Texas Redeemed

by Isla Bennet

  “How far is that? How far will you go to get your way, Valerie?” The dark thoughts, the bitter words, swirled together to create a dangerous, destructive funnel cloud. “The night my mother left with the money you came to me at the batting cage and we had sex. And you wound up pregnant.”

  “‘Wound up’? As if you didn’t have a little bit to do with that?”

  “Did I? Really?”

  “You were the only guy I was with then.”

  “Good old Sam Burgess might not agree with that.” Even as the words tumbled from him he wanted to pull them back but couldn’t.

  Valerie flew at him, hitting his chest with her fist twice before crumpling against him. He didn’t feel the impact, as if he was covered in steel. “Get a paternity test, Valerie. I don’t want Lucy to live a lie.”

  He turned and went back into the hospital, hating himself more with each step.

  EPISODE TEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  VALERIE WENT TO the ranch but lingered outside on the porch with her head rested on her knees, sobbing quietly. She wanted to leave the tears, heartbreak and vulnerability out here, and go into the house with some plan of how to deal with whatever would come next.

  The front door opened and there was Dinah’s soft, concerned voice. “Valerie, oh, you poor girl.” She sat beside Valerie and circled her in her plump arms and fresh-baked-pastries scent. “Oh, now, come here.”

  Valerie buried her face into her aunt’s shoulder, teary eyes, runny nose and all. “It’s falling apart. Peyton’s done with me.”

  “Done? Why?”

  “I did something terrible a long time ago, and the truth finally …” Valerie sniffled and let Dinah lift her chin. “He’s furious.”

  “But he loves his family. Crystal’s not even as clear as that. Love’ll bring him back. He’ll forgive you.”

  “No, Di. I’m not putting stock into that.”

  Her aunt frowned. “Sure about that? Seems to me you and Peyton deserve love and forgiveness. There’re bad men on this earth.” She lightly tapped Valerie’s silver crescent-shaped scar, and Valerie instantly thought of the only time her uncle had physically harmed her. “But there are some good men, too. Don’t give up on a good man. Neither should Peyton give up on a good woman. Y’all ought to have faith in each other.”

  The cold corner of her heart didn’t want to depend on Dinah’s talk of love and faith. She had done the very thing she’d tried to avoid: let Peyton get too close. Now he was under her skin, in her heart, a part of her soul … and somehow she would have to get over him.

  Fear of how he—and no doubt Nathaniel—would retaliate scorched her blood. The fact that he’d demanded a paternity test when Lucy was all but a female carbon copy of him cut like a blade. But what hurt worse than even that was the fear of losing him.

  NATHANIEL WAS SITTING on the caramel-brown brocade sofa in the parlor with a snifter of brandy when Peyton finally dragged himself to the mansion at an ungodly hour. “Valerie called. She didn’t sound well.”

  Pacing restlessly, he thought about his motorcycle, but knew even it wasn’t fast enough to whisk him away from hell. He went to the solarium, all the wonderful memories of being in here with Valerie growing up now coated with acid.

  “All of it … the friendship … the love … was one incredible lie.” He moved out of the entryway to let his grandfather past, then recounted Valerie’s confession. “Did she ask you for the money to rehabilitate Battle Creek?”

  “That’s the beauty of a con well done. She didn’t have to ask. I gave it to her.” The old man’s frosty glare landed on his wife’s telescope. “I thought she was a captain willing to go down with her ship when it came to that damn ranch, and for those girls’ sake I begged her to take the money.”

  He lifted the cane, as if to swing it at the telescope and send it careening through the window, but Peyton advanced on him. “Don’t, Grandpa. I know what you’ll do, because I’ve been there. You’ll blame Grandma for not being here to fix this, or for bringing Valerie into our home. But it won’t help.”

  “I warned Estella not to trust her, but she fought me …” His grandfather swore. “My lawyers can get you justice, my boy. Valerie manipulated you into sleeping with her. Lo and behold, she ended up pregnant. Your life didn’t have to turn out the way it did.”

  Nathaniel wanted to blame Valerie for ruining the plans he’d carefully made for his grandson. Peyton’s feelings, his emotional well-being, hadn’t been a factor to Nathaniel—but it had mattered to Valerie. “So we come after her not because she and my mother conned me, but because my life turned out a certain way. A way other than what you wanted, right?”

  “There were opportunities you lost because of her lies.”

  “Meaning that New Zealand mentorship and the job in Los Angeles? That was all bought and paid for by you, Grandpa. I didn’t earn it. Even if Mom hadn’t taken my money and run, even if I hadn’t slept with Valerie and then figured she’d be better off without me, who’s to say I wouldn’t have gotten the hell out of this town anyway?” He rested his hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. “I make my own choices. I’m leaving.”

  “The woman’s got you running again!”

  “Maybe Valerie had it right all along when she said I’d only end up leaving again. Maybe I didn’t change after all … and what good would it have done?” Peyton looked Nathaniel square in the face. “If you want to start a war with her, you’ll do it alone.”

  “LOOKS LIKE YOU could use a steak.”

  Felicity waved her blueberry mojito in the air as Valerie made her way through the crush of boot-wearing couples shuffling about the dance floor in a two-step to a country-western classic.

  When her friend had invited her to The Tapping Spider Barroom and Steakhouse, locally referred to as “The Spider,” Valerie hadn’t anticipated that the squat Meridien bar would be this crowded.

  Visiting the city was supposed to lighten her mood, but by the time she had made it to the bar in the rear of the restaurant, she was weighed down with memories of being at the Bronco with Peyton.

  “Saved you a stool.” Felicity motioned for the bartender and lightly drew her fingernails over his hand. “Tyson, this is my friend Val. What’s a good getting-over-a-breakup drink?”

  Valerie was too emotionally drained to react right away. “Using my life as a conversation-starter to hook up with a hot bartender, Felicity?” she whispered after Tyson had recommended a raspberry kamikaze and sent her order of medium-rare steak and potatoes to a waitress.

  “Ty invited me to his place but I passed because I’m doing the friend thing tonight. You really could use a friend—and, of course, a steak.”

  Valerie smiled and hugged Felicity. “Thanks.”

  “Oh, it’s all part of the code.”

  Tyson returned with Valerie’s kamikaze—and a shot of tequila on the house for Felicity—then swaggered down the bar to tend to another patron.

  “What code?” Valerie asked.

  “Chicks before dicks.” Felicity clinked her glass to Valerie’s. “Cheers.”

  After Valerie finished her drink and chased it down with iced water, she said, “You told the bartender I’m getting over a break-up. The truth is, I’m so not. Getting over it, I mean.”

  “Nobody expects you to bounce back right away. Losing someone you love isn’t quick and painless.”

  “Peyton said he doesn’t love me anymore. Is it crazy that my gut’s saying he still does?”

  “The man checked into Peridot last week. There’s a reason he and Nathaniel can’t see eye-to-eye, and I bet that reason’s you. From what I hear, Nathaniel takes money and loyalty very seriously, but blaming you for this whole thing with Marin Beck would be irrational even for him. It was a few thousand dollars, which is nothing—”

  “Not to some people.”

  “It happened forever ago and Peyton’s mother left with the money.” Felicity downed the shot and shook her head at a man in the crowd w
ho signaled her over for a slow dance. “If Nathaniel tries to blow this out of proportion and hold you accountable, he’ll just be wasting his time.”

  Valerie had already had a discussion with Jack and her lawyer, and had decided to return the money Nathaniel had given her to restore Battle Creek. Finances would be very tight for a while, but at least she’d feel better about not having his gift—which she’d always viewed as a debt—hanging over her head.

  The waitress arrived and Valerie accepted the steaming plate of steak and potatoes with lackluster enthusiasm because she didn’t have the appetite for it now. As she poured ketchup over the meat, Felicity made a face.

  “Go dance,” Valerie said, shaking the glass bottle with gusto. “Let me eat my ketchup-covered steak in peace.”

  Felicity headed off into the crowd, and Valerie sighed over her plate. She had just taken a bite when someone tweaked her hair and said, “Hi.”

  She spun on the stool, fork still in hand. “Oh.”

  Peyton paused with uncertainty, glanced at the fork which she quickly dropped onto her plate. “How’ve you been, Valerie?”

  You mean besides missing you like crazy? “Good,” she said slowly, then shook her head. “No, not good, actually.”

  He sank onto the stool beside her. “Felicity told me you’d be here tonight. I thought you should know that my grandfather’s not going to make life hard for you. What happened with you and me and my mother—that has nothing to do with him. And he doesn’t want to cause trouble for Lucy. Neither do I.”

  “Good to know.” And it was. A family war was the last thing their daughter needed; she hadn’t taken news of their split well.

  “If there’s anything you need me to do …”

  Take back all the anger. Understand why I did what I did. Be here for Lucy and me.

  “We haven’t heard from you in a week, Peyton,” she said brusquely, banishing those whispering thoughts. “There’s gossip about you leaving again.”

  He swore softly. “What would Night Sky be without gossip?”

  “Did you find me here just to say goodbye?”

  His eyes were dark, conflicted. “Lucy’s still in trouble. I want to see her—”

  “We should have that paternity test done in San Antonio,” she cut in, and she could practically see remorse sink into him.

  But he didn’t protest or apologize, or even protest that he wasn’t leaving town—and that hurt. “Fine.”

  After he walked away, Valerie turned to her plate with a sigh. “I guess I’m ready for you now, steak.”

  CROUCHED IN THE bed of her pickup truck, Valerie waited in the feed store parking lot for Doug McNamara and his son to transfer another forty-pound sack of horse feed from their flatbed. The three of them had already stacked four bags, and she was confident her vehicle could handle another six.

  “I reckon you bought our entire inventory of this stuff,” Doug said with an easy grin, then grunted as he hauled another sack into her truck.

  She crawled over and yanked it on top of the short stack. Clearly showing off his youth and strength, Owen brought over two more sacks—without the telltale grunt of a man whose years of hard labor had put wear and tear on his back.

  “Be careful,” she told the teen, adding a smile to avoid bruising his ego.

  “Don’t wanna have to tell folks you got a hernia carting around organic whole grain,” his father chimed in, and Owen frowned as if to say, “Jeez, Dad.”

  They finished loading the truck and Owen said, “Almost forgot—” and raced inside the store to return with a paper bag. “Could you give this to Lucy? It’s a dream-catcher. I was gonna give it to her at Bud Frowler’s barbecue, but since she didn’t show up—”

  “She did,” Valerie countered. She hadn’t been in the mood to go, but Lucy had pleaded to hitch a ride with Sarah Carew and Valerie had been so grateful for that nugget of normalcy that she’d allowed it. “With Sarah.”

  “But, um …” the boy looked perplexed “… the Carews were out of town, ma’am.”

  Doug clamped a hand on his son’s shoulder. “That they were. We rescheduled our delivery to their farm because of it.”

  “My mistake,” she said in a controlled voice, taking the dream-catcher and driving off. That her daughter could lie so effectively, so expertly, was a stab. That she’d been off doing something that she was ashamed to admit to Valerie was a twist of the knife.

  At the ranch, Valerie shot upstairs, coaching herself to drag down her Jordan crazy-man temper to a boil—which would take some effort since rage plus fear usually equaled something explosive. But all rationale crumbled when she found her daughter’s bedroom vacant with nothing out of the ordinary … save for the glinting household scissors on top of the pool of softly curling toffee-colored hair on the floor.

  Panic touching her like pinpricks, she thundered down the staircase, missing a step in her haste and gripping the banister to avoid a tumble. “Dinah!” she hollered, bolting to the family room and catching a nanosecond of a reality-television catfight before her aunt scrambled to press the power button on the remote control.

  “TV these days. There’s just nothing to choose from.” Dinah’s light laugh died the instant she saw Valerie’s face. “Oh, no.”

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  “I’d say holed up in her room again—”

  “Then you’d be wrong. Her hair is there, but she’s not.”

  “She’s gone and cut her hair?” Dinah gripped her shoulders, then her brows crinkled and she seemed lost in thought. “Oh, that girl’s not all right. During the cattle drive I found her in the bathroom square in the middle of the night. With a pillow, like she’d been sleeping in there. She told me she had a bad dream and … well …”

  With a pillow. Just like when she was a little girl, mourning Anna.

  Valerie stormed outside and, not taking the time to saddle her horse, rode bareback to the windmill. She spotted Lucy on the ground with her knees drawn up and a piece of elastic around her wrist. A few feet away her horse nibbled on blades of grass.

  When Valerie dismounted, Lucy jetted to her feet, her striking blue-gray eyes drenched in anguish. Half of her hair fell in soft curls just past her waist; the other half had been unevenly chopped to about an inch above her elbow. “Please don’t freak out.” She hastily bundled it all with the elastic. “It’s my hair.”

  Defensive. In a panic. Frightened. Valerie saw it all in the way Lucy trembled as she retreated to her horse. She felt like she was drowning in confusion, struggling to stay afloat on the clues in her daughter’s words and in her eyes. “Why’d you cut it?”

  Lucy froze, then spun to face the windmill. “Uh …”

  “Before you lie—again—I do know the Carews weren’t at Bud’s barbecue, and neither were you. So tell me where you went.”

  “I can’t.”

  Frustrated, Valerie pointed at her daughter’s horse. “Get on and let’s go home. Maybe a week of lockdown will change your mind.”

  Lucy turned, her face crumpled. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  Mommy.

  The person she’d spent years trying to fiercely protect was slipping from her grasp. They were both in trouble, and needed to trust someone to help.

  Valerie only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHAT IF SHE could stay here forever? Fresh from the beautician’s chair—Dinah’s friend was a little arthritic and hummed Tammy Wynette repeatedly, but swore on her ’69 Camarro that she wouldn’t tell people about Lucy’s red eyes and half-shorn hair—Lucy now sat in her great-grandfather’s study with the old-time Big Band swing music he loved in the background and a scatter of colored pencils and charcoals and sheets of blank paper in front of her.

  In here, with the distractions of design and music, she didn’t dwell on how pissed off her mom had been at the windmill earlier. Like always, she’d messed up—lying, doing stupid stuff and covering it up with more lies.

  Sh
e had tried to be noble like her dad, and brave like her mom, but she totally wasn’t cut out to be heroic. A million times she’d scraped up the nerve to tell her parents about Marin Beck … but didn’t.

  Now that they were mad at each other—about what, she didn’t know, much to her frustration—it was impossible to even get them in the same room.

  The world was spinning too fast, and cutting her hair had somehow made things slow down and bend to her control. At least for a moment.

  It was up to her to get herself out of this mess with her grandmother, who didn’t even care about Peyton the way she’d first pretended to. Then she’d help her parents realize that they were supposed to be together, and that being apart was ridiculous.

  “Take one last thing, Lucy. Then I’ll go away and I won’t bother either of your parents. Be a grownup about this.”

  Lucy paused with a magenta colored pencil poised over a sketch of a long vest over black trouser pants. Would Marin truly go away and stop messing with her head if she stole one last thing?

  She put down the pencil and slowly revolved in the gigantic leather chair, scoping out the pictures and plaques and knickknacks decorating the room. There was the ashtray filled with coins, but how would she sneak coins out of the house without getting busted? There was a fancy-looking pen on the desk, but she’d already given Marin a pen, and she’d complained about not getting enough money for it from the pawn dealer.

  Her stomach felt queasy, but she stood up and went to the polished display case in the corner. She picked up the object that caught her eye, recognizing it as the pocket watch her dad had told her about. It was one of the few things he’d kept when he left Texas, because it had belonged to his father.

  Lucy found it hard to breathe as she slid the pocket watch into her hobo bag, then she hurried to the office chair and tried to draw. The music continued to play but she couldn’t hear anything over the screaming in her brain.