by Maggie Marr
Bobby and Ash settled into a back booth and Tulsa took a seat at the counter. Tulsa attempted to not be too obvious as she watched Bobby and Ash. Over the last few weeks they’d developed an easy rhythm. Ash was animated and expressive and Bobby was present and had an easy laugh. Tulsa understood what Ash got from her dad—no judgment, no discipline (at least not yet), and an adult that listened. When they were together, Bobby truly listened to Ash. He was so present. Now he leaned forward over the table while he held his menu, enraptured with what Ash told him, his eyes wide and a giant smile on his face. Gone were any awkward moments, replaced by smiles and laughter and genuine joy. Tulsa was happy that Ash had this with her father, but she also understood the reality of how that would all shift if Bobby became the primary caregiver for Ash. He’d have to set boundaries. Create rules. Make limits. All the things that Savannah continuously did for Ash and the very reason Ash was rebelling.
“Afternoon, Tulsa.” Cade slid into a seat at the counter beside her. A warmth flooded down her spine with the caress of his voice.
Rose stopped in front of them and Tulsa turned her coffee cup skyward so that she could pour. Cade did the same.
He glanced over his shoulder toward Ash and Bobby on the far side of the restaurant.
“I’d hoped it wouldn’t go this far. I didn’t really think it would.”
“Neither did I.” Tulsa rested her chin on her hand. The inside of the diner was nearly empty. Tulsa watched Ash peruse the menu. “It’s a big change.” Tulsa turned and met Cade’s gaze. “But if it happens, it’s a big change for everyone.”
“Maybe Ash’ll tell Wilder she wants to stay here with Savannah,” Cade said and poured cream into his coffee.
“Maybe.” Tulsa sat in silence and watched Ash and Bobby. When she turned back toward Cade, he watched her. Instead of feeling conflicted, the weight of Cade’s gaze warmed her. For a moment, a settled feeling spread through her limbs.
“How’s your dad?” Tulsa asked, her voice soft.
Cade tilted his head. His surprise at her question was justified. She did nearly everything to avoid the subject of Hudd in any way other than to try to find answers about her mother’s death. But if Hudd was losing his mind, then Cade was in fact about to lose a parent and losing a parent, Tulsa knew, was one of the toughest things to endure.
“He’s…” Cade chose his words carefully. “Confused,” Cade said. “Sometimes he’s lucid and other times he’s… well… he’s like a child.” Cade toyed with the fork that lay on the counter. “Wayne wants me to find some help. Lottie’s not really trained to help with Dad’s dementia, and he wants me to start looking at nursing homes and, well…” Cade looked up from his coffee cup and into Tulsa’s eyes. “I’m just not there yet.”
Tulsa didn’t know her father and she hadn’t had much of a mother, but she had, however, had Grandma Margaret, and the idea of putting her into a nursing home would have made Tulsa’s stomach churn.
“I want to take care of him.” Cade leaned against the stool seatback. “I think my mom would expect me to take care of him. I just… I’m not sure exactly how I can.”
“You’ll find a way.” Tulsa placed her fingertips onto the back of Cade’s hand.
Electricity flashed through her even with this slight touch. She met Cade’s gaze. He, too, felt the energy that pulsed between them.
What would Cade say—what would he do once he discovered she’d met with Kyle Edwards and sought out Wilkes Stevenson? How could she possibly be with Cade if Bobby got custody of Ash? There were too many barriers between them, but in that tiny touch the energy pulsed between them and they both felt and needed to try to ignore it.
Tulsa looked away from Cade and watched Ash dip a French fry into ketchup and smile at Bobby.
“I wish we could have saved her from testifying,” Cade said.
Would it be difficult for Ash to choose? Gut-wrenching? Selection of one parent over the other had to create some kind of guilt within a kid.
“If it’s any consolation, I told Bobby I thought that Ash should finish school here.”
Tulsa turned back to Cade. She’d guessed as much and she appreciated him saying it out loud. He seemed so earnest as he watched her. He’d been there for her when her mother died. He’d held her while she cried. He’d promised her a future. He’d wanted her when really she had nothing but herself to give—and in response to all his love, she’d left without a word or any explanation. Without even a wave good-bye. Cade had deserved more than that, she owed him better than that. A sudden urge built within her to explain, to tell him the facts that surrounded her exit from Powder Springs.
“Cade, I wanted to tell—” Tulsa started.
“Have you talked to her?” Cade interrupted, his eyes darted from Tulsa’s face toward the back booth.
Tulsa nodded yes and bit down on her bottom lip. Now wasn’t the time to confess the details surrounding her departure. Perhaps the time would never arrive. Tulsa again glanced over at Ash. “This is her decision and I don’t want to look like I’m trying to make it for her.”
“Make it for her? Come on, she’s a McGrath,” Cade said and grinned. “No one makes a decision for a McGrath.”
“Good point.”
“If anything, you’re the best person for her to talk to. You’re not her dad and you’re not her mom. Plus you’re older than fourteen, so your advice might be semi-sound.”
“Right,” Tulsa said.
“I know she’s a teenager, but come on—you’re the cool aunt from LA,” Cade said.
“Only when I drive the convertible,” Tulsa said.
“You? Have a convertible?”
“Of course. Standard issue for attorneys in LA. We get them when we get our bar card.”
“Wow, I should have gotten licensed in California instead of New York.”
“Weather’s better,” Tulsa said.
“And so are the perks. Obviously.”
“The benefits outweigh the cons,” Tulsa said and again looked into Cade’s eyes.
“I guess,” Cade said. “If you don’t mind being so far from home.”
*
“You almost ready?” Tulsa called up the stairs to Savannah. “You’re supposed to work the volleyball booth in fifteen minutes.”
“Almost,” Savannah yelled back.
Tulsa paced from the bottom of the staircase to the front room. She glanced out the window at the darkness. The earth looked cold and hard. She had turned and started back down the front hall when she paused. Grandma Margaret. She’d been passing the urn made of white porcelain with blue daisies painted on it for weeks. She’d even set her keys on the table beside the urn as well as her laptop and her purse, yet she never really stopped and considered that there in that piece of ceramic lay the remains of her grandmother. She bit her bottom lip—somehow it made her feel unsettled that Grandma Margaret remained in the house instead of buried beside Connie, and yet this house would always be Grandma Margaret’s, no matter how many more generations of McGraths called the two-story rambling Victorian home. Perhaps this was the right spot for Grandma Margaret—not the cold earth, not even setting free her ashes on the air that blew through the Rockies, but instead in this spot, just inside the front door, almost standing guard over the family and the home she’d dearly loved.
There was a knock on the front door and Tulsa started. She looked away from the urn and toward the pane of beveled glass in the door. Tulsa opened the front and steadied herself because Bobby was one of the last people she ever would have guessed would show up on the McGrath front porch.
“Evening, Tulsa.” He tilted his head and clasped his Stetson in his hands. “Is Savannah around?”
Tulsa backed away from the door. “Uh, sure. Why don’t you… yeah, come on in.” She didn’t know what to do with Bobby. Should she slam the door closed in his face or offer him a place to sit? His eyes fell on Grandma Margaret’s shotgun, which hung above the fireplace on the wall.
“D
on’t worry,” Tulsa said. “It’s unloaded and I hid the shells.”
His smile seemed weak but thankful.
Tulsa backed away from Bobby. “Let me see if I can get Savann—”
“Bobby?”
Savannah stood on the staircase above them both. She wore a skirt and her usually wild curls were tamed into a low ponytail at the back of her neck. Her gaze met Tulsa’s eyes and seemed to ask the same question that Tulsa wondered: what the heck was he doing here? Tulsa couldn’t answer her sister’s wordless question. She was just as surprised as Savannah that Bobby had the gall to demand sole custody of Ash and then appear on Savannah’s doorstep.
“Sorry to stop by without calling,” Bobby said. He turned his hat in his hands and his gaze jumped from Tulsa to Savannah. “But I thought for sure you’d just hang up on me if I did.”
“You thought right.” Savannah walked down the stairs and stopped in front of Bobby. Her face first appeared angry but the closer she got to Bobby the more her features shifted. Her mouth sloped downward and her eyebrows crinkled over her eyes.
“Why are you here?” Savannah asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I wanted to talk about Ash,” Bobby said.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Tulsa broke in, but Savannah held up her hand to halt Tulsa.
“I think you’ve made yourself pretty clear where Ash is concerned,” Savannah said and rolled her shoulders back. “You want to take her away from me.”
“Savannah… I… Can’t we please, just for a minute, talk about it?” Bobby asked.
Savannah shook her head and reached for her coat. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I don’t want Ash to testify in court,” Bobby spit the words out quickly. “I… I don’t think it would be good for her.”
Savannah returned her jacket to its hook. Her mouth was set in a tight line. “I agree with you,” Savannah said. “Fine, we can talk.”
Bobby followed Savannah into the formal living room. Just out of sight, Tulsa slowly crouched and sat on the bottom step of the staircase. Yes, she was eavesdropping and yes, it might be wrong, but she didn’t care. She wanted to hear every word that Bobby said to Savannah. Every explanation, if there was any, every plea, every argument—
“Tulsa?” She stiffened at the sound of her sister’s voice.
Tulsa stood and peeked her nose around the corner into the formal living room. Bobby and Savannah sat in chairs on opposite ends of an antique marble tea table. An odd-looking couple. Bobby in a pair of Wranglers and worrying his hat in his hands and Savannah in her flowing skirt and long scarf. They had known each other’s younger selves intimately but after fifteen years of life they appeared to be strangers to one another.
“Why don’t you go ahead to the carnival,” Savannah said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Tulsa pursed her lips and walked toward the door. The attraction she really wanted to see was right here at home.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tulsa meandered beneath the white lights strung from pine tree to pine tree in the town square. A wistful yearning like a thin rivulet of water trickled through her body. The scent of snow in the air kept company with cinnamon and apple, thanks to Rose’s fresh-baked pastries. Flames licked the wood in the bonfires. Couples held hands and kept warm beside the jumping flames. Wayne sold hot apple cider beside Dr. Bob at the football booster booth. Judge Wilder collected tickets at the Hot Shot tent where for a buck you could try your hand with an air rifle and a target in an attempt to win a stuffed animal.
People nodded and waved to Tulsa as she meandered around the town square. Melancholy squeezed her heart and yet even with the melancholy from the past mixed with the uncertainty of her family’s future, a deep warming joy, a sense of calm—of belonging, grounded her to this very moment, to this very place. Her eyes drifted over the crowd—children and parents and grandparents all linked to this town with a deep abiding love, not only for each other but also for their home. Her gaze drifted, collecting the sights like bits of bright sea glass until it landed on a pair of eyes watching her.
The breath whooshed from her lungs and a jolt raced through her body. He was five feet away but when their eyes locked it was as if a circuit was complete and a sharp blue bolt of electricity arced between them. Her chest squeezed. She couldn’t move—even though she should turn away, she should walk away, she maybe should run away as she had years before—instead, her feet were firmly planted on the courthouse lawn. His eyes never left hers as he walked toward her. Well-worn Levi’s molded to his thighs. He wore a deep mocha leather jacket over a black shirt. He stopped six inches from her.
“Evening, Tulsa.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. She glanced down toward her feet and then back up to meet his gaze. She couldn’t help herself. So overcome by his presence and this place—every memory of every fall carnival collided inside her mind. Every want. Every need. Every unsaid thing. And more too—maybe it was the soon-to-be end of her trip. Maybe it was the guilt of all that she was stirring up. Maybe it was simply the damned excitement she felt with this charge running so hot and fierce between them. In this instant—this moment—for whatever reason, all the obstacles that stood between them melted away and she was any woman wildly attracted to a man.
“Cade,” she said and looked up through her eyelashes.
He leaned forward and whispered into her ear, “You are the most beautiful woman here.”
Warmth, thick and hot, pooled within her. Heat drifted outward and saturated her limbs. A tingling sensation all through her spine. A slow smile crawled across Cade’s face as if he knew the sensations he caused to course through her body. He reached his hand around and rested it on the small of her back.
“Maybe you’d let me get you an apple cider?”
Tulsa nodded and a sweet soft smile drifted over her face. There wasn’t much for them to say—why not just acknowledge the attraction and enjoy the evening?
“I’d like that.”
A soft sort of magic, built upon shared memories, filled the air around them. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she couldn’t ever be with Cade and a resignation to the permanence of their attraction and the impermanence of their time together. They wandered toward Rose and Earl and the sweet cinnamon rolls. Tulsa surrendered to the gentle, reassuring pressure of Cade’s hand on her back.
Cade ordered for them and they drifted to a wooden bench with wrought-iron arms. Here they had a view of the carnival. Tulsa’s eyes drifted toward a pack of high schoolers where Ash stood beside Dylan, their fingers loosely entwined. Her smile was easy and she laughed at a joke. She seemed so effortlessly happy—so content in her life. How could Ash want to leave this place and these people for so much that was unknown?
Tulsa understood the need to leave. At eighteen she would have said she felt compelled by the events in her life to move to Los Angeles. And maybe Ash felt compelled as well by the need to know her father and distance herself from her mother and this life—to create her own identity. Maybe this need was embedded within a strain of the McGrath DNA. Connie had come and gone from Powder Springs every few months—unable to settle down with a forever in this town—and that same blood that ran through Connie pumped in Tulsa’s veins and in Ash.
“Did Bobby come by the house?” Cade asked after taking a sip of hot coffee.
“How’d you know?” Tulsa bit into the warm, sticky goodness that was Rose’s fresh cinnamon roll.
“I suggested it.” Cade leaned into the wooden back of the bench and stretched his arm out and behind Tulsa’s shoulder.
“Little risky of you. Especially when you’re looking for a restraining order since Savannah is so dangerous.” Tulsa twisted her lips and tilted her head to the side.
“I think all that is going to be moot after they talk.”
Cade’s eyes held the hint of a smile. A smile because he held a secret that he hadn’t shared. Tulsa bit her bottom lip. She wanted to know what tidbit of information
he held so closely, but there were a multitude of reasons that Cade not only wouldn’t but couldn’t tell her about his conversation with Bobby—not the least of which was the fact that Bobby was his client.
“That feels patently unfair,” Tulsa said and licked a hint of icing off her finger. Cade’s eyes lingered as her tongue rolled over the tip of her finger and a heat settled in the V between her legs with his gaze. His eyelids were heavy and the muscle in his jaw twitched as she pulled her finger from between her lips.
“Why did you send Bobby to the house?”
Cade looked up from her lips and leaned forward. “While I know it was borderline as far as professional ethics, my client and his daughter had a conversation today that I believe only he should share with your sister.”
Tulsa’s heartbeat kicked upward because a hope that maybe Bobby and Ash had decided that Powder Springs was the best home for Ash and because Cade was so close if she leaned forward a mere two inches her lips—lips that desperately wanted to kiss Cade—would get exactly what they desired. Cade reached out his hand and his fingers touched the edge of Tulsa’s chin. His blue eyes locked with hers.
“I think everyone will be pleased with their decision.”
Warmth coursed through her—warmth that quickly ignited into a hot flame—a flame that burned to her core. Cade’s fingertips stroked her chin and a tremor raced through her. Her gaze narrowed and all that was around them—the lights, the people, the scents, the carnival—dropped away and fell from her vision and at that moment all she saw was Cade. Clear and before her were his strong features and kind eyes and she wondered why they couldn’t be together, why it seemed as though every block, every barricade that could be imagined was placed in their way and quite simply why, if they cared for each other enough, they couldn’t find their way around the challenges they faced.
