’re playing Russian roulette with. It’s your baby’s, and Jack’s, too.”

  “Let me worry about my family, Valerie,” Cordelia said with a grunt of pain.

  “Your family is my family. You’re my family. And I’m scared out of my mind right now.” Valerie swallowed back a sob. “Just let Peyton help you.”

  Peyton deftly lifted Cordelia, buckling a little as her weight aggravated his own injuries from his earlier fall, and started walking in the direction of the ranch, with Valerie leading the two horses.

  The continuing onslaught of freezing rain that felt like needles to the skin had only heightened the hazard of tramping through the wood. The trail had become icy and to avoid having to pick balled ice from the horses’ hooves, Valerie guided them slightly off the path and through the snarl of trees, stumbling and slipping and struggling to aim her flashlight toward Peyton and Cordelia.

  And then the unmistakable flutter of snow began to drift down, eliminating what little visibility remained.

  “T-too far,” Cordelia mumbled, crying out when Peyton tripped over a branch and jerked her in his arms.

  “It’s not,” Valerie protested, shaken to hear her sound defeated. “We’ll get you to the ranch, damn it.”

  Once they did emerge from the trail, everything happened in fast forward. It took two vehicles to cart Cordelia to the hospital, because both Dinah and Lucy insisted on going along. Certain that he could be of no use at the ranch until the light of day and, hopefully, calmer weather, Will left with a vow to locate Brute when he returned.

  Valerie, left at home with Bowie, the dogs and her own fears as company, picked up the phone and called Chase’s room at Blue Longhorn. After sixteen unanswered rings, she hung up and dialed the landline at Coop’s bunkhouse.