“More like a thousand years. Old people sometimes spend time in the past, you know,” she answered.
“When was the last time you were over here at this ranch?” Nash asked from the end of the table. Kasey was to his right and Silas was between them in an old wooden high chair with so much white paint on it that every corner was now rounded. Henry had probably sat in it when he was a baby. Suddenly, Hope had the urge to touch it, just to see if she could feel his spirit, and it would tell her that he was alive and well.
“That would have been the day that your great-grandmother passed away. My church group brought food. It will be thirteen years next spring,” Hope said.
“I was here but I don’t remember you being here,” Nash said.
“You hadn’t arrived back at the house yet.”
“The funeral was so crowded, I don’t remember many of the faces,” he said.
“Small towns are like that,” Jace said. “I remember Henry but not so much about his mother. What was she like, Granny?”
“Minnie was a quiet woman who never missed church or an opportunity to help out with a dinner for the needy,” Hope answered. “This place doesn’t look a thing like it did when she was living here. She would have liked that you’ve put up her tree and used all her things to decorate it. At least that corner is still the same.”
“Thank you,” Nash said. “But that wasn’t all me. Kasey and the kids did most of it.”
“Well, it looks real nice,” Lila said. “Like something you’d see in an antique store. If you ever want to get rid of any of those ornaments or those big lights, just let me know.”
“I’ll probably keep them forever.” He grinned, but his eyes were on Kasey. “We started a tradition here and they’re part of it.”
“Oh?” Both of Hope’s gray eyebrows shot up.
“Kasey agreed that she and the kids would help me with decorations every year and that they’d stay the night here at the Star,” he said.
Gracie rolled her eyes.
Valerie sighed.
Hope tapped her tea glass with a spoon. “A toast—to traditions, old and new. To friendships—old and new. And to a very merry Christmas—to all of us, both young and old.”
“Hear, hear!” Paul raised his glass.
“A lovely toast, Granny,” Lila whispered. “With a lot of underlying meaning.”
Hope touched her glass to Lila’s. “You always were a smart one.”
* * *
The Christmas tree lights mesmerized Kasey that afternoon as she attempted to take a nap on the sofa. The children were all down for at least an hour, and Nash had gone to his room. A whole hour with nothing to do was a luxury she didn’t get often, but her mind wouldn’t shut down. She kept replaying every word and nuance at the dinner table. Had Gracie and Valerie been nicer or were they just planning a new attack strategy? Did anyone else notice those long looks that she and Nash exchanged? Was Brody done trying to control her life?
She heard a whimpering noise and sat up. She was halfway up the stairs when she realized it was coming from Nash’s room and not from the baby monitor on the end table beside her. She eased back down the steps and pressed her ear against Nash’s bedroom door.
“No, no!” he growled. “No, God, please, no!”
“Nash, are you all right?” she asked through the door.
“Please don’t let them be dead…” he whimpered.
She eased the door open to find him sitting up in bed, his eyes wide open and his hands held out as if they were wrapped around a steering wheel. Fearing that he’d had a relapse, she sat down on the edge of the bed and touched him on the shoulder.
“Nash, it’s just a nightmare. Wake up,” she said gently.
He blinked twice and grabbed her in a fierce, tight hug. “Oh, Kasey, they’re dead. Three of them are dead and it should have been me, not them. How can I ever tell their families?”
“It’s okay.” She gently rubbed his back.
“I don’t give a damn if it’s classified. Their families deserve to know what happened and that they were heroes. They need to know. Oh, Kasey, they’re blown up.”
“That was a long time ago, Nash. It’s over and done with,” she said soothingly.
“I hear a chopper. Maybe some of them are alive. I’ve got to get to them to help, but we’ve got to get this man to base…oh, God…that’s not a rescue chopper, it’s one of the enemies firing on us. I have to drive faster.”
She wiggled free of his embrace and clapped her hands several times. “Wake up right now, Nash Lamont.”
He blinked rapidly, his eyes taking in the room. “Where am I?”
“At the Texas Star in Happy. You were having a nightmare.”
“Kasey? What are you doin’ here?”
“I’m staying here, remember.”
“It was another bad dream. I hadn’t had one that vivid in a long time.” The words came out in short bursts between deep breaths. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you? What time is it?”
“It’s three fifteen, December third. We had Sunday dinner here on the ranch and when everyone went home, we put the kids down for a nap and decided that we’d take one, also—remember?”
He nodded slowly. “Sometimes the past and the present get tangled up together.”
“Let’s get a glass of sweet tea and talk about it in the living room,” she said.
“I’d rather have a beer.”
“Does your therapist have you on meds?”
“No, and I’m not takin’ pain pills, so a beer won’t hurt me, Kasey.”
She wasn’t a newbie to the nightmares or to the crazy awake-but-still-asleep mode. Adam had been in that position a few times, especially after that six-month deployment. Talking helped him more than anything, even if it meant leaving out classified details.
Nash followed her into the kitchen and took two beers from the refrigerator, handed one to her, and carried the other one to the living room, where he sat down on one end of the sofa. “I’m sorry that I woke you. After that dinner and your talk with Brody, you needed a nap.” He held up the beer and looked at it for a long time. “I can’t remember if I’m supposed to have alcohol with the medicine.”
“No, you aren’t. Some caretaker I am. I’ll get you a glass of sweet tea.” She took his can back to the refrigerator and returned to the living room with it. Easing down on the sofa, she purposely left a couple of feet between them. “Now tell me about the nightmare.”
“It’s always the same dream and it’s exactly what happened. We were over there on a mission—classified so I can’t reveal names—to rescue a high-ranking official who’d been kidnapped. They were demanding ransom and the government does not negotiate with terrorists, but they will send in their best team to bring their man home. Everything went as planned.”
He paused and took several long gulps of the tea. “There were six of us plus the guy we’d gotten out of the place. There were two vehicles and I should have been driving the lead car, but…” He raked his fingers through his dark hair.
“But you weren’t because?” she asked.
“The guy we rescued had been tortured and was weak from no food, so we laid him in the backseat of the second car. One of the team members thought I should stay with him, since I was the captain of the team. The medic sat back there with him and another one of the team was in the passenger’s seat in the front with me.”
“And?” She pushed him forward when he stopped. “Tell me the details, Nash, so that you won’t have this dream again.”
“You sound like a therapist.” He finished off his tea and crumpled the can in his hands.
“Have you told someone else about this?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t put it into words, not to a stranger.”
“I’m your friend. Tell me,” she urged.
Dark eyes, veiled with secrets beyond even what she could comprehend, stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. “How can you be my friend? I’ve done terri
ble things, Kasey. I don’t deserve a friend like you.”
“You defended this country to give me the freedoms that I have. I’m proud to be your friend, and don’t you ever doubt that,” she told him. “Now, I want to know what happened. The man you rescued wasn’t in good shape, so he was in the backseat with the medic. You were driving and someone was riding shotgun. Three people were in the lead vehicle, right?”
“Humvees,” he said. “We were all so excited to be going home in time for Christmas. We thought the first car hit an IED, but that wasn’t what happened. It was a rocket launched from a hill over to our left. It was awful and I started to pull over, but the other two in the team were screaming at me to go on.”
“Could you have saved those men?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They were all dead but we don’t leave our men behind. And a helicopter appeared over the ridge and started shooting at us. I had to do some fancy driving to get us to safety.”
“Were the bodies rescued and brought home?”
He barely nodded. “They sent out a squad and the bodies, what was left of them, were sent home in flag-covered coffins.”
“Did you get to go with them? See it through and go to the funerals?”
A slight shake of his head. “While that was going on, we got the rescued guy to the base and they put him on a plane straight to Germany for treatment. We succeeded in saving one man but lost three. It never seemed fair to me.”
“Why didn’t you accompany those bodies home?” she asked.
“That evening at dusk just as they were bringing them in, there was a little boy.” He paused again and looked blankly across the room toward the tree. “His mother was a translator for the base, and he came to work with her every day. He was kicking around a ball and it flew out of the gates into a bad zone. I went after him but didn’t make it. He stepped on a bomb and I was thrown backward, hit my head on a rock, and had a major concussion. I went home with the bodies but never knew it. They took me straight to the hospital, and that’s where I stayed for weeks.”
“Well, no wonder you have nightmares. What happened when you got well?”
“They discharged me and I went home to Addy’s. Grandpa had died, and she needed help running their small farm. She’s a firm believer that hard work cures anything. Then a month ago she sold the farm, and after we got her moved to town, she decided that I should move to Happy to get my head on straight. Doesn’t look like it’s working too well, does it?”
“Patience.” She glanced up and locked gazes with him for at least the tenth time that day. “Why didn’t you buy the farm?”
“She wouldn’t let me. Said I’d have to go into debt and that there was a ranch in Happy that I could have without owin’ money. She sold it to my cousin Taggart, who’s used his rodeo winnin’s to buy the place. But I don’t want to talk about ranchin’ or farmin’ right now.”
He leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. She barely had time to moisten her lips when his dark lashes fluttered down to rest on his cheekbones and his mouth covered hers in a scorching hot, passionate kiss. When it ended, he drew her so close to his chest that she could not only hear his heart racing but also feel it through his shirt and hers.
“You’re an amazing woman, Kasey. I’m the luckiest man on earth that you’re my friend.”
Friends did not kiss friends like that. She should be eaten up with guilt again, but she wasn’t. She wanted to kiss him again to see if the next one was even hotter.
“Mama, can I have a cookie?” Emma’s voice floated down the steps and into the living room.
Kasey quickly stood up, knocking over her beer in the process.
“I’ll take care of the mess while you get the princess a cookie.” He grinned. “And Kasey…”
“I know.” She quickly cut him off. “We’ll talk about it later.”
He gave her a meaningful look. “Thank you.”
Emma was too young to notice the high color in her mama’s cheeks, but Kasey could sure enough feel the heat as she sat her daughter up to the table and gave her a cookie and a glass of milk.
Chapter Twelve
Damn!” Kasey swore as she shot a dirty look toward the black wall-hung phone not six inches from her side. It rang a second time and startled her all over again. She’d been in the house a week and wasn’t even aware that the thing worked, since it had never rung.
She grabbed the receiver and took a step only to nearly drop it since it was attached to the base and not a cordless. “Hello,” she said cautiously.
“Could I speak with Kasey McKay please?” a voice she didn’t recognize asked.
“This is Kasey,” she said.
“This is Barbara Dillard, the elementary school principal. We’ve got a problem with Rustin and need you to come to the school. We tried the phone number on his records and it went straight to voice mail, but I knew that you were helping out at the Texas Star.”
“Is he all right? Is he hurt?” Kasey’s heart flipped up in her throat and her voice went all high and squeaky.
Nash came through the back door with Emma at his side. Silas toddled in from the living room and, as usual, reached up for Nash to hold him. Nash picked up the toddler and laid a hand on Kasey’s shoulder.
“Something wrong?”
Kasey held up a finger and listened to Miss Dillard, agreed that she’d be at the school in fifteen minutes, and turned to answer Nash’s question. “Rustin has gotten into a fight at school, and I have to go take care of it. My phone must need recharging so they called the landline.”
“I’m going with you,” Nash said. “We’ll put Silas’s coat on him and…”
“Hey, anyone at home in this place?” Jace yelled from the front door.
“In the kitchen,” Nash hollered.
His footsteps sounded like gun blasts as he made his way across the hardwood floor to the kitchen. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Kasey.
“Who died? You’re pale as a ghost.”
“Rustin has been in a fight at school,” she said. “He’s never fought with anyone. I can’t imagine him…”
“Go on. I’ll take care of these two monkeys while you’re gone. How about a movie, kids?”
“Frozen?” Emma eyed him.
“Whichever one you want. Let’s get your jacket off, Emma, and come here to Uncle Jace, Silas. It’s almost dinnertime so we’ll make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and have a living room picnic,” Jace said. “You better go with her, Nash. She might need someone to referee if she thinks someone has wronged her boy.”
With a nod, Nash handed Silas to Jace and headed to the hall tree in the foyer to get Kasey’s coat.
Kasey shoved her feet into a pair of work boots and jerked the denim coat from his hands and talked as she hurried outside. “The principal said that the mother of the other child is there, too.”
“You look like you could eat metal fence posts and spit out nails,” he said.
“Rustin is not a fighter—except with Emma, and then it’s sibling arguments, not fistfights,” she said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions until we see what happened.” He opened the door for her. “Could be that someone else is bullying him.”
“Then I’ll take him out of that place and homeschool him. Lila is a teacher. She’ll help me see to it that he’s learning what he needs to.” Kasey started the engine and was backing up before Nash even got his seat belt fastened.
“Take deep breaths and settle down,” Nash said.
She started the car and turned to face him. “Don’t tell me what to do. This is my child and no one is going to pick on him.”
“Maybe he was doing the pickin’.” Nash’s southern drawl should have calmed her but it didn’t.
“Not Rustin.” She could feel steam coming through her ears as gravel hit the yard fence when she stomped the gas pedal. Nash might be right about her settling down, but she so needed something to be angry about that day and this was just the
ticket.
It had been three days—three long days since that kiss on Sunday and he had acted like it never happened. She’d said they would talk about it, but the time was never right, and now it was a great big elephant hanging between them, creating a ball of anger in her chest. Everyone said for her to move on, but when she thought she might be ready, nothing more than one kiss happened.
She tapped the brakes at the stop sign, slowed from eighty-five to eighty, and slid around the corner on two wheels.
“Slow down or Rustin isn’t going to have a mama to fight for his rights,” Nash said.
“Then his two uncles, his aunt, his granny, and his grandma will do it for me,” she snapped.
She parked right in front of the school, hopped out of the van with Nash right behind her. Rustin was sitting in the hallway with four other little boys, and every one of them looked like they’d been the only little chicken at a coyote convention. Scratches, black eyes, and Rustin held a tissue up to a bloody nose.
“Hi, Mama. Hi, Nash. I’m in trouble, ain’t I?” he said.
“What happened?”
“Mrs. McKay?” The principal motioned her inside the office. “And you are?” She eyed Nash from his boots to the top of his head.
Her expression said that she liked every inch of what she saw, but Kasey didn’t have the time to be jealous.
“I’m Kasey McKay. This is Nash Lamont.”
“Come into my office. The other boys’ mothers are already here.”
Kasey and Nash followed her through the doors and into a small office.
“Kasey?” Mallory Smith looked up and smiled.
Jody Lansing came up out of her chair with her hands knotted into fists as she got right in Kasey’s face. “Your child attacked mine, and I want him expelled for bein’ a bully.”
Jody had been in Kasey’s class in school. She’d been a cheerleader and probably would still be one when she was eighty. That was her claim to fame—that and the fact that she’d married the second-string quarterback the summer that she graduated.
“Sit down, Jody, and calm down. I’m not expelling any of these kids until we figure out what happened. I haven’t questioned them until y’all got here,” the principal said. “But I’m going to bring them in here right now, and I will be the one asking the questions. I want all y’all to be silent until we see what these boys have to say. Can you do that?” She gave all four of them a long look reserved for elementary students who weren’t following rules.
Long, Tall Cowboy Christmas Page 16
