Texas Baby

by Kathleen O’Brien

  Josie went to the window, but Chase’s truck wasn’t there. He hadn’t come back after his appointment. She wondered if he was avoiding her.

  She needed something to distract her. She made her way back to the kitchen, as usual following her nose.

  Imogene looked more frazzled than Josie had ever seen her, her wispy hair flying all around her face, and her chipmunk cheeks flushed beet-red.

  “Oh, Lordy, I hope you’ve come to help.”

  Josie smiled. Here in the kitchen with Imogene was just about the only time she didn’t feel like a freeloader. With no fuss or bother, Imogene always put her to work.

  “I have. What do you need?”

  “I need someone to take these box lunches out to the construction site. Can you drive?”

  Josie wrinkled her nose. “That depends on who you ask. The guy who fixed the pillar out front probably doesn’t think so.”

  Imogene waved her hand impatiently. “I mean when you’re not in a diabetic coma.”

  “Yes,” Josie said. “That is, I could, if I had anything left to drive.”

  “Oh, we’ve got vehicles all over the ranch, just sitting there growing moss. But my sister is coming in from Houston, and I’ve got to meet her at the airport in an hour. I’m running behind, and I need you to take these lunches out to the site.”

  “Okay. I’d be glad to.”

  Imogene hadn’t even waited for her response. She was already drawing a crude map on the back of a napkin. “It’s not far. Just come out here—” she pointed to an intersection nearby “—and then turn right. It’s the old Bradley place, about six miles past Everly. It burned down last month, and they’re holding a barn raising, so to speak.”

  “Who is?”

  “Everybody,” she said absently. She was counting boxes under her breath, pointing and scowling, as if someone might be trying to fool her into sending the wrong amounts.

  Finally satisfied, she turned to Josie. “Take one of the vans, so it’ll all fit. The red ones are Black Forest ham and Swiss on croissant. The yellow ones are mandarin chicken salad. The white ones are grilled eggplant.”

  “Yummy,” Josie said sincerely. She’d had one of Imogene’s grilled eggplant sandwiches, and it was heaven.

  “You get any complaints, you just tell them to shut up and eat.” She wiped a strand of hair away from her damp forehead. “Ned had the nerve to ask for a turkey wrap, can you believe it? I said, you get what you always get. If I give in to even one person, I’ll end up making forty different sandwiches for forty different mouths.”

  “Do they have barn raisings a lot?”

  “This one’s organized by the Burn Center. But about once a month, they’re out there fixing something for somebody. Like the Habitat people, only more informal like. Chase’s mother started it, but now it’s just a habit. It’s the way Chase is. He likes to help people out.”

  “Yes,” Josie said, nodding self-consciously. “I know.”

  Imogene laughed, reaching around to untie her apron. “Lordie, honey, I didn’t mean you. You’re…” She screwed up her mouth, considering. “You’re different.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. Now get going. You’ve got to stop by the diner, too, and I won’t be sending soggy sandwiches.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AFTER THE BLOWUP with Nikki, Susannah was almost too distracted to focus on anything. As she pulled into the Bradley lot, with her forty-two-ounce jugs of lemonade, coffee and ice water on the seat beside her, she was still reliving the argument, thinking of all the brilliant comebacks she should have used.

  The whole thing made her furious, and her body thrummed with tension. As a result, her foot was heavy on the pedals, and she was going far too fast. She took the corner too sharply.

  And she came within a rabbit’s whisker of colliding with another car, pulling in from the other side.

  The Coleman jugs tumbled everywhere as she hit the brakes. Her head snapped forward, and she felt the cool kiss of the windshield against her brow. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the sound of shattering glass.

  But nothing happened. The other car braked sharply, too. Her shoulder belt held her in place. The car rocked slightly, settling, like a cup knocked sideways, but not hard enough to fall over.

  She closed her eyes and tried to breathe. Gradually, over a couple of seconds, she felt her own balance returning. The whooshing in her ears stopped as the adrenaline eased off. As shock receded, she gained a little room in her brain to think.

  And that’s when she noticed that the shiny black Mercedes she’d almost hit belonged to Trent.

  Damn it. Could anything else go wrong today?

  He recovered faster than she did and pulled his car smoothly into one of the few open slots. They were late for the building party, and everyone else clearly had already arrived.

  If only she’d come sooner.

  If only he hadn’t come at all.

  He got out, and sauntered back toward her, his movements efficient and graceful. He was never awkward, was he? She felt an unwanted response to the elegant motion of his perfectly shaped body. But she couldn’t help that. He was a good-looking man, and she still had eyes in her head.

  However, she didn’t have to let herself stare. She averted her gaze and focused on maneuvering her car into the only other available space. When she turned in, she found herself nose to nose with Chase’s truck. It felt comforting, like encountering an ally just before a battle.

  If only Chase were in it, and could act as a buffer between his two friends. It was a role he’d perfected over the past few years.

  But Chase had probably already been working on the Bradley house for hours.

  Oh, well. What couldn’t be avoided might as well be faced. It was no big deal, really. She saw Trent all the time, though she hadn’t seen him since her engagement to Chase had been announced.

  Even before that, they had always managed to avoid being alone.

  She took a deep breath, grabbed one of the coolers and climbed out. It was a hot, sunny day already. Everyone would be dying of thirst, wondering where the drinks were.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as Trent approached her. “That was my fault.”

  “It certainly was,” he said with that air of amusement that attracted so many women, but only irritated her. “Did you learn that trick from Josie? I thought I was having déjà vu for a minute there.”

  His gaze scanned her lazily. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Her knees wobbled a little—the adrenaline, no doubt—so she stood by the side of the car, waiting for them to settle. “The lemonade is probably going to have a nice head of froth, though.”

  He peered in. The jugs lay every which way on the floor of the passenger seat. “I’ll get the rest of those for you.”

  She shook her head. “I’m all right, thanks. Chase will get them.”

  Trent raised one of his dark brows. “Chase is probably fifteen feet in the air right now, with a mouth full of carpenter’s nails. You’d drag him over here, just to deny me the privilege of hauling your lemonade?”

  She flushed. Through the years, she’d developed a thick skin where Trent was concerned, and it ordinarily took more than his sardonic smile to fluster her. But she simply wasn’t up to sparring with him today, not after going toe-to-toe with Nikki all morning.

  “Of course not,” she said. “If you think it’s such a big deal to carry the coolers, help yourself. I’m just—” She backed away to provide access to the car. “I’m just surprised to see you here, that’s all. You don’t usually…I mean, when the Burn Center is involved in something—”

  He shrugged. “Bradley is a friend of mine. I want to help him. The fact that he ended up in your precious Burn Center doesn’t change that.”

  She felt her spine stiffen. “My precious Burn Center?”

  She shouldn’t have provided the opening for him. She should have seen that he was spoiling for a fight.

  “S
ure it is. It’s your baby, isn’t it? You spearheaded the drive for it, you raised the money for it, and you’ve been martyring yourself for it ever since. St. Susannah of the Fiery Flames, that’s what we call you.”

  She put the cooler of lemonade down carefully. And then she reached out and slapped him. Hard. Flat-palmed across the cheek.

  With lightning reflexes, he caught her hand. He held it in the air, his gaze never dropping from hers, even as the red outline of her fingers appeared like a brand on his face.

  “How dare you?” Her breath came roughly. She refused to demean herself by trying to wriggle her hand away. He was twice as strong as she was, and she wouldn’t be free until he decided to let her go.

  “How dare I? I dare because it’s true. And because enough is enough. It’s gone on too long, Sue. It’s been more than ten years. More than a decade since Paul died. And you’re still using that goddamn Burn Center to punish me for it.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She lifted her chin. “But how typical of you to think that everything, including a project I’ve been deeply involved in for years, is actually all about you.”

  “It is all about me. Or rather, it’s all about us.”

  “Us?” She laughed harshly. “There hasn’t been an ‘us’ for ten years, Trent. And there never will be again.”

  He let go of her hand slowly. His face looked raw, shockingly young, stripped of the mocking mask that had covered it for so long. She caught the faint whiff of old smoke in the air. Was it left over from the Bradley fire, she wondered? Or was it the smell of her own bridges burning?

  “What the hell happened to you, Sue? You used to be so…” He shook his head, as if he found himself unable to come up with the right word. “So…”

  She held her breath, calling on her hard-won thick skin to protect her from whatever he might say next. To keep her from doing anything stupid, like letting her voice break, or allowing a tear to fall.

  He gave up. “When did you turn so cold?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was during the six months I sat in Paul’s hospital room, watching him die. Watching his mother’s heart break. Watching his father fade away before my eyes.”

  Trent shook his head again. It was a primitive denial, a subconscious rejection of a truth too painful to accept. But it was all true. Why shouldn’t he face it? She’d had to face it back then, day after day, month after month. And she faced it still, every day, in her memories, in her dreams.

  She shrugged. “Or maybe it was the day your father showed up and told me you were gone. That you’d left town. And you’d married someone else.”

  “You know why I left. Surely you haven’t forgotten telling me you’d never speak to me again as long as you lived.”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten. So you moved on. And quickly, too. Well, good for you. It shows a certain resilience, to be able to kill a man, abandon your family and betray your girlfriend, all without blinking an eye.”

  “What is it you won’t forgive me for, Sue? Is it what happened to Paul? Or is it the fact that I married someone else?”

  “Hey, guys.” Suddenly Chase was there behind them, looking sweaty and golden from hard labor in the spring sun. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer. It amazed her that anyone could look so wholesome, so normal, at a moment like this.

  “What’s going on out here?” Chase frowned at Trent, then turned his gaze to Susannah. “Is everything all right?”

  Susannah looked at Trent, inviting him to respond. In an instant, his elegant bitterness was back in place. He was devilishly handsome, dangerously self-composed and utterly unreachable.

  “Not to worry, Chase,” he said, pulling his keys from his pocket. He shook them with a light jingle. “I was just leaving.”

  “Damn it, Trent, what have you—” He narrowed his eyes, obviously spotting the shape of Susannah’s hand still flaming on the other man’s cheek. He whipped his head around. “Sue? Tell me. Are you okay?”

  “Okay?” Trent laughed, a jagged, joyless sound. “No, she’s not okay. She’s a stone-cold bitch, and there’s nothing that remotely resembles a heart beating inside that beautiful breast.”

  “Cripes, Trent—”

  “Sorry, buddy.” He smiled at Chase with his usual ironic detachment. “But it’s true. And all I can say is…better you than me.”

  THE SLOW HANDS DINER was easy to find, thank goodness. Josie parked the van out front, locked the precious boxed lunches inside, and then hurried to the front counter.

  A huge man ambled over. He had bushy black hair, horn-rims, and a tattoo on his monstrous bicep that said Sell by: 1987.

  “Hi, there,” he said with a smile so warm it took her by surprise. “Lunch for one?”

  “No, thanks. Imogene asked me to tell you that she needs two of your big muddies. And she said, well, she said we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

  Actually, Imogene had said to tell him to “hustle like it’s 1970,” but at the last minute Josie just couldn’t do it.

  “Two big muddies coming up.” The giant reached under the counter, grabbed a bottled water and handed it to her. “Grab a stool and make yourself at home. I’ll be back in two shakes of a stick.”

  She took the stool closest to the cash register. It was the best vantage point for seeing the dozen or so customers, all dusty, stubbled ranch hands who were clearly stretching their lunch hours to the max.

  Slow Hands… She smiled to herself, finally getting the pun.

  She unscrewed the cap of the water and, taking a drink, sneaked a glance at the first table. She didn’t really think that Flim could be one of these customers—he had been so well-groomed, so believable in the role of a privileged young son of Texas. But you never knew. Give some of these guys good clothes and a good haircut, and they might look like Robert Redford themselves.

  She checked each table out, one sip of water per cowboy. But when the bottle came up empty, so did her search. Flim wasn’t here.

  Then she noticed that the walls were crowded with photographs. Rodeos, it looked like, and county fairs, and Fourth of July picnics.

  A gold mine…a virtual mug book of local cowboys.

  She slid off her stool and walked casually over to the nearest photo. It showed several cowboys in ten-gallon hats, grinning as they gathered around a beautiful black horse. Mysty Rios takes the blue rosette in reining, the caption read.

  But she didn’t recognize any of the men in the picture. She tried not to feel disappointed. Even bothering to look at the pictures was a little like playing the lottery. Actually, the odds that she’d find Flim’s face among this sea of cowboys were probably even slimmer than her odds of winning the Saturday-night jackpot.

  But here she was, with time to kill, and it didn’t hurt to try. How she would love to be able to walk up to Chase and say, “I found him!”

  She smiled at one of the real-life ranch hands as she bumped his chair, trying to get a better angle on the picture on the wall behind him. “Sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to take a quick look—”

  “Miss Whitford?” The cowboy stood up awkwardly and took his hat in his hand. “Boss Johnson,” he supplied politely. “I work at the Double C.”

  She searched her mind, and then she placed him. He was the cutting horse trainer, the one who had spotted the phobia in that beautiful roan.

  “Hi, Mr. Johnson. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

  If only he knew how sorry. When she’d seen Johnson riding the roan, he’d reminded her of Willie Nelson, his face covered in a reddish-gray beard, and his hair tied back in a long, scruffy ponytail. Today he had apparently come from the barber. His face was clean-shaven, and he had the neatly parted, above-the-ears haircut of a banker, or a schoolteacher.

  It was unnerving to realize how much of her impressions were based on such superficial details. If she couldn’t recognize a man she’d seen just a few days ago, a man who wasn’t trying to hide from anyone, how could she be so sure she’d know Flim when she
saw him?

  “It’s okay, ma’am,” Johnson said with a smile. “I reckon my own mother wouldn’t recognize me today. I’m fixing to ask my girl to marry me, and I thought I’d better not show up looking like yesterday’s hog slop.”

  “You look great. How romantic. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that she says yes.”

  “Oh, she will.” Johnson laughed, a big, heartfelt roll from the diaphragm. “She’s been hinting for weeks. And besides, I got this.” He dug in his pocket and brought out a black velvet box. He snapped it open with two fingers.

  Josie caught her breath. Nestled in the bed of satin was one of the prettiest diamond rings she’d ever seen. Big and round, and giving off colored light like a Fourth of July sparkler. Chase must pay his cutting trainers amazingly well…or else this guy had saved up for years.

  “Wow,” she said. “She’s one lucky lady.”

  “Naw, I’m the lucky one,” he said, flushing in the most endearing way. “She’s flat-dab gorgeous, and I’m as ugly as homemade soap, but—”

  He stopped midsentence, and stared at the door. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He frowned. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to lay eyes on that little gelding again so soon.”

  She looked at the door, too. And this time she did recognize the cowboy walking in. It was Eli Breslin, the kid Chase had fired last night. The boy glanced toward where she and Johnson stood, colored up, and then looked away, pretending he hadn’t seen them.

  “Good decision,” Johnson grunted. “He better not push his luck. If it’d been up to me, he would’ve been fired from living, not just from that job. And I darn sure wouldn’t have found work for him anywhere else.”

  He took a last swig of his sweet tea, then wiped his napkin across his mouth in one big sweep.

  “But Mr. Clayton’s got a soft heart, everybody knows that.” He shrugged good-naturedly. “What can you do?”

  “Mr. Clayton got Eli a new job already?”

  “Yeah. At the hardware store. I guess it’s okay, as long as he’s not working with living critters. A person can’t actually kill a monkey wrench, right?” He chuckled, amused at his own joke. “Though if anybody could, that’s your boy.”