Peace in the Valley

by Ruth Logan Herne

  Two big questions without an answer.

  “Colt’s plans for helping rebuild have won a lot of support, but there’s some who can’t get beyond what your father did in the past.”

  Trey understood being mired in the past too well. He clamped his back teeth together but kept his face calm. “Forgiveness doesn’t come easy.”

  “And sometimes forgiving ourselves takes longest of all.”

  Nick’s words jerked Trey’s head around.

  His brother didn’t look at him. He simply set the dairy products on the counter and let Ham ring them up. And when Trey proffered his debit card to Ham, Nick gave him a brotherly nudge, one that said too much.

  “I’ve never seen so much food, like ever!” Cody’s excitement made Trey wonder if he’d gone overboard, but a family of five would go through a lot of food, wouldn’t they? But then if money was tight, overflowing grocery carts might not be the norm.

  “Well, I figured it’s important to grab stuff while we’re in town because your mom’s van is broken.”

  “And all her fwowers.” Belle lifted tragic eyes to his. “She was cwyin’ because she missed her fwowers so much.”

  The thought of causing the young widow strife twisted Trey’s heart. One thoughtless moment, one unnoticed sign, and he’d wiped out a significant chance for income. On the plus side, no one was hurt, and he’d called out the pot-smoking teen, so maybe some good would come out of this day after all.

  Nick helped him load the groceries and the kids while Trey made use of the ATM, then clapped him on the back. And then he did something the brothers almost never did, something that Elsa, Nick’s psychologist fiancée, must have taught him.

  Nick hugged him, and Trey didn’t know how much he needed that hug until he got it.

  “See you at home.”

  “Will do.”

  Just that, no long-winded speeches to drag things out, just a hug. And that meant everything.

  Lucy and Cade had just made the turn toward Hammerstein’s when Trey’s SUV pulled up. He jumped out, rounded the hood quickly, and opened the door for them, probably being nice while hoping she wouldn’t sue him for the earlier accident.

  You didn’t used to be so cynical. It’s a really unattractive trait, her conscience scolded. Maybe he’s just being kind.

  And maybe Cinderella really did cram her foot into that stupid glass slipper.

  Nope, Lucy believed in a great many things, but the term “straight-shooting man” had become an oxymoron years before.

  “How’s he doing?” Trey didn’t just help her up into the seat and shut the door. He leaned in, concerned, as if Cade’s fate mattered to him, and that tiny bit of interest seemed to stir Cade’s emotions. “Stitches or glue?”

  “Stitches.” Cade peered up at him. “They asked Mom if I was a quiet kind of kid. Quiet kids can have glue. Mom said we better use thread.”

  Trey laughed, then held his hand up for a high five. The move seemed to deepen Cade’s interest. “I hear ya. Better safe than sorry. And you were able to use my card all right?” He shifted his attention back to her, and for a moment, she wished he could just stand there, looking at her like that, for the rest of her life.

  Magnetism.

  This man had a lock on charisma and exuded magnetism, a dangerous combo. She’d heard that in his music and seen it in his country videos. But those were nothing compared to the real deal, up close and personal like he was now.

  She clamped down her errant heart, put a lock on the sweetness of an adrenaline buzz, and answered calmly. “I was able to use it. Thank you. I did have to give her your cell phone number in case they needed assurance, and that made her day. But then she shredded it. And sighed because she said the last thing she wanted to do was shred Trey Walker’s personal cell number.”

  He laughed and gave her a teasing look, the kind that seemed easy and sincere, like they were old friends or new sweethearts.

  They were neither, but she couldn’t deny the spark of interest on her side. She could, however, control it, because she wasn’t one of his teenage groupies, or even a more mature one.

  She’d lived a lot of life already. She might be twenty-six by the calendar, but experientially she’d packed on an extra decade. Or maybe it just felt that way.

  “I’m glad there wasn’t a problem, Mrs. Carlton.”

  “Lucy.”

  He was starting to back away from the door when she offered her first name for his use. He paused, made eye contact, and nodded, serious and simple. “I’m obliged, Ms. Lucy.” His Western twang drawled out the Miz Lucy, and he grinned at her. He touched his hat once more, a gentleman’s salute. “And I’m Trey.”

  She figured her heart started beating again about the time they made the turn into her drive. Ashley was on the porch, zoned out on music and maybe weed, but Lucy would handle that once Trey left.

  He pulled in, made a quick turn, and backed the SUV up to the porch steps. Ashley looked up, surprised.

  The hatch went up and Ashley’s eyes went wide as Cody raced out of the car and hurried to the back. “I wanna help bring things in!”

  “Me too!” Belle worked her latches a little more slowly, but when she was done, she hopped down and scrambled out of the SUV. “I’m big enough.”

  “I don’t understand.” Lucy watched them grab some bags. Once Cade had climbed down, she shut the door and circled the car to Trey’s side. “What did you do?”

  “Just some shopping. I figured you wouldn’t have a car for a day or two, and if you were down on supplies, you had no way to get them.”

  “I’m not a charity case.” She stared at him, wanting him to know she understood how things worked. Nothing came free, and no one did something for another person without some kind of string attached. She knew the truth in that. “Things are tight here, but we manage without handouts. Yours or anyone else’s.”

  He considered her words but didn’t seem the least bit bothered by them. “Not a handout, just a neighborly gesture since I messed up your day, your van, and all of your hard work. This is nothing more than a stopgap to make up for my carelessness. Not a bit of charity about it.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  Now he winced, and he tipped his hat back, folded his arms, and looked down at her without dropping his chin. “Well, now, that’s another conversation, Ms. Lucy.”

  “Not Miss Lucy. Just Lucy. And please, don’t try your country-lovin’ stage tricks on me. I’m immune.”

  “Good to know.” He accepted that simply, but Lucy was pretty sure she saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes before he shut it down. “In any case, it seems my daddy has a debt to settle with you.”

  “With me and so many others,” she muttered, aggravated. “Kids, stop unloading those things right now. I’m sure they can use all of this stuff over at the Double S. They feed a crowd every day.”

  “Don’t you even think of getting me in trouble with Isabo,” he warned, as if he was actually afraid of Angelina’s mother. “She’s running that kitchen now, and anyone who knows anything about running a ranch knows the first rules of the day are to love God the Father Almighty and keep the cook happy.”

  She tapped her toe, tempted to possibly kick him with it or just keep tapping.

  She kept tapping and folded her arms as the kids continued to unload the bags. Squeals of excitement indicated he’d made some good choices.

  He directed his attention toward the noise. “Ham and Cody helped me out. I figured if we go car shopping tomorrow after church—”

  “Dealerships aren’t open on Sunday,” she argued.

  He held up his cell phone. “Found one in Wenatchee that we can get to after services tomorrow. I promised Dad I’d go to church with the family, but they don’t open till noon so that works out all right. And if you don’t see something you like there, then we’ll check further on Monday. In the interim, Ange is on her way over here to pick me up. I’m leaving my Jeep so you’ve got wheels until you’ve
got your own. We’ve got plenty of vehicles at the ranch, and this one’s an automatic, not a stick shift like Nick’s and Colt’s.”

  “I can drive a stick.” If he raised one eyebrow of doubt or surprise, she might kick him yet.

  “Then it wouldn’t have mattered which car we left you. I didn’t know.” He shrugged and handed her the keys and a slim envelope from the ATM. “Tank’s full. We can either ride together to the dealership or separate. Your choice. And the envelope is to cover the flower loss. I expect today’s sales would have been a big help, so use this as needed. If it doesn’t seem like enough, just let me know.”

  It felt wrong to take the money.

  This would be so much easier if it was an impersonal check from an insurance company. Then she’d have no qualms.

  But to have this man—this famous country singer/television star personality—slip her cash felt wrong, even though it made perfect sense.

  “Ange also said the kids could hang out at the ranch tomorrow if that helps. Rye Bennett’s brother and sister are coming over to do some riding, and Colt would be happy to give the kids a chance up top. Plenty of grown-ups around tomorrow to keep an eye out. And to cook food. It might give your teen something to keep her head and hands busy.”

  Rye Bennett was the local sheriff and Angelina’s boss. He’d left a job with the Chicago Police Department to come back to Gray’s Glen when his mother lost her battle with cancer. Now he was raising his younger brother, Brendan, and sister, Jenna, a nice pair of kids who’d known grief firsthand.

  She should rebuke Trey’s offer. She should demand the insurance card and let the two companies wrangle things out, waiting days or even weeks to get a car.

  “Pride goeth before the fall.”

  She understood the words well. She’d let pride trip her up too many times. Hers. Chase’s. In such a hurry to grow up, they never quite did until there was absolutely no other choice. “You sure they wouldn’t mind having the kids around?”

  He shook his head as Angelina’s SUV crunched gravel behind them. “Positive.”

  “Then, yes, if you wouldn’t mind. Getting a replacement would take a load off my mind.”

  “Mine too.” He waved to Ange, then turned back quickly. “And about my father…”

  Oh, she knew his father, all right. A lying, scheming, rich conniver who thought nothing of the consequences of his actions, as long as he gained leverage. She held her ground and the grudge that went along with it. “Yes?”

  “He wants to make restitution, but he’s not physically capable of doing it, so he’s assigned me the task.”

  “The task?” She returned Angelina’s wave, then redirected her attention to Trey. “What task?”

  “To get things in order. To help out over here. I guess he got in your way, years back?”

  “Not mine, but the Wheelers, which made it mine when we bought the place.”

  “Well, Ms. Lucy—”

  “I told you before. It’s Lucy, plain and simple.”

  “Well, Lucy, plain and simple…” He smiled, teasing her, and she wished it wasn’t attractive and cute and nice and all those things that cost so dearly in the end. “The Double S has things covered for the next few weeks. I’m on hiatus for the summer, and I’ve been assigned to you.”

  “To me, as in?”

  “Trey Stafford, fixer upper.”

  This was too weird. Way too weird. “No.”

  He climbed into the passenger seat of the ranch SUV and looked at her, skeptical. “I expect you know my father.”

  Oh, she did, all right. And it sliced the grace of her spirit to think anything nice about the man.

  “There’s no refusing Sam Stafford, Lucy, and at this stage of the game, with him being so sick, I wouldn’t if I could. If fixing old wrongs over here helps him face these days with a less troubled heart, then that’s what I aim to do. I won’t get in your way. I promise.”

  He was already in her way.

  He was already a nuisance, a bother, and a temptation.

  But his words struck the softer part of her heart, which had long since become the narrower portion.

  She’d watched her mother fight and lose her battle with cancer, and she’d seen her work to make amends while healthy enough to do it. And her mother was a kind, soft-spoken woman, who hadn’t hurt a soul, ever. Still, she’d tried to strengthen family ties and smooth old regrets, hers and others.

  She’d gone home to God gently, probably the same way she’d entered the world.

  Sam Stafford didn’t deserve to go home gently, or maybe at all, but that wasn’t for her to say. That was between him and the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And if Sam was extending an olive branch and she refused it, then the error was hers to own.

  Pride again. Her downfall.

  She breathed deep and looked off toward the northern hills, rising bluff by green bluff to the mountains beyond. “You won’t get in the way?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  She could do this if for no other reason than Sam Stafford owed this little farm a neighbor’s respect and a swindler’s payback. He’d leased water rights years back, leaving the Wheeler Tree Farm dry as toast during the worst of summer heat. Tree loss was nothing that could be regained in a year or two. It was a decade-long endeavor, and Sam knew that. “All right. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “After church.”

  She almost smiled.

  The best music men she knew, or had known, could sing about church. She’d witnessed it firsthand. She’d sung lead next to some of them. They sang about faith and love and God. Her children’s father had a voice for gospel music as much as he had for eighties rock, but he hadn’t stepped foot in a church or uttered a vestige of prayer for a decade before he died.

  He’d talked the talk but could never walk the walk, and she’d found his music-loving friends to be very much the same. So Trey Walker Stafford could take his church talk and bottle it. Either way?

  She wasn’t buying into it.

  “You’re home.” Colt released his horse into the near paddock, closed the gate, and crossed the graveled barnyard as Yesterday’s News trotted off. He grabbed Trey’s hand, then thumped him on the back. A big grin split Colt’s face, quite different from the taciturn man his brother had been for so many years.

  “I’m here.” Trey didn’t call it home. He had his ranch down south, rolling acres of creek-fed grass, Black Angus cattle, and horses. He’d had the sprawling cabin built big enough to hold the laughter of children and the odd dog or two in an urge to get things right, really right, for once in his life.

  They’d had no children. Cathy died, and he wasn’t at the ranch long enough to call it home or keep a dog happy, so it had become just another place to hang his hat between gigs.

  “Trey, you’ve got to be starved.” Angelina grabbed his arm and drew him forward, toward the kitchen. “Mami said you didn’t take time to eat and you’ve been gone for hours. What kept you?”

  He was about to answer when Cheyenne’s voice hailed him from the lower paddock.

  “Uncle Trey! Uncle Trey! Watch me!” Nick’s oldest daughter waved, and when old Murt scolded her to quiet down from up top a horse, she cringed and nodded. Trey staved off Angelina with his other hand. “I’ve got to see her run through her paces. Food’ll wait. She sounds excited.”

  “She is.” Angelina kept moving toward the house. “You go. I’ll make you a sandwich with that beef barbecue.”

  His stomach rumbled at the thought. He was hungry, for certain, in so many ways. Some of that hunger could be helped with Isabo’s cooking. But there was another hunger. One that wasn’t so easily assuaged.

  Ange aimed for the kitchen.

  Colt walked him down to the lower paddock. Trey had learned a lot in this paddock, and from the same old-timer leading Cheyenne around now. “Lookin’ good, Murt.”

  “I miss you, boy.” Murt kept his eyes on Cheyenne, but Trey felt the truth in the words. “ ’Bou
t time you came back to hang out awhile.”

  “Feelin’s the same.”

  “Well, good. Easy now, Chey, go light on those reins, let her feel you relaxed, but in charge. There you go.”

  “I love this.” Nine-year-old Cheyenne beamed at Trey from astride the gray mare. “I feel like I’m on top of the world up here.”

  “I know that feeling well.”

  “Uncle Trey!” Dakota, Cheyenne’s seven-year-old sister, raced his way. “You came home!” She leaped into his arms, a bundle of frenetic and sincere energy. “I am so glad to see you! There’s so much going on! Did you know my dad is going to get married?”

  “I heard a rumor to that effect,” Trey told her. “Is it true?”

  Dakota’s bright eyes went wide. “It is very true, and Elsa likes to do so many weird things with us, like go into the woods and find frogs, and paint things and make messes, and she taught me how to sit real still while puppies get born!”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way!”

  Her sheer delight blessed him in a way he’d forgotten. The joy in her voice, the excitement in her eyes, much more obvious than when he’d been here a few months before.

  Colt shoulder-nudged him. “Quite a difference, right?”

  “Like night and day.”

  Nick beelined across the grass, handed Trey a thick sandwich, and took a protesting Dakota from his arms. “Let him eat, kid. He’s too skinny. We’re going to fatten him up, get him properly prepped presurgery.”

  “What?” Dakota stared at her father, perplexed.

  “Nick.” Angelina scolded him with the single word. “Remember if he opts out, you’re next in line.”

  “But not as good a match.”

  “Nope. I got the straw on that one,” Trey admitted.

  “Short straw?” Colt wondered out loud, and he directed a pointed look right at Trey.