by Nikki Logan
‘Better than Gracie May’s,’ he bragged, relief live in his voice.
She sighed, glanced in her mirror at the empty road that led back towards the Alamo and then pushed open her driver’s door. Minutes later she was seated at the cramped little counter inside the store filled with car polishes, air fresheners, snacks and magazines, cupping a coffee she didn’t really want between her hands.
But at least it went some way to warming the hollow, cold place that was her heart.
‘How well did you know my mother?’
Gus frowned. ‘Well enough. The three of us spent some time together. She was the talk of the town being squired around everywhere with two such good-looking young men.’ He chuckled at his own wit.
Her mother…firmly in the center of the spotlight? ‘I’ll bet.’
‘Don’t you go sassin’ the woman that gave you life,’ he scolded and, astonishingly, Ellie felt some shame. ‘Weren’t her fault she was cut from such different cloth to everyone else. Everything she did was interestin’ to folks around here. Won’t be no different with you.’
‘Except I won’t be staying long enough to make an impression.’
‘Heard y’all made an impression last night at the dance.’
Her heart sank. ‘If by “impression” you mean “spectacle,” then, yes, I probably did.’
They’d danced close enough and slow enough to ignite a dozen rumors.
Gus busied himself cleaning his counter. ‘Weren’t no surprise to me when I heard. Y’all looked right cozy when I last saw you. I told him so when he came through this morning, too—’
She hated the way her heart lurched at that news. ‘Jed was here?’
‘Not for long. Searched round the back, lookin’ for that mutt of his.’
Ellie sat up straighter, her chest tight. ‘Deputy?’
‘Not the first time he’s slipped his collar. Won’t be the last. He’s probably getting himself a second breakfast with Misses Darcy and Louisa.’
Probably. It wasn’t her right to worry about Deputy or Jed any more. Not that it ever had been, apparently. She forced her mind onward.
‘So you drove Mother home to New York?’
He snorted. ‘Not what she most preferred, but only choice she had.’
Ellie paused midsip. ‘She didn’t want to go back?’
‘She didn’t want to admit defeat to her folks. She’d burned a fair number of bridges coming here at all. Marryin’ without their approval.’
So she returned with her tail between her legs. Just like me. And a belly full of babies, thankfully not like her. How much more awful must it have been, discovering that? Her mother must have had strength she’d never seen.
Or just never looked for.
‘Do you know why she went back?’ Ellie studied him, watching closely for a reaction.
She got none. He just shrugged wiry shoulders. ‘She wouldn’t stay in the same town as Clay and have to face him every day.’
Every day. Just like Jed.
‘And he never went after her?’
‘Clay was a proud man. Proud of his heritage and his business. It never sat right with him that he’d picked a woman who couldn’t settle here in the country. Whom he couldn’t make happy. Whom he couldn’t give children to.’
Ellie nearly gasped. ‘She told you that?’
‘Not on your life. She’d have never spoken about him like that, even to me. But he told me. After she’d left. About how desperate she was for offspring and how none ever came.’
‘He got over her quick enough. From what I hear Holt Calhoun is my age.’ She surprised herself by feeling actual, genuine umbrage on her mother’s behalf.
She knew how she’d feel if she heard Jed took up with someone from last night’s dance the moment she was out of the picture. That he was kissing someone else in front of his fire just days after she’d stumbled down his steps.
Gus wiped down his spotless counter one more time. ‘Weren’t no shortage of women eager to have her place. Turns out any fertility issues didn’t lie with Clay. He got himself the heir he’d been wanting so bad after just one night with Sandra. Once that was done, there was no question he’d marry her as soon as the divorce papers came through.’
So he couldn’t reconcile with her mother even if he’d wanted to. But that didn’t explain why he never acknowledged her and Matt. Why wouldn’t he at least seek them out? ‘He got the family he always wanted.’
‘Yup.’
‘And my mother got hers. Just not together, I guess.’
‘Love don’t hardly ever strike two people equally, Ellie.’
Her mind went straight to Jed.
Was it really that simple? Had she let all the new and overwhelming feelings she’d had since coming here skew what she felt for Jed? Had she misread the level of his interest? What experience did she have to call on? Sudden heat joined her aching heart.
Just how much of a fool had she made of herself?
‘Well, thanks for the coffee, Gus.’ Despondent, Ellie pushed up and away from the counter and turned for the door. The bell above it tolled. ‘I’ll tell Mother you asked after her?’
His head shot up, his eyes grew bright and keen. He looked like asking after her was just the first of a hundred things he wanted to say to her mother.
‘That would be a kindness. Thank you.’ Gus cleared his throat again. ‘So when do you leave Larkville?’
‘Right now. That tank you just filled will get me halfway home.’
His brow folded. ‘Now?’
‘Got a long drive.’
‘Before seein’ Jess?’
‘She’s on her honeymoon.’ He even told her that; did he have a touch of her father’s Alzheimer’s?
‘Sure, but she’s back this morning. Her best friend, Molly, mentioned it yesterday.’
Ellie’s heart leapt in her tight chest. ‘Today?’
‘A week early. Something to do with her boy getting homesick. Would be a shame if you missed her.’
Imagine if she hadn’t come to Gus’s station to top up her rental. She would have left Larkville and probably passed Jess Calhoun on the way out of town. ‘Yes, it would. Thank you, Gus, I really appreciate that.’ She threw him a gentle look. ‘It really was a pleasure meeting you.’
And in his understated Texas way he agreed. ‘Mutual.’
Then she was out the door, back in her car and lead-footing it in the direction of the Double Bar C.
* * *
She almost, almost didn’t miss it. The dark shape that lurched out of the bushes on the side of the highway feeder and darted across the front of her rental. First cows, now wolves. How many wildlife incidents was she destined to have in Larkville?
Maybe the cows had been a sign. Maybe she was supposed to turn back there and then that day? Maybe she’d just been too slow on the uptake and everything that happened afterwards with Jed was the price she paid for staying.
Except—despite the awful end—it was hard to regret meeting him. To know that such a man existed, that such new parts of her existed… They had to be worth everything that followed. No matter how awful.
She kept her foot steady on the brake as the dark shape dashed out of her periphery. Behind it, like a consciousness shadow, came recognition.
‘Deputy?’ She craned her neck back to see into the bushes on the other side of the road where he’d headed. ‘Deputy Dawg!’ she called out the open window.
Maybe it was the formal use of his full name, maybe it was because she was a voice he vaguely knew, or maybe it was just because they’d had that one special night crammed into her bed together, but after a moment of breathless silence his big horse head poked back through the bushes and wild eyes stared at her as she climbed out of her car. She looked both ways for traffic and then crouched.
‘Come on, boy!’
He didn’t hesitate. He rushed straight towards her, his tail slinking between his legs as he approached, his ears flattening. The first things she
noticed were the terror in his eyes, the wet of his thick coat and the muddiness of his paws. The next thing she noticed was the pace of his heart.
He shoved his wet body against her and lifted a sopping paw against her crouched hip.
‘What are you doing out here?’ she queried, wrapping her hands around his shoulders and snagging his collar. His body was roasting, and drool hung off his usually dry chops in strings. His gums were pale in the split second she saw them, and a series of anxious whines issued from the back of his throat.
Deputy was stressed. Really stressed.
Had he been hit? Injured?
She glanced left and right again to make sure they were still traffic-free. A semi could come along any moment and find a car, a woman and a dog taking up their lane.
‘Come on.’ She opened the back of the car and gestured for him to jump in. He did so with an unseemly amount of haste and then sat, trembling top to toe, crowded in amongst her suitcases.
‘Where’s your dad, boy?’ His big head cocked at the sound of her measured voice and he seemed to relax just a hint. ‘Oh, you like me talking to you, huh?’
Deputy blinked, refocused, came back to the same plane as she was on.
Yeah, he did.
So she started a gentle monologue as she slipped the rental into gear and pulled forward on the highway. ‘I don’t have your dad’s cell number or I’d call him.’ More head cocks in her rear vision mirror. ‘I can’t call 911, boy. Even for you.’
She thought fast as he humphed back against her luggage, relaxing further. ‘But we’re so close to the Calhoun place. Why don’t we go there? They’ll have his number. And we’ll ask Wes to take a look at you, hey? You like Wes, he’s a good guy, and you like the Double Bar C, I know….’
On and on she rambled, as Deputy zeroed in on every tone and nuance of her voice and inched back down the stress Richter scale. She told him about meeting Gus Everett and about Jess’s letter and how her mother had loved Clay Calhoun enough to betray her family’s wishes and marry him. Enough to uproot her city life and move out here.
‘Must have taken some courage, huh?’
Deputy tossed his head up and smacked his lips clean of the prodigious amount of drool. It was almost an agreement.
Courage. Though it was hard to know whether it took more courage to stay or to go.
‘But then she left…’ How bad had things become between the newlyweds that she was willing to bail so soon on their marriage?
Ellie knew, firsthand, how deficient she felt just for having her aversion to touch. The hundred different ways the world had of reminding you that you didn’t measure up. How much worse must it have been for her mother to believe she was infertile when the man she loved wanted an heir so very much?
At least she had Jed in her corner helping her, not judging.
Had being the operative word.
A sudden realisation shimmied through her. Whether or not Jed had withdrawn his interest in her, he could never withdraw the difference he’d made to her soul. And to her body. She could never—would never—go back now that she’d tapped into that passion inside of her.
Jed gave her that.
Yet here she was running away rather than staying and toughing it out. But didn’t it take two to work things through? And could she even face him knowing how awfully she’d misread his interest?
‘I’ve messed things up, boy.’ She groaned and Deputy cocked one brown eyebrow. ‘I said things I shouldn’t have. I hoped for things I shouldn’t have.’
He just blinked at her.
She turned at the Calhouns’ access road that she’d first met the cows on. ‘He’s a good man, your dad. Got his share of issues but nobody’s perfect.’
By the time she pulled under the big entry statement to the Double Bar C she’d offloaded her entire childhood onto the poor old dog, who’d dropped to his elbows some time back and now his eyes were drifting shut. But they shot open as she pulled her car up to the Calhoun homestead.
That big tail began to thump.
Ellie’s own tension eased. Maybe he was going to be okay, after all.
Up ahead a handful of people were unloading luggage from a fancy truck. Ellie recognised Wes Brogan immediately, and the ranch hand she’d spoken to on her first visit to the Double Bar C. Next to them, a tall, dark-haired man with killer bone structure looked up from the back of the vehicle.
Ellie pushed her door open.
Up on the homestead porch the door swung open and a young boy dashed out, skipping down the steps and running over to the man whose eyes were fixed so firmly on her arrival. Behind the boy, a blonde, willowy woman stepped out of the house.
Ellie’s breath caught.
Jess.
Suddenly she became critically aware of her appearance. Barely groomed from her desperate exit this morning and patches of damp and mud and dog slobber where Deputy had leaned on her and pawed her. Ordinarily she’d have been mortified that this was going to be Jessica Calhoun’s first impression. But Deputy’s needs came first. There was no time for preciousness. And besides, something essential in her had changed since arriving in Larkville.
She turned and pulled open the back door of the car and the whole car lurched as Deputy leapt out. Wes Brogan’s eyes flared wide. The boy dashed forward, squealing. The tall man snatched him up before he could get far.
‘The sheriff’s been tearing the county up looking for you,’ Wes said in a loud voice, coming towards her.
Ellie’s breath caught, low in her throat. ‘Me?’
Wes laughed and his eyes dropped to her side. ‘Deputy Dawg.’
The breathlessness hardened into a lump and embarrassed heat soaked up her neck. She forced speech past it. ‘He’s… I’m not sure what’s happened to him. I found him on the highway. He was in a bad way.’
Wes instantly sobered and barked over his shoulder for the younger hand. ‘Cooper! Grab Misty’s kit and clear us a space in the tack room.’ Then he lifted his eyes back to hers and said quietly, ‘I’ll check him over, Ms. Patterson.’
‘Ellie, please…’ Ugh. All so hideously awkward. And none of it really mattered anyway. She’d be gone in a few minutes.
Some fuss and bustle and all three men and one very tired, miserable dog disappeared for some much needed care. The surprise must have still shown on her face after they all trooped off because a soft, polite voice spoke right behind her,
‘Deputy’s part of the family around here.’
Ellie’s back muscles bunched. She took two deep breaths before turning around…and her eyes met a pair so similar, yet different, to her own. There was absolutely no question of their owner’s identity.
‘Jess.’
Jessica Calhoun’s pretty face folded in a frown. Ellie could see her trying to place this newcomer who’d arrived with their sheriff’s dog. But just as she thought to introduce herself, Jess’s eyes widened and her lips fell open on a gasp. ‘Are you…?’
‘Eleanor Patterson.’
‘Oh, my Lord—’ Long slim fingers went to her chest and her eyes welled up dangerously. ‘Oh…’
‘I’m sorry to take you by surprise,’ Ellie rushed.
‘No! Molly told me someone was looking for me in town. I had no idea…’
The two of them stood awkwardly, their respective hands dangling uselessly at their sides. Ellie said the first thing that came to her. It was the least poised and professional she’d ever been but also the most honest. Another thing she’d learned to be.
‘I don’t know what to do.’
Jess’s nervous laugh bubbled up. ‘Me, neither. Can I, um… A hug?’
Old whispers instinctively chorused in her head and she grasped for a legitimate excuse. ‘I’m filthy—’
Jess laughed properly this time. ‘You’re on a working ranch. Everyone’s dirty here.’ She stepped forward, undeterred.
Ellie knew this moment counted more than any other she’d ever have with her half-sister. She tamped down the w
hispers, held her breath and stepped into Jess Calhoun’s open embrace.
Warm, soft, strong arms closed around her, and Ellie felt her body flinch on a rush of emotion.
Good emotion.
Jess hugged just like Alex. The discovery brought tears to her eyes.
The hug went on just a bit too long but neither one wanted to be the one to end it. Eventually Ellie pulled away but kept her hands on her half-sister’s arms. ‘This is so…’
‘Odd?’
She laughed, sniffing back tears. ‘But good!’ she added lest Jess think she wasn’t cherishing every moment. ‘There are four of you.’
Oh, no, she was rambling.
But Jess knew she was talking about Calhoun offspring. She smiled. ‘I know. And two of you. Twins!’
They stared again.
‘I’m sorry I came without checking,’ Ellie said.
Jess shook her head. ‘Don’t be. It was quite a bombshell I dropped on you. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’ She pressed her fingertips to her coral lips and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I have a big sister.’
Ellie laughed. ‘And a big brother.’ Matt may not be here but he deserved to be counted into this moment.
‘Holt’s going to freak out…not being the oldest any more.’ Her laugh then was pure delight, yet Ellie could tell it came from a solid and dedicated affection. Her eyes went to the little boy who peered around his mother’s legs.
‘And…do I have a nephew?’ Ellie breathed.
‘Oh! Brady Cal—’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry, still getting used to that… Brady Jameson, I’d like you to meet your aunt Eleanor.’
Ellie reeled back. ‘My goodness that makes me sound a hundred years old.’ Then she bent down and shook a very serious Brady’s hand. ‘Call me Ellie.’
‘You sure don’t look a hundred,’ he said, pumping her hand formally.
Everyone laughed then and the silence no longer felt awkward. ‘So…the letter…’
‘Do you want to see it?’ Jess was quick to offer.
‘No, not right now. I don’t need a letter to know the truth. I can see so much of Matt in you. And maybe a bit of me.’
‘I thought the same thing. The rest of you must be your mother?’
‘I look a fair bit like her, yes.’ Much to poor Gus’s distress.
