Unmasking the Maverick

by Teresa Southwick

  She’d been so sure he was fitting into the Rust Creek Falls community. In her heart, hope had taken hold, along with deeper feelings. So the reenlistment news came as a shock. A deeply painful one.

  Last night, when she told him she wanted to go home, he’d brought her back to town to get her truck. On the drive they’d hardly said two words to each other. Although he’d made progress being conversational, Brendan wasn’t naturally talkative. From him silence wasn’t a surprise. Her excuse was being numb. That wore off this morning and she really missed feeling nothing. Now she felt heartsick and it sucked.

  “Well, damn it.” Ronan rubbed a hand across his neck, a gesture of frustration because there was no one to focus his anger on.

  “I know. It’s a little hard on a girl’s ego to find out she just wasn’t enough for him to stay—” Emotion choked off the rest of what she’d been about to say.

  “So you really care about him?”

  She nodded because she still couldn’t get a single word past the lump in her throat.

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he set out to hurt you. I think he probably did his best not to.”

  “Yeah.” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I knew he was another stranger in town who was leaving, but then I got to know him. He’s nothing like the bozo. Brendan is a good man. I didn’t plan on this. My eyes were wide-open.” She shrugged. “It just sort of happened in spite of me.”

  “I’d still like to beat him up,” Ronan muttered.

  “Because you’d feel better if he cleaned your clock?” Men are from Mars, she thought.

  “Pain is easy. But watching my sister hurting and not being able to take it away is hard.” He looked almost as miserable as she felt.

  “You’re going to make me cry again.” She sniffled. “Stop being so sweet.”

  “Okay.” He looked down for a moment, and then the corners of his mouth turned up. “So, now will you tell me where my wire cutters are?”

  “Seriously?” Playfully, she slugged him in the arm, then threw her arms around him in a hug. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. This too shall pass. I’ll get over it.”

  “I know you will. O’Reillys are made of stern stuff. We might bend but we don’t break.”

  “Now go away and let me finish my work,” she said.

  “Okay. Maybe Keegan has been into my tools again and I can kick his ass.”

  Fiona laughed as she shooed her brother away. But after he was gone she felt even more alone. What he’d said about the O’Reillys being tough must have been true, because it surprised her that she’d been able to put on a brave front. The thing was that talking it out with her brother had made her realize the awful truth.

  She would go on, but now there was an emptiness inside her that could never be filled. Her heart wasn’t just broken. It was shattered and would never be whole enough to love again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brendan would give anything if he could forget the look in Fiona’s eyes when she got out of his truck last night. He recognized betrayal and pain. Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. Some hero he was. It was putting off the inevitable, but he wished she hadn’t asked him to go to the party. With her family there, no less. But when she did, he knew he had to reenlist and she needed to know. So he told her his decision and now she hated him. Damn it.

  Now he was in the barn workshop at the crack of dawn trying to repair an electric frying pan because he couldn’t sleep. Might as well do something until he had to be at Jamie Stockton’s place to take a look at his baler. The pan fix wasn’t going well. He’d taken it apart and was looking for something obvious. A loose connection.

  It’s almost always in the wiring. His dad had told him to start there every time.

  Maybe his own wiring needed a fix, Brendan thought, since he was so screwed up. He’d been completely sincere when he told Fiona she was better off without him. He would just hurt her again and he couldn’t stand that. But more unbearable was the thought of her with someone else. That was a classic example of being screwed up.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Brendan turned at the sound of Luke’s voice. His friend was standing in the shop doorway. “Hey. You don’t need an invitation. This is your barn.”

  “Yeah.” The other man walked closer and stopped beside the bench, which was covered with tools and broken-down appliances. “But you made this shop yours. Breathed life into a room full of dust and cobwebs.”

  “You’re giving me too much credit.”

  “I disagree.” He glanced at the small appliances, battered power tools and even bikes that were lined up to be looked at. “If this space was mine, that stuff would just be junk. From where I’m standing it looks like proof that folks around here believe you can fix them. They’re counting on you.”

  Except for his dad, no one had depended on him since he left the Marine Corps. “Are you here to try to talk me into opening a shop again?”

  “No, actually.” Luke’s expression was deadly serious. “I came to ask when you decided to reenlist.”

  “How did you—”

  “It’s a small town. News travels fast. That’s both good and bad.” The other man shrugged.

  Brendan hadn’t told anyone except... “You talked to Fiona.”

  “No. Her brother Ronan. Apparently she was upset. He dragged the information out of her.”

  Brendan winced even though the other man’s voice was calm, not critical. When did this stopover in Rust Creek Falls get more complicated than him figuring out his next move? Stupid question, because he knew the answer. The moment he saw Fiona. She complicated the hell out of his life.

  Then Luke’s words sank in. She hadn’t shared his plan willingly but had been too upset to hide her feelings. Her brother out-stubborned her and Brendan had to admire that, and the family. Seems she wasn’t the only one who cared; she came from a long line of people who believed in compassion and commitment. That was something he’d been looking for all his life.

  It was why he was returning to the Corps, the one place he was guaranteed to fit.

  He didn’t answer Luke’s question about when he’d made up his mind, but braced himself for a hard sell. At the same time he couldn’t help wondering why this guy would waste his time and energy.

  “Look, Luke, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I appreciate you giving me a place to clear my head, get in shape and figure things out.” He faced the other man straight on. “I’ve done that. Now I’m ready—”

  “Not so fast.” His friend held up a hand. “Hear me out.”

  “You can’t talk me out of it. This is the right thing.” But an image of Fiona flashed into his mind, running in here with her cheeks flushed and her red hair flying. She was his passion and his pain. That realization took some of the intensity out of him.

  “I’m not trying to talk you out of anything,” Luke said. “I just want to tell you a story.”

  This was starting to grate. “I’m not a kid—”

  “It’s my story,” the other man said. “And I think you owe me a listen.”

  So he was calling in a marker. Brendan folded his arms over his chest. This man had a great piece of property and was putting it to good use. His family was here, he had a wife who loved him and everyone in town respected him for his commitment to give back to the community. So what was his deal?

  “Okay. I’ll listen. But I’m just not sure what Mr. Perfect can say that will change my mind.”

  “I’m not perfect. Not by a long shot.” Luke laughed but the sound was mocking. “I have so much to make up for.”

  “No way.”

  Luke gave him a look, then started talking. “I was wild and willful when I was younger. When you’re the oldest of seven, you’re expected to set an example. But that’s not what I did. At best my behavior cou
ld be described as a horrible warning. I was young and stupid.”

  Brendan recognized the expression on his friend’s face—haunted, guilty, desolate. He saw it when he looked in the mirror. He’d seen it on the faces of his buddies in wartime and always there was death involved.

  “What happened?”

  “I was in a bar. Drunk on my ass.” There was self-incrimination in Luke’s voice. And biting sarcasm. “Oh, I was twenty-one. Barely.”

  “Then what—”

  “My brothers Bailey and Daniel were with me and they were underage. It was a dive where they didn’t care all that much about checking IDs.” He blew out a long breath. “Bailey was twenty, Dan was only eighteen. He had more sense than his two older brothers put together.”

  “What happened?” It was something really bad. Brendan had lived through bad and knew what it looked like.

  “Bailey was drunk, too, but Danny hadn’t been drinking. He was worried that neither of us could drive home and he was right. He called the folks, figuring his macho brothers wouldn’t hand over the keys to him and would try to drive.”

  “Was he right?”

  It didn’t seem possible, but Luke’s face turned even more darkly intense and bleak. “We’ll never know for sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Mom and Dad were coming to deal with us but they never made it.” His eyes were unbelievably sad. “They were hit and killed by a drunk driver.”

  Brendan had seen more than his share of violence and thought he’d heard it all. He didn’t think anything could shock him but he was wrong. “Man, I’m sorry—”

  “I’m not finished.” Luke held up a hand. “My family was destroyed. There were seven orphans and my maternal grandparents weren’t prepared to take them on. Jamie and Bella stayed together and endured the resentment of our mother’s folks. The two youngest, Dana and Liza, were adopted.”

  Brendan thought he’d had it bad, but this man was carrying around the baggage of loved ones lost and six young lives forever changed—seven if you counted his. He recalled the day he’d met Forrest Traub and Luke talked about the plans he had for the cabins that he’d helped his dad build. Now he knew what Fiona had meant when she’d said things didn’t go as planned.

  “The Rust Creek Falls community looks like it comes together during hard times.” He said that because he didn’t know what else to say.

  “They do,” Luke answered. “But I left town.”

  “What?”

  “Dan, Bailey and me. We moved out and took off. We blamed ourselves and it seemed like the best thing for the younger ones. We started out working ranches together, then split up.” He looked away for a moment as painful memories seemed to scroll through his mind. “It’s just in the last year or so we’ve reunited. We found out we owned Sunshine Farm. I was lucky to find Eva and she loved me back. On top of that she was one hundred percent on board with our vision to make this ranch mean something.”

  “And you’re changing lives for the better, Luke.”

  “We’re trying. So far we have a pretty good track record. Getting a reputation for bringing lonely hearts together.” He smiled for the first time since walking through the door.

  But Brendan wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t looking to be part of someone’s vision. Not even for Luke’s redemption. “I’m not sure why you told me all that, but—”

  “Here’s my point. I ran away from Rust Creek Falls. I thought I could leave it all behind me, but I was wrong. For twelve years I wrestled with the past and my guilt pinned me to the mat.”

  “That’s not the man I see,” Brendan said.

  “Oh, that guy’s there. And he’ll always be there, carrying responsibility for what happened. I’m learning to deal. But it didn’t start until I came back here and faced what I did.”

  Brendan dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry you went through that, but I’m still not sure why you told me. What does that have to do with me?”

  “Everything. Takes one to know one. I ran away and you’re running, too.”

  “You’re wrong. This isn’t where I grew up.”

  “No. But your run started when you joined the Marines. Now you’re reenlisting. It’s not hard to connect the dots.” Luke’s look challenged him.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” That was Bravo Sierra and Brendan knew it. Luke hit a nerve and the pain was radiating through him.

  He remembered why he’d enlisted in the first place. He couldn’t wait to get away from Prosperity, Texas, and what had felt like the stigma of being different, being raised by a single dad who repaired junk for a living. He hadn’t seen a lot of options and his mother had said he needed to live up to the meaning of his name. Be a warrior. So enlisting had been a way to get out from under. He’d run away.

  Luke met his gaze. “I’m talking about the fact that joining the Marines was the first time you ran and going back is following the same pattern. Break it, Brendan. Stay in Rust Creek Falls. You have friends here, people who care about you. And Fiona.”

  He looked at the frying pan in pieces on the workbench. “I have a better chance of putting this mess back together than I do of fixing things with her.”

  “You don’t know unless you try.” Luke put a hand on his shoulder, a brotherly gesture. “There’s a place for you here. We need all the help we can get with our plans for Sunshine Farm. Maybe you can do more good as a civilian and find yourself in the process.”

  Telling that story couldn’t have been easy, Brendan thought. “I appreciate what you just did, Luke. What you told me. Thank you.”

  “Maybe it will help. Don’t sell Fiona short. Give it a try with her. What have you got to lose?”

  Everything, Brendan thought.

  He watched the other man walk out the door and his mind was racing. Just a little while ago he’d been looking for the loose connection and now he knew it was him. He also knew how to fix it. He just hoped that it wasn’t beyond repair.

  * * *

  Fiona finished hand-stitching little ears to Jared’s pig costume for tonight’s Halloween party at Sunshine Farm. Her sister Fallon had called in reinforcements because caring for the triplets barely left her enough time to go to the bathroom, let alone sew costumes. Their sister Brenna came, too, and the three of them were at Short Hills Ranch.

  “I can’t believe the kids are still napping.” Brenna raised her arms in the air, stretching after sitting hunched over to sew. “They aren’t sick, are they?”

  “No. Jamie helped me wear them out this morning. They were running around getting all that energy out. Then they ate lunch and crashed just before you guys got here.”

  “Miracles do happen.” Although not in my world, Fiona thought. She finished sewing and held up the little piggy suit. “What do you think?”

  “Absolutely adorable,” Fallon said. “Mine’s done, too.”

  “So is mine.” Brenna followed their lead and put her needle and thread back in the sewing box sitting on the coffee table. “It’s a good thing you were able to finish the body suits. The snout and ears were time-consuming.”

  Fallon gave them a grateful look. “I couldn’t have done it without my sisters.”

  “Do you remember when Dad used to call us his three redheaded piggies?” Brenna’s blue eyes sparkled.

  “We were little then,” Fallon reminded her.

  “He wouldn’t dare say that to us now,” Fiona told them. Especially to her, with those extra few pounds on her hips.

  She used to take exception to the family resemblance. It was impossible not to know they were sisters and inevitably people compared them. But they grew up and traveled their own paths to independent womanhood. Brenna loved being a hairdresser and making her clients look and feel pretty. She fell in love with Travis Dalton and married him.

  Fallon worked at Country Kid
s Daycare because she’d always adored children. When Jamie was a single dad raising infant triplets, she was one of the volunteers who helped out so he could work his ranch. Romance happened and she married the rancher, became the kids’ mom for real.

  Fiona was the single sister and that wasn’t likely to change. She hated the word spinster, but that’s what she was. Because the man she loved was leaving town and taking her heart with him.

  “What’s wrong, Fee?” Fallon was sitting on the sofa beside her and looked concerned.

  “Nothing.”

  “You just got awfully quiet.” From the chair on the other side of the coffee table, Brenna looked concerned now, too.

  “Just remembering the ghosts of Halloween past.”

  “Cute.” Brenna wrinkled her adorable little nose. She put the costume she’d finished on top of the other two on the table. “Not bad if I do say so myself.”

  “They look great,” Fallon gushed. “The Three Little Pigs. Jared, Henry and Kate are going to look so awesome in these.”

  “They better wake up pretty soon,” Fiona said. “I want to see them dressed up and get some pictures of those rascals.”

  “I plan to let them sleep. They get cranky if they don’t wake up on their own.”

  “Then I’ll just stick around until they do. I’ll help you get them ready,” Fiona offered.

  “Don’t you have to get yourself into costume for the party?” Brenna scooted forward to the edge of her chair.

  “Yeah,” Fallon agreed. “You can see the triplets then and get pictures. If we can keep them still long enough to take some.”

  “What are you dressing up as?” Brenna asked. “Do you need me to do your hair?”

  Well, darn it. She’d hoped to avoid telling them face-to-face that she was skipping the party. Maybe she could just say it and her sisters wouldn’t quiz her about the decision. Right, she thought. When pigs could fly.

  “The thing is—” She looked at Fallon beside her, then Brenna in the chair. “I’m not going to the party.”