A Hero's Homecoming

by Laurie Paige

He didn’t appear to be breathing hard, but he had to have run to make it up the trail so fast.

  “You saw me,” she accused, angry that he’d been so sneaky about it. “You knew I was here.”

  “Yeah. Were you going to run home without saying hello?” he asked laconically, letting her go when she stepped back.

  “Yes.”

  His smile belied the tension she sensed in him. She watched him warily.

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  Thirteen

  “Fine.” Carey, short of making a fool of herself and insisting on being allowed to pass, was trapped on the narrow trail with him. She took in his lean, masculine appearance.

  He was wearing jeans and scuffed boots, a blue shirt that couldn’t match his eyes for color and a black down vest. He pushed his hat up off his forehead, his gaze never leaving hers.

  Lifting her chin, she held her ground and waited for his next move.

  “Where’s Sophie?”

  “At her father’s.”

  “How’s Highway?”

  “Fine.” She shifted restlessly. “I have to be going.” She took a step forward.

  He moved aside, but when she was abreast of him, he held out a hand in front of her. A fat raindrop landed in his palm. “It’s starting to rain.”

  She examined the clouds that were fast descending over the land. A sheet of rain was visible coming at them.

  He grabbed her arm. “Come on, let’s get to the truck.”

  She ran with him down the trail, and they reached the truck before the deluge hit.

  “That was close,” he said, laughing as the drops pounded the windshield.

  She frowned at the heavy curtain of rain. She would have to ask him for a ride to the cabin. She wished she hadn’t come out at all. It had been stupid.

  “Would you mind giving me a lift to the cabin? My truck is there.”

  “Are you spending the night?”

  She shook her head. “I have an early day tomorrow.”

  “Umm,” he said as if he could see through her lie. However, he didn’t probe further.

  Neither spoke as he drove up the rough cattle road and over the ridge. When he pulled into the clearing, she already had her hand on the door handle.

  “Wait,” he requested.

  The silence between them could have been a snow chasm a mile deep. Neither was willing to make the leap across.

  “Yes?” she finally said impatiently.

  “The case was solved today. Did you hear?”

  “No.”

  “Wendell Hargrove was arrested. Because the crimes went across state lines, the FBI was brought in. Five indictments to commit conspiracy, fraud and extortion, unlawful entry and destruction of property at peril to life were laid against three officers of PureGrow and the attorney.”

  “Well.” Her hand crept toward the door handle. “That’s wonderful. Now the ranch can get back to functioning. And you can leave,” she added, keeping her tone bright.

  “Hell,” he murmured.

  He tossed his hat onto the gun rack and slid close. His arms encircled her. Her breath came fitfully between her lips as he bent to her. His mouth touched hers lightly.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered. The misery of the past week without Sophie to distract her rushed over her.

  “One for the road,” he bargained, tilting his head to one side to study her averted face.

  She shook her head.

  “I’m leaving at the end of the month,” he said, as if that argument might sway her. “Eleven days.”

  “You’re not going to help Sterling with the ranch or the resort if they get it started?”

  “You can’t imagine a person leaving when someone else might need him, can you?” He caught a handful of her hair and let it slide through his fingers. “Quitting isn’t in your vocabulary.”

  There was amusement and exasperation in his voice, and other emotions she couldn’t identify. His perusal was one of dazzling tenderness. It hurt and confused and angered her. The tears she’d suppressed for days welled close to the surface. She breathed slowly and deeply.

  “I haven’t said this to a woman in twenty-five years, but I think I’m in love with you.”

  Rage flew through her. He said he was leaving and in the next breath said he was in love? What kind of logic was that?

  She batted his hand away from her cheek. Tears poured down her face as hard as the rain pounded the pickup. “See what you’ve done? You’ve made me cry.”

  With that, she had the door open and was out of there.

  He was still sitting in the same place when she pulled out of the clearing in front of the cabin with a spinning of tires on the wet dirt.

  Wayne tossed the last shirt into the bag, then looked around the room he’d called home for a year. Yeah, he had everything. He zipped the carryall, then hefted it to his shoulder. He picked up the already full duffel. That was it, down to the travel alarm he’d carried for years but never used. He was ready to move out.

  Not a soul was on hand to witness his departure when he went outside. He tossed the bags into the truck and paused for one last glance around the place.

  Harding and the cowboys, including the new hands they’d hired on now that the Kincaid curse had been resolved, were moving cattle to the high pastures for summer.

  He’d always liked that part of ranching best—the spring and the ambling up into the hills, camping out along the swollen creeks, sleeping in the truck or the snow cabins along the way, observing what winter had done to the land.

  A twang echoed through his chest as if a single note on a harp had been strummed.

  Turning from the hills, he looked over the home pastures. The mares lazed in the sun while their foals raced one another along the fence. Freeway lay in the grass by the barn, his two remaining pups tumbling over him while they wrestled with each other and tried to entice the old man into playing with them. He frowned as another twang hit him in the chest.

  He let his gaze drift over the stables, barns and sheds until he came to the ranch house. He stared at it for a long spell as scenes from the past rushed into his mind.

  Overbuilt and ostentatious, nevertheless it had been his home for the first eighteen years of his life. He’d learned about life there, its cruelties, its sly jokes on naive humans….

  Its joys?

  Yeah, there had been those.

  Enough of memories. It was time to go. He’d said his farewells to Jenny and Clint and the McCallums yesterday. He’d promised to write and visit often.

  “Yo, Freeway, get your mangy hide in the truck, fellow. The road is calling.” He glanced over at the big mutt.

  Freeway thumped his tail briefly, then laid his head between his paws and yawned.

  Wayne hauled the door open and waved his hat toward the interior. “Last call,” he said. “Either you’re with me or you’re on your own.”

  Freeway got to his feet, stretched with his rump in the air and his head between his forefeet, then trotted over and jumped into the truck. He took his place on the passenger side. His pups tried to follow.

  “Sorry, guys, but you have to stay here. Your mom would worry if she came back from driving cattle and found you gone. You’ll be okay.”

  He put the pups in the stable, closed the door and jumped in the pickup. Thirty minutes later, he slowed down as he entered the city limits of Whitehorn.

  For a couple of blocks, he kept his thoughts grimly centered on getting to the highway and heading south. Then at Center Street, he turned and drove slowly through the heart of the town, past the Hip Hop Café, the park, the courthouse and sheriff’s department.

  Finally he turned toward the west and drove to the cemetery, knowing he had to do this one last thing before he left. He parked and climbed down, leaving the door open in case Freeway wanted to join him. He walked along the rows until he came to the Kincaid section.

  There he stopped and read the headstones. His father. His mother. His brother.
All laid to rest in neatly divided rectangles. Too bad life wasn’t as orderly as death.

  The twang hit his chest again, harder this time.

  He stepped inside the wrought-iron picket fence and sat on a stone bench at the foot of his mother’s grave. Taking off his hat, he contemplated the lives of the three people who’d made up his family.

  Dugin had been neither a scholar nor an athlete. He’d stayed on at the ranch, but he’d never found his niche in life. His mother, gentle and loving, but stubborn…or maybe it was pride that wouldn’t let her admit she’d made a mistake in marrying Jeremiah or that the marriage was over long before she passed on.

  And Jeremiah. Smart, capable, a man who thought he owned life…and the lives of all those around him. He’d died an ignoble death in his own bathtub, done in by Lexine Baxter, who’d been harder and craftier than anyone Jeremiah had ever known. The old man had met his match in Dugin’s scheming wife.

  And then there had been himself. The golden boy. The quarterback with the deadly arm. The A student. The “pick of the litter,” his dad had once called him, chest puffed out as he took his son’s accomplishments for his own.

  That boy was gone, too.

  Wayne was surprised to realize it no longer hurt, none of it, the betrayals, the memories, the roughshod manner of his father. He saw that young, idealistic young man as a separate being from himself and what he was now. He looked back into the past and saw the golden boy as if he’d been another kid brother, one who’d died before his prime as poor Dugin had.

  So it all came down to the same in the end. No matter how many monuments a person built for himself in life, it all came down to six feet of dirt under a pretty lawn.

  The Kincaid name wasn’t much in these parts anymore. It was best to let it die out naturally—a family gone to seed and scattered in the wind.

  The breeze ruffled his hair, reminding him it was time to be moving on. He jammed his hat on and turned his face from the tombs and the life he’d left behind long ago.

  Freeway was gone when he reached the truck. He whistled, then waited, his elbow propped on the open window frame, the sun warm on his face as he surveyed the snow-dappled mountains. He whistled again.

  “Freeway,” he yelled, impatient to be off.

  From a distance, he heard a faint bark. Peering down the road, he spied the dog loping off in the distance.

  Muttering an imprecation, he drove down the country road until he caught up with the mutt. He stopped and reached across the front seat to open the passenger door.

  “You weird dog, what the hell are you doing?”

  Freeway dropped his tail and cringed, but didn’t leap into the seat. He headed down the road at a faster clip. After a few yards, he looked back, barked once, then headed off again.

  Wayne watched him for a couple of minutes, then closed the door, eased into gear and followed a few yards behind the mongrel, who seemed to have a destination in mind.

  Within another half mile, Wayne knew where it was.

  He cursed roundly, then gunned the engine. He was parked in the drive when Freeway came bounding across the lawn, barking joyfully as if he were Lassie and had just made it home.

  The mutt dashed past Wayne and—

  “Hey, hello, there,” Carey said, laughing and avoiding the tongue that was trying to give her doggie kisses all over her face as Freeway propped his front paws on her chest and greeted her.

  She’d stopped at the corner of the garage, her back partially to him as she patted Freeway and fended off the exuberant greeting at the same time. She hadn’t seen him.

  Wayne felt as if he’d been carved from stone. He couldn’t move. He hadn’t meant to see her again.

  The twangs strummed painfully with each beat of his heart, and blood rushed to his head, making him dizzy. A whole ball of mixed emotions churned in his throat.

  At that moment, Carey stepped back and looked his way. Wariness skittered into her eyes. Freeway dropped to the driveway and danced all around her as she came forward.

  “Hello,” she said, a question in the word. She looked at Freeway, then at him. “What’s happening?”

  “Freeway wanted to stop and say goodbye.”

  “Oh.”

  Her bouncy curls caressed her neck and forehead as the breeze shifted to the west. She was dressed in her old faded-green sweats, a gardening trowel in her hand. She wore one glove. She probably thought the other one was lost, but he could see it sticking out of her back pocket, where she’d tucked it for safekeeping.

  A smile kicked up the corners of his mouth.

  Her eyes widened in surprise, but she smiled back. “Well, have a nice trip. Have you decided where you’re going this time?”

  He shook his head. “Where’re Sophie and Highway?”

  “He’s snoozing in the house. He wore himself out chasing bees and butterflies in the garden. Sophie’s with her grandparents this weekend, attending her father’s wedding. She’ll be back tomorrow night. I’ll tell her you stopped.”

  He nodded.

  A flicker of uncertainty flashed through her eyes as he continued to stand there. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from her. Or force his feet to move.

  “Jennifer is doing well,” she finally said. She removed the glove and dropped it and the trowel beside a flat of mixed annuals she was planting beside the garage. “She’s gaining weight. Her hair is growing back.”

  “That’s good.” His voice came out husky and low, filled with tension that was growing with each second.

  The wind toyed with her hair and pressed her clothing against her body, outlining the curves he knew. A shot of anticipated pleasure sped through him, stirring him to instant arousal.

  “I hope you’ll keep in touch. With the McCallums,” she added hastily. A flush crept into her cheeks.

  Something tender nudged his heart. The twangy feeling made breathing difficult. Freeway went to the kitchen door and barked, demanding entrance. From inside, a series of excited yelps answered.

  “I suppose we’d better let father and son say their farewells.” She led the way toward the house.

  Wayne followed, calling himself all kinds of names for not hightailing it out of there while he could. He shook his head. Okay, maybe he’d have a cup of Carey’s great coffee, then he’d hit the road. For sure.

  They went inside.

  Highway jumped all over them, welcoming each entry into the kitchen as if each were a long-lost love. He and Freeway got into a game of tug-of-war with a rawhide chew.

  “Coffee?”

  “Umm, yes.” He inhaled deeply. “Something smells good.”

  “I’m trying a new recipe for gingerbread. Sophie and I are going to make a gingerbread house for the class party at the end of school. Would you like some?”

  He thought about it for about two seconds. “Sure.”

  “I’ll make the sauce.”

  She poured the coffee, then made a vanilla-and-raisin sauce for the gingerbread. In a few minutes, she placed a plate in front of him and one for herself on the table.

  “Be careful. The sauce is hot.” She took the chair opposite. She checked the sauce by carefully sticking her tongue to a dab on her fork. “It’s okay.” She took a bite.

  It was the best gingerbread he’d eaten in years. Maybe ever. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last had the treat. While chewing the second bite, an odd thing happened.

  The past slipped from his mind.

  He looked at Carey and everything left his mind, except for her…and him…and the growly sounds the dogs were making as they played…and the sound of the wind roaming around the eaves…and the sound of the clock ticking quietly on a shelf.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  Her eyelashes flicked upward. He gazed into those blue-brown-golden depths, willing her to hold his glance.

  “Thanks.” She looked down and went on eating.

  He drew a slow breath. The twangs quieted a bit, becoming calmer as he ac
knowledged and accepted the inevitable. “There’s no way I can leave,” he told her. “I’d have to tear my heart out by the roots, because it’s going to stay right here in Whitehorn.”

  Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t speak.

  “With you and Sophie.”

  She licked her lips and pressed them firmly closed.

  He frowned. “Say something. I feel like a fool left hanging out in the wind to dry.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Try ‘I love you’ for starters.”

  She shook her head and stared at him as if he’d gone completely crazy. Maybe he had. Or maybe he’d come to his senses. About damned time.

  “Okay. How about ‘Yes, Wayne, I’ll marry you, even though you’re ornerier and meaner and uglier than that mangy mutt you hang out with?’ Can you say that?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm, you’re going to make me sweat it, huh? Okay, I’ll go first.” He cleared his throat, then stood. He paced to the counter and turned. “I thought I could walk away from here. I thought I could get in my truck and drive out of Whitehorn and not look back.”

  She bit into her bottom lip and looked as if she might cry. He wondered how many times she’d wept after she left him that day at her cabin. Regret strummed across his heartstrings.

  “I couldn’t.” He paused, seeing the three graves lined up in a neat row. They were gone—his dad and mom and brother—but he was here and alive. “I went to the cemetery, instead, and said goodbye to the past.”

  Desperation washed over him as the full impact of all the things he wanted rushed at him in a tidal wave of need and longing.

  “I love you. If you can bring yourself to believe that for now, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it to you. I’m through running, Carey, from myself and from you.”

  She stood, her expression wary, and yet, he thought he saw a glimmer in her eyes. “For how long?”

  “Forever. If you’ll have me, I’d like to stay here and build a life. I’d like to have that child you spoke of, that brother or sister for Sophie. Maybe one of each.”

  Carey felt as if her heart had grown too big for her chest. She pressed a hand against the ache and tried to understand what he was saying. She heard the words, but they were so foreign to what she’d expected, they could have been another language.