Tina nodded firmly.
Though she had spent five years dreading the thought of seeing Cole again, she had never actually prepared for the reality.
He would be starting work on the ranch in just a few days and that didn’t give her much time. Before then, she needed to find out whatever she could about his plans.
* * *
TINA AND ALLY walked through the unoccupied bakery and entered the adjoining room. The homey, country-kitchen atmosphere of the sandwich shop encouraged lingering over a cup of tea. People said the owner had planned it that way because, as a result, she heard all the gossip that traveled around Cowboy Creek.
As teens, Tina and Ally had felt sure the many small round tables in the shop were bugged.
At this time of the evening, they had their pick of the room and seated themselves at a table for two.
Tina took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of cinnamon and cloves that always seemed to hang over the bakery and the shop. The smells here were almost as good as those in Abuela’s domain at the Hitching Post.
“I don’t see Layne,” Ally said over the top of her menu.
“Maybe she’s in the kitchen getting an order.”
“I don’t know... Wait—Sugar’s headed this way. You know what that probably means.”
Tina nodded. “She’s filling in.”
The owner began her day in the bakery long before the sun came up, yet could often be found in the shop at closing time. Normally, she let the waitresses handle the customers.
The wooden floorboards creaked as Sugar approached their table.
A hefty Georgia peach in her midsixties, Sugar had the softest drawl Tina had ever heard. She also had the most solid arms Tina had ever seen on anyone, including any wrangler who had ever worked on Garland Ranch. Sugar claimed she’d earned those muscles from years of kneading bread dough and hauling restaurant-sized sacks of flour.
“Hey, girls, you’re in late.”
“And you’re working overtime,” Tina said.
“Yep. Layne took the day off, so here I am.”
“Darn.” Ally set down her menu, giving Tina a look that said she would handle the questioning—which was fine with Tina. The less interest she showed, the less suspicion Sugar would direct her way. “We wanted to talk with her.”
“Well, she’ll be in tomorrow. Or you can catch her at home tonight.”
“Is she spending the day with Cole? I heard he’s in town.”
“He is.” Sugar’s gray eyebrows rose as her eyes widened. “And you could have knocked me over with a sheet of parchment paper when I heard about him coming home. Layne was pretty closemouthed about it till last week.” She sounded upset that she hadn’t known sooner about Cole’s return.
“But why is he back?” Ally asked. “I mean, he hasn’t come home since he graduated high school.”
“Because the ink’s barely dried on Layne’s divorce papers, and that rat Terry’s kicking her out of the house.”
Ally gasped. “But she’s got Scott—and she’s pregnant!”
Tina winced, thinking of the loving support she had received from Abuela and Jed all through her life, even during her pregnancy. Even though she had never told them who had fathered her child.
“Layne’s situation doesn’t seem to be bothering Terry,” Sugar continued. “So, she called Cole.”
“That’s a first,” Ally said, exchanging a glance with Tina. “How long is he staying?”
Ally had spoken too quickly. Sugar frowned. Resting her hands on the edge of the table, she stared from Ally to Tina and back again. “Why? What’s happening?”
She didn’t ask only out of curiosity. Everyone knew how well Sugar looked out for all the residents of Cowboy Creek, especially her employees.
Just the way Jed looks out for us, as Abuela would often say.
“There’s nothing’s happening,” Tina said. But there soon would be, unfortunately.
“Yeah.” Ally nodded. “I was just wondering whether I’d get to say hi or not.”
“You should. Layne tells me he’ll be around for a while.” Sugar chuckled. “I think coming back home again might give that boy a lot more than he bargained for.”
This time, neither Tina nor Ally had anything to say.
* * *
IN HIS SISTER’S new apartment, Cole picked up one of the packing boxes he’d piled in the corner of the room. She had given the larger of the two bedrooms to her son—and his toys—and left this closet-sized one for herself.
“Scott’s probably getting hungry,” Layne said. “I need to start thinking about supper.”
“Supper? You just gave him a three-course snack.”
She laughed. “That was hours ago, Cole. And little boys have big appetites. Don’t you remember from when you were a kid?”
“Not really.” What he recalled was being four years old and stockpiling his own snacks, holding them aside until Layne started whining about being hungry. The sooner he could get his little sister quieted, the less chance there was of their dad yelling and sending her into tears.
As if she had read his mind, she abruptly grabbed a pile of clothes from the carton he’d set next to the closet door. “Once I have this box emptied, I’ll start supper.”
“We could go out,” he suggested. “Or pick up some takeout. My treat, either way.”
“No. The sooner I get used to cooking in that tiny kitchen, the better.”
She turned to the closet. Shaking his head, he took a seat on the edge of the twin bed. He should have known she’d refuse the offer. It had been enough of a struggle getting her to agree to let him pay for some of the groceries.
She hadn’t had the money to rent a truck for the move, either, and wouldn’t let him get one, though he’d told her he could easily afford to pick up the tab.
In the years he’d been gone from Cowboy Creek, he had worked as a wrangler on one ranch after another.
On the run, Jed had said.
He’d rather think of it as staying open to possibilities.
In any case, he had never tied himself to anything permanent, never owned a home or even paid rent or electricity, and he had always traveled light enough to fit all his belongings into a couple of duffel bags. No sense buying things that would only weigh him down. Cheap, some folks might say, but again he preferred to look at things his way and call it being frugal.
That frugality had paid off. So had his time on the rodeo circuit. He now had a good-sized nest egg he’d been sitting on, thinking of investing.
As he’d said to Layne, what better investment could he come up with than spending some of it on his sister and her son?
He knew the answer to that question, all right. So did Layne. He would do anything for the little sister he’d raised practically single-handed.
In the years he had been gone from Cowboy Creek, he made sure to send money when she asked to borrow it, and even when she hadn’t.
Deep down, he knew money could never make up for not being here for her the last few years. True, he hadn’t known how bad things were between her and Terry until the end. But maybe if he’d stayed, he could have helped her out more. Been there to keep an eye on her son once in a while, so she and her now-second ex could have had some time together. Maybe that would have saved the relationship—not that he’d believed it had ever really had a chance. Neither he nor Layne knew what a good marriage looked like.
But if nothing else, helping her back then might have him feeling less like a stranger with his own sister’s child now.
In the long run, his offer to get the truck for her move had done no good.
You’re taking care of enough already, Layne had said.
So he had loaded his pickup and made one trip after another between her former two-story house and this so-called two-bedroom apartment.
He thought of the trip he’d made out to Garland Ranch that afternoon.
Though he and Tina had been a couple of grades ahead of Layne in school, the two knew each other. S
uddenly, he felt the urge to tell Layne about running into Tina again. About what a jerk he’d been to her in high school and about how that could come back to bite him. About how he wished he’d done some things...maybe a whole lot of things...in his life differently.
But he’d never dropped his problems on his sister before and sure wouldn’t start now. Not when she had enough troubles of her own.
She turned from the closet. “I talked to Sugar about giving me more time at the shop and maybe even letting me back her up when she needs help in the bakery.”
“Do you really need to take on more hours, especially when it means being on your feet, in your condition? If that bast—”
“Don’t. Please.” She shot a glance toward the door. “I don’t want to talk about Terry around Scott. And I can’t blame Terry. If he were Scott’s father, things might be different, but I can’t expect the man to give me extra support for a child that’s not his.”
“Is he still planning to see Scott?”
“He said he would.” But she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Damn. A man didn’t just walk away from a child he’d raised, even if that child wasn’t his own.
But he didn’t push the issue. This was the first time he and Layne had discussed the subject, and he realized the wisdom of keeping the rest of his feelings about it to himself. For now.
“What about financial support for the baby?” he asked.
She touched her stomach, not much rounder than it had been the last time he’d seen her.
Late December. She had just discovered she was pregnant and hadn’t wanted to be home for the holidays. They had met halfway between Cowboy Creek and the Texas ranch he was working.
For the first time since he’d left town, they had spent Christmas together. They ate dinner in a nearly empty diner decorated with limp tinsel and faded ornaments. But the waitress wore a pin with a reindeer whose nose flashed like a small red strobe light and had made Scott laugh.
Layne, expecting a baby but already on the road to divorce, had done her best to smile.
The effort it took told him he needed to come back to Cowboy Creek.
Layne shifted one of the boxes he’d set on the bed. “My lawyer’s making sure Terry’s keeping up with the insurance payments to cover the hospital.”
“He’d damned well better keep up. You have any problems, you let me know and I’ll talk to him.”
“Always the protective big brother,” she murmured, her eyes misting. She sat beside him and rested her head against his shoulder. “I really appreciate everything you’re doing, Cole. Coming back to town. Helping with the move. Even giving me a hand with the unpacking.” She sat back and looked up at him. “I couldn’t have done all this without you.”
“I’m not begrudging any of it, you know that. But you also have to know you’re not alone here. You heard what Sugar told you the other day. You’ve got friends in town, plenty of friends who would help out.”
“Yes, I do.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Maybe I should have said what I was really thinking. I didn’t want to do this without you.”
To his dismay, her voice broke. “Layne...”
“Let me go check on Scott.” She hurried from the room.
Earlier, after giving her son strict instructions to stay on the floor with his trains, she had settled him in the living room. With boxes piled throughout the apartment, it wasn’t safe to let him run loose.
Cole looked at the boxes piled around him in the small bedroom and had a sudden urge to run loose himself. Or just to run. Maybe Jed hadn’t been wrong, at that.
He felt the need to get the hell out of Cowboy Creek again. Coming back here had dredged up too many bad memories, too many thoughts of how helpless he’d been to protect Layne against their mama’s indifference and their dad’s vicious tongue.
Too many reminders of the boy he’d once been.
On the other hand, his return to help Layne through a bad time had brought with it an unexpected advantage. Taking a job at Garland Ranch again would go a long way toward proving he had changed.
His talk with Tina should have done the same, but her acceptance of his apology had rung about as true as a forced smile at a sad Christmas dinner.
He’d have to try harder to convince her they could put their past behind them.
Chapter Three
“What do you think, Paz?” Jed asked.
At the table in the hotel kitchen after breakfast, he sat finishing up his coffee. Paz stood at the counter where she was making one of her fancy desserts for tonight’s supper. With Tina and Robbie at the breakfast table, they hadn’t had a moment to themselves till now.
She cracked an egg into the ceramic bowl in front of her. “I think,” she said, “by asking Cole to return to work here, you have stirred up more than the sugar in your coffee.”
Frowning, he looked at her. She had sounded tart and a few worry lines creased her forehead, but she gave him a faint smile.
He grinned back. “I have set some things in motion, haven’t I? For step one, anyhow.”
“Do you think everything will go as you want it to?”
“Of course. All according to plan. And once the other girls are here, we’ll move on to step two.”
She cracked another egg into the bowl and added a spoonful of vanilla. “Sugar called me this morning. Tina and Ally were at the shop last night.”
“To see Layne?”
“Yes. And asking about Cole.”
He chuckled. “What did I tell you? Nothing to worry about. Everything’s falling into place.” At the sound of light, familiar footsteps in the hallway, he added, “Hush. Here comes the girl now.” He got up to rinse his mug at the sink.
Tina entered the room and set a tray of dishes on the counter beside him. “Thank goodness for the Women’s Society and their monthly breakfast! Maria’s just clearing the last couple of tables. I’ll take care of loading the dishwasher for you, Abuela. I’ll take that, too.” She plucked the rinsed mug from Jed’s hand. “And then I’ve got to get to my office.”
“Already?” he asked.
“Yes, unfortunately. And I know the next part by heart, Abuelo.” She laughed. “‘You can’t work all day, every day.’”
“Well, it’s true. You need to relax once in a while, girl. Have some fun. You work too hard.”
“Somebody has to, while you brush up on being lord of the manor. You’ll want to make a good impression on Andi and Jane when they get here.”
“Oh, I’ll make an impression on them, all right. One of these days, I might even make you sit up and take notice, too.” Smiling, he left the room.
* * *
IN HER OFFICE behind the hotel registration desk, Tina entered items into the accounting software. Working with finances normally grabbed her attention, but for the past couple of days, she’d had trouble concentrating.
Again, her thoughts flew to the cause of her distraction—her brief reunion with the man who had fathered her child.
Cole had broken her heart years ago. That was nobody’s fault but her own. She was over that—and over him.
Still, his return had resurrected the old memories.
She had gotten close to him, yet he had walked away from her without looking back.
Apology or no apology, if she let him get close to Robbie, how could she believe he wouldn’t walk away from their son?
She pushed the thoughts of Cole from her thoughts and envisioned her little family—Robbie, Abuela and Jed. For their sakes she needed to focus on her work. On what was important to her. And that definitely didn’t include Cole.
She forced her attention back to the computer screen.
Though she made sure to double-check each entry, the numbers didn’t look good. Not because she hadn’t totaled them correctly, but because they didn’t add up to enough.
She had just finished her entries when she heard the familiar sound of Jed’s boots on the stairs. His steps grew louder as he approached the fr
ont desk in the hotel lobby.
“Tina, you in there?”
“Yes,” she called. “Give me a second.” She hurried to back up her file and close the program.
In the kitchen that morning, Jed had seemed more like his old self. But that couldn’t make her forget the past few weeks, when every time she’d tried to talk to him about her concerns, he’d brushed her off. Maybe now, he finally wanted to discuss what he had on his mind.
The office doorway led right to the lobby’s registration desk. There, Jed stood with his crossed arms on the counter and one boot planted on the brass foot rail. Tall and thin, he had neatly combed his sparse white hair and wore his usual boots, jeans and Western shirt with a string tie.
Though she often lovingly teased him about being lord of the manor, as she had done in the kitchen a while earlier, there was some truth behind her words. He now left the day-to-day working of the ranch to his manager, Pete, and his cowhands, but Jed kept tabs on everything. And he always took care to project just the right image for a man who owned both a ranch and a hotel.
“Hey, my handsome abuelo,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Not much. Just checking to see if you were in there. And where’s that little guy of ours?”
Her throat tightened at the thought of her son. How would she explain her years of silence about his daddy to Abuela and Jed? She swallowed hard and forced a smile. “He’s in the kitchen with Abuela.”
“You and Paz get all the shopping done this morning?”
“We did. She had quite a list.” Unlike their trip earlier in the week.
“We’ll use everything she bought. Things are gonna be a mite busier around here soon.”
“You mean with Jane and Andi coming to visit?”
“That. And more.” His grin made her heart fill with love—and additional concern. The low number of reservations continued to bother her. For years now, they hadn’t opened the small wedding chapel on the property or even catered a reception. They would manage, especially with the bookings she had taken for later this week and the next. But they had nothing on tap for the next few months to justify Jed’s level of excitement.
“Did you book a large group while we were gone?” she asked.
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